US CDC, FDA call for pause in use of J&J vaccine due to rare blood clots

An extremely rare clotting problem that's also seen with the AstraZenica vaccine.

Read the whole story

 

[Ozy]

So stopping and assessing the situation is the right thing to do.

How many in a million may get Covid-19 while waiting for that assessment and get severe issues from that? Sometimes doing nothing is not the safest option.

Like I said, I am pro vaccines. But the covid 19 vaccines are going to be administered to everybody, including hundreds of millions, billions maybe, who might never get the virus, or might not suffer noticeable symptoms if they do get it.

And then go on to transmit it to someone who dies.

Pro-vaccine, yeah right.

 

[Coco7]

Apparently most doctors don’t know the first thing about identifying different categories of blood clot, so that conversation would be moot. The reasoning behind temporarily pulling the J&J vaccine is to allow time for medical professionals to familiarize themselves with exactly that.

Considering the fact that doctors are, at this very moment, putting up a massive legal fight against a federal regulation requiring them to spend 8 hours (which can be split into 2 hour segments) learning the proper way to use buprenorphine to ameliorate opioid addiction, it is highly unlikely that they will have any interest in learning how to ID various clot types and respective treatments.

 

[NCG_Mike]

I recently read the chances of been struck by lightning are one in three hundred thousand.

 

[IIci]

Damnit!

I was scheduled to get that tomorrow.

Was? Did it get canceled? I'm scheduled to get it tomorrow, too. I've not heard any word from the provider about a cancelation. Seems like it would be a really bad idea to cancel appointments that are already scheduled.

The pause is a CDC guidance, your local health officials will determine if and when they choose to pause. For instance NYC has paused and is rescheduling j&J vaccines, have not yet heard that the whole state is doing the same (maybe another Cuomo / De Blasio drama will unfold).

Edit: Guess no city vs state drama, NY state is also pausing j&j as of today.

 

[WilhelmC]

...
That quote could be interpreted to mean that patients over 60 are at lower risk of clots associated with the vaccine.

I don't think that's what they meant, and even if they did, why would that be the case... because people over 60 have s**ttier immune systems that are less likely to react to any particular virus?

At this stage in the data nobody really knows. The case counts are all extremely low, but everything I've seen indicates it's mostly young women This article is typical:
"Nine of the 11 patients were women, and the median patient age was 36 years (range, 22 to 49)." According to the Ars piece, the J&J associated blood clots are also tend to be younger and female: "So far, all six cases have occurred among women below the age of 50 and appeared between one and two weeks after vaccination." Since the only group that young to get vaccinated has been health care workers, it's rather notable that 15 of the 17 cases have been women under 50, and most of them seem to be younger.

The "young women get this more" idea comes from observed data. The closest thing I have seen to speculation on why is the dude who made the oral contraceptives joke on this thread.

That said, you know how you shouldn't do a vast study that tries to figure out the answer to hundreds of questions because you'll get false positives? I would not be surprised if, 2 years from now, everybody's convinced this was a false positive. We just happened to have a bunch of young women have these clots, and they worked in health care so they'd been vaccinated. And they're very unusual clots so it was highly unlikely to be chance, but this was just the highly unlikely thing that happened with Covid vaccines?

EDIT: 9+6 is not 14, 11+6 is not 15.

I wonder about the age part. The cases are in younger women. But the J&J vaccine was only approved recently and we started vaccinations of the elderly quite a while ago. How many women over the age of 60 have received the J&J vaccine? I'm guessing it's pretty low.

The first article is on the AZ vaccine. That was fairly widely deployed in Europe, so they vaccinated a lot of women above 50.

Now they're noticing it in the US, with Pfizer.

And there's lots of potential speculation, but very little hard data. It could be an artifact of small numbers, it could be an interaction with some medical treatment that younger women are likely to get, it could be just the clue that lets us figure out how the blood clotting system actually works, it could be a combination of the three, etc.

Or it could be that, while the AZ has a small risk of the blood clots in young women, the Pfizer does not; and the apparent correlation with age is an artifact of most of the older women already having the vaccine.

