6 obvious deaths that we're aware of. The risk of the vaccines is in their novelty and morbidity. An abundance of caution is required in this instance. It would be very bad to discover that there's a vanishingly small chance of blood clots within the first 3 months but a significant chance when paired with other events over the following decade.
So I created a new account for this to avoid linking personal information...
I had blood clots in my lungs last week a few days after getting the J&J vaccine. I'm an otherwise totally healthy man in my 30s, no preconditions. The hospital reported it to the vaccine reporting agency, which I assume is reviewing all this information.
I'm not sure if they considered my case when making this decision. My clots were different type than what these women experienced (pulmonary, not cerebral).
Of course vaccinating the public is extremely important right now. If the risks of clotting really are 1 in a million, it makes sense to re-instate it. I also think that's an obvious conclusion and the people working on this are well aware of the public health trade-off.
I suspect they are working with more information than what's in the press release, and its prudent to give them some time to work through it.
I am so sorry. As somebody who has experienced pulmonary embolism, this is so scary.
Make sure to never forget to take your blood thinning medicine. You absolutely must get the blood clots completely dissolved, and the blood thinner medicine is highly effective at getting rid of it, if you take it.
I agree for the US to pause the rollout is likely based on more data than 6 known cases of clotting. Not trying to be conspiratorial but my two cents is the authorities have more data then what is publicly being shared.
Or they are aware that data reporting is spotty - many deaths could have happened and been attributed to other causes. How many heart attacks or strokes happened in those 6 million people? How many of those might have involved undetected clots?
If we assume that only 5% of cases are being detected and reported correctly, then the numbers look quite different.
Clotting happens much more frequently with or without vaccination. The reported cases are a kind of very rare type of clotting. It's easier to spot something unusual going on when mutiple rare events are observed.
In comparison there have been over 2000 deaths reported (US, all vaccines). But death is not unusual and unless one can find a specific link to vaccination that number alone is not alarming. Sometimes we live with known risk, anaphylactic shocks e.g., because they are unavoidable and benefits outweigh risk. But we do what we can to mitigate such risk.
In summary the current pause is triggered by the particular type of clotting, not just any clotting. But your case should contribute to the overall evaluation of the likely cause and risk.
The PR release tells people to watch for pain in their legs. So I think it’s possible and likely that clots are not only cerebral but arterial and venous.
But, IDK and I’m super skeptical they’re willing to halt vaccine and take this hit for 6 known cases. My guess is 6 deaths they’re willing to acknowledge and a few more cases that will come out.
But again, I know nothing and I would’ve expected their stock price to take a hit today.
Thanks. As I've now learned, almost all of these clots originate in the legs and pelvis and then travel to other parts of the body (lungs, brain).
So I think that's why they're telling people to watch for leg pain. I didn't have any issues with my legs, but it's apparently a common symptom to have pain and swelling there.
I got a little out of breath doing simple tasks like walking briskly or picking up my kids, and I had a pain in my back (actually lung) that gradually got worse over a few days.
Eventually the pain was severe enough that I went to the ER.
Looking back, the shortness of breath was a key indicator. It wasn't that I was struggling to breathe or anything, but I felt like I couldn't take a big deep breath easily and that's not normal.
The pain would also get worse at night when I tried to lie down to go to sleep. I thought I had pulled a muscle in my back at first, but it was quite painful.
ok now I'm worried. I got the JJ vaccine 4 weeks ago. Suffered semi bad flu for few hours that night then after felt great. Now some who now me may consider me a hypochondriac but I've felt a tad "off" since the vaccine but kept it to myself. Maybe only 2-3 tiny lightheadedness episodes while walking the dog (nothing major just more of "what was that"), or some very minor chest tightness and stomach bloating feel.
