Early on it was a much bigger deal. By the 1980s pill technology had become much safer.
The AZ/J&J problems look to be linked to low platelet count. If you have had a physical recently, they’ve probably counted your platelets. Making sure this has been done in the past year makes administering the J&J vaccine more difficult (and the one shot and done plus high stability is the most appealing thing about the J&J), but it can be done.
We hoo-mans are very bad at conceptualizing tiny odds. You can think of the likelihood of getting blood clots from the vaccine as about the same as walking out of the house and getting bonked on the head by a meteorite. 
OK, now I need to get a steel umbrella and never leave the house without it 
Seriously, I’m feeling pretty good about my odds. It was just jarring first thing in the morning, turning on the TV and getting the news less than 48 hours after getting the J&J vaccine.
Does this mean that they shouldn’t have put the vaccine on hold?
That’s a real point of dispute, at least with the Astra Zeneca one. The EU central agency, for instance, hasn’t recommended holding off, but the French health agency has put restrictions on its use.
Here in Canada, it’s only recommended for those 55 and over, because the risk, to the extent it’s quantifiable, seems to be greater for those under 55.
AZ is a new vaccine, for a new disease, and there’s a lot of unknowns, so different health agencies and countries have taken different approaches.
Thanks.
I was wondering what the 6.8 million denominator represents. The wording “out of 6.8 million vaccinated in the US” makes me think even people vaccinated yesterday are included. From what I’m seeing a lot of people got J&J last week. My thinking is that of the 6.8 million, a whole bunch of those are recent. Unfortunately, the “6” is likely to become higher.
Is that supposed to be a serious question? It’s obviously the kind of judgment call that’s been discussed ad nauseum in the AstraZeneca thread. My view is that it mainly depends on what alternatives are available. In this case, since alternatives are widely available, putting it on hold pending more information is probably a good precautionary measure.
So, should extend stay at home orders until we get that meteorite thing figured out too? 
I disagree that this vaccine should be put on hold. At most, put it on hold for women less than 50 or something. The risks here are lower than the risks of birth control pills, lower than smoking, and much, much, much lower than just the clotting risk of getting COVID-19.
There are two issues – one is that the alternatives aren’t really widely available – there’s still a huge backlog of people wanting to get vaccinated and can’t. The second is the messaging – anyone who didn’t want to get the vaccine will have another bullshit excuse.
The J&J vaccine was going to be the go-to method for getting the vaccine out to the community – it didn’t need the super-cold fridges and is one and done, so the plan in NYC was to get it on a van and out into the under-served neighborhoods. Now, even if they can get that done (the hold is lifted) the folks who would benefit most may balk at getting this one.
I am so bummed by this. I’m scheduled to get my J&J vaccine tomorrow and it looks like it will be on hold at least through then. So now I’m back on the treadmill of hunting for a vacation appointment. Also I was really looking for j&j due to the one and done aspect now I’m a month out at best of being fully vaccinated which is starting to impact my job as everyone else is vaccinated and wants to go back to in-person meetings.
As I understand it, the treatment for this particular type of rare blood clot is quite different from the standard treatment for more common blood clots. As such, the pause in vaccination is intended to ensure the relevant information gets circulated, so for the occasional people in whom the problem is observed, the treatment will be correct and effective, and its negative effects mitigated. This is reasonable to me.
Yes.
Sorry, I haven’t been following that thread.
@RitterSport addressed this in the post 2 below yours. It looks to me like this will cause a significant delay in people getting vaccinated, and it’s reasonable to ask whether the risks of clotting outweigh the risks of those people getting Covid.
Maybe you can still get it tomorrow–reporting is saying the CDC will meet tomorrow to decide if to put it on hold. Get in line early!
That’s a good and valid point, though it’s not what you originally asked, which seemed more like a “gotcha” kind of question. I admit that it was perhaps a bit glib of me to say that “alternatives are widely available” as I was thinking in terms of the contrast with Canada where I live, where vaccines are in shorter supply per capita than in the US. For instance, a much higher percentage of Americans have been either partially or fully vaccinated. Furthermore, the second dose is generally being administered within the supposedly optimum 21 days, whereas in Canada most provinces have stretched it out to several months to ensure that the maximum number of people get at least the first dose.
So yes, I can see drawbacks to putting J&J on hold. I’m sure there’s a CYA aspect to it in the regulatory bureaucracy.
Oredigger77, for example, in this very thread, is going to be delayed in getting vaccinated and he/she is obviously good enough with tech to at least post on this site.
J&J was going to be used to reach all those people who are bad at tech, have had trouble getting appointments, or don’t have the time or ability to actively hunt for a vaccine appointment. Not everyone is able to get a python bot going to find the vaccine appointments as soon as they open.
Disastrous decision, and that’s not even including the disastrous messaging.
I used vaccinefinder.org to get my appointment.
It’s pretty much trolley problem though isn’t it? So the ethical question is much debated.
Though I wonder if clots and covid deaths aren’t independent sets. Not that we have any way to know.
Only in the sense that approving any medication is a trolley problem. Keeping tobacco use legal is a trolley problem. Cancer meds are a trolley problem. Hormonal birth control is a trolley problem. Allowing police officers to have guns is a trolley problem. Allowing ambulances to go through red lights is a trolley problem.
I’m watching it but I’m not hopeful. my appointment is a 3.5 hour drive away so they have to decide before noon MT tomorrow for me to make it. It was one thing to take an afternoon off of work and drive 220 miles one way to get a single shot but I can’t do that twice. Maybe I’ll get lucky otherwise its back hunting openings though I’ll still be aiming for J&J since it’ll be back by Friday. My best hope now is this scares enough people that its easier to get J&J appointments.
When is the COVID virus going to be FDA approved?
There are bad things that can happen with medical procedures. Any operation is a risk. My aunt died from complications from a hysterectomy. We assess the risks as best we can.
A lot of this comes down to educated guesses. Sometimes the experts guess wrong. The initial messaging on masks was a mistake, all things considered. I get what they were trying, but they were still wrong.
For the record, I have had the J&J vaccine. Not much I can do about it now!