I did not see anything about the Pfizer vaccine. This is about the Janssen(J&J) version. Do you have a reference on Pfizer vaccine causing the syndrome.

 

[WilhelmC]

I recently read the chances of been struck by lightning are one in three hundred thousand.

A shocking statistic.

 

[SmokeTest]

Damnit!

I was scheduled to get that tomorrow.

Was? Did it get canceled? I'm scheduled to get it tomorrow, too. I've not heard any word from the provider about a cancelation.

My guess is pretty much every provider is going to cancel all appointments by the end of the day. I've read of several that already have, the rest will probably follow suit soon.

Seems like it would be a really bad idea to cancel appointments that are already scheduled.

Why? Without cancelling the appointments the pause does nothing. At least in my area, providers are booking a couple weeks in advance.

 

[eivinds]

Here in Denmark where I live, roughly 140k were vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine before the program was paused. There were 10 cases of blot clotting in individuals under 65, but only in the case of the 1 fatality (a 30-year-old woman) has the blood work been made public. As in the case with Norway, there don't appear to be publicly available age data, although that would clearly be possible for researchers to get access to (at least here in Denmark).

A recently published paper describes five cases of rare blood clots in Norway after the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Three women died (aged 37,42, and 54), while a woman aged 39 and a man aged 32 recovered.

These rare blood clots are not that rare in Norway, with 5 cases (possibly 6) out of 130 000 vaccinated persons (about 1:20000).

 

[cosmicjesus]

Damnit!

I was scheduled to get that tomorrow.

Was? Did it get canceled? I'm scheduled to get it tomorrow, too. I've not heard any word from the provider about a cancelation. Seems like it would be a really bad idea to cancel appointments that are already scheduled.

The pause is a CDC guidance, your local health officials will determine if and when they choose to pause. For instance NYC has paused and is rescheduling j&J vaccines, have not yet heard that the whole state is doing the same (maybe another Cuomo / De Blasio drama will unfold).

Our state health department (MN) released a statement "advising" that providers follow the CDC/FDA recommendation, so it's not clear what's going to happen with anything in particular.

 

[Deleted member 553147]

So stopping and assessing the situation is the right thing to do.

How many in a million may get Covid-19 while waiting for that assessment and get severe issues from that? Sometimes doing nothing is not the safest option.

Like I said, I am pro vaccines. But the covid 19 vaccines are going to be administered to everybody, including hundreds of millions, billions maybe, who might never get the virus, or might not suffer noticeable symptoms if they do get it.

And then go on to transmit it to someone who dies.

Pro-vaccine, yeah right.

“Yeah right?” What are you talking about? I’m fully vaccinated, my children are fully vaccinated, I have as a “frontline nurse” received my 2 Pfizer covid-19 vaccine shots months ago. I usually get the flu vaccine every year because it’s pretty stupid not to - whatever vaccine they might think up next, I’ll be in line for that as well. Vaccines are great.

But still - there are reports of blood clotting everywhere this J&J and the AstraZeneca vaccines have been used. We need to pause them while it’s being investigated, it sucks but that is what we will have to do. And we have options while they are paused, those options suck and I’m as sick of face masks (I wear them all day at work) as the next guy, and I miss bars and restaurants. But those are minor annoyances, we’ve dealt with it for a full year, we can take a few more months if we have to.

So I don’t know what point your weird attitude serves.

 

[Deleted member 590575]

Damnit!

I was scheduled to get that tomorrow.

Was? Did it get canceled? I'm scheduled to get it tomorrow, too. I've not heard any word from the provider about a cancelation. Seems like it would be a really bad idea to cancel appointments that are already scheduled.

I'm getting mine through my workplace and I called health services there to ensure I would still be getting it and they said no, that they would not be administering it until the recommended pause was lifted.

 

[IIci]

Looks like the people who showed up today for a j&j shot at the NY mass vaccinations sites got Pfizer instead. Guess only people scheduled tomorrow and beyond got rescheduled.

