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J&J COVID vaccine use paused due to one-in-a-million complication;:
On Tuesday morning, the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a release acknowledging that an extremely rare clotting disorder was associated with the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine. The problem is actually less than a one-in-a-million issue; in data from the US, where 6.8 million doses of this vaccine have been used, there have only been six instances of the clotting problem detected.
Because the clots call for an unusual treatment, however, the organizations are calling for a pause in administering the shot. This will provide them with time to ensure the medical community is aware of the appropriate treatment.
[...] The leading hypothesis to explain the phenomenon is that, in very rare cases, the adenovirus triggers an immune response to factors found on the surface of platelets, which are an essential part of the clotting process. This activates platelets, causing clots, and at the same time reduces the total platelet count.
These seemingly contradictory changes make treating the issue through the normal approach to excessive clotting dangerous. Typically, the appearance of clots would call for using a treatment that would reduce the probability of clots forming. But due to the low platelet counts in these individuals, those treatments can make it much less likely that clots form when they're needed.
It's this difference between apparent patient needs and appropriate treatment that has caused the CDC and FDA to call for a pause in the use of the J&J vaccine.
[...] So far, all six cases have occurred among women below the age of 50 and appeared between one and two weeks after vaccination.
To put that in a different perspective, imagine giving a shot of vaccine every single second of every minute of every hour of every day.
How long would it take to reach 1 million doses? Start on the first second of a Sunday. Go through that whole day. And Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday, and Friday and Saturday — i.e. one whole week.
We're not done yet!
Add another Sunday, and Monday, and Tuesday, and Wednesday; that gets us to 11 consecutive days of non-stop dosing. That would still be less than 1 million doses. Remember this is at a rate of Jab. Jab. Jab. Jab. Non-stop.
After all that, you're still not done! You'd still need another 49,600 doses to reach exactly 1 million.
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Tuesday April 13 2021, @11:43PM (17 children)
Got mine already - one and done!
Haven't died in thirty days, and vaccine strength is now at maximum - yipee! Now I go where I please and do what I choose.
Good luck getting yours, sucka's. Oh and watch out for stray lightning.
--
Waiting for the conspiracy theory explanation of all this - like maybe the Gates nanobots are malfunctioning in the J&J vax.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @11:48PM (1 child)
So how's your local 5G signal?
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:05AM
<meta>Quality Troll</meta>
Nice!
The shame though is that isn't quite stand-alone.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 13 2021, @11:57PM (4 children)
Just remember to keep masking up because the vaccine doesn't do shit.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:07AM (1 child)
Faucist!
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:28AM
Faucian Bargain
(Score: 5, Interesting) by nostyle on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:38AM (1 child)
Funny, I thought _zero_ Covid hospitalizations and _zero_ Covid deaths was some pretty good $hit.
Actually I look marvelous in a mask, and haven't had so much as a fever in 15 months, so I'm sold on wearing masks forever!!
__
Then, again, I'm not a woman under fifty (lucky stars maybe).
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:36AM
I agree, you look much better in a mask. Please continue to wear one in the interest of a better quality of life for everyone around you. :P
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:16AM
Congratulations!
A picture is worth a thousand words.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/04/13/risk-reward-calculus-johnson-johnson-vaccine-visualized/ [washingtonpost.com]
It looks like a good thing to pass along to people you know who don't have number-oriented minds.
The article says it's outside the WaPo's usual paywall.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:37AM (3 children)
"abundance of relief" because J&J vaccine is doped with oxycontin for that "extra" relief.
(Score: 2) by nostyle on Wednesday April 14 2021, @01:05AM (2 children)
Somebody once botched a surgery on my leg, leaving me with a permanent excruciating neuropathy. I spent the next three years in an oxycontin haze. Eventually my brain learned to "route around" the neuropathic sensation, and I was able to wean myself off opioids over an interval of about nine months. Been off them about six years now.
