Reading Oredigger’s response makes me think that maybe a JnJ pause could be like a stock exchange stop which is there to let things cool down and to allow information to spread so everyone is on equal footing. A pause is warranted at this time to allow people to make informed decisions. Everyone getting J&J in the future should be made aware of the risk. People like Oredigger can choose J&J knowing the risks and that is great. But even so, a pause makes sense for now to make sure the information has the chance to get out there.
Around here the big lottery is Powerball and ticket sales cut off at IIRC 9pm for the 11pm drawing two days per week.
There’s advice out there that people over age 50 should not buy their ticket prior to 8pm on drawing night. By buying their ticket any earlier they are more likely to die before the drawing than to win it. The later you buy after 8pm but before 9pm the more the odds favor winning over dying.
Buying an early ticket sure sounds like giving Fate the finger. Which might displease Fate more than you later wish you had. 
Some expert opinion on the clotting issue:
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/04/12/az-oxford-calculations
I’m seeing a lot of concern that this news is going to fuel vaccine hesitancy and conspiracies. I understand that taking this into consideration and plowing ahead with use despite the numbers would do the same thing, but I do wonder.
Yeah thats my take. Imagine the reverse - if we had a blood clot drug that had killed half amillion americans.
I just don’t see how 6 out of 6.8 million is even significant in any way. So there’s a 0.000088 percent change of a clot? That is such a small percentage as to be basically zero. All this news is going to do is scare uninformed people.
There’s a decent bet that more than 6 people have been severely injured or killed during their drive to/from their vaccinations, regardless of the vaccine type.
A legit question for sure and I’m not sure there are any definitive answers. I suspect they’re acting out of an abundance of caution and trying to make sure that they perfect the vaccination regimes so that people won’t be scared of getting future vaccinations. But if I were told that there’s a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting a serious blood clot, I’d still probably get the shot, and then speak with my doc about how to monitor for clotting.
I feel you. The exact same thing happened to me with AZ. I got the vaccin and then a couple of days later all the papers were talking about the sudden deaths of people in my exact category in big screaming headlines. Not fun. My rational side would take it again and is even quite frustrated about the hold-up policies are causing, but my emotional side ended up worried for weeks. At least for me, it’s one thing debating it on a message board and another having it in my body.
Thanks, I appreciate hearing a similar experience. All day long I’ve been thinking “is that extremely slight headache I have and my seemingly blurry vision caused by eyestrain from staring at a computer screen, completely my imagination, or…?!?” But I’ll get over it in the next couple days most likely.
Looks like the US has been averaging about 0.5 deaths per 100,000,000 passenger miles in light vehicles over the last decade. So, you’d get to a 1 in a million chance of dying if you drive approximately 200 miles. I would imagine that the average drive to get vaccinated is much less than that, though I’m also sure that many people have already undertaken trips that long or longer to receive vaccinations.
There also the issue if some similar one in a million side effect develops with the other vaccines. At that level, it would start raising above ethical quandary into unfortunate but direct harm. Along with a public push to ignore the evidence, because the one in a million can perhaps be applicable to one vaccine (well, we’ve got others) but won’t work across the board if it’s going to make vaccination DOA.
Using a viral vector to insert the DNA for a piece of the virus into your own cells, so that the active part of the vaccine is actually manufactured inside your own body is very new. Just barely not as new as the mRNA vaccines.
No. It’s been stated that there is no known link to underlying conditions. The low platelet count is thought to be caused by the vaccine in some people.
Has it been cancelled? I know some clinics that suspended J&J were able to switch quickly to Pfizer or Moderna.
Just wanted to mention I saw this post after I posted the above response. I hope you can get rescheduled quickly, if J&J is not available. Even if it does get switched, you are ahead getting one dose of whatever they have, and then trying to get a second dose closer to you, which may be easier as time goes on.
If you have a CVS pharmacy close to you, check there if you need to schedule a second dose. They have a separate link for scheduling second doses.
Yes, my appointment was officially cancelled this morning while I was in a meeting and I’ve been directed to go back on their website to find anotehr time to get one of the other vaccines. Back to gen pop for me. Maybe I’ll get lucky.
My son was supposed to get J&J today, and his appointment was cancelled, too. Also, he turned down an alternative of another appointment from the state yesterday, because this was scheduled today. Now he has to go back to the end of the line to get an appointment.
It’s not an “optimum” 21 days. It’s just the number of days that happened to be studied in the trials that led to the US EUA. They didn’t try other time periods to determine what was best. They just picked something soon-but-hopefully-not-too-soon so as to have data as fast as possible.
My guess is that when the dust settles and we have more information about the optimal timing, it will turn out to be more than 3 weeks. But the US is going with 3 weeks because that’s ACTUALLY BEEN TESTED and we know it looked good enough.
There is limited data from Pfizer and Moderna on other time periods from the studies, based on when people actually got their 2nd doses. The data covers 2nd doses administered between 19 and 42 days post first dose. That limited data is that there was no decrease in efficacy between the first and second dose for people getting 2nd shots up to 6 weeks after the first dose.*
In the Oxford/Astra Zeneca trials, they actually included 2nd dose timing in the study, but numbers were small. That limited data showed better ultimate efficacy with 6 to 12 weeks’ spacing between shots.
In the UK study, 59% (1407 of 2377) of the participants who had two standard doses received the second dose between 9 and 12 weeks after the first. In the Brazilian study, only 18.6% (384 of 2063) received a second dose between 9 and 12 weeks after the first. The combined trial results found that vaccine efficacy at 14 days post–dose 2 was higher in the group with more than 6 weeks between doses than in the group with less than 6 weeks between doses (65.4% vs. 53.4%).
So you’re probably right that ideal dosing may wind up on a different schedule. With variants as a concern, I would not be surprised if there were a switch to a single dose, followed by a six-month or annual booster that’s adjusted for variants.
*This may be hard to parse. My understanding is that they are saying that effectiveness of the first dose had not started to decline by the time of the second dose. We know from the studies and from measurements “real world” use now that efficacy increases after the second dose. So delaying second doses does mean delaying full efficacy.
Thanks, only the linking, not the arrow of causation, was clear in what I’d read.
[FROM NYT]
What does this mean for people who have recently received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine?
Fewer than one in a million J&J vaccinations are now under investigation. If there is indeed a risk of blood clots from the vaccine — which has yet to be determined — that risk is extremely low. The risk of getting Covid-19 in the United States is far higher.
The F.D.A. recommends that people who have received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine within the past three weeks should contact their doctors if they experience severe headaches, abdominal pain, leg pain or shortness of breath. Doctors seeing people with those symptoms, particularly if the patients are young women, should ask if they recently received a Covid vaccination, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Biden administration’s chief science adviser, said at a news briefing on Tuesday.
People should not be concerned about mild headaches and flu-like symptoms in the first few days after vaccination. Those are common, harmless side effects brought on by the immune system’s production of a defense against the coronavirus.
For people who received the vaccine a month or two ago, the issue being raised about clots “doesn’t mean anything,” Dr. Fauci said. The six cases occurred within a “pretty tight window” of six to 13 days after people received the shot, he said.