Color me confused.
If half a dozen serious adverse reactions to the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are enough to disrupt federal health authorities from using it, why not just recommend it?
Why do they only point to the states?
It sounds like being a little pregnant.
And CDC officials found it very difficult to answer reporters’ questions yesterday.
They stressed that the six women, 18 to 48, who suffered an unusual disorder – one died, another in critical condition – were a small percentage of the nearly 7 J & J million shots fired so far. is. “Extremely rare,” the acting FDA commissioner said. But that left them open to questions about whether it was a major overreaction.
The FDA, which could pull the plug at any time, said in a joint statement with the CDC that it was making the recommendation out of an “abundance of caution.”
But how deadly as the blood clots can be in people with severe reaction, what about all the lives that can be saved by vaccinating people against the coronavirus?
President Biden lets his medical experts take the lead. But his predecessor was moving fast.
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Donald Trump said the government had done a “terrible bad service” to people around the world because the vaccine’s excellent reputation would be “permanently challenged.”
Then Trump became political, saying that the FDA bureaucracy “should be controlled”, and without proof suggested that the government would do it for political reasons, or “perhaps because their friends at Pfizer suggested it”.
But the man who launched Operation Warp Speed does have one notable point. Unfortunately, millions of people refuse or are very reluctant to be vaccinated. People who do not know their Pfizer from their Moderna can hear the news second hand and come to the conclusion that all Covid vaccines are dangerous, that you may even die from them. This would be a major setback for the country’s efforts to achieve herd immunity.
Even a “break” of a week will take hundreds of thousands of vaccines out of the program. And it has a double impact, because J&J has the only one of the three vaccines that only needs one dose instead of two to be effective.
Anthony Fauci tries to be reassuring and says that the chance of someone taking the J&J survey could happen is less than 1 in a million (although people should be on the lookout for the symptoms). But it seems like it’s a whole lot more far-fetched than the chance to get Covid himself.
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was bitten by a snake. Less than two weeks ago, 15 million doses were destroyed as the company confirmed that a subcontractor had infected them with the AstraZeneca vaccine at a Baltimore plant. It was a blow to the overall program and a great embarrassment to J&J.
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White House virus coordinator Jeff Zients said the planned interruption “would have no significant impact on our vaccination plan” or the current dose of 3 million daily doses. But no one really knows how long the suspension will last or the potential impact on the vaccinations.
And in states like Michigan, where new business is seven times as high as in February, any reduction in shipments is very worrying.
Given the speed and scope of the virus program, we are happy that there were no more major accidents. Maybe it’s just a footnote, but at the moment it’s worrying.