Anyway, I am quite familiar with the feeling of being on oxycontin, and I noticed no such sensation with the J&J vaccination. I'm pretty sure you are only trolling, though.
--
Yes, "every little step I take" remains painful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @02:30AM (1 child)
yo dawg, i've heard you liked oxycontin, so i gots me a box of genuine chinese-made fentanyl, all packed for shipping. send me your address and it will be sent over, pronto.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @02:48AM
Bobby Brown - is that you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:44AM
"Haven't died in thirty days"
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 14 2021, @01:52AM (3 children)
Good for you, not so good for the six people with potentially deadly blood clotting issues.
Like in the early days of Polio vaccination, there is some risk in vaccinating - we tell ourselves that it's less than the risk of not vaccinating, but does everybody believe that? The real answer depends in large part on how many people end up taking the vaccines.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @02:11AM
"there is some risk"
That's life. And medicine is no different.
Vaccination is also a public health issue, where the public policy is geared toward the larger society, not particular individuals. So, provided vaccine is low-enough risk, we encourage vaccination.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 14 2021, @04:11AM (1 child)
Not sure where you wanted to go with that question, but it's pretty clear that the usual anti-vaxers aren't going to believe that. There will always be somebody. My take is that there's a lot more 1 in a million complications from covid than what's been talked about so far for the vaccines.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 14 2021, @01:14PM
Right now, I've read that approximately 30% of US adults are disinclined to take the COVID vaccines... I don't know what the hardline antivaxxer population slice is, I usually see it expressed in more local terms of "hotspots," one would assume that near 100% of the hardline antivaxxers are also COVID vaccine averse, but I think that 30% number includes a lot more people - which is a good thing in my opinion. I wish the vaccine debate would break down from the "ALL OR NONE" positions that are usually heard. Maybe then the establishment might focus more on transparency, clear understandable accurate independently verified and verifiable data, and letting people decide for themselves rather than attempts at intimidation through fear.
Our kids were toddlers during the mercury removal phase for vaccines and dental fillings. It was a serious blow to the credibility of the establishment how many dentists and physicians presented the hard-line "zero risk of harm, absolutely harmless, you have nothing to worry about" position on mercury right up until it wasn't in the mainstream products anymore, and then they flip-flopped like a winning politician on election night.
As for personal risk from not vaccinating - if 99% of the population vaccinates, then the 1% that doesn't is benefiting greatly from reduced risk of side effects and near zero risk of disease due to herd immunity. If 1% of the population vaccinates then that 1% is benefiting greatly from reduced risk of disease thanks to vaccination and the risk of side effects is negligible by comparison. In-between, somewhere there's a balance point where risk and reward are roughly equal - and at present nobody has sufficient information to assess where that balance point is. The balance point also depends greatly on whether you are regularly exposed to potentially diseased people, and in overall societal terms: whether or not at-high-risk of serious disease/death populations are exposed to you.
In a way, it's a lot like speed limits - most places don't even post limits different for night and day, let alone weather conditions and vehicle capabilities. So, the law draws a simple conservative line in the sand and it seems that the majority of motorists cross that line the majority of the time in most conditions. Enforcement is sparse and uneven and almost wholly unrelated to safety - but good luck implementing anything more sensible.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:02AM (21 children)
Is one in a million an accepted adverse reaction rate? How does this vaccine compare to other vaccines?
Instead of a snarky "look at the unwashed morons" quip, how about digging up the data. I've got other things to do right now, but at least I started. There should be a paper in here somewhere that gets into the hard numbers rather than just a list of bullet points telling you to question nothing.
https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/safety [vaccines.gov]
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/ensuringsafety/monitoring/vsd/ [cdc.gov]
I'd like to know how tetnus adverse events compares to the COVID numbers. This is the sort of information that if made easily available would encourage acceptance. I find the snarky stuff about being a moron to instead make me question the safety of the COVID vaccines. I've basically taken the position that I'll wait for the human trials that we're in the midst of to conclude, but real data, not ideologically massaged, could move me.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:17AM (7 children)
》 Is one in a million an accepted adverse reaction rate?