But last week (would have been 3 weeks after shot) I awoke in the middle of the night with pretty a bad chest pain like you describe. Felt like it was in middle of my chest and was quite painful. I had to physically sit up in my bed for about 5 minutes hoping it would subside. I got up and got some water and hoped it didn't get worse as I started contemplating what I should do if it does.
I was so tired though I just propped myself up with pillows and slept sitting up against the headboard because laying down seemed to make it come back worse. I eventually fell asleep and when I woke for the day I still felt a small amount of pain still. Went about my day normally and it seemed to go away later in the day.
I would think I am out of the window by now after 4 weeks to which I am in any danger from what I'm reading on news sites? I've been the gym since that episode and have done cardio fine. My wife suggests I take some low-dose aspirin for next few days.
If you’re having chest pain that’s severe enough to wake you up at night, I would talk to a doctor. It doesn’t have to have anything to do with the vaccine.
I would also not dismiss the nagging feeling in the back of your head that something doesn’t feel right. You know your body more than anyone.
Not to scare you, but I advise following up with a doctor as soon as possible. My 21 year old brother who was otherwise completely healthy suffered a similar short pattern of pain due to blood clots (not related to vaccine) but with severe neck pain for a short time one night.
It went away after that night, he was fine for 3 weeks with no pain or issues, was working out fine, etc. and thought nothing of it.
Suddenly one night went from perfectly fine sleeping to suffering a major stroke due to a blood clot in his brain within a 10 minute period, unable to do anything himself to get help as he lost all motor skills.
He said in retrospect he wishes he had followed up with a doctor on the thing he thought was no longer an issue 3 weeks before.
There are genetic tests they can run, as well, such as to see if you might have factor V Leiden.
They put me on blood thinners right away to prevent future clots and prevent the clots from getting bigger. I’ll be on them for at least a few months.
They then put me on pain meds and supplemental oxygen for a few days and watched me. The pain went away after a few days (I assume when the inflammation went down).
They didn’t actually treat the clots themselves. The body apparently does that itself over the course of a few weeks and months. There are invasive surgical ways to try to break them up but they felt I wasn’t bad enough to risk it since I could sit up and breathe on my own.
They checked my heart for tissue damage and thankfully didn’t find any. So now they’re doing a slew of tests to find the cause (genetics? Cancer? So far tests show cancer is unlikely).
Recovery has been good to be honest. I’m not really in pain. I do get out of breathe very easily but they say that’s normal and should go away in a few weeks as the clots dissipate. The lung damage should heal, I think.
The real danger from more clots to the brain or damaging the heart are prevented by the blood thinners, which are apparently highly effective. So I think I got lucky and I’m glad I went to the ER when I did.
110+ million vaccinations in the US and holy goddamn, no major issues. 31 million infections and 550,000+ dead, in a year. Millions of long haul COVID cases. Debilitating lung conditions, brain fog, lasting consequences already from the virus, and you wanna crow about long term consequences of the vaccine. What in the actual roasting hell.
I've noticed you, specifically, posting pro-virus misinformation since the very beginning. Half a million people died, man. I wish you would just spare us your trolling, damn it!
>Stop violating people's human rights to make their own individual medical choices.
What are you even referring to? Literally no one has to get a vaccine if they don't want it. Nobody in the comment chain you're replying in had advocated for forced innoculation. This is 100% already a "their body, their choice" situation.
It's worse than that. They are literally rolling out misinformation--lies, really--to try to convince people to not get vaccinated. Comment history on the topic of COVID is littered with trollish behavior and bonkers-bad reasoning fitting a pattern.
I always provide sources for my facts. See above. The parent comment was an opinion. Meanwhile, you don't have access to a long-term study on any Covid treatment, because not enough time has passed. That's not misinformation. That's math.
Blood clots cause strokes. You have no idea if Covid treatment increases your odds of having a stroke in 10 years. I invite you to study the history of various medical treatments that turned out to have unintended consequences on unsuspecting populations. Good luck either way. Stay healthy and stay free.