 

[SussexWolf]

Based on how AstraZeneca numbers developed, the incidence will be higher than that and the younger women -angle is a sample bias due to medical professionals being priority group (presumably in US as well) which is a female-dominated profession.

Here's two comparisons on being admitted to ICU in UK within 16 weeks vs blood clot risk.
Medium risk at 60 cases / 100k / day:

And low risk at 20 cases / 100k / day

To my layman's opinion vaccinating people in 50s should be slam dunk, below that it becomes debatable.

I think the U.K. applied a sensible risk based approach by giving those under 30 a choice of an alternative to AZ. That’s the only age group where the harm risk matches the benefit. For anyone older than 30, it’s a slam dunk. Clearly that advice needs to be kept under review should the risk v benefit ratio shift.

 

[XavierItzmann]

This is typical of the FDA and CDC.

"Thousands, even millions of people are dying because you do not approve this drugs and/or it costs $5 billion to get you to approve them"

FDA-CDC: "It's ok, these are "natural deaths and hardly anyone blames them on us"

FDA: "Imagine if we approved something and it killed one person. We'd get blamed! Our careers and maybe even our pensions would be at risk!"

 

[SraCet]

...
I'm getting mine through my workplace and I called health services there to ensure I would still be getting it and they said no, that they would not be administering it until the recommended pause was lifted.

Maybe put some effort into getting a Pfizer shot for yourself?

If you're in a position to make a choice, might as well.

 

[babydocmd]

Apparently, 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.

If that's the mechanism, I wonder if there's anything easy that can be done prophylactically to make it non-lethal, with a risk of side effects even lower than the rare blood clotting?

Possible but irrelevant. The low hanging fruit is to just give a different vaccine in females under 50. The alternative is prophylaxis in all people (but particularly women under 50) which means we are exposing millions of people to medication for benefits that are unlikely to justify the risk. If it really is immune mediated the last thing you want to do is 'tone down' the immune response to a vaccine. We also cannot fine tune platelet aggregation without risk of hemorrhage.

Possibly Novavax to the rescue . . . https://theconversation.com/what-is-nov ... -it-157227

 

[SraCet]

...
Possible but irrelevant. The low hanging fruit is to just give a different vaccine in females under 50. The alternative is prophylaxis in all people (but particularly women under 50) which means we are exposing millions of people to medication for benefits that are unlikely to justify the risk. If it really is immune mediated the last thing you want to do is 'tone down' the immune response to a vaccine. We also cannot fine tune platelet aggregation without risk of hemorrhage.

Possibly Novavax to the rescue . . . https://theconversation.com/what-is-nov ... -it-157227

Indeed. I can't imagine a treatment that would tell your immune system "only react to these spike proteins, but not these adenovirus virions."

 

[Deleted member 590575]

...
I'm getting mine through my workplace and I called health services there to ensure I would still be getting it and they said no, that they would not be administering it until the recommended pause was lifted.

Maybe put some effort into getting a Pfizer shot for yourself?

If you're in a position to make a choice, might as well.

I've been trying. Pennsylvania seems to have done an abysmal job with their vaccination rollout.

Also, I live near the New York border and people from NY can come to PA to get vaccinated but not vice-versa, which makes no sense at all to me.

Everyone I know from NY has been vaccinated and hardly anyone I know in PA has.

 

[watermeloncup]

Apparently, 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.

If that's the mechanism, I wonder if there's anything easy that can be done prophylactically to make it non-lethal, with a risk of side effects even lower than the rare blood clotting?

Possible but irrelevant. The low hanging fruit is to just give a different vaccine in females under 50. The alternative is prophylaxis in all people (but particularly women under 50) which means we are exposing millions of people to medication for benefits that are unlikely to justify the risk. If it really is immune mediated the last thing you want to do is 'tone down' the immune response to a vaccine. We also cannot fine tune platelet aggregation without risk of hemorrhage.

Possibly Novavax to the rescue . . . https://theconversation.com/what-is-nov ... -it-157227

Does anyone know why Novavax hasn't been submitted for approval yet? It seems to be a really good vaccine.