Apparently it's not accepted, since they're pausing the human trial.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:21AM (6 children)
Maybe they're burying and downplaying the actual numbers. Its painful sometimes, to be right about everything like i am, because it takes years of patient waiting to prove to everybody how right i am about things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:32AM
A blood clot in the brain? Nothing for you to worry about.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:48AM (2 children)
Actually it's a pretty low reaction rate, about 1/10th what's typical for traditional vaccines.
Here's some long-term data on an old tried-and-true vaccine:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11144371/ [nih.gov]
Serious adverse events after measles-mumps-rubella vaccination during a fourteen-year prospective follow-up
Results: Immunization of 1.8 million individuals and consumption of almost 3 million vaccine doses by the end of 1996 gave rise to 173 potentially serious reactions claimed to have been caused by MMR vaccination. In all, 77 neurologic, 73 allergic and 22 miscellaneous reactions and 1 death were reported, febrile seizure being the most common event. However, 45% of these events proved to be probably caused or contributed by some other factor, giving an incidence of serious adverse events with possible or indeterminate causal relation with MMR vaccination of 5.3 per 100,000 vaccinees or 3.2 per 100,000 vaccine doses.
.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:17AM (1 child)
Thank you -- that's useful info.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:40AM
Welcome. That's also about what I've seen for random other older vaccines, but this was the first data I came to today.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:58AM
Oz has had just over a million doses and has one case of serious clots forming. But the clots lag the vaccine by 4 to 20 days, so one in a million is probably low.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 14 2021, @02:02AM
I read without looking at username -- I thought I was reading a melyan post for a second.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:29AM (1 child)
The Phase III trials were complete last year.
Claiming that the results were "ideologically massaged" by the clinicians and biostatistics nerds is a grave accusation. Got proof? Evidence even?
(Score: 4, Touché) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 14 2021, @01:54AM
Got a non-biased independent culture deconstruction investigation like was done at NASA after the Challenger explosion? No? And I doubt we will be getting one, either.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:50AM
Some hard numbers posted below.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Troll) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 14 2021, @01:58AM (1 child)
Six initial reported and verified cases translates to a much larger number in the field if an investigation cares to look for them.
What's most concerning is that these cases may be indicative of some kind of manufacturing error/design flaw which is what they are hoping to determine/correct with this shutdown.
Then there's the correlation with a similar problem in Europe a few weeks ago.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:12AM
Part of the delay is that they need to do an in-depth investigation and analysis to determine how much is the vaccine and how much is due to other unrelated causes. For instance, smoking while on contraceptives is a known risk factor for blood clots, and the reported numbers are in the right ballpark for that. Those cases need to be factored out before we can say what the risks of the vaccine are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 14 2021, @02:57AM (3 children)
Problem is, most vaccines have a history years or decades long. If they say that vaccine A has side effects ranging from nausea for 20%, up to death for 1 in 7 million, there is a long history of clinical data to back that up.
With the COVIDS, there is no history. We're all guinea pigs. Ten years from now, the side effects may look like
nausea 1 in 10,000
long term respiratory problems 1 in 20,000
reproduction problems for women 1 in 25,000
reproduction problems for men 1 in 75,000
long term circulatory problems 1 in 150,000
long term heart problems 1 in 500,000
death from blood clots women 1 in 900,000
death from blood clots men 1 in 50,000,000
No, I'm not a time traveler, but you need to understand that it's all experimental at this point. Eventually, all of the side effects will be known, and published, just like it is for every other vaccination.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:22AM (1 child)
...but don't forget to compare those numbers with the non-vaccinated risk:
death from Covid-19 infection 1 in 50 (or insert your preferred rate here and compare to vaccine risks)
--
I don't mind being a guinea pig, if humanity's future is brightened.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @06:23AM
You can't put a one in a zero.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @10:41AM
>> Eventually, all of the side effects will be known, and published, just like it is for every other vaccination.