For example, you can't easily prove that your comment here is not causing me to develop a blood clot if I develop one.
Which is why we try to prove positives: who else has developed a blood clot after reading your comment? Is there any correlation? Anything to suggest there is causation too? What would be the hypothesis.
You are right that vaccines are not proven to be perfectly safe (and to be honest, none of them are even with longer testing time). But you are still muddying the waters by throwing these "prove a negative" statements.
The risk with coronavirus vaccines today is that the risks are not fully known (unlike with other, more established, vaccines for other diseases). Risks of getting coronavirus is also not fully established, though we know it can be pretty severe.
It would be only natural to expect some similar immune response from COVID and vaccines causing similar issues in the body, but that's totally hypothetical until proven to be the case.
Data so far points that it's much less likely for someone to develop issues from a vaccine than from COVID itself (roughly 10000 less likely at least), so it's up to the individual to assess if they are less likely to contract COVID and get serious symptoms, or get serious symptoms out of vaccination.
Also statistically unknowable at this point. But a 34 and under year old already has less than a 1 in 100K chance of dying from Covid. That is to say, an under 34 year old is more likely to die of murder than die of Covid. Anywhere from 4-10x more likely in the U.S. depending on the city.
We never really exposed general population of under 34s to unmitigated coronavirus (perhaps March/April 2020 in USA or Sweden in 2020 is closest we got to it), but even that is uncontrolled for people deciding to reduce exposure to other people on their own.
"10000 less likely" was derived from 1 in 6 million compared to a global death rate of roughly 2%, then allowing for roughly an order of magnitude error: not scientific at all, I agree.
Taking your numbers as undisputable while not acknowledging that they are as uncertain as "the other side" is a bit dishonest in my opinion.
Accepting your stats here, but what about consequences other than death? A friend in their late 30s just had to relearn how to walk and was in a coma for weeks after getting COVID. Months later he still isn't able to work full time.
"The full research, development and approval process can last from 12 to 15 years."
"If the FDA gives the green light, the investigational drug will then enter three phases of clinical trials:
Phase 1: About 20 to 80 healthy volunteers to establish a drug's safety and profile, and takes about 1 year. Safety, metabolism and excretion of the drug are also emphasized.
Phase 2: Roughly 100 to 300 patient volunteers to assess the drug's effectiveness in those with a specific condition or disease. This phase runs about 2 years. Groups of similar patients may receive the actual drug compared to a placebo (inactive pill) or other active drug to determine if the drug has an effect. Safety and side effects are reviewed.
Phase 3: Typically, several thousand patients are monitored in clinics and hospitals to carefully determine effectiveness and identify further side effects. Different types and age ranges of patients are evaluated. The manufacturer may look at different doses as well as the experimental drug in combination with other treatments. This phase runs about about 3 years on average."
Fine, then what issue do you have with my comment? Pressuring or rushing to inject people who have no statistical risk is just adding to the overall risk equation
And when I hear rumblings of vaccine passports and all this nonsense in the news and I see some people's general attitude towards Covid vaccination: you're either for it or you're a flat earthling neophyte.
At any rate, point I'm trying to make:
There's less than 3700 deaths for Under 34 year olds in the United States, from Covid19 [1].
And that number will go down with every year that passes from here on out, because a broader percentage of that demographic already has herd immunity. In fact, there's much more important health problems to focus on for those demographics. Suicide, heart disease, homicide, car accidents, liver disease, diabetes, etc.
Population under 34: 148M
Covid19 deaths under 34 in first year of existence, with no immunity in population: 3710
Flu & pneumonia deaths for pop under 34 in 2018 was 1857 [3].
Odds of dying of Covid19 under 34 in first year of its existence:
.0025%
Odds of long-term consequences from RNA therapy from AZ, J&J, or Pfizer treatment: ???
Unknown. It could increase your odds of having a stroke at in 10 years. No one knows. If it's causing blood clots, that's a distinct possibility.
