On Thursday, the Biden administration announced new restrictions on Johnson & Johnson’s COVID vaccine, citing rare but life-threatening blood clots, which, they say, outweigh the benefits of the vaccine for those who have other vaccines available to them.
This is not the first time that the Biden has trashed the Johnson & Johnson vaccine by citing the ridiculously rare risk of severe blood clots. Last year, the Biden administration temporarily paused the J&J vaccine rollout over just six cases of patients with severe blood clots out of nearly 7 million doses.
Your math is correct. They paused the rollout for a less than a one-in-a-million risk of severe blood clots. It was a dumb move, and the Biden administration eventually lifted the pause, but the damage was done and caused significant vaccine hesitancy for all the vaccines.
According to Our World in Data, there have been 18.71 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson COVID vaccine administered since it was made available last year.
So, how big of a problem are these blood clots now? Surely, if the FDA says the risks outweigh the benefits there must be a huge number of these severe blood clots, right?
Guess again.
“An updated analysis of safety data through March 18 found that there were 60 confirmed cases of the blood-clotting syndrome, including nine that resulted in death,” reports the Washington Post. “Even with quick treatment, vaccine recipients can rapidly worsen, with long-term health consequences.”
Sixty confirmed cases, only nine deaths.
Sixty confirmed cases out of the 18.54 million doses administered by March 18.
Nine deaths out of the 18.54 million doses administered by March 18.
I’m no mathematician, but that’s a really, really, really, really, really, really low-risk level.
Yet, according to Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine official, the other vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna are “safer,” but still he kinda-sorta says the J&J vaccine is okay and “still has a role in the current pandemic response in the United States and across the global community.”
Are you confused? You should be. Because while the Biden administration seems intent on bashing the Johnson & Johnson vaccine over a statistically tiny risk of severe blood clots, they seem far less concerned about the elevated risk of myocarditis in young males who have received the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna.
As PJM’s Stacey Lennox reported earlier this year, the rates of myocarditis in young males skyrocket for those who have had the mRNA vaccines.
Gee, wouldn’t you rather take your chances with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine?
In addition to the above data, which came from VAERS data, Stacey noted that “in a preprint study using claims data from Kaiser Permanente Northwest, researchers found that the risk for three cardiac complications, myocarditis, pericarditis, and myopericarditis, was 1 in 1,860 for males 18-24 and 1 in 2,650 for boys 12-17.”
The risk of a severe blood clot from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is 1 in 309,000. The risk of dying from a severe blood clot from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is 1 in 2,060,000.
Ketanji Brown Jackson may not be a mathematician, but even she could look at these numbers and make the same conclusion as everyone one about the comparative safety of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine vs. the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
So, why is the Biden administration pushing the mRNA vaccines? I actually answered that question last year, and it’s quite frightening.