Assuming the aforementioned odds don't total to 1 in 1.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:58AM (3 children)
Well, supposedly no similiar cases with moderna or pfizer vaccines.
The Astra Zenaca vaccine had a higher rate in similar cases. Roughly 1 in 500,000 cases in Europe that last I checked the numbers. (wikipedia [wikipedia.org] does show slightly higher numbers than I thought; about 1 in 300,000.)
Probably related... The 2 mRNA vaccines do not appear to nhave this side affect, while both the J&J and AZ vaccines have it. The latter 2 are both Viral vector vaccines [wikipedia.org] derived from a modified virus to confer immunity. (The Spunike V vaccine made in Russia is also a Viral Vector vaccine.)
It sounds to me like the viral vector vaccines are quite similar to the actual covid virus due to the fact that blood clots are an common side effect of covid-19.
ofc, that is why they use a similar virus to get the immunity and hopefully lesser effects. (Like cowpox being used to prevent smallpox.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @06:23AM (2 children)
No thnx, I'm not putting that mRNA shit in my veins. I'd prefer a REAL vaccine (sicne the fucking definition has been retconned to now include experimental shit). But in light of that, J&J seems like the least odd one of the bunch. Still, maybe I can get my hands on the Cuban vaccine, which is traditional, or I could just say FUCK IT, and not worry, since I'm not a fat fuck so my risk of dying is negligible. But i suspoect they will make some sort of vaccine mandatory so my kdis can have normal lives. Just abotu 30th mandatory vaccine on the ever icreasing list of poisoned shit. But hey, we got to keep the pharma profits flowing right?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stretch611 on Wednesday April 14 2021, @07:29AM
Wow, you seem to be a real happy person with all of your kind words.
I am sure that you will be happy to know that the US has already paid the big pharma companies in advance for even vaccine doses for every person in the entire US regardless of whether or not you actually use it.
Your altruistic self sacrifice is truly remarkable in this day and age. After all, once all the vaccines are given out in the US, I am sure that the current administration will send all of the leftover doses to the poorer countries in central america. Your kindly act to not get the vaccine will inevitably mean that one of the less fortunate in those poor countries will be able to get vaccinated, saving them from the death and mayhem of coronavirus. Who knows, the poor person that you save might eventually cross the border and end up in the US only to marry your daughter. (and stay here thanks to her sacrifice to give him citizenship.)
You are truly an inspiration to us all. If only everyone could be so kind.
Have a BLESSED day 🥰 🥰
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:00PM
On the upside, if you're worrying about a vaccine causing learning disabilities...well.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by krishnoid on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:36AM (2 children)
And then there's the chance you take with COVID-19 itself [hopkinsmedicine.org].
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday April 14 2021, @01:00AM (1 child)
There's also this:
https://www.endocrineweb.com/covid-19-post-infection-thyroid-disease [endocrineweb.com]
Consider that some of the long-term effects of a damaged thyroid gland are heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, dementia, osteoporosis, and that your lifespan is cut to about ten years after critical decline... not to mention everyday nuisances like chronic fatigue, chronic pain, incontinence, and erectile dysfunction. Thyroid affects *everything*.
Per a study I couldn't relocate offhand, about 30% of CV19 cases examined for it had significant damage to the thyroid gland.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @06:31AM
Did you really just link a case study with speculation in lieu of evidence? Also note: "The authors of the study also noted that a month earlier, the patient had her thyroid tested, and her results were normal." which is a damning indicator she had a pre-existing thyroid condition. How often do you get your thyroid examined? Or anything examined for that matter? And her normal result was a product of a single testing point. The endocrine system isn't static, not in the least.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by oumuamua on Wednesday April 14 2021, @01:25AM (2 children)
Looking at a few of the dirty dozen anti-vaxxer 'influencers', Could the motivation be as simple as making a buck?
https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2021/03/12-people-responsible-more-half-covid-19-vaccine-disinformation-dozen-anti-vaxx [newstatesman.com]
Almost all of them are selling one or more of: a book, a seminar, a product, a 'natural wellness' clinic
How's that for finding a marketing niche /s
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:06AM
When you think about it, they are just doing what the big news organizations are doing, but on a smaller scale: grifting on fear and rumors, accentuating the negatives. people emotionally respond to negative stimulus to a much greater degree over positive stimulus.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday April 14 2021, @04:00AM
They better make their bucks quickly.