- these are vaccines, they aren’t gene therapy (ie they aren’t changing cellular DNA)
- saying a portion of the population has herd immunity is non-sensical. Either there’s herd immunity (virus can’t spread bc everyone has antibodies) or there isn’t. It happens at specific thresholds of population exposure/antibody presence that varies based on the R of the virus. It was estimated at ~70% for the ‘original’ virus and with the UK/SA variants now looks to be north of 80%.
- even with exposure, there are case reports of reinfect ion which makes sense in the history of coronaviruses which aren’t considered to provide long term immunity (ie antibody titre falls off and may not provide immunity in some short term horizon, ie 18 months)
- therefore, return to normal relies on elimination of community spread, by herd immunity, which likely will require vaccination; which will hopefully provide longer term immunity than infection with the virus itself (not sure on the evidence on this)
I agree that population that has low statistical risk shouldn’t be pressured into vaccination, and I see the dangers in vaccine passports etc.
To another point you made, regarding long term risks and generally the history of misguided attempts by the medical community to do something that has severe deleterious longer term effects that were unforeseen: I am signicantly less concerned about the risk of ie long term stroke risk being raised in this population, because the emerging evidence points to a HITTs-like antibody mediated condition.
In Heparin induced thrombocytopaenia and thrombosis, removal of trigger removes long term risk and I would think that no further antibody triggering thrombosis should be produced after the acute period in those affected (and indeed in that very large fragment of the population who don’t develop CVTS or vaccine mediated thrombosis, which does seem confined to those who had vaccine via adenovirus vectors), then it should be a non-issue because the autoantibody was never produced in the first place and there are no memory cells there ready to pump it out again at antigen presentation.
Of course, I qualify this with its possible, and you’re free to dismiss my confidence, but we have a plausible mechanism that is relatively well understood so I think the risk of there being long term risks is very low
It's quite true that nobody knows the long-term consequences of these vaccines (which I don't think it is accurate to call gene therapies), but likewise you have no idea what the long-term consequences of COVID exposure are either - it's not a simple die/survive binary as some people have mild symptoms but develop chronic problems.
You obviously have strong feelings about this because you came into the thread with big broad claims, but you seem to be taking disagreement from others very personally.
>Fine, then what issue do you have with my comment?
It's pretty obvious if you read my comment. You said, "Stop violating people's human rights", and I said nobody's rights are being violated. Putting it to you as clearly as possible, your rights are not being violated until you are being strapped into a chair and having a vaccine forced into you, and that's simply not going to happen.
Some regions may adopt a "passport" system for the relative short-term but even then, you still do not have to get a vaccine if you don't want to. You just may have to wait a little bit longer than the vaccinated to get back to participating in certain things, but you would still be exercising your right to not get vaccinated.
It's as simple as that, and has nothing to do with the rambling that followed your question.
I meant the original comment where you levied a personal attack against me. I stated my opinion in earnest. I've been posting on HN for better part of a decade, and you levy a personal assault on me. At any rate, I want you to understand: it's perfectly ok, and perfectly acceptable for there to be people in the world who have different opinions than you, and that does not make them a troll.
The above was my rationalization, with sources that you probably didn't bother to read, for my original comment where you made the personal attack and assaulted my character. At any rate, this conversation is done. Stay healthy and stay free, my friend.
> I meant the original comment where you levied a personal attack against me.
I think you mean me. What I actually wrote was:
> Comment history on the topic of COVID is littered with trollish behavior and bonkers-bad reasoning fitting a pattern.
