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The risk of dying from a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is six in 6,800,000 (6.8M). The world population is 7,900,000,000 (7.9B). If everyone on the

by js2 6y ago

The risk of dying from a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is six in 6,800,000 (6.8M). The world population is 7,900,000,000 (7.9B). If everyone on the planet got the J&J vaccine tomorrow, and if it is the cause of the clots, then 6,971 people would die from the vaccine. Yesterday, Covid19 killed 8,803 people (according to worldometers). We don't want anyone to die from vaccination, and we don't fully understand what the clotting issue is, so it probably makes sense to pause using J&J as long as the mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) have not been implicated (which they haven't). OTOH, if this being in the news causes fewer people to get vaccinated, pausing it may be a mistake that will cause more overall deaths. Now, your risk of dying either from vaccination or Covid19 depends on various demographic factors not accounted for in my math above. But, nonetheless, the risk of dying from the J&J vaccine is really, really, really tiny. Like, if I knew there was a 0.00009% chance my car were going to explode every time I got in it and started it, I would not be at all nervous about starting my car everyday for the rest of my life. I'm way more likely, even accounting for my age demographic, to choke to death eating dinner tonight (5,051 deaths from choking in the U.S. in 2015 of which 2,848 were older than 74). Edit: lifetime risk of car exploding assuming I start it every day for 50 years is about 1.6%. Okay, maybe I wouldn't play that game.