After all, the people they are fleecing are not likely to have a long life span.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rich on Wednesday April 14 2021, @01:58AM (5 children)
The J&J jab is similar to the Astra Zeneca and Sputnik V vaccines in that it uses a "harmless" carrier virus for the antigens. AZ has been put on hold or severely limited in Europe because of similar observations of thrombosis. I wonder if that is actually an effect of the carrier rather than the CoV2 specific antigens. Has anyone got any reports about such things with Sputnik V?
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday April 14 2021, @02:38AM (2 children)
Comrade, we do not ask such questions unless we fancy a long term vacation in Siberia.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @06:25AM
That's not what happens anymore, though you could find yourself experiencing gravity first hand.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @07:13AM
Your Russia is out of date. You need to upgrade to Polonium 210.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday April 14 2021, @04:08AM
Damn... beat me too it. I posted this [soylentnews.org] above; only to scroll down and see you came to the same conclusion that I did.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @11:18AM
I don't know about Sputnik, but a Dutch newspaper [www.nrc.nl] [in Dutch] mentioned yesterday that one of the common properties of AstraZeneca and Janssen (the the Dutch J&J subsidiary in Delft that developed it) vaccins is that they both have an adenovirus as carrier, although it's not the same virus and there are differences in how the viruses are processed as well. But whathever the outcome, your thought that the carrier virus might be the culprit makes sense.
(Score: 1) by js290 on Wednesday April 14 2021, @02:03AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 14 2021, @04:23AM (1 child)
Yeah, cause we all know twitter is a fount of credible medical information. (/sarcasm)
So I'm gonna need Azuma's endorsement on this one before I take it seriously.
--
It is an interesting hypothesis nonetheless.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 14 2021, @12:07PM
There is soooo much unknown there @_@ There's a zillion and one things that could conceivably cause clots. High homocysteine is implicated, estrogen itself is implicated, problems in the body's plethora of methylation systems (hence the reference to B12) are implicated, polymorphims in the hilariously-abbreviated MTHFR gene are implicated, pre-existing thrombophilic mutations like Factor V Leiden or prothrombin G20210A are implicated...
Then there's the fact that the different B vitamins work, if I remember right, at different steps of the methylation cycle, so supplementing with folate may unmask a B12 deficiency or supplementing with thiamine might reveal a folate deficiency, etc. All of this may, or may not, depending on the person, also have something to do with their mitochondrial efficiency (effectively, whether the cells of the body are in a sort of chronic low-grade hypoxia from underproduction of ATP) and who knows what else.
The adenovirus vector itself might also, as someone suggested, indirectly be causing this since it of course causes an immune response. Everything's connected to everything else and no one can tell where the start or end of the chain is, least of all me.
That said, I can offer an anecdotal study with a sample size n=1 (me) that the Pfizer shot seems to work well and with no side effects in the short to medium term worse than the usual flu jab. In this particular population. Which is just me.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by Barenflimski on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:02AM (2 children)
I have twice as much of a chance of being struck by lightning than getting blood clots. I have a 12x better chance of being struck by lightning than dying from the JnJ vaccine. One lady died out of 7 million vaccines. It would be interesting to know if she would have died from COVID itself.
Gotta love the COVID fear porn. Lets all try to guess what's coming next. We've had "variants," CDC directors "scared", 1 in a million vs. the rates for COVID deaths, "Long COVID", people COULD get X disease. What else will the media throw at folks for their click-bait headlines?