 

[psd]

Oh well, I guess you can't logically argue somebody out of a position they didn't logically argue their way into (I think that is a famous phrase or something from somebody..)

My favorite quote on this matter...

“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?”

Sam Harris

How about adjusting your communication with the target audience?

Sam Harris is an anti-religion activist.

Adjusting the communications style can convince religious people you respect them, and the atheist position has been misrepresented by their Pastors/Imams/etc., which means that if one of them has already logiced himself out of Jehovah/Vishnu/etc. you have shown them a different path that they may choose. But the rest of the congregation? If logicking people out of their religions worked there'd only be one religion.

In this case a bunch of people have chosen to be anti-Vax for non-logic-related reasons that make sense to them, and you might be able to use those to convince them, but that ain't easy. You'd have to get into their heads, figure out what their actual objection is, and deal with it.

Which kinda works with family because you know them and they trust you. But in my specific family situation the anti-vaxer is a woman in her 30s, with a 16-year-old daughter. Which is a harder case to counter when the blood clots almost entirely happen in young women.

Logic is just a communication tool. As they say, use the right tool for the right job.

 

[jdale]

I recently read the chances of been struck by lightning are one in three hundred thousand.

CDC says 1 in 500,000, on a per-year basis. https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html

It's not evenly distributed. According to the CDC, God hates Florida Man. (Ok, that's not quite how they phrased it.....)

Also, men are more likely to be struck than women -- 85% vs 15%, so a pretty big effect.

And before you say, "I just stay inside," they note "about one-third (32%) of lightning injuries occur indoors."

 

[psd]

Looks like the adenovirus vector is a flop; that sucks. Hopefully we can get the cost of the synthetic lipids and raw mRNA down with massive manufacturing scales.

One in a million people get some life-threatening blood clots.

720,000 in a million people avoid some life-threatening virus completely

179,999 in a million people might still get the corona virus and have fewer symtoms

Friendly reminder that aspirin is deadlier than J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines combined

In my state one lady died and other is on life support. You numbers might say one thing now but they could radically change. Remember Fauci said Covid was no big deal and we didn't need masks?

Yes, we remember when Fauci said Covid was no big deal and we didn't need masks.

 

[tyrrell]

I imagine I'm not alone in this experience with my relative. The depressing part of this though is that she's a 30-something college-educated Democrat who has a career related to healthcare. If people like her are vaccine-hesitant, how will we ever reach the rest of the population?

For those of us close to someone who's vaccine hesitant/resistant/etc. and want to help them make a good decision, I recommend reading Adam Grant's Think Again, or start with his article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/opin ... -mind.html

Good luck!

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

Damn. the J&J vaccine was the argument I was going to use with my vaccine fearful relatives that don't like the mRNA vaccines because they are fearful of long term effects. ...

This is kind of a bogus argument though. As I posted in a different thread yesterday, the J&J vaccine is basically an mRNA vaccine. It just uses DNA to get your cells to make the same mRNA you would get directly from the mRNA vaccines.

Two things that are different may well be even more different after interacting with a complex biological system. It's entirely conceivable that an mRNA vector - which I'd guess, though I could be wrong, affects random target cell lines rather than a specific cohort, as a viral vector would - could have different effects down the line. Your argument is itself bogus. A valid argument is that the things they have in common should make different effects less likely compared to a random medication.

As a man in my 60s with no allergies, my risk from any of the vaccines is probably slight - if I get to choose I still have a preference for one with a viral vector.

 

[NickBII]

...
That quote could be interpreted to mean that patients over 60 are at lower risk of clots associated with the vaccine.

I don't think that's what they meant, and even if they did, why would that be the case... because people over 60 have s**ttier immune systems that are less likely to react to any particular virus?

At this stage in the data nobody really knows. The case counts are all extremely low, but everything I've seen indicates it's mostly young women This article is typical:
"Nine of the 11 patients were women, and the median patient age was 36 years (range, 22 to 49)." According to the Ars piece, the J&J associated blood clots are also tend to be younger and female: "So far, all six cases have occurred among women below the age of 50 and appeared between one and two weeks after vaccination." Since the only group that young to get vaccinated has been health care workers, it's rather notable that 15 of the 17 cases have been women under 50, and most of them seem to be younger.