Alex3917 6y ago
> if this being in the news causes fewer people to get vaccinated, pausing it may be a mistake that will cause more overall deaths. Except for that the government covering up the MMR investigation instead of doing it openly is what caused the anti-vaxx movement in the first place. Compare that with the public rallying around J&J after their Tylenol recall.
TrevorJ 6y ago
>The risk of dying from a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is six in 6,800,000 (6.8M) that we know of. I suspect the lack of understanding about what is happening, and what other knock-on effects there might be is what is behind this. If a wing falls off of one airplane in a million, we still stop and try to figure out what happened because as far as we know, wings are not supposed to fall off any airplanes, so there's something about the system we need to learn more about.
- mujina93 6y ago
  But airplaines are engineered by humans, we know everything about how they are supposed to work until the last bit of physics. We don't have the same absolute understanding of mechanisms with vaccines. Therefore, I am not sure we can use this metaphore to suggest that it is the right choice in this terrible time to stop vaccinations, causing slowdowns to happen and scepticism to spread in the population that is bombarded by the press which creates an echo chamber repeating over and over superficial news. I personally don't expect a vaccine, nor any medicine in general, to be supposed to have absolutely zero incidence of possible negative side effects.
  - TrevorJ 6y ago
    >stop vaccinations We aren't stopping vaccinations. We are stopping this vaccine. For the moment. To gather more information. Which is precisely the kind of responsible behavior that we need, if we want people to be less skeptical of the vetting process for these vaccines. >We don't have the same absolute understanding of mechanisms with vaccines. Wouldn't this support more caution, not less?
  - loveistheanswer 6y ago
    >But airplaines are engineered by humans, we know everything about how they are supposed to work until the last bit of physics. >We don't have the same absolute understanding of mechanisms with vaccines. Having even less knowledge about how vaccines and our immune systems work seems like reason to be even more cautious, not less cautious. Especially considering the fact that autoimmune disorders have been on the rise for decades, and we don't know why.
    - necovek 6y ago
      > Especially considering the fact that autoimmune disorders have been on the rise for decades, and we don't know why. Could it be that we are simply diagnosing them better? Just throwing it out there as a plausible explanation since autoimmune disorders are commonly diagnosed based on a multitude of symptoms none of which definitely indicates an autoimmune disorder independently; similarly, I find it highly likely the rise in cancer diagnosis to be at least partially linked to better diagnostics too.
da_big_ghey 6y ago
But you are having conflate for deaths from each of things. Rates in dying are not homogeneous in J&J vax versus corona. J&J vax maybe is received by many younglings who are not risking death so much from Corona for benefit of old. It is not yet being known for if J&J vax is having any greater risk for older people or younger people. So calculus is maybe not so simple. If I are healthy young person maybe it is not a beneficent risk for taking.
- deleted 6y ago
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- xiii1408 6y ago
  This is an excellent point, and exactly the reason why the UK decided to stop administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under 30. Not sure why you're being downvoted. For people under 30, particularly women, the risk of blood clots from AZ is higher, while at the same time the risk from coronavirus infection is lower. When there are alternative vaccines available with no evidence of similar side effects, it makes sense to temporarily stop administering AZ/J&J to those groups to investigate if there are any risk factors we can use to predict and protect those who may be most vulnerable to side effects. (It has been suggested that young women on certain types of birth control are at highest risk of blood clots after AZ.) That said, as some have pointed out, the risk of blood clots is still thought to be very low, even for women under 30, and anti-vax groups as well as the vaccine hesitant may see this news as a sign that it's not safe for anyone to take any vaccine. However, I don't think we as a society should actively try to conceal news or research about vaccine safety so that people don't worry. In my opinion, people have a right to know, and efforts to conceal concerning information often backfire, producing more public distrust.
- hnick 6y ago
  Also if you live somewhere like Australia or NZ which is vaccinating but has largely wiped out community COVID. It makes sense to have a bit more caution in such places as long as the mRNA vaccine can still be used. Australia suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine for that reason, but I believe we're using it again now after some analysis.
tacitusarc 6y ago
6 obvious deaths that we're aware of. The risk of the vaccines is in their novelty and morbidity. An abundance of caution is required in this instance. It would be very bad to discover that there's a vanishingly small chance of blood clots within the first 3 months but a significant chance when paired with other events over the following decade.
- Exmoor 6y ago
  You'd have to compare that to the chances of the long term effects of COVID causing issues down the line, which I'm willing to heavily bet is much more likely given what we've seen so far.
- MikeCapone 6y ago
  There's already been large scale phase 3 trials, and we've deal with vaccines for decades, they're not entirely novel and unknown each time.
  - ttesttom 6y ago
    The phase 3 trial for JnJ/Janseen had only ~44k participants whereas here we are talking on the order of ~1 per million (that are reported as of today)
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    > we've deal with vaccines for decades I don’t think that’s accurate in this case. The type of vaccine that J&J released had up until months ago only ever been deployed in animals. IIRC pigs had a problem with corona viruses that we solved” The J&J is not a heap of dead virus like the common ones we have had forever. But a live harmless (we think) virus dolled up to look like Rona Corona.
    - adgjlsfhk1 6y ago
      Live harmless vaccines aren't anything new. Some of the TB vaccines from the 60s are of that variety. Live virus vaccines have safely been used for at least the past 5 decades. Stop spreading bullshit.
dheera 6y ago
Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%? Would you want the chef at your local takeout to be vaccinated to 66.3% efficiency? or 94%? Why was this vaccine even approved, instead of just having J&J produce the same vaccine Pfizer and Moderna are making, which would be in the best interest of the world? Is this some utterly idiotic capitalism bullshit that prevents J&J from making a 94% vaccine as well? Why can't we just take $100B out of the $1T military budget, throw it at Pfizer and Moderna to shut up their patent lawyers, and then hand the formula to J&J to become a 3rd factory for a good 94% mRNA vaccine? And then hand that formula to the rest of the world including Brazil, India, China, and other recent new COVID hotspots so that the virus doesn't boomerang back to the US in an evolved form? At least that's what I would do if I was president.
- jackbrookes 6y ago
  The percentage efficacy can be misleading, it is not a like-for-like comparison. https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johnson-moderna-pfizer https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johns...
- e9 6y ago
  This is not full story. 65% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 but 100% efficacy against death and hospitalization due to COVID-19. So there is real benefit to it.
  - dheera 6y ago
    Yes, but 65% efficacy still means that 1/3 of the vaccinated people will continue to be spreaders, which doesn't sound great, especially if that allows the virus to spread and evolve into a harsher variety.
    - savanu 6y ago
      The different efficacy rates of the vaccines do not directly imply anything about spreading covid. A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading (This may or may not be true). Folks are still studying how effective the vaccines are at preventing spread.
deleted 6y ago
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wincy 6y ago
