Utahlefty
Active Member
- Messages
- 271
In "normal" times, the scientists will have worked all of this out prior to presenting to the public but in covid times we're seeing the process happen in real time. It can certainly be confusing to try to sort through the daily noise but I guess that's the drawback of doing science on live TV, as it were.
One thing I keep seeing on the internets is the trepidation of the "new" mRna vaccine technology used in the Moderna & Pfizer vaccines. This isn't actually new at all - this technology is at least 15 years old. The Ebloa and MERS vaccines are mRna vaccines developed a decade ago. A big part of the appeal of mRna vaccines is their plug-n-play nature once they've worked the kinks out (which they've already done prior to covid showing up). This is why these companies were able to make a COVID vaccine so quickly.
It's true though that mRna vaccines have not been used on this scale before and so far (approx 200million doses) side effects have been minimal.
Not so for the other vaccines though. All five of the Adenovirus-vectored vaccines have reported blood clots in women 18-49. These are : Johnson & Johnson, AstraZenica, the Russian Sputnik V, and three of the Chinese-made vaccines.
This was, of course, the big news this week - the suspension of the J&J vaccine by the CDC. This was expected to be temporary but they've asked for more time to sort that out. Bummer but it's not as simple as vaccine=blood clots.
A few numbers:
average annual rate of blood clots in this cohort: 1:1000
rate of blood clots in J&J vaccinates in this cohort: 1:1,000,000
rate of blood clots in covid patients in this cohort: 1:12
rate of Vaccine induced thrombocytopenia : 1:30,000
It could be quite true that the Adenovirus-vectored vaccines increase the risks of blood clots in some people but that risk would be orders of magnitude less the risk if infected with covid and probably less as a specific trigger than even the normal background risk in this group.
Hence, it's taking the Brainiacs a bit longer to do the maths on this but I fear the damage has already been done from a public perception standpoint.
In the U.S. the possibility exists to hold out for the mRna vaccines as we've ordered enough doses to vaccinate everyone with them by July.
In the larger world this is a problem as less than 60% of the population lives in an area that can accommodate the storage and handling requirements of the mRna products - they'll have to depend on the Adenovirus-vectored vaccines and so it's good to see the transparency happening.
Early reports would indicate they're zeroing in on vaccine-induced thrombolic thrombocytopenia as the origin of the blood clots in these individuals. This makes some sense as the majority of these cases I've treated were vaccine induced -- not any particular vaccine, just "A" vaccine. (thrombocyte is a fancy word for platelet, more on the mechanism of this later if there's interest)
One thing I keep seeing on the internets is the trepidation of the "new" mRna vaccine technology used in the Moderna & Pfizer vaccines. This isn't actually new at all - this technology is at least 15 years old. The Ebloa and MERS vaccines are mRna vaccines developed a decade ago. A big part of the appeal of mRna vaccines is their plug-n-play nature once they've worked the kinks out (which they've already done prior to covid showing up). This is why these companies were able to make a COVID vaccine so quickly.
It's true though that mRna vaccines have not been used on this scale before and so far (approx 200million doses) side effects have been minimal.
Not so for the other vaccines though. All five of the Adenovirus-vectored vaccines have reported blood clots in women 18-49. These are : Johnson & Johnson, AstraZenica, the Russian Sputnik V, and three of the Chinese-made vaccines.
This was, of course, the big news this week - the suspension of the J&J vaccine by the CDC. This was expected to be temporary but they've asked for more time to sort that out. Bummer but it's not as simple as vaccine=blood clots.
A few numbers:
average annual rate of blood clots in this cohort: 1:1000
rate of blood clots in J&J vaccinates in this cohort: 1:1,000,000
rate of blood clots in covid patients in this cohort: 1:12
rate of Vaccine induced thrombocytopenia : 1:30,000
It could be quite true that the Adenovirus-vectored vaccines increase the risks of blood clots in some people but that risk would be orders of magnitude less the risk if infected with covid and probably less as a specific trigger than even the normal background risk in this group.
Hence, it's taking the Brainiacs a bit longer to do the maths on this but I fear the damage has already been done from a public perception standpoint.
In the U.S. the possibility exists to hold out for the mRna vaccines as we've ordered enough doses to vaccinate everyone with them by July.
In the larger world this is a problem as less than 60% of the population lives in an area that can accommodate the storage and handling requirements of the mRna products - they'll have to depend on the Adenovirus-vectored vaccines and so it's good to see the transparency happening.
Early reports would indicate they're zeroing in on vaccine-induced thrombolic thrombocytopenia as the origin of the blood clots in these individuals. This makes some sense as the majority of these cases I've treated were vaccine induced -- not any particular vaccine, just "A" vaccine. (thrombocyte is a fancy word for platelet, more on the mechanism of this later if there's interest)