A recommendation by the federal government to pause using Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine will remain in place after an advisory panel put off a vote on how to move as they examine six reports of life-threatening blood clots.
OT: Put this in another thread too, but it’s time for Dems to brag a little. A year+ of weekly UI claims being higher than the PEAK of the Great Recession and we finally broke the streak! It’s almost like addressing the issues people and businesses are having is more effective than tax cuts for billionaires and doing nothing.
That can certainly be done here and in other wealthy countries. In the developing world, the J&J and AstraZeneca (which are essentially the same, using adenovirus vectors) are really the only viable option. The Pfizer and Moderna are simply not usable in countries where -70C freezers are non-existent.
These rare reactions are serious, but the risks of dying- 1 in 200,000 even in the group of women 18-49-are still less than the risks of dying from Covid. Once doctors are all aware of the reaction and how to treat it, the risks will go down even further.
The risk of contracting blood clots is about the same in Pfizer ‘s and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines as in AstraZeneca ‘s, according to a study released on Thursday.
Researchers at the University of Oxford, the same university that helped develop drug company AstraZeneca vaccine, found that the rare blood clotting known as cerebral venous thrombosis occurred in four in a million people receiving the vaccines from drug company Pfizer and biotech Moderna.
That compares to five in a million people after the first dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, they said.
In both cases, the risk of blood clots is much higher in those who contract the Covid-19 virus. CVT occurred in 39 in a million patients, the researchers said.
Study Link:
I’m sure the numbers are similar here as they are in the UK. The US just doesn’t make the information public. I have a pretty good idea why.
Added:
This study does not mention ITP ( immune thrombocytopenic purpura) Another clotting disorder associated with 20 cases in the US mostly after the first vaccination with mRNA vaccines. Some very good information on this was published March 25th here:
From a new Swedish paper (with Swedish sentence structure). I haven’t heard much about when covid-recovered persons should get vaccinated, but this gives some direction.
Our results suggest that reducing the transmission rate affected by invading virus strains, seasonality and the level of prevention, is most important. Second to this is timely vaccine deliveries and expeditious vaccination management. Postponing vaccination of antibody-positive individuals reduces also the disease burden, and once risk groups have been vaccinated, it is best to continue vaccinating in a descending age order.
I assume some correlation has been determined that links these cases to the J&J vaccine, but does anyone know the how these numbers compare to “normal” occurrences of these blood clots?
Not so much. It is calling J&J on the carpet to please explain to them why, when this condition happened to a volunteer in the trials, J&J concluded that it was not due to the vaccine and tossed it aside.
When you find that the conclusion of a paper is based on a faulty presumption, makes you go digging to see if there are any other surprises waiting to be found.
We like lower taxes, if you want the government oversight to be at 100% all the time, that’s going to cost a ton of money. So there is a reliance on the company to be transparent about where there are potential problems, those are the parts that get the thorough review out of the potential thousands of pages of documents. Otherwise, it’s needle in a haystack for the oversight.
One in 1 million! How special, just happening to women, when in 1 million? And buy some, from what I’ve gathered that’s OK, after all that one in 1 million it’s just a woman.
I am surprised, And disgusted at the same time, there’s some people Think that just one in 1 million who just happens to be a woman that’s OK. Why is another man? Any for a man would it be OK, You know after all women seem to be dispensable when it comes to Science. After all look at all of the heart attack research it was all done for men and they just assumed that women would follow the same pattern only to find out that that’s not the case. Time after time science seems to favor men over women even at the cost of one in 1 million hey that’s OK.
For perspective, all vaccines are evaluated for risk/benefit and no vaccine is completely innocuous. So, if the risk of serious adverse events from the vaccine outweighs the risk of severe disease, then the balance goes in favor of administering the vaccine. A primary reason that smallpox was eliminated is that more people were dying from the vaccine (1 per 1 million deaths plus several thousand per million serious adverse events)) than from the disease. Smallpox could be eradicated. The whole cell pertussis vaccine had a high adverse event ratio but we continued to use it until the acellular pertussis vaccine was developed because the vaccine was better than the alternative. In the J&J case, thrombosis is a serious adverse event and, given the availability of two safer alternatives (in the US) I think a pause to understand the breadth of the problem is justified. First, the rate is higher than 1 per million if you just look at the population of 18-49 year old women. Second, we only know the rate of cases serious enough to be a medical emergency; there could be a much high rate of less serious thrombosis that can manifest in long term issues. Third, treatment of thrombosis from COVID vaccines is different that treatment from other cases of thrombosis and physicians (and patients) need to be educated abut what to look for. Fourth, there is not extensive experience with adenovirus vectored vaccines in human medicine, Since similar side effects are seen with the other adenovirus vectored COVID vaccine (AstraZeneca) it makes sense to look at the bigger picture before plunging ahead. That is not to say that we should not approve the J&J COVID vaccine. Risk/benefit in developing countries with no alternative will not be the same. But there is a reason to proceed cautiously until we have a better handle on what is happening. These vaccines were approved for Emergency Use Authorization and did not go through the full battery of safety testing a regular non-emergency vaccine would require.
OTOH, 39 out of every million will suffer from CVT. due to covid-19. I’m guessing more than one out of those 39 will die, especially with other covid-19 complications. Which way is better? Vaccine or no vaccine?
Did you read the excerpt from an Oxford University study released today that I posted above.
found that the rare blood clotting known as cerebral venous thrombosis occurred in four in a million people receiving the vaccines from drug company Pfizer and biotech Moderna.
That compares to five in a million people after the first dose of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, they said
When you add in the risk of ITP ( immune thrombocytopenic purpura) from the mRNA vaccines, which is safer? There have been at least 20 cases of ITP associated with mRNA vaccines after the first shot in the US.
But they paused vaccination because of this. That’s exactly the opposite of saying it’s somehow okay because it’s one woman in a million. I guess this is a Straw Woman argument.
Agreed. There is a significant chance that by analysing new data and reanalysis of what we know already, the scientists can find a class of people that should NOT take this vaccine. And that would mean millions of others could take it safely. Completely safely. It’s worth pursuing.