The "young women get this more" idea comes from observed data. The closest thing I have seen to speculation on why is the dude who made the oral contraceptives joke on this thread.

That said, you know how you shouldn't do a vast study that tries to figure out the answer to hundreds of questions because you'll get false positives? I would not be surprised if, 2 years from now, everybody's convinced this was a false positive. We just happened to have a bunch of young women have these clots, and they worked in health care so they'd been vaccinated. And they're very unusual clots so it was highly unlikely to be chance, but this was just the highly unlikely thing that happened with Covid vaccines?

EDIT: 9+6 is not 14, 11+6 is not 15.

I wonder about the age part. The cases are in younger women. But the J&J vaccine was only approved recently and we started vaccinations of the elderly quite a while ago. How many women over the age of 60 have received the J&J vaccine? I'm guessing it's pretty low.

The first article is on the AZ vaccine. That was fairly widely deployed in Europe, so they vaccinated a lot of women above 50.

Now they're noticing it in the US, with Pfizer.

And there's lots of potential speculation, but very little hard data. It could be an artifact of small numbers, it could be an interaction with some medical treatment that younger women are likely to get, it could be just the clue that lets us figure out how the blood clotting system actually works, it could be a combination of the three, etc.

Or it could be that, while the AZ has a small risk of the blood clots in young women, the Pfizer does not; and the apparent correlation with age is an artifact of most of the older women already having the vaccine.

I did not see anything about the Pfizer vaccine. This is about the Janssen(J&J) version. Do you have a reference on Pfizer vaccine causing the syndrome.

Nope. That was just an ADHD brain fart.

Like many of those, the detail farted-up was both trivial and essential to the case.

 

[FreeRangeOrganicSoyLatteCappuccino]

I recently read the chances of been struck by lightning are one in three hundred thousand.

CDC says 1 in 500,000, on a per-year basis. https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html

It's not evenly distributed. According to the CDC, God hates Florida Man. (Ok, that's not quite how they phrased it.....)

Also, men are more likely to be struck than women -- 85% vs 15%, so a pretty big effect.

And before you say, "I just stay inside," they note "about one-third (32%) of lightning injuries occur indoors."

How does one get struck by lightning indoors? In the shower? or plumbers working on metal pipes?

 

[ricardoRI]

...
Yes, It's complicated.

There is a working paper somewhere on recommendations for 'vaccine induced CVT' but I can't find it quickly and I have to quit futzing around and go to a meeting. It is certainly a work in progress..

Your link suggests anticoagulants, which makes sense for "normal" CVT, but if anticoagulants are counterindicated due to low platelet count, it seems like we're back to not having a treatment for this condition.

Perhaps blood transfusions are effective for vaccine induced clots? The pause allows alternate remedies to be developed.

 

[Deleted member 817175]

Looks like the adenovirus vector is a flop; that sucks. Hopefully we can get the cost of the synthetic lipids and raw mRNA down with massive manufacturing scales.

One in a million people get some life-threatening blood clots.

720,000 in a million people avoid some life-threatening virus completely

179,999 in a million people might still get the corona virus and have fewer symtoms

Friendly reminder that aspirin is deadlier than J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines combined

In my state one lady died and other is on life support. You numbers might say one thing now but they could radically change. Remember Fauci said Covid was no big deal and we didn't need masks?

Perhaps you could refresh my memory on this one, deplorable.

 

[psd]

Looks like the adenovirus vector is a flop; that sucks. Hopefully we can get the cost of the synthetic lipids and raw mRNA down with massive manufacturing scales.

One in a million people get some life-threatening blood clots.

720,000 in a million people avoid some life-threatening virus completely

179,999 in a million people might still get the corona virus and have fewer symtoms

Friendly reminder that aspirin is deadlier than J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines combined

In my state one lady died and other is on life support. You numbers might say one thing now but they could radically change. Remember Fauci said Covid was no big deal and we didn't need masks?

