> What matters is the outcome compared to the thing birth controls prevent - pregnancy.

Same with the vaccine.

> Do you get more blood clots from being pregnant or from being on the pill?

Again, same with the vaccine. COVID itself causes clots, in a very substantial percentage of hospitalized patients.

"The benefits of this medical intervention are worthwhile, despite the risks, given the alternative" is precisely the point being made.

> Same with the vaccine.

No, because there are other vaccines that don't give you blood clots at all. Your entire point is moot. Pausing temporarily to investigate is hardly controversial. The comparison with birth control is nonsensical.

A vaccination for COVID is not the same as getting birth control. Even if it was, why would you get J&J if you could get Pfizer that doesn't have the same issue?

If all vaccinations had the same blood clotting issue then perhaps you and the original poster would have a point. Given a huge disparity between them with regards to blood clotting taking a moment to investigate this is simply prudent. Making nonsensical comparisons to birth control, well, is not.

Sure, but J&J isn't being permanently discontinued. Why are you against simply pausing vaccinations to investigate this? If the USA was this prudent with COVID in its beginning we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Your argument would be reasonable if it was being permanently suspended.

It doesn't have to be permanently discontinued for the public to lose trust in it and refuse to take it.

The mere publication of the blood clots would also cause the public to lose trust in it.

Should the government also just not disclose any side effects? By definition any bad information will make the public lose trust.

I think there should be an investigational period to see if there's an actual issue first. In software, we'd call it "responsible disclosure".

The goal is to avoid this sort of consequence:

https://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/yougov-poll-finds-dis...

> The skepticism shows no sign of slowing, YouGov reports. While trust for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines rose in all country surveys between December and March, trust for the AZ vaccine slipped in Germany over that span. By early March, 40% said the AZ vaccine was unsafe, an increase of 10% since its earlier December poll.

> The result? Anecdotal reports in Germany and across Europe of people refusing the AZ vaccine and supplies sitting unused in warehouse, YouGov reported—real-world evidence of “the extent of the damage done to the perceived safety of AstraZeneca vaccine.”

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/03/22/increasi...

> The AstraZeneca jab, which is cheaper to produce and easier to store and distribute than the vaccines currently being administered across Europe from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, was meant to be a workhorse of the continent’s vaccination drive. That plan could be in trouble, however, if citizens across Europe continue to believe that the AstraZeneca vaccine is unsafe and, as a result, refuse to bare their arms for it.

This is not software. So do you believe the government should be transparent or not? If anything you should blame the media, not the government.

I believe there are significant public health implications to how information is released to the public that need to be considered better than they have been in the case of this pause and the similar case with the AZ vaccine.

I believe, as with software, that immediate release of unvetted, incomplete, and still-being-investigated information can be actively harmful to people.

There's no "high standard" to begin with.

J&J is paused because there are alternatives that don't have clotting to the same degree.

A comparison with birth control makes no sense. Is there some magical birth control that's used orders of magnitude more (Pfizer) and orders of magnitude safer with respect to blood clotting and also prevents pregnancy?

No? Then the comparison is stupid.

There currently isn't enough vaccine to meet demand. Pausing J&J distribution will cause a larger gap between supply and demand. The 7 day average of deaths from Covid in the U.S. is 985. Even a week's delay in getting to full deployment of the vaccine thus means thousands of deaths.

What would need to happen in your view to justify pausing vaccinations for even a single day?

IMO that lack of caution is why the USA is in this situation to begin with.

I am not saying outright that the pause is not justified. But it has a substantial cost, and it would be good to see that our health authorities have considered this and weighed the balance of costs and benefits. e.g. it might have made sense to pause J&J for under age X and continue it for over age X, based on relative risk.

I don't agree with your analysis, I think you can see it entirely the other way, that both this pause and the initial "wait and see" attitude towards Covid are the result of an excessive bias towards the status quo. I remember back in January-February 2020 when people were saying it would be crazy to just shut down air travel, think of the massive economic cost.

The primary concern people have here isn't the review, it's the immediate withdrawal. People who had appointments to get the J&J vaccine will now go vaccine-less until they can be rescheduled, even if they would have been happy to take it knowing about the blood clots.

Sure, but my point is that a comparison with birth control is stupid at best, harmful at worst.

J&J isn't being permanently suspended - I bet you within the coming days this ban will be reversed and people can get J&J if they'd like.