They do not know why the J&J vaccine is a threat to these younger women. I just heard one guess that it could have something to do with birth control.
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Birth control pills make you more susceptible to blood clots generally. Same reason they tell you not to smoke when you’re taking them.
Young women are already a very low risk demographic for bad covid outcomes, so if I suddenly start identifying as a young woman and taking those hormones, someone remind me not to get revaccinated with JNJ or AZN for my boosters 
JNJ halting their EU rollout now too.
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My vote on this was that I’d wait 3 months to see how it plays out, and that’s pretty much exactly what I did, getting vaccinated in late March, 3 months after the initial rollout in December.
As I said upthread, the shocker to me is that the adenovirus vaccines have turned out to be the troublesome ones, while the mRNA vaccines have proven to be less risky thus far. Long term side effects of mRNA vaccines are still unknown but right now Pfizer and Moderna are looking like the Cadillac vaccines while JNJ and AZN’s formulations are looking more like Ford Pintos.
My hope right now - they don’t take away my second Pfizer shot that I have booked next week in an attempt to more broadly administer a single dose of the mRNA vaccines.
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???
I have a different take. WGBH, Boston, for example had this to say:
Will I be as well protected against getting super sick with COVID-19 if I get the J&J shot as if I get a two-dose version from Pfizer or Moderna?
“When we look at the thing we probably care about most — making sure that we don’t end up in the ICU or dying — the efficacy of the three vaccines is virtually identical,” says Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
The perception that some vaccines may be better than others has to do with the topline numbers from efficacy studies. The mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were both found to be about 95% effective against preventing symptomatic COVID-19 after the second dose. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by contrast, was found to be 66% protective against moderate and severe disease overall worldwide, and 72% protective against such cases in the U.S.
But you can’t really compare those numbers head to head, says Pierre, because “these were different trials in different places at different times,” and the strains of the coronavirus running around were likely somewhat different. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was tested more recently, including in South Africa and Brazil, at a time when more contagious variants of the coronavirus were widely circulating in those countries. The Moderna and Pfizer clinical studies, meanwhile, were started earlier, before such variants had become widespread.
Given those differences, Bibbins-Domingo says “the number you should probably compare is 85%” — that’s how effective the J & J vaccine was found to be at preventing severe disease four weeks after immunization.
Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, agrees that the J&J vaccine seems to be “terrific” at saving lives. He tells NPR he’s advising his family members to take whichever vaccine comes their way first.
Which vaccine offers the best protection against the worrisome coronavirus variants?
We can’t compare the vaccines head to head on this question, Pierre says, because the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines haven’t been subjected to rigorous clinical trials in places where these variants are widespread. But we can say that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine performs well against the variants first detected in Brazil and South Africa, because it was tested in both countries at a time when the variants were already rampant there. And in both countries, the J&J vaccine was still shown to be highly effective against severe disease, according to an analysis posted by the FDA.
“What we see is that we still have good efficacy with this vaccine regardless — even in these areas where the variants were highly prevalent,” Pierre says. “And I think that’s really a fire-tested way to say that this particular vaccine is unequivocally good.” She notes that preliminary data also suggest the J&J vaccine might offer protection against asymptomatic infection.
On a personal note:
I’m male, not female. I’m old, not young. I’ve never smoked anything, not even corn silk. And birth control has been off the table for me since the day I was born. So I remain good with the J&J vaccine.
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I have been unable to determine the probability of developing this disorder among people who have not received a vaccine. It seems to me that’s a crucial number. six cases out of the millions of doses administered is a tiny number. How many people who received the vaccine have been in automobile accidents or have had heart attacks?
Regular blood clots are something like 1/1000 people per year, and these are not elevated risk due to the vaccines. these brain related blood clots are much rarer but also more dangerous, baseline is 5/million/year in adults. You can see why if the US has 6 for JNJ out of 7 million people in just a month or so, that’s definitely more common than you’d expect.
thanks for the info. That number is so low that it’s going to be almost impossible to arrive at a statistically meaningful conclusion. with 7 million people receiving the vaccine in a month we would expect an average of 7*5/12= 3 blood clotting events with goodness knows what standard deviation. The actual number, 6, is larger than the expected value but certainly not out of the realm of possibility of a statistical fluctuation.
edit. another issue is the age distribution of the probability. I would imagine that the probability increases with age and due to eligibility rules the average age of people receiving the vaccine is probably higher than the population average.
edit. but with a statistician’s “on the other hand”, the ages of the six seems fairly young
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Do remember that the speaker (and perhaps the reporter) may be pushing an agenda. In this case, to have everyone take a shot, any available shot, without being picky and causing supply imbalances of one over another. I agree wholeheartedly that everyone should take any shot asap. But if there’s no big difference, I myself would first take Moderna’s.
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Depending on where a clot forms you might not feel it. And if you do feel it, you might not know what you’re feeling. DVT might just feel like a sore muscle at first, something you’d ignore if you happened to exercise that muscle.
Good thing you’re not on birth control 
.
Point taken. But I’m the wrong sex and even were I female it’s a one in a million shot.
Heck, I run more risk just climbing into my car and driving to the store.
