> 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.