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I love how people are complaining about this decision without addressing the fact that there are two other vaccines that don't have this issue that have been us

I love how people are complaining about this decision without addressing the fact that there are two other vaccines that don't have this issue that have been used orders of magnitude more. Why wouldn't you pause J&J? It's just a drop in the bucket in total vaccinations anyway and the other two don't have this issue.

xwdv 6y ago
J&J was the best option for those who didn't want to dabble in experimental vaccine tech. Now there is no choice.
- endisneigh 6y ago
  J&J is objectively more dangerous. So what argument do you have to not pause it given the "experimental" tech is orders of magnitude safer?
- amluto 6y ago
  J&J is an adenovirus vector vaccine, which is barely less experimental than mRNA. AFAICT the only licensed adenovirus vector vaccines are for Ebola, and those have not been used very widely. Earlier attempts to use adenovirus vectors for gene therapy had issues due to, wait for it, thrombocytopenia. The the one and only COVID vaccine that uses more or less tried and true technology and looked excellent in trials is Novavax. (AIUI Novavax’s adjuvant is newish, fancy, and not necessarily that easy to scale, and it may well be responsible for the excellent performance.)
stickfigure 6y ago
According to the article, 6.8 million people in the US have received the J&J shot. Without the J&J vaccine, those people (6.8 million others) would not be vaccinated due to lack of supply. The US CDC website[1] currently says the 7-day death rate per 100k people is 1.4. Without the J&J vaccine, that's almost 100 additional people dying per week - and just in the US. [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_deathsper100klast7days https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_deathsper100...
- endisneigh 6y ago
  Is your logic basically that as long as the vaccine kills fewer people than COVID all is well? Pausing briefly to investigate this seems prudent. If we had the same prudence with COVID overall we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.
  - stickfigure 6y ago
    We know with near-certainty that pausing to investigate will produce more death than not-pausing while investigating. It's really not complicated. Count up the bodies in Column A, count up the bodies in Column B, then pick one.
dylan604 6y ago
Isn't this why Europe pushed pause on Astra Zeneca's vaccine?

xwdv 6y ago

J&J was the best option for those who didn't want to dabble in experimental vaccine tech. Now there is no choice.

endisneigh 6y ago
J&J is objectively more dangerous. So what argument do you have to not pause it given the "experimental" tech is orders of magnitude safer?
amluto 6y ago
J&J is an adenovirus vector vaccine, which is barely less experimental than mRNA. AFAICT the only licensed adenovirus vector vaccines are for Ebola, and those have not been used very widely. Earlier attempts to use adenovirus vectors for gene therapy had issues due to, wait for it, thrombocytopenia. The the one and only COVID vaccine that uses more or less tried and true technology and looked excellent in trials is Novavax. (AIUI Novavax’s adjuvant is newish, fancy, and not necessarily that easy to scale, and it may well be responsible for the excellent performance.)

stickfigure 6y ago

According to the article, 6.8 million people in the US have received the J&J shot. Without the J&J vaccine, those people (6.8 million others) would not be vaccinated due to lack of supply. The US CDC website[1] currently says the 7-day death rate per 100k people is 1.4. Without the J&J vaccine, that's almost 100 additional people dying per week - and just in the US. [1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_deathsper100klast7days https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_deathsper100...

endisneigh 6y ago
Is your logic basically that as long as the vaccine kills fewer people than COVID all is well? Pausing briefly to investigate this seems prudent. If we had the same prudence with COVID overall we wouldn't be in this situation to begin with.
- stickfigure 6y ago
  We know with near-certainty that pausing to investigate will produce more death than not-pausing while investigating. It's really not complicated. Count up the bodies in Column A, count up the bodies in Column B, then pick one.

dylan604 6y ago

Isn't this why Europe pushed pause on Astra Zeneca's vaccine?