I went to the emergency room for earth shattering headaches (no history of headaches like this) after getting the J&J vaccine last week. I mentioned I’d got the vaccine and asked if it was possible the two were linked. The doctor did everything but actually roll his eyes and thought that the headache being caused by the vaccine was ridiculous. I bet if I went today he wouldn’t be so dismissive.
- nawitus 6y ago
  That's odd, as headache is a common symptom for many vaccines (or pretty much any medicine).
  - autokad 6y ago
    a thunder clap headache is also a symptom of a stroke.
    - lupire 6y ago
      ...which is a kind of blood clot.
- cyberlurker 6y ago
  Would he somehow check for blood clots? What could that doctor have done?
  - pvarangot 6y ago
    Give you blood thinners like aspirin?
  - knz 6y ago
    My family history includes some "adventures" with blood clots/PE's. Typically they investigate with multiple tools - a CT scan, a D-Dimer blood test, and often an ultrasound to check blood flow in limbs etc.
  - wincy 6y ago
kaczordon 6y ago
OTOH, if this being in the news causes fewer people to get vaccinated, pausing it may be a mistake that will cause more overall deaths This is the reason people lost trust in the medical community during COVID.
- cyberlurker 6y ago
  Yes, the fact that they are being this cautious is a good thing for public trust. We have other vaccines as well. I rather have this level of transparency then blindly tell people to get JJ and we will figure out edge cases later.
  - mujina93 6y ago
    Is it that good? There are places where lots of people are refusing to get the vaccine if they hear it's Astra-Zeneca, because of all the overblown nightmarish news around it. I can tell you for example that in Italy there are examples of regions where 80% of people refuse. I understand the need for being cautious and for transparency. Actually, I would like to have even more transparency and actual scientific data and numbers from the news. That would help the public understand better why certain decisions are made. (Maybe my main problem is just with mainstream press, not much with stopping vaccinations per se. I'd just like to know more and be told by politicians: we are listening to scientists, these are the data, this is how numbers compare to the incidence of other side effects for well known medicines and to the numbers of daily deaths and long term problems caused by COVID, and the decisions are taken because X > Y).
    - gls2ro 6y ago
      > refusing to get the vaccine if they hear it's Astra-Zeneca, because of all the overblown nightmarish news around it Here is a small problem with this that makes me also consider if I want to take a shot with AZ even if I registered for it months ago waiting for my place: Before EU started discussing the issue with statistical signifiant number of cases of blood clots in vaccinated population UK Reported 5 cases of blot clots in vaccinated population. After EU talked second time to suspend vaccination with AZ lo and behold UK discovered that it missed in previous months to report 25 more cases. Now should I trust any of these agencies that they are telling the truth? I am starting not. But I had a mild COVID and I am sure after experiencing those symptoms that I really want a vaccine. I am not willing to experience a reinfection.
TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
Nit pick sorry: > Now, your risk of dying either from vaccination or Covid19 depends on various demographic factors Your risk of dying, or other health injury, depends on your personal health factors specifically. Demographic is the statistical data of a population.
nomel 6y ago
Also, there is a clot risk for with COVID [1] that's much higher than the vaccine. The clot risk is the reason I've been indoors this whole pandemic, so I'll happily take my these ridiculously better chances with the vaccine. 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/13/blood-clots-more-likely-from-covid-than-jj-vaccine-dr-purvi-parikh.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/13/blood-clots-more-likely-from...
autokad 6y ago
0.00009% over a 30 year period means you have about a 1% chance of being blown up by starting your car. that's about the odds of catching HIV while having unprotected sex with someone who is HIV positive (depends on a lot of factors though).
- lupire 6y ago
  Error, mismatched units. The 30 year odds of HIV due to unprotected sex is far higher.
  - autokad 6y ago
    point being, even if it was just 1 time, had you performed that action you would be very worried I presume.
niyikiza 6y ago
Another factor to consider is that COVID is contagious but blood clots are not. The multiplicative (if not exponential) nature of COVID spread makes this a no brainer that the vaccine should be reinstated (and just monitored). I suspect that what's happening is that these institutions don't think in consequentialist point of view. They are not comfortable with diverting the trolley even if the math checks out.
blub 6y ago
"Now, your risk of dying either from vaccination or Covid19 depends on various demographic factors not accounted for in my math above. But, nonetheless, the risk of dying from the J&J vaccine is really, really, really tiny." Unless this is a repeat of AstraZeneca, where many were lamenting the interruption of vaccination and calculating the risk for the entire population of people injected with AZ. Meanwhile, in some countries, the risk of dying from the vaccine for young women was higher than the risk of dying from the virus. After the concerns about AZ turned out to be justified and AZ being banned for certain age groups you'd think that people would get a clue about unconditional vaccine cheerleading.
- haswell 6y ago
  > the risk of dying from the vaccine for young women was higher than the risk of dying from the virus Do you have a good source you'd recommend for this? I couldn't find this bit of info from the first few articles I skimmed. > After the concerns about AZ turned out to be justified and AZ being banned for certain age groups you'd think that people would get a clue about unconditional vaccine cheerleading. Who is unconditionally cheerleading which vaccines?
  - robbiep 6y ago
    In australia for example, where there is currently zero community transmission, and AZ was the preferred rollout for most of the population, assuming only women are vulnerable (not true) about 8m women below 50 (the age for which the government instituted the cutoff for alternatives) so at 1:500,000 risk of some injury (edit - originally said death) that’s 16 people who, ceteris paribus, wouldn’t be at any risk
    - fspeech 6y ago
      I think your argument can be better if you qualify your assessment of risk for Australian women with the temporal constraint of "for now". Because transmission is low in Australia they may be better off waiting for a safer choice. However eventually travel will return and it is highly likely that the virus will still be around.
slibhb 6y ago
If there is solid evidence that a vaccine will kill people, it should not be used. It's intolerable that people die taking a prophylactic. It's much, much worse to kill someone with a vaccine than to allow that person to perhaps die of a virus. Thankfully, in this case, sanity prevailed.
- IvyMike 6y ago
  > If there is solid evidence that a vaccine will kill people, it should not be used. Don't all vaccines have some extremely low but nonzero probability of killing someone? > It's intolerable that people die taking a prophylactic. What do you think about airbags in cars?
  - slibhb 6y ago
    If airbags kill someone who didn't crash their car, that model of car/airbag should be recalled. If a vaccine kills someone, people should stop taking that vaccine. The point here is simple. It's worse for someone to die of a vaccine than for someone to die of the coronavirus. How much worse is up for debate, but it's a significant factor and napkin math has to take that into account or it's morally bankrupt.
    - FooHentai 6y ago
      I think I see your point but the probabilities are an important factor, as well as the freedom to choose based on being well informed. Unfortunately at this stage we don’t have sufficient information to provide solid information to make an informed choice. If there’s (hypothetical overly high numbers here) a 10% chance of dying from a disease or a 1% chance of dying from the vaccine from that disease, I want the vaccine and would like the freedom to do so. But if a new vaccine is coming out and soon after we see a 1% death rate from it, now I’m gonna want to hold off and take my chances with the disease because that 1% may turn out to be as high as or greater than 10% down the track when more is known. The main complexity here is just like the early days of coronavirus - until things have played out for a while you can’t have confidence about the extent of the harm and that’s true for both the disease (which we now have over a year of information about) and the vaccines (which we have a month or two of in-the-wild info so far).
