WASHINGTON – Surgeon General Vivek Murthy received a message Friday afternoon from the 6.8 million Americans who received the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine and who, in recent days, have read about reports of blood clotting: “Vast and overwhelming chances are you’re right, “Dr. Murthy said during a briefing by the COVID-19 White House response team.
He added that the response team was quite confident in this statement, which is consistent with what scientists know about the vaccine.
The Biden administration on Tuesday told states to stop using the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after six reports of blood clotting, including one death. Dr. Anthony Fauci, a senior scientific adviser to the Biden administration, urged people who have already received the vaccine to “pay attention” to potential symptoms of coagulation, such as body aches or headaches.
Murthy’s reassurance to Johnson & Johnson beneficiaries came just moments after Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said a key advisory board would take another week to study the vaccine. That council, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, met earlier this week but did not reach a conclusion, with one member calling for “stronger information”.
The committee will meet again next Friday, Walensky said, which would give it time to “review any additional cases that may come in and for them to conduct a full risk assessment and assess emerging science.”
The Biden administration is in a difficult political and scientific problem, hardly the first of the pandemics. Even if its top experts trust the vaccine, they strive to show that safety and transparency are paramount. The Trump administration has often been criticized for not appearing in connection with the pandemic, especially when it comes to politically uncomfortable truths.
“We want people to know what we know,” Murthy said. “This is your security system that works for you, what you see now,” he added, hoping that “if you are told what is happening,” it would inspire confidence in the American people. This could be a risky calculation, especially if conspiracy theories about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are proliferating rapidly on Facebook.
Murthy is relatively new to the briefings of the response team, which tended to involve Fauci and Walensky in the first place.
The president’s top scientific advisers universally agree with the surgeon general that the risk of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is very low, especially compared to the imminent risk of coronavirus. Trying to put the issue of blood clotting in context, Andy Slavitt, a White House scientific adviser, said in Friday’s briefing that not only are such cases “incredibly rare,” but it is imperative that we address the fact that we lost 560,000 Americans and that vaccines save lives. “
A similar problem arose in Europe last month, after reports of blood clotting led some countries to remove the AstraZeneca vaccine from rotation. The vaccine was designed similarly to Johnson & Johnson, using an adenovirus vector. The European Medicines Agency has found that there have been 86 cases of blood clotting in 25 million people on the continent who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine. He urged nations to resume use of the vaccine because, as the agency said, “the overall benefits of the vaccine in preventing COVID-19 outweigh the risks of side effects.”
The other two vaccines used in the United States – those developed by Moderna and Pfizer – use a different technology, called messenger RNA, that has not been associated with cases of blood clots. After reports of Johnson & Johnson cases first surfaced, White House coronavirus response coordinator Jeff Zients quickly pointed out that the two companies supply 95% of the vaccine doses given to Americans so far and that any distribution deficiencies Johnson & Johnson would not affect the Biden Vaccination Guidelines.
The biggest concern is that the Johnson & Johnson break will be used by vaccine skeptics to further question the vaccination effort. This forces public health officials to dance delicately, just like on Friday, when they acknowledged the fundamental safety of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, while promising to follow any conclusions that scientists eventually reach on their own.
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