And I stand by that statement. You've had a long history of rolling out dubious arguments and posting inflammatory misinformation with a deliberate agenda to minimize COVID from the very beginning, the whole damn year. I have no idea why. Your comments on other topics seem reasonable and level-headed, but your COVID trolling is just off the charts. I wish you would just stop it. The world hasn't even processed the trauma of going through millions of deaths, we're finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and we got you out here just making more noises again, with driveby doubt mongering. Every. damn. time. Only with one more zero on the death counts each time. Please, just can it, dude. What are you hoping to accomplish? Talking people out of getting vaccines? You're afraid that you need to take a vaccine, because it's just the sniffles, or something? Fuck off with that already, the world's been on fire for a year. People I know have died. Friends of mine have long COVID. Friends of mine are doctors, nurses, who have seen thousands die. Fuck off with your stupid "gene therapy" fear mongering, on exactly the wrong thing, in exactly the wrong direction, at exactly the wrong time.
It concerns me that you are so keen on citing data in your comments, yet you are unable to notice that my username is not the same username that called you a troll.
My first comment in this thread was where I told you that your rights were not being violated. My second comment was my clarification. This is my third. There have been no personal attacks directed toward you from me - if you feel differently, please highlight where you feel I attacked you.
This is false. MRNA vaccines have no relation to gene therapy. MRNA is not turned into DNA by the body, and is fully gone from the body within a couple days. As such, there are no possible long term effects related to the vaccine being MRNA vs traditional protein based vaccines.
> No one has any clue as to their long term side effects. The under 30 odds of death for Covid-19 are statistically zero percent.
Can't you flip that around? No one has any clue as to the long term side effects of Covid-19. The under 30 odds of death for getting the vaccine are statistically zero percent.
They are vaccines and you should update your knowledge. Herd immunity needs to happen or our economy and health will be suffering for years. The chance of complications is also basically zero. If you want to chicken out and not get one that's fine, but don't spread disinformation. The mRNA vaccine is not gene therapy. Again you are spreading misinformation with that. Stop reading right wing trash sites and read some science sites.
1 death. The other cases are severe blood clotting but still alive by my understanding.
That's literally one-in-6-million chance of death with regards to this blood-clotting issue. A vanishingly smaller chance than the 1-in-40,000 (or 150-in-6-million) a healthy young person has of dying of COVID19.
So 1 death, 5 severe reactions related to blood clotting. Definitely a cause of concern, but lets not overplay the stats here.
This just another "Trolley problem": 150-people (even youngsters) would die from COVID19 vs the 1-person who died from the J&J vaccine.
If we include the general population (instead of focusing on the youngest and healthiest of us): COVID19 mortality rate is 1%ish, or 60,000-people-per-6-million.
You have to multiply the IFR by the odds that the person gets COVID to begin with. In countries where there's no community transmission (Australia) or in countries where it's possible to kill the virus just by vaccinating the at-risk population combined with shut-downs, the multiplier should be pretty small. Even in countries that have handled it badly, it still might be only a 1/3 or 1/2 chance of catching it. So as a young healthy person my chances of dying from COVID are probably less than 1/100000.
I bring this up because I think it misses the actual point. Even if the vaccine had a 1/100000 chance of death or major complications, I would still take it. Because my life is not the only one that matters. Killing the virus is likely (in this country) to require most people who are physically capable (including the young) of taking the vaccine. My taking on a 1/100k risk with the vaccine vs a 1/100k risk without the vaccine is worth it, because for most other adults, the risk is much greater than 1/100k if the population doesn't get vaccinated.
Fortunately, I don't think pausing J&J is necessarily the wrong decision, even given the argument I just made. AFAIK it's the least common of the three vaccines, and so there should not be many "missing" vaccinations that result from the pause. The fact that taking a risk is justified does not mean that pointless risk is justified.
It's not clear to me that the J&J vaccine's supply is large or critical enough that it's going to make that much of a difference (yet). If the supplies of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines are such that most people with J&J appointments can just get one of the others instead, that's really not that big a deal.
Walk-ins might be affected, though, but I'm not sure what percentage of the total daily vaccinations are walk-ins vs. appointments.