textman 6y ago
I read one of the six died. Has there been a news update that all six have died?
disabled 6y ago
It's not just a "blood clot" or some "rare type of blood clot". This was what I posted in this post about the European Medicines Agency acknowledging the AstraZeneca vaccine (which I was inoculated with) was linked to something never seen before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26725232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26725232 > "Zero surprises here. Both Norwegian and German research teams identified the /actual specific novel antibody/ that causes this /new previously unclassified syndrome/ that was effectively unheard of before the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine existed. Also, both teams are phenomenally talented for identifying this antibody so quickly. Usually it is on “finding a needle in a haystack” level difficulty. BTW, I am probably going to get downvoted but I am definitely not an antivaxxer and I received the AZ vaccine as innoculation for COVID-19."
- _rs 6y ago
  Do you have any resources to read more about the research teams and their findings? Most of the articles I'm reading are very hand-wavy about the specifics/science and I'd love to actually learn more about the cause and condition.
  - disabled 6y ago
    The Los Angeles Times wrote an excellent article about the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine situation, in layman's terms [1]. However, journalists need to stop calling it "blood clots" or "rare blood clots", and instead call it a "rare clotting syndrome" that is "novel (new) and previously unclassified". For the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine situation, there has also been other good journalism sources here [2][3]. Pay attention to the subsection on [3] stating "Nothing but the vaccine can explain why". In both cases, the situation is clinically similar to Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), although there are very distinct differences. It should not be used as a comparison. This is a good peer-reviewed journal article on diagnosis and management [4]. This is another article describing the syndrome [5]. I should emphasize that the treatment that is used for this specific syndrome is extremely expensive: intravenous immunoglobulin. I personally take the same medication (immunoglobulin) subcutaneously (under-the-skin) twice per week, for 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system. I will require this medication for life. When I lived in the USA (I live in Croatia now), my medical insurance was paying $278,000/year for the medication, under contract. I am not talking about how much the medication was being billed for, which was way higher. So, you heard me right, my insurance paid $278,000/year for this type of medication. [1] Here’s what we know about J&J’s vaccine and rare blood clots: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-04-13/what-we-know-about-jnj-vaccine-rare-blood-clots https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-04-13/what-we-kno... [2] ‘It’s a very special picture.’ Why vaccine safety experts put the brakes on AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/it-s-very-special-picture-why-vaccine-safety-experts-put-brakes-astrazeneca-s-covid-19 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/it-s-very-special-pi... [3] Norwegian experts say deadly blood clots were caused by the AstraZeneca covid vaccine: https://sciencenorway.no/covid19/norwegian-experts-say-deadly-blood-clots-were-caused-by-the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine/1830510 https://sciencenorway.no/covid19/norwegian-experts-say-deadl... [4] Diagnosis and Management of Vaccine-RelatedThrombosis following AstraZeneca COVID-19Vaccination: Guidance Statement from the GTH: https://zlmsg.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021_Diagnosis-and-Management-of-Vaccine-Related-Thrombosis-following-AstraZeneca-COVID-19-Vaccination-Guidance-Statement-from-the-GTH.pdf https://zlmsg.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021_Diagnosis-a... [5] A Prothrombotic Thrombocytopenic Disorder Resembling Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia Following Coronavirus-19 Vaccination: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-362354/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-362354/v1
tibbydudeza 6y ago
People don't think like that.
rsuelzer 6y ago
Per Wikipedia: there are 7.3 deaths per 1 billion km driven in the USA. About 7 million J&J doses have been delivered. One person has died as a result of blood clots thought to be related to the vaccine. If we assume an average of 32km round trip to get to a vaccination site (~10 miles each way). Statistically speaking at least one person has died driving in their car to get the vaccine. The same number as from the vaccine. I couldn't find good stats on serious injuries per km driven, but I suspect it's an order of magnitude higher than deaths per km. Your risk of dying on your way to get the vaccine is the same as your risk of dying from the vaccine. You are, almost certainly, far more likely to be seriously injured on your way to get the vaccine than you are from the vaccine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...
CryptoPunk 6y ago
It's six bloot clots, and only ONE death, not six deaths: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ey2oowQWgAApGnK?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ey2oowQWgAApGnK?format=jpg&name=...
diebeforei485 6y ago
The 6 are only those we know of. There could be others, because these cerebral blood clots can happen two weeks after receiving the vaccine. As we analyze the data, and see if more data comes in the next two weeks, we'll have a better sense of the risk.
- mhb 6y ago
  How many would there need to be in order to justify proceeding to use the vaccine? Proclaiming that there could be others is worthless without quantifying what you're willing to accept. Just saying to wait is a decision that will kill people.
  - diebeforei485 6y ago
    > Proclaiming that there could be others is worthless without quantifying what you're willing to accept. If it can be isolated to certain groups, then those groups could be offered alternatives. The UK did something like that, and it worked well for them. It's not just about an overall number - it's about how effectively this risk can be reduced. > Just saying to wait is a decision that will kill people. J&J was a very small proportion of vaccines. There is plenty of extra supply from Moderna and Pfizer in the US, so you'll need a citation that this will kill people.
_karl_b_12 6y ago
>> Yesterday, Covid19 killed 8,803 people (according to worldometers). I'm certainly not denying Covid19, but I do take all the statistics with a grain of salt. It's important to understand that those people died with, not necessarily of Covid19. Also, why are so many positive tested persons without any signs of illness? I wonder what numbers would result in testing every death for other viruses. The best, maybe only number we can properly compare is the total death rate. In doing so we see that Covid19 causes additional deaths, but it is far from as severe as the media and politics suggest.
- stopping 6y ago
  The number of excess deaths in the world is quite similar to the number of known COVID deaths. In fact, excess deaths is the higher number. It's very likely that the number of COVID deaths is currently underestimated, as spread of other infectious diseases has been drastically diminished by the lockdowns.
jeegsy 6y ago
With all due respect to the statistics lessons that usually follows news like this, if you are one of the 6,971 or the 8,803 for that matter, these numbers are not as comforting as you might imagine. It's like the time I was unemployed and I kept hearing from the government about how low the unemployment rate was.
someonehere 6y ago
I can avoid getting into my car and running that risk. It’s still there and can happen, but I can opt to not drive my car. The vaccine is eventually going to be mandated to go back to the office, go places, etc.. That’s a risk that you can’t avoid and will have to take. I’m all for vaccinations and get them when needed, I’m still not comfortable for vaccines that have not been approved. Right now, they all have emergency approval and not overall approval. According to the cdc, vaccines need at least ten years of data to be considered safe for use. We’re only a little over a year into the development of the vaccine. Not really safe in my eyes.