Perhaps you could refresh my memory on this one, deplorable.

Just one claim in that sentence...

 

[marsilies]

In my state one lady died and other is on life support. You numbers might say one thing now but they could radically change. Remember Fauci said Covid was no big deal and we didn't need masks?

Perhaps you could refresh my memory on this one, deplorable.

Just one claim in that sentence...

I see two, depending on how you break it down. I'm assuming HistoryDave is taking the two different things Fauci supposedly said as two different claims.

i.e. Fauci said...

1. Covid was no big deal
2. and we didn't need masks

The "didn't need masks" bit is borderline, but could be considered true, from a certain point of view (early on, Fauci and others were recommending against healthy people not coming in contact with people we were known to be sick from wearing masks). There's a lot of caveats to this claim, but Fauci did own up to this and explained his reversal later.

I don't recall Fauci ever stating anything like "Covid was no big deal."

 

[ripvlan]

The article I read stated that the CDC isn't putting a full stop on it. That a Doctor and Patient can make the decision and still move forward. The CDC expects to have updated guidance "in a few days."

Plus - is J&J still in limited supply?

The "pause" makes sense so that good data and procedures can be sent out. Healthcare providers need to know to be on the lookout for a rare condition, and patients need to be sent home with an update list of "When to see a doctor." Who knows, a pre-test to determine patient compatibility?!

I had to answer several questions. Such as "Is this your first dose? did you have an allergic reaction?" Uhhh... no, this is my first time! And they ask men, "Are you lactating?" The questionnaire needs work

 

[cosmicjesus]

Damnit!

I was scheduled to get that tomorrow.

Was? Did it get canceled? I'm scheduled to get it tomorrow, too. I've not heard any word from the provider about a cancelation.

My guess is pretty much every provider is going to cancel all appointments by the end of the day. I've read of several that already have, the rest will probably follow suit soon.

Seems like it would be a really bad idea to cancel appointments that are already scheduled.

Why? Without cancelling the appointments the pause does nothing. At least in my area, providers are booking a couple weeks in advance.

A lot of it depends on how scheduling/rescheduling is handled, but canceling/rescheduling appointments can have a particularly disruptive impact on logistics as well as the "one in hand is better than two in the bush" effect it may have among the people who have their appointments canceled. Not to mention the disruption you're causing people who may have had to schedule around things to get the vax.

 

[marsilies]

I had to answer several questions. Such as "Is this your first dose? did you have an allergic reaction?" Uhhh... no, this is my first time! And they ask men, "Are you lactating?" The questionnaire needs work

Are you suggesting men never lactate?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Male_lact ... _lactation
https://www.coloradosurro.com/blog/indu ... breastfeed

 

[Netguru]

Has there been any evidence that COVID itself can cause blood clotting through the same mechanism? I don't know enough about the biological nuts and bolts of vaccines & COVID to understand the short explanation given in the article.

If COVID doesn't share this same risk, I'm curious why this vaccine would uniquely cause it. Anyone knowledgeable about medicine & biology able to fill me in on this in greater depth than the article provides?

My wife had an ischemic stroke one week after we voted in person last November. She experienced a headache about two to 3 days after super Tuesday. Her family has no history of strokes. She is a healthy middle aged women (50). BP at hospital was 120/80. CAT scan indicated no permanent damage. Strangely enough, it was the day (the following Monday) when she felt better (headache seemed to ease) that the stroke hit. The stroke lasted a few minutes that seemed like a lifetime to me. She couldn't talk, open her mouth or move her left arm but she could stand (which seemed to have cleared the clot a few minutes after standing).

Two days after her stroke, the first of my four indoor cats got sick. It started with the cat that sleeps by her head that got sick first. Two days later another cat got sick. That continued until all four got sick. None of my cats have ever been sick. The oldest cat is 17 and the youngest is 5. Their symptoms were constant sneezing all day for two to three days. I have never heard cats sneeze like that and I have had cats for 30+ years. They are all fine today.

