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This is great, but a gigantic Public Communications disaster. I had a vax-sceptic friend send me an article from a reputable source, quoting claims from the Na

This is great, but a gigantic Public Communications disaster. I had a vax-sceptic friend send me an article from a reputable source, quoting claims from the National Health Agencies and WHO etc. about the 'blood clots' which essentially conclude that 'they are rare and treatable' ... but my friends 'interpretation' was that the vax was 'unsafe'. She literally couldn't grasp that the data in the article was supposed to make her conclude it was 'safe'. She just read 'fear'. 40% of developed world people are either 'not very literate' or 'not paying attention' or have 'reading comprehension' problems whereing they are not going to engage with the material to derive conclusions. While the public health agencies decisions are a little cautious, they are reasonable, but the 'communications' of it via random articles with bits of 'facts' is a complete disaster from a Public Communications perspective and is causing probably measurable harm. If there is a 'marginal risk' of 4 in 1 million of 'blood clotting' and it's entirely treatable, then this information should be made available and transparent during the official conferences, but it should not be headline news. Whenever material information is presented regarding concerns, they have to be contextualized, and if the conclusion is effectively 'the vax is perfectly safe, this is just an administrative thing' then this has to be repeated over and over. From the FDA: "Out of every 10,000 women taking birth control pills, 3 to 9 of them will develop a blood clot". That is about 100x greater than clotting from AstraZeneca Vaccine, and 10's of millions of American women are taking it daily. Now that's context. Every single story about COVID needs to start and end with the 'Net reality facts' about vaccination, which as of today is: 'It's utterly safe, basically for everyone, and it will help stop the spread and keep other safe'. When messaging critical information for the masses it needs to be simple, clear, consistent, repetitive, words need to be chosen very carefully, and assume you're dealing with a 'Grade 8' audience in terms of net comprehension/attention/understanding. Almost all intelligent professionals live in bubbles, we tend to have no grasp of how it is out there for a large swath of the population. Even public health agencies web-sites are overloaded with information, literally with critical information in 'downloadable PDFs' (???), it's not good, I hope we develop a new approach but I don't think we will.

quickthrowman 6y ago
> From the FDA: "Out of every 10,000 women taking birth control pills, 3 to 9 of them will develop a blood clot". > That is about 100x greater than clotting from AstraZeneca Vaccine, and 10's of millions of American women are taking it daily. Now that's context. More context: the vaccine clots have been in the brain, birth control clots tend to occur in the legs (and rarely in the lungs). You can use heparin to treat the latter, but heparin could make the brain clot from the vaccine worse. I’m no medical professional, so I’ll let this article do the heavy lifting: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/23/fact-check-birth-control-vaccine-blood-clot-comparison-lacks-nuance/7256800002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/23/fac... Despite that, the odds seem to favor using the J&J vaccine based on numbers. The reported clot cases and total vaccines are 6 in 6.7 million with 1 death. If those odds are extrapolated, this means approximately 1150 people would die if everyone on earth received the J&J vaccine, and 6600 would have blood clots. All of the cases were in women of roughly child-bearing age, give them an option/priority for the mRNA vaccines, see if clots occur in other demographic groups. I had the J&J shot, and would do so again.
mikem170 6y ago
> If there is a 'marginal risk' of 4 in 1 million of 'blood clotting' and it's entirely treatable I completely agree with what you are saying, but wanted to point out that the risk of a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis blood clot risk is something like 4 in 1 million, but there are other kinds of blood clots (deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, etc). During J&J FDA trials of 20k people there were 50% more blood clots of other various types in the vaccinated group [0] (15 blood clots in vaccinated group versus 10 in the placebo group, which the FDA did not consider statistically significant at the time). It might not be fair to compare J&J cerebral venous sinus thrombosis blood clots only to blood clots of any type from birth control pills. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/13/health/johnson-vaccine-blood-clots-cdc-fda/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/13/health/johnson-vaccine-blood-...
linuxftw 6y ago
The FDA is phrasing it as 'blood clots' and what they should be calling it is 'death.' How many deaths are associated with each vaccine at this point? Show me the data.
- jollybean 6y ago
  Only a minority of the clots caused death, and as there is treatment for them and we know what to look for, it should be considerably less risky. 'The data' is available for you out there on Google. The calculus the public health officials are making I think is reasonable.
  - linuxftw 6y ago
    How many deaths are acceptable to the regulators? Like, a hard number.

quickthrowman 6y ago

> From the FDA: "Out of every 10,000 women taking birth control pills, 3 to 9 of them will develop a blood clot". > That is about 100x greater than clotting from AstraZeneca Vaccine, and 10's of millions of American women are taking it daily. Now that's context. More context: the vaccine clots have been in the brain, birth control clots tend to occur in the legs (and rarely in the lungs). You can use heparin to treat the latter, but heparin could make the brain clot from the vaccine worse. I’m no medical professional, so I’ll let this article do the heavy lifting: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/23/fact-check-birth-control-vaccine-blood-clot-comparison-lacks-nuance/7256800002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/23/fac... Despite that, the odds seem to favor using the J&J vaccine based on numbers. The reported clot cases and total vaccines are 6 in 6.7 million with 1 death. If those odds are extrapolated, this means approximately 1150 people would die if everyone on earth received the J&J vaccine, and 6600 would have blood clots. All of the cases were in women of roughly child-bearing age, give them an option/priority for the mRNA vaccines, see if clots occur in other demographic groups. I had the J&J shot, and would do so again.

mikem170 6y ago

> If there is a 'marginal risk' of 4 in 1 million of 'blood clotting' and it's entirely treatable I completely agree with what you are saying, but wanted to point out that the risk of a cerebral venous sinus thrombosis blood clot risk is something like 4 in 1 million, but there are other kinds of blood clots (deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, etc). During J&J FDA trials of 20k people there were 50% more blood clots of other various types in the vaccinated group [0] (15 blood clots in vaccinated group versus 10 in the placebo group, which the FDA did not consider statistically significant at the time). It might not be fair to compare J&J cerebral venous sinus thrombosis blood clots only to blood clots of any type from birth control pills. [0] https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/13/health/johnson-vaccine-blood-clots-cdc-fda/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/13/health/johnson-vaccine-blood-...

linuxftw 6y ago

The FDA is phrasing it as 'blood clots' and what they should be calling it is 'death.' How many deaths are associated with each vaccine at this point? Show me the data.

jollybean 6y ago
Only a minority of the clots caused death, and as there is treatment for them and we know what to look for, it should be considerably less risky. 'The data' is available for you out there on Google. The calculus the public health officials are making I think is reasonable.
- linuxftw 6y ago
  How many deaths are acceptable to the regulators? Like, a hard number.