by js2 6y ago

Alex3917 6y ago

> if this being in the news causes fewer people to get vaccinated, pausing it may be a mistake that will cause more overall deaths. Except for that the government covering up the MMR investigation instead of doing it openly is what caused the anti-vaxx movement in the first place. Compare that with the public rallying around J&J after their Tylenol recall.

TrevorJ 6y ago

>The risk of dying from a blood clot after receiving the J&J vaccine is six in 6,800,000 (6.8M) that we know of. I suspect the lack of understanding about what is happening, and what other knock-on effects there might be is what is behind this. If a wing falls off of one airplane in a million, we still stop and try to figure out what happened because as far as we know, wings are not supposed to fall off any airplanes, so there's something about the system we need to learn more about.

mujina93 6y ago
But airplaines are engineered by humans, we know everything about how they are supposed to work until the last bit of physics. We don't have the same absolute understanding of mechanisms with vaccines. Therefore, I am not sure we can use this metaphore to suggest that it is the right choice in this terrible time to stop vaccinations, causing slowdowns to happen and scepticism to spread in the population that is bombarded by the press which creates an echo chamber repeating over and over superficial news. I personally don't expect a vaccine, nor any medicine in general, to be supposed to have absolutely zero incidence of possible negative side effects.
- TrevorJ 6y ago
  >stop vaccinations We aren't stopping vaccinations. We are stopping this vaccine. For the moment. To gather more information. Which is precisely the kind of responsible behavior that we need, if we want people to be less skeptical of the vetting process for these vaccines. >We don't have the same absolute understanding of mechanisms with vaccines. Wouldn't this support more caution, not less?
- loveistheanswer 6y ago
  >But airplaines are engineered by humans, we know everything about how they are supposed to work until the last bit of physics. >We don't have the same absolute understanding of mechanisms with vaccines. Having even less knowledge about how vaccines and our immune systems work seems like reason to be even more cautious, not less cautious. Especially considering the fact that autoimmune disorders have been on the rise for decades, and we don't know why.
  - necovek 6y ago
    > Especially considering the fact that autoimmune disorders have been on the rise for decades, and we don't know why. Could it be that we are simply diagnosing them better? Just throwing it out there as a plausible explanation since autoimmune disorders are commonly diagnosed based on a multitude of symptoms none of which definitely indicates an autoimmune disorder independently; similarly, I find it highly likely the rise in cancer diagnosis to be at least partially linked to better diagnostics too.

da_big_ghey 6y ago

But you are having conflate for deaths from each of things. Rates in dying are not homogeneous in J&J vax versus corona. J&J vax maybe is received by many younglings who are not risking death so much from Corona for benefit of old. It is not yet being known for if J&J vax is having any greater risk for older people or younger people. So calculus is maybe not so simple. If I are healthy young person maybe it is not a beneficent risk for taking.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
xiii1408 6y ago
This is an excellent point, and exactly the reason why the UK decided to stop administering the AstraZeneca vaccine to people under 30. Not sure why you're being downvoted. For people under 30, particularly women, the risk of blood clots from AZ is higher, while at the same time the risk from coronavirus infection is lower. When there are alternative vaccines available with no evidence of similar side effects, it makes sense to temporarily stop administering AZ/J&J to those groups to investigate if there are any risk factors we can use to predict and protect those who may be most vulnerable to side effects. (It has been suggested that young women on certain types of birth control are at highest risk of blood clots after AZ.) That said, as some have pointed out, the risk of blood clots is still thought to be very low, even for women under 30, and anti-vax groups as well as the vaccine hesitant may see this news as a sign that it's not safe for anyone to take any vaccine. However, I don't think we as a society should actively try to conceal news or research about vaccine safety so that people don't worry. In my opinion, people have a right to know, and efforts to conceal concerning information often backfire, producing more public distrust.
hnick 6y ago
Also if you live somewhere like Australia or NZ which is vaccinating but has largely wiped out community COVID. It makes sense to have a bit more caution in such places as long as the mRNA vaccine can still be used. Australia suspended the AstraZeneca vaccine for that reason, but I believe we're using it again now after some analysis.

tacitusarc 6y ago

6 obvious deaths that we're aware of. The risk of the vaccines is in their novelty and morbidity. An abundance of caution is required in this instance. It would be very bad to discover that there's a vanishingly small chance of blood clots within the first 3 months but a significant chance when paired with other events over the following decade.