We thought the J&J shot was the way to go until I started reading about the AstraZenaca issues with clotting. I had a feeling that the J&J would be causing the same issues given the technology behind both of them.

Whether our fear of her receiving the J&J vaccine is warranted, doesn't matter to us. She will go with Pfizer or Moderna given what happened. J&J is probably fine for me.

I understand this is anecdotal but never the less, I can't risk her life when different options are available to us.

 

[jdale]

I recently read the chances of been struck by lightning are one in three hundred thousand.

CDC says 1 in 500,000, on a per-year basis. https://www.cdc.gov/disasters/lightning/victimdata.html

It's not evenly distributed. According to the CDC, God hates Florida Man. (Ok, that's not quite how they phrased it.....)

Also, men are more likely to be struck than women -- 85% vs 15%, so a pretty big effect.

And before you say, "I just stay inside," they note "about one-third (32%) of lightning injuries occur indoors."

How does one get struck by lightning indoors? In the shower? or plumbers working on metal pipes?

Anything with a power cord can conduct, metal pipes, water....

https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-indoors
https://www.earthnetworks.com/blog/stru ... g-indoors/
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/03/how-a-m ... house.html

 

[The Lurker Beneath]

Regarding comparisons to Aspirin...Aspirin has been around for a long time and its side effects have been thoroughly researched. We’re quite confident that its rare side effects are, in fact, rare.

Why people think aspirin is harmless is just weird or is it just that they have either forgotten or never read the label?
You don't want to find out too late the many excellent reasons why aspirin is not recommended for children under 12 unless under doctor's advice!

It took a long term to determine those side effects of aspirin and the same level of research has to happen with these and other vaccines. While it is very disappointing, it is essential to stop and review the actual data. Understanding the reasons behind this may lead to better treatment of blood clots and other blood disorders.

The cloud over aspirin may well have cost more lives than it has saved, in my opinion. Acetaminophen has killed thousands (half of them probably wanted to die, but didn't realise how long it would take - and the other half overdosed by accident).

 

[Digital Dud]

Had a J&J appointment scheduled at a Walgreens on Friday, but apparently Walgreens is halting all J&J vaccines across all states? Called them and the lady cancelled my appointment and now I don't have any appointment, RIP. They're definitely going to kill people with this pause.

 

[fyo]

Here in Denmark where I live, roughly 140k were vaccinated with the AstraZeneca vaccine before the program was paused. There were 10 cases of blot clotting in individuals under 65, but only in the case of the 1 fatality (a 30-year-old woman) has the blood work been made public. As in the case with Norway, there don't appear to be publicly available age data, although that would clearly be possible for researchers to get access to (at least here in Denmark).

A recently published paper describes five cases of rare blood clots in Norway after the Astra Zeneca vaccine. Three women died (aged 37,42, and 54), while a woman aged 39 and a man aged 32 recovered.

These rare blood clots are not that rare in Norway, with 5 cases (possibly 6) out of 130 000 vaccinated persons (about 1:20000).

My original post linked that exact study.

The issue, as I pointed out there, is that the age and gender splits of the population of 132,686 is not public (AFAICT). Two groups were offered the vaccine: healthcare workers and nursing home residents.

Given that the clots were seen almost entirely in women < 60 or so, the question becomes: How many women < 60 were in the population studied?

I could speculate and make some half-assed guesses and if I were forced, I'd probably multiply the risk by at least a factor of four, but guessing is just stupid at this point. The age and gender distributions are KNOWN, we'll have some real non-WAGs soon enough.

(In the meantime, use those vaccines on groups proven to not be at risk!)

 

[norton_I]

Has there been any evidence that COVID itself can cause blood clotting through the same mechanism? I don't know enough about the biological nuts and bolts of vaccines & COVID to understand the short explanation given in the article.

If COVID doesn't share this same risk, I'm curious why this vaccine would uniquely cause it. Anyone knowledgeable about medicine & biology able to fill me in on this in greater depth than the article provides?

Clotting is a huge risk of covid but I think the mechanism is considerably different.