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.