When I was vaccinated last week there were quite a few people receiving the J&J vaccine. I had to wait over one half hour. Takers were of both sexes. I was probably the oldest person there, but there were plenty of younger people who appeared to be in their sixties, and a decent number of people even younger than that. After the shot we all just walked out without fanfare. Hoping for the best.
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A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advisory committee did not vote Wednesday on whether to extend the nation’s pause on Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, after experts on the panel argued there was still insufficient data to make final recommendations
This is outrageous analysis paralysis. Give people the information and let them decide for themselves whether they want to take the risk.
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My take is different on this CDC review. I’m sure they are under lots of pressure to re-approve JNJ for use to fight the pandemic, and I’m surprised they didn’t immediately cave like the UK regulators did half way thru their AZN vaccine rollout and say something like “the protection against covid far outweighs any rare health risks associated with possibly elevated rare blood clot risk”. But do note even the UK relented last week and are not recommending AZN for those under age 30 now.
This suggests to me that
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we have the luxury of choice since PFE and MRNA vaccines are going to be enough to vaccinate everyone in the US, while JNJ is a small, if somewhat more convenient alternative, and
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the data must be bad enough they can’t in good conscience endorse the JNJ risks.
Along those lines,
But also note that all of the clot victims were non-elderly women. If you ballpark that as 1/4 of the population, the risk to them is 4x higher so you’d expect less than 1 event in that group and so 6 is even more unusual. In addition, given the age-based priority rollout, it may well be the case that non-elderly women are much less than 1/4 of the vaccinated demographic and then their implied risk could be even higher than that.
Younger women have some 1000-10,000x lower risk of death from covid than a really old person, who might have a 5-10% chance of death. If these viral vector vaccines present not a 1 in few million risk of death, but instead 1 in 100k to a younger population subgroup, well, that’s about the same as the risk of a young woman of dying from covid.
I don’t think the health experts would endorse a vaccine that was just as risky as the disease, especially since not everyone will / has to get the disease but the government policy is trying to give the vaccine to everyone. Plus, your chances against the disease get better due to improved treatments, getting the pandemic under control by vaccinating more at risk groups, you can personally take precautions that reduce this risk a lot, etc.
Viral vector vaccines have been used before for things like Ebola, but they were tested for safety in thousands of people, not millions, so you wouldn’t be able to see a rare side effect like these possible blood clots statistically. Plus given your chances of dying, if you were at risk of getting Ebola you’re not going to argue about a 1 in a million side effect when your odds if you get it are 50/50.
The math is very different for giving vaccines to healthy people especially for non-fatal diseases. “Do no harm” is a high standard.
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What are the principal reasons for existence of the CDC and the FDA?
Self interest and self preservation
President Trump sought to break up those clubs and he failed. Thousands perished as our vaccines were studied to death unnecessarily by the FDA. Our risk from COVID-19 exceeded our risk from a bad vaccine. It made no difference because trouble with the vaccine would have jeopardized the sanctity of the FDA itself, which for them was of foremost importance.
Now it’s happening all over. I do not blame Biden because he likely realizes, better that Trump ever did, the absolute hopelessness of reforming either the FDA or the CDC. So we wait while they twiddle their thumbs on the J&J vaccine and more people get blood clots from COVID-19 than ever would have from the shot. But harm done by the CDC and FDA CYA obsession far exceeds anything related to clots:
Those two lethargic, self-protective, government agencies have struck a blow for vaccine hesitancy which will have lasting impact here and worldwide. Thousands more people than before will become ill, and even die, from COVID-19 because they unwisely refuse inoculation out of unwarranted fear of vaccines. And as unvaccinated persons allow the virus to continue rampaging, chances for emergence of a new unwieldy variant are much enhanced.
Trump could not bring the FDA and the CDC to heel. Biden is too smart even to try. But something needs to be done. Those two government agencies are, quite literally, killing people in real time!!
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No, they’re two of the most respected government institutions in the USA, and are emulated by aspiring free countries throughout the world.
Why must magas some continue to try to tear down American values, American leadership in the world, and American institutions?
It’s not your fault, you’re just regurgitating what you hear from talking heads that shouldn’t have elevated platforms to spread FUD…
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I think there’s a high probability that the sex distribution and ages of the US sample is a coincidence. I was listening on Bloomberg radio to someone from the UK who says that there the clot problems with the Astra Zeneca vaccine are equally distributed among the sexes (am I allowed to say that there are 2 sexes?)
For the purposes of these statistics, I’ll allow it 
. As long as you know that a non-zero percentage of humans are born with any of several variations in sex characteristics, including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones or genitals, and fall outside the 2 sexes [1].
It is utter foolishness like this, spewed by people like you, that has promulgated and sustained sickness and death for thousands of people. I went point by point. You offered no rebuttal whatsoever except to express blind and unquestioning admiration for failed, primarily self-interested, government entities. Your brand of childlike overlord worship is duly noted. I certainly do not share it. But then, grasshopper, I am not a child.
Thousands perished as our vaccines were studied to death unnecessarily by the FDA.
Are you seriously suggesting that testing the current vaccines LESS would have led to increased public adoption in any way shape or form?
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