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. This fear porn that is being spoon fed to people is worse than COVID itself. Would be great if living ones life as a free soul, thinking for ones self based on ones risk profile, and bravery under pressure, sold ads as well as neurotic fear.
(Score: 1) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 14 2021, @03:48AM (1 child)
If we're going to be snarky, what's J&J's stock price doing? Do you like the stock?
Other than that, your math is incomplete because you presume to know the future. Given how most of the lightning stats are presented (*), I'm guessing you are comparing the chance of dying by a lighting strike over a year's span while comparing that to observational data on a vaccine that's been in wide circulation for a few months. The mismatched time spans make the comparison invalid. Further, the vaccine may well cause permanent changes in a person's body that they carry around with them for years or even til death. One's exposure to lightning is extremely ephemeral by comparison and it is generally accompanied by substantial warnings (thunder, weather reports) that allow people to take precautions. Once the vaccine is in your body, your exposure is constant and you cannot put away your umbrella or keep away from windows.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not anti-vax -- I've had all my shots. But wow -- if this vaccine does start causing serious problems on a wider scale in a year or two, the damage caused by all the people glibly saying it's safe and anyone who questions that is a moron, will be incalculable. Honesty is always the best policy -- especially important is being honest about what is unknown. It is perfectly legitimate to explain why those unknowns are unlikely, but to say with blanket certainty there are no known risks, no unknown risks, and anyone who thinks otherwise should be silenced and gulaged -- that kind of over-confidence is how trust in science as a knowledge building tool (distinct from the oxymoronic current usage of "The Science (which must never be questioned, only accepted)") is destroyed.
(*) https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html [cdc.gov]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Barenflimski on Wednesday April 14 2021, @04:51AM
Your entire premise is based on fear. You have the right to be as fearful as you want. Do not impose that on me.
I don't live my life constantly worried about the whatifs of death. Hell, until the last century or so, we all had a better chance of dying of a bacterial infection than COVID. You honestly think now that the "adenovirus" used in these is going to start killing people 2 years down the road? Come on man.
I don't live my life fearing death. I live my life within reasonable bounds. Nothing is certain, and right now a lot of folks feel more uncertain. That doesn't mean that we should all shift to living in fear. Just because you are fearful doesn't give you the right to project that on me.
It's not a great thing folks have lost some years, but reducing life to analytics is preposterous. You'd think this was the bubonic plague version 2.0. Humans are relative, and this entire thing shows how relatively safe life has become. I have zero interest in being part of the race towards 0.
Let's take your thought... And what if things go south, and we all die? I certainly don't want to die with my head in the sand, alone on this planet because I was too scared to go out because I have a .01% chance of dying. Talk about glib.
I'm 7 days into my JnJ vaccine. I'd take another jab of the JnJ virus tomorrow. I honestly hope these things don't go to waste.
(Score: 2) by EJ on Wednesday April 14 2021, @05:07AM
Imagine being the ONLY healthcare provider allowed to administer the vaccine, and having NO help at all to do it.
Now, let's imagine that all 4+ million nurses in the USA [2020nurseandmidwife.org] are allowed to administer the vaccine. You could be done in less than a second.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 14 2021, @06:43AM
That added text at the summary is clearly not aimed at informing you, as the information density is extremely low.
So what does a one-in-a-million risk mean if you assume one vaccination per second? Simple: About one case about every 11.5 days.
See? I needed two sentences to give the same information as that ultra-long text.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday May 21 2021, @06:59AM
This is all well and good, now imagine we discover a long term side effect or complication. Maybe it's one in a million, maybe a hundred times higher. Who knows? It's why we do long term drug studies.
Personally, I'm going to wait before getting a vaccine, but I don't fault anyone who isn't waiting. Ultimately you have to pick between two unknowns, the unknowns of covid and the unknowns of the vaccines.
> but 1 in a million is tiny
And the chance of getting covid multiplied by the chance of experiencing permanent symptoms is also tiny. Tiny times tiny. What's the exact number? What's the exact number for you? Who knows. Flip a coin.
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