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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: 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.
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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...