There certainly is, but there's also other vaccines which don't exhibit this problem. Why should we administer AstraZenica or J&J when Moderna and Pfizer are available and don't have any correlated blood clot issues?
Because there aren’t enough Moderna and Pfizer, and every day we don’t vaccinate, more people get sick and die, people can’t see their friends and family or live normally, and parts of the economy remain shut down.
The cost is really severe! Especially globally, many countries have hardly been able to vaccinate at all.
You also don't know how severe the blood clotting problem is. It may escalate over extended time. We also don't know the mechanism by which it's causing blood clotting. That's the problem.
People are looking at this like it's just one case in millions or just 6 deaths in 6.8 million doses for J&J. You don't know that because we don't know what is going on. We just know the symptom; we don't know the "disease". It may be a permanent risk for all recipients. It may cause permanent damage for all recipients. It may be something that happens in 10% of the recipients over the next 10 years. All we know is that it's doing something that it should not and there is no explanation how.
"Let's give out a vaccine that we know is harmful to an unknown degree," is not a reasonable response.
The solution is to stop production and distribution of the vaccine you know is broken and instead ramp up production of the ones that do not have harmful side effects.
This sounds compelling but Covid also seems to produce long run risks in about 10% of those who get it, not to mention the deaths. You’re only looking at one side of the ledger but could make all the same points with more frequency on the other side.
Given that Astrazenca has the same issue, and given that both vaccines use Adenoviruses (known to cause clotting issues) then it is a reasonable bet the J and J issues are like AZ. Those are similar to Heparin induced clotting and Germany’s Erlich institute has given guidelines for treatment.
Because they aren't 'available'. The EU is currently at just 15% vaccinated. Stopping the use of some vaccines means it will take longer and longer to vaccinate people during which time more people will die, not to even speak of the other negative effects of the prolonged pandemic.
Supply. I would agree with you otherwise, but if we rely solely on Pfizer and Moderna it’s going to be well into 2022 before the Western countries get vaccinated. I read today Canada was supposed to take deliver of 10M AZ doses, which would vaccinate ~1/7th of their population. That’s not happening now.
Because in the during the four week delay in vaccinations many more people will die from Covid-19 than would be affected by side effects from the AZ or JJ vaccines. The truly responsible thing to do is to continue to administer the AZ and JJ vaccines until the other vaccines are available.
There is no “safe drug”, “unsafe drug”. It’s a continuum and it’s balanced by the benefit.
I find it hard to believe there isn’t a subgroup where the benefit of the vaccine doesn’t outweigh the risk.