J&J VACCINE COULD STILL BE GIVEN OUT
For some, it might be worth the low-level risk
Does anyone at the state level realize that the recent pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is a recommendation from the feds — not a mandate?
It certainly doesn’t seem that way.
Many states, including Massachusetts, immediately halted the use of the vaccine altogether following Tuesday’s recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. But they technically didn’t have to follow the federal guidance — and they should consider keeping the J&J shot available at least for some people.
The “pause” is due to six rare blood clot cases that happened in recently vaccinated women. The halt was extended further on Wednesday after a CDC committee said it needed more data to make a decision on next steps. The committee will reconvene on Friday.
Acting out of an abundance of caution and being transparent about any potential vaccine issue is critical, but states can still use this vaccine, and, in some special cases, they should.
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health made a great point about it on Twitter, using an example of an older male migrant farm worker with diabetes who can’t return for a second shot and therefore would be a great candidate for the J&J vaccine.
Such a person has a high risk of getting the coronavirus and an elevated risk of death as well. Jha reasoned that each unvaccinated day, his risk of death from the coronavirus is 1 in 100,000 and his lifetime risk of getting a blood clot from the J&J shot is less than one in a million — or might even be zero.
“No-brainer. Give him J&J,” wrote Jha, and I agree.
The extremely rare blood clotting issue, called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, is most common in young adult women, so why not consider pausing it for that population and giving it to others in the meantime?
During Wednesday’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting, Dr. Camille Nelson Kotton, a committee member and an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the pause has been “devastating.”
She added, “We were planning on using this vaccine in the state of Massachusetts for people who are homebound and otherwise not able to get a vaccine. We were planning on using it for our vulnerable inpatient populations.”
At the end of the day, people will get the coronavirus and might even die while they wait for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. With six blood-clot cases out of 7 million doses administered, a person has a better chance of getting struck by lightning than getting a blood clot from the shot.
And, according to CDC data, 10 million precious doses have been shipped out to states on top of the 7
million that have already been given out.
The longer this pause lasts, the more vulnerable people will go unvaccinated and get sick. Also, people will start to lose faith in the vaccines and hesitancy will increase.
A recent YouGov America poll showed public confidence in the J&J shot went down by 15 points from 52% of people saying it was safe before the CDC announcement, to 37% after.
The blood clot cases need to be taken seriously and investigated thoroughly, but we are still in a very grave pandemic crisis.
We desperately need our vaccine campaign to continue strong if we want to finally end this pandemic. It is incumbent upon the CDC and the FDA to not let this pause linger, which would allow more people to jump off the vaccine bandwagon, or get sick while they wait for a shot.