Exmoor 6y ago
You'd have to compare that to the chances of the long term effects of COVID causing issues down the line, which I'm willing to heavily bet is much more likely given what we've seen so far.
MikeCapone 6y ago
There's already been large scale phase 3 trials, and we've deal with vaccines for decades, they're not entirely novel and unknown each time.
- ttesttom 6y ago
  The phase 3 trial for JnJ/Janseen had only ~44k participants whereas here we are talking on the order of ~1 per million (that are reported as of today)
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  > we've deal with vaccines for decades I don’t think that’s accurate in this case. The type of vaccine that J&J released had up until months ago only ever been deployed in animals. IIRC pigs had a problem with corona viruses that we solved” The J&J is not a heap of dead virus like the common ones we have had forever. But a live harmless (we think) virus dolled up to look like Rona Corona.
  - adgjlsfhk1 6y ago
    Live harmless vaccines aren't anything new. Some of the TB vaccines from the 60s are of that variety. Live virus vaccines have safely been used for at least the past 5 decades. Stop spreading bullshit.

dheera 6y ago

Why is everyone worried about blood clots, and not that the J&J vaccine has a crap-tastic efficiency of 66.3%? Would you want the chef at your local takeout to be vaccinated to 66.3% efficiency? or 94%? Why was this vaccine even approved, instead of just having J&J produce the same vaccine Pfizer and Moderna are making, which would be in the best interest of the world? Is this some utterly idiotic capitalism bullshit that prevents J&J from making a 94% vaccine as well? Why can't we just take $100B out of the $1T military budget, throw it at Pfizer and Moderna to shut up their patent lawyers, and then hand the formula to J&J to become a 3rd factory for a good 94% mRNA vaccine? And then hand that formula to the rest of the world including Brazil, India, China, and other recent new COVID hotspots so that the virus doesn't boomerang back to the US in an evolved form? At least that's what I would do if I was president.

jackbrookes 6y ago
The percentage efficacy can be misleading, it is not a like-for-like comparison. https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johnson-moderna-pfizer https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johns...
e9 6y ago
This is not full story. 65% efficacy against symptomatic COVID-19 but 100% efficacy against death and hospitalization due to COVID-19. So there is real benefit to it.
- dheera 6y ago
  Yes, but 65% efficacy still means that 1/3 of the vaccinated people will continue to be spreaders, which doesn't sound great, especially if that allows the virus to spread and evolve into a harsher variety.
  - savanu 6y ago
    The different efficacy rates of the vaccines do not directly imply anything about spreading covid. A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading (This may or may not be true). Folks are still studying how effective the vaccines are at preventing spread.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

wincy 6y ago

I went to the emergency room for earth shattering headaches (no history of headaches like this) after getting the J&J vaccine last week. I mentioned I’d got the vaccine and asked if it was possible the two were linked. The doctor did everything but actually roll his eyes and thought that the headache being caused by the vaccine was ridiculous. I bet if I went today he wouldn’t be so dismissive.

nawitus 6y ago
That's odd, as headache is a common symptom for many vaccines (or pretty much any medicine).
- autokad 6y ago
  a thunder clap headache is also a symptom of a stroke.
  - lupire 6y ago
    ...which is a kind of blood clot.
cyberlurker 6y ago
Would he somehow check for blood clots? What could that doctor have done?
- pvarangot 6y ago
  Give you blood thinners like aspirin?
- knz 6y ago
  My family history includes some "adventures" with blood clots/PE's. Typically they investigate with multiple tools - a CT scan, a D-Dimer blood test, and often an ultrasound to check blood flow in limbs etc.
- wincy 6y ago

kaczordon 6y ago

OTOH, if this being in the news causes fewer people to get vaccinated, pausing it may be a mistake that will cause more overall deaths This is the reason people lost trust in the medical community during COVID.

cyberlurker 6y ago
Yes, the fact that they are being this cautious is a good thing for public trust. We have other vaccines as well. I rather have this level of transparency then blindly tell people to get JJ and we will figure out edge cases later.
- mujina93 6y ago
  Is it that good? There are places where lots of people are refusing to get the vaccine if they hear it's Astra-Zeneca, because of all the overblown nightmarish news around it. I can tell you for example that in Italy there are examples of regions where 80% of people refuse. I understand the need for being cautious and for transparency. Actually, I would like to have even more transparency and actual scientific data and numbers from the news. That would help the public understand better why certain decisions are made. (Maybe my main problem is just with mainstream press, not much with stopping vaccinations per se. I'd just like to know more and be told by politicians: we are listening to scientists, these are the data, this is how numbers compare to the incidence of other side effects for well known medicines and to the numbers of daily deaths and long term problems caused by COVID, and the decisions are taken because X > Y).
  - gls2ro 6y ago
    > refusing to get the vaccine if they hear it's Astra-Zeneca, because of all the overblown nightmarish news around it Here is a small problem with this that makes me also consider if I want to take a shot with AZ even if I registered for it months ago waiting for my place: Before EU started discussing the issue with statistical signifiant number of cases of blood clots in vaccinated population UK Reported 5 cases of blot clots in vaccinated population. After EU talked second time to suspend vaccination with AZ lo and behold UK discovered that it missed in previous months to report 25 more cases. Now should I trust any of these agencies that they are telling the truth? I am starting not. But I had a mild COVID and I am sure after experiencing those symptoms that I really want a vaccine. I am not willing to experience a reinfection.

TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago

Nit pick sorry: > Now, your risk of dying either from vaccination or Covid19 depends on various demographic factors Your risk of dying, or other health injury, depends on your personal health factors specifically. Demographic is the statistical data of a population.

nomel 6y ago

Also, there is a clot risk for with COVID [1] that's much higher than the vaccine. The clot risk is the reason I've been indoors this whole pandemic, so I'll happily take my these ridiculously better chances with the vaccine. 1. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/13/blood-clots-more-likely-from-covid-than-jj-vaccine-dr-purvi-parikh.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/13/blood-clots-more-likely-from...

autokad 6y ago

0.00009% over a 30 year period means you have about a 1% chance of being blown up by starting your car. that's about the odds of catching HIV while having unprotected sex with someone who is HIV positive (depends on a lot of factors though).

lupire 6y ago
Error, mismatched units. The 30 year odds of HIV due to unprotected sex is far higher.
- autokad 6y ago
  point being, even if it was just 1 time, had you performed that action you would be very worried I presume.

niyikiza 6y ago

Another factor to consider is that COVID is contagious but blood clots are not. The multiplicative (if not exponential) nature of COVID spread makes this a no brainer that the vaccine should be reinstated (and just monitored). I suspect that what's happening is that these institutions don't think in consequentialist point of view. They are not comfortable with diverting the trolley even if the math checks out.

blub 6y ago

"Now, your risk of dying either from vaccination or Covid19 depends on various demographic factors not accounted for in my math above. But, nonetheless, the risk of dying from the J&J vaccine is really, really, really tiny." Unless this is a repeat of AstraZeneca, where many were lamenting the interruption of vaccination and calculating the risk for the entire population of people injected with AZ. Meanwhile, in some countries, the risk of dying from the vaccine for young women was higher than the risk of dying from the virus. After the concerns about AZ turned out to be justified and AZ being banned for certain age groups you'd think that people would get a clue about unconditional vaccine cheerleading.

haswell 6y ago
> the risk of dying from the vaccine for young women was higher than the risk of dying from the virus Do you have a good source you'd recommend for this? I couldn't find this bit of info from the first few articles I skimmed. > After the concerns about AZ turned out to be justified and AZ being banned for certain age groups you'd think that people would get a clue about unconditional vaccine cheerleading. Who is unconditionally cheerleading which vaccines?
- robbiep 6y ago
  In australia for example, where there is currently zero community transmission, and AZ was the preferred rollout for most of the population, assuming only women are vulnerable (not true) about 8m women below 50 (the age for which the government instituted the cutoff for alternatives) so at 1:500,000 risk of some injury (edit - originally said death) that’s 16 people who, ceteris paribus, wouldn’t be at any risk
  - fspeech 6y ago
    I think your argument can be better if you qualify your assessment of risk for Australian women with the temporal constraint of "for now". Because transmission is low in Australia they may be better off waiting for a safer choice. However eventually travel will return and it is highly likely that the virus will still be around.

slibhb 6y ago

If there is solid evidence that a vaccine will kill people, it should not be used. It's intolerable that people die taking a prophylactic. It's much, much worse to kill someone with a vaccine than to allow that person to perhaps die of a virus. Thankfully, in this case, sanity prevailed.

IvyMike 6y ago
> If there is solid evidence that a vaccine will kill people, it should not be used. Don't all vaccines have some extremely low but nonzero probability of killing someone? > It's intolerable that people die taking a prophylactic. What do you think about airbags in cars?
- slibhb 6y ago
  If airbags kill someone who didn't crash their car, that model of car/airbag should be recalled. If a vaccine kills someone, people should stop taking that vaccine. The point here is simple. It's worse for someone to die of a vaccine than for someone to die of the coronavirus. How much worse is up for debate, but it's a significant factor and napkin math has to take that into account or it's morally bankrupt.
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    I think I see your point but the probabilities are an important factor, as well as the freedom to choose based on being well informed. Unfortunately at this stage we don’t have sufficient information to provide solid information to make an informed choice. If there’s (hypothetical overly high numbers here) a 10% chance of dying from a disease or a 1% chance of dying from the vaccine from that disease, I want the vaccine and would like the freedom to do so. But if a new vaccine is coming out and soon after we see a 1% death rate from it, now I’m gonna want to hold off and take my chances with the disease because that 1% may turn out to be as high as or greater than 10% down the track when more is known. The main complexity here is just like the early days of coronavirus - until things have played out for a while you can’t have confidence about the extent of the harm and that’s true for both the disease (which we now have over a year of information about) and the vaccines (which we have a month or two of in-the-wild info so far).

textman 6y ago

I read one of the six died. Has there been a news update that all six have died?

disabled 6y ago

It's not just a "blood clot" or some "rare type of blood clot". This was what I posted in this post about the European Medicines Agency acknowledging the AstraZeneca vaccine (which I was inoculated with) was linked to something never seen before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26725232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26725232 > "Zero surprises here. Both Norwegian and German research teams identified the /actual specific novel antibody/ that causes this /new previously unclassified syndrome/ that was effectively unheard of before the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine existed. Also, both teams are phenomenally talented for identifying this antibody so quickly. Usually it is on “finding a needle in a haystack” level difficulty. BTW, I am probably going to get downvoted but I am definitely not an antivaxxer and I received the AZ vaccine as innoculation for COVID-19."