And as a sibling mentions, the general risk of dying from COVID-19 is not 150 in 6M, because the probability of getting (symptomatic) COVID-19 needs to be factored into that figure. I would not be surprised that if that probability drops to under 1 in 6M after accounting for that, though of course the symptomatic infection risk differs based on demographics.
One thing that I am worried about, though, is that this might make people trust all the vaccines less in general. My girlfriend and I had J&J appointments for this Friday; fortunately we were able to get a walk-in Moderna shot today, but the issues with the J&J vaccine did give her a little anxiety even about the Moderna vaccine. I think that (and worse) might be pretty common, and isn't unreasonable.
It takes quite a long time to prove the link between a viral infection and a cancer that develops decades later, so it'll be a while before we know for sure.
I think that given the fact that we've been getting sick from corona-family viruses for years with no suspected link to cancers, this should be of relatively low concern, barring any specific information.
There are other potential longer term side effects that at least seem to have some emerging data to back them up, which seem more concerning to me.
How would we even know? In order to tell if coronaviruses caused cancer, we'd need to be keeping track of which people had ever been infected with one of them and how many of them ended up with cancer, and we're not. It'd just fall into the background level of cancer incidence otherwise. Hell, we haven't even figured out if they're the main cause of Kawasaki disease yet, and that's a fairly spectacular and dangerous condition affecting children. There's some evidence that some common viruses in the family might be really deadly to elderly people, but that doesn't seem to have been researched much either. There's a lot we just don't know.
This isn't actionable information, though. There are no good ways to mitigate all unknown potential risks, because the mitigations have risks themselves.
You mean proteins if you're talking modern/pfizer. It's literally triggered by one protein that matches a protein on the covid membrane. Everything in life is a chance, just stepping out and getting some sun puts you at risk for skin cancer yet still people have been doing it for a couple million years.
Well, consider that a lot of people who aren't applying as much caution to the virus itself just don't think it's that big a deal. Either they think their infection risk is low, or they expect they'll be asymptomatic, or think that even symptomatic infections aren't that bad. Through that lens, it makes sense to be wary of taking a vaccine with possibly-dangerous side effects when they don't believe the virus it protects against is all that bad.
I don't agree with the premise behind this reasoning, but I can see how it'd come about.
I agree but only because about 5% of the vaccines currently distributed are J&J in the USA. The others will more than make up for it I'm sure. I think when we hit the wall and the supply outstrips the demand in the next few weeks as we approach 60-65% vaccinated and qanon and hippy antivaxxers are unwilling, I bet in month there will be so many open spots that they'll start cutting back manufacturing unless Biden convinces Moderna and Pfizer to keep going full speed ahead and we say distribute to Mexico/Central America/South American countries (like we ought to do).
Some experts have said that it's probably an immune reaction to the adenovirus which is used as the delivery mechanism in the vaccine. Wouldn't the side effects therefore be limited to the first weeks after the injection only?
You'd have to compare that to the chances of the long term effects of COVID causing issues down the line, which I'm willing to heavily bet is much more likely given what we've seen so far.
The phase 3 trial for JnJ/Janseen had only ~44k participants whereas here we are talking on the order of ~1 per million (that are reported as of today)
Live harmless vaccines aren't anything new. Some of the TB vaccines from the 60s are of that variety. Live virus vaccines have safely been used for at least the past 5 decades. Stop spreading bullshit.
Ok. Well, perhaps you aren’t actually aware of what the J&J is. I enjoyed the part about spreading bullshit though, good one.
No, there have been no previous live viruses that have been genetically modified to look like other viruses (embedding Covid spike proteins) injected in humans before three months ago in any scale.
We have treated animals with exactly this however, including pigs against piggy rona.
I recommend reading the whole post next time, not just stopping at “live virus”.
This is what worries me. I have had the AZ vaccine. Will I be at risk of this syndrome every time I am exposed to coronavirus? In other words, is the risk cumulative?
