The CDC recommends not taking the Johnson & Johnson vaccine if other vaccines are available. Fox Business. The J&J vaccine was already pulled back in April due to fears over blood clotting but the benefits were weighed to outweigh the risks. However, new FDA data shows that the clotting issue could be more common than thought. At least 9 deaths and 54 cases of clotting have been confirmed with two more deaths suspected. If someone has been vaccinated with the J&J shot they are recommended to choose Moderna or Pfizer if they want a booster shot. The J&J shot is a viral vector vaccine and the other major vaccine of that type, AstraZeneca's, has had similar clotting issues in Europe. The J&J vaccine was not used as much as the other two vaccines with only 16 million doses being given.
My Comment:
I think this is another example of a phenomenon that I have noticed with any discussion of the vaccines. Nobody, including myself, seems to differentiate between the various vaccines. There are three in the United States alone, Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, with AstraZeneca being used in Europe as well. Not to mention the Russian and Chinese vaccines.
This is a problem as these vaccines are not all the same. They have different actions and effectiveness and they have a lot of different side effects. I am sure people will use this news to attack the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines but that should not be done. Those vaccines have their own issues and can and should be discussed, but don't conflate the three vaccines.
As for the J&J vaccine, I have always wondered why it was approved in the first place. The effectiveness was nowhere near the level of the other two vaccines even back when the vaccines were formulated for the dominant variants. And it had a long history of dangerous side effects with the clotting issue from the start. I don't think the situation was so dire with vaccinations that we really had to approve this shot.
The clotting issue seems to be pretty serious. Obviously people have died from taking the shot. It's possible that those people would have died if they got the virus but my guess is that they would not have. And they probably would have survived as well if they had taken the other two vaccines instead.
Do those deaths outweigh the people that may have been protected from the virus with the J&J vaccine? That's the million dollar question. My gut says that it was probably not. If the J&J vaccine was the only game in town it would probably have been worth it to vaccinate the highest risk people with it, but it never was. There were two other options in the United States and I think we probably could have shelved J&J long before the current date.
But what is really shocking is the fact that the CDC didn't just pull the vaccine. I am not sure why if they think it is dangerous enough to not recommend it why they would let it stay in circulation. Just pull it now. I think that they don't want to further cause resistance to the vaccines but that ship has already sailed a long time ago.
I also think that the argument for the vaccines have been overstated. I am not opposed to the vaccines for many people, maybe even most. But I also think that for a lot of people the vaccine may have been more of a risk than the virus. That appears to be especially true for the J&J vaccine. I know for me personally, I took the Pfizer vaccine last March but I don't know if I would have done it today and I won't be getting the boosters.
Of course the vaccination policy has made little sense from the beginning. In a perfect world people would have weighed the costs and benefits of the vaccines against the threat of the Coronavirus and made an informed choice. That is not what is happening now, everyone is supposed to get vaccines, even children who are at almost no risk from the virus.
I do think that there should be an accounting from the medical industry and the powers that be over the Coronavirus response. I know that vaccine injuries are lawsuit proof due to how our vaccine system works. Everyone who is injured has to go through the VAERS system and that could take a long time for it to pay out. But I do think that someone should pay for these deaths.
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