_rs 6y ago
Do you have any resources to read more about the research teams and their findings? Most of the articles I'm reading are very hand-wavy about the specifics/science and I'd love to actually learn more about the cause and condition.
- disabled 6y ago
  The Los Angeles Times wrote an excellent article about the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine situation, in layman's terms [1]. However, journalists need to stop calling it "blood clots" or "rare blood clots", and instead call it a "rare clotting syndrome" that is "novel (new) and previously unclassified". For the AstraZeneca (AZ) vaccine situation, there has also been other good journalism sources here [2][3]. Pay attention to the subsection on [3] stating "Nothing but the vaccine can explain why". In both cases, the situation is clinically similar to Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), although there are very distinct differences. It should not be used as a comparison. This is a good peer-reviewed journal article on diagnosis and management [4]. This is another article describing the syndrome [5]. I should emphasize that the treatment that is used for this specific syndrome is extremely expensive: intravenous immunoglobulin. I personally take the same medication (immunoglobulin) subcutaneously (under-the-skin) twice per week, for 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system. I will require this medication for life. When I lived in the USA (I live in Croatia now), my medical insurance was paying $278,000/year for the medication, under contract. I am not talking about how much the medication was being billed for, which was way higher. So, you heard me right, my insurance paid $278,000/year for this type of medication. [1] Here’s what we know about J&J’s vaccine and rare blood clots: https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-04-13/what-we-know-about-jnj-vaccine-rare-blood-clots https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2021-04-13/what-we-kno... [2] ‘It’s a very special picture.’ Why vaccine safety experts put the brakes on AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/it-s-very-special-picture-why-vaccine-safety-experts-put-brakes-astrazeneca-s-covid-19 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/03/it-s-very-special-pi... [3] Norwegian experts say deadly blood clots were caused by the AstraZeneca covid vaccine: https://sciencenorway.no/covid19/norwegian-experts-say-deadly-blood-clots-were-caused-by-the-astrazeneca-covid-vaccine/1830510 https://sciencenorway.no/covid19/norwegian-experts-say-deadl... [4] Diagnosis and Management of Vaccine-RelatedThrombosis following AstraZeneca COVID-19Vaccination: Guidance Statement from the GTH: https://zlmsg.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021_Diagnosis-and-Management-of-Vaccine-Related-Thrombosis-following-AstraZeneca-COVID-19-Vaccination-Guidance-Statement-from-the-GTH.pdf https://zlmsg.ch/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2021_Diagnosis-a... [5] A Prothrombotic Thrombocytopenic Disorder Resembling Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia Following Coronavirus-19 Vaccination: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-362354/v1 https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-362354/v1

tibbydudeza 6y ago

People don't think like that.

rsuelzer 6y ago

Per Wikipedia: there are 7.3 deaths per 1 billion km driven in the USA. About 7 million J&J doses have been delivered. One person has died as a result of blood clots thought to be related to the vaccine. If we assume an average of 32km round trip to get to a vaccination site (~10 miles each way). Statistically speaking at least one person has died driving in their car to get the vaccine. The same number as from the vaccine. I couldn't find good stats on serious injuries per km driven, but I suspect it's an order of magnitude higher than deaths per km. Your risk of dying on your way to get the vaccine is the same as your risk of dying from the vaccine. You are, almost certainly, far more likely to be seriously injured on your way to get the vaccine than you are from the vaccine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate#List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...

CryptoPunk 6y ago

It's six bloot clots, and only ONE death, not six deaths: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ey2oowQWgAApGnK?format=jpg&name=large https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ey2oowQWgAApGnK?format=jpg&name=...

diebeforei485 6y ago

The 6 are only those we know of. There could be others, because these cerebral blood clots can happen two weeks after receiving the vaccine. As we analyze the data, and see if more data comes in the next two weeks, we'll have a better sense of the risk.

mhb 6y ago
How many would there need to be in order to justify proceeding to use the vaccine? Proclaiming that there could be others is worthless without quantifying what you're willing to accept. Just saying to wait is a decision that will kill people.
- diebeforei485 6y ago
  > Proclaiming that there could be others is worthless without quantifying what you're willing to accept. If it can be isolated to certain groups, then those groups could be offered alternatives. The UK did something like that, and it worked well for them. It's not just about an overall number - it's about how effectively this risk can be reduced. > Just saying to wait is a decision that will kill people. J&J was a very small proportion of vaccines. There is plenty of extra supply from Moderna and Pfizer in the US, so you'll need a citation that this will kill people.

_karl_b_12 6y ago

>> Yesterday, Covid19 killed 8,803 people (according to worldometers). I'm certainly not denying Covid19, but I do take all the statistics with a grain of salt. It's important to understand that those people died with, not necessarily of Covid19. Also, why are so many positive tested persons without any signs of illness? I wonder what numbers would result in testing every death for other viruses. The best, maybe only number we can properly compare is the total death rate. In doing so we see that Covid19 causes additional deaths, but it is far from as severe as the media and politics suggest.

stopping 6y ago
The number of excess deaths in the world is quite similar to the number of known COVID deaths. In fact, excess deaths is the higher number. It's very likely that the number of COVID deaths is currently underestimated, as spread of other infectious diseases has been drastically diminished by the lockdowns.

jeegsy 6y ago

With all due respect to the statistics lessons that usually follows news like this, if you are one of the 6,971 or the 8,803 for that matter, these numbers are not as comforting as you might imagine. It's like the time I was unemployed and I kept hearing from the government about how low the unemployment rate was.

someonehere 6y ago

I can avoid getting into my car and running that risk. It’s still there and can happen, but I can opt to not drive my car. The vaccine is eventually going to be mandated to go back to the office, go places, etc.. That’s a risk that you can’t avoid and will have to take. I’m all for vaccinations and get them when needed, I’m still not comfortable for vaccines that have not been approved. Right now, they all have emergency approval and not overall approval. According to the cdc, vaccines need at least ten years of data to be considered safe for use. We’re only a little over a year into the development of the vaccine. Not really safe in my eyes.