Covid 19 coronavirus: Did spotlighting a rare potential vaccine side effect put more at risk?
15 Apr, 2021 10:19 PM
7 minutes to read
A health worker loads syringes with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Photo / AP
New York Times
By: Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jan Hoffman
Some public health officials fear that the pause on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine may fuel vaccine hesitancy and expose more Americans to a bigger danger: the coronavirus. To federal health officials, asking states Tuesday to suspend use of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine until they can investigate six extremely rare but troubling cases of blood clots was an obvious and perhaps unavoidable move.
The problem is getting the public to understand relative risk, said Rupali J. Limaye, who studies public health messaging at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She noted that the potential rate of blood clotting in reaction to the vaccine is much smaller than the blood clotting rate for cigarette smokers and for women who use hormonal contraception, although the types of blood clots differ.
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A mass vaccination site in San Juan, P.R., in March. Around the country, Johnson & Johnson vaccine recipients were left to grapple with the news, which was especially unsettling for women ages 18 to 48, who accounted for all six cases of blood clots.Credit...Carlos Giusti/Associated Press
WASHINGTON (NYTIMES) - To federal health officials, asking states on Tuesday (April 13) to suspend use of the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine until they can investigate six extremely rare but troubling cases of blood clots was an obvious and perhaps unavoidable move.
But where scientists saw prudence, public health officials saw a delicate trade-off: The blood clotting so far appears to affect just 1 out of every 1 million people injected with the vaccine, and it is not yet clear if the vaccine is the cause. If highlighting the clotting heightens vaccine hesitancy and bolsters conspiracy theorists, the "pause" in the end could ultimately sicken - and even kill - more people than it saves.