Federal officials are concerned that doctors may not be trained to look for the rare disorder if recipients of the vaccine develop symptoms of it. The federal health agencies said Tuesday morning that “treatment of this specific type of blood clot is different from the treatment that might typically be administered” for blood clots.
“Usually, an anticoagulant drug called heparin is used to treat blood clots. In this setting, administration of heparin may be dangerous, and alternative treatments need to be given,” the statement said.
This is WAY WORSE. if that’s the concern they need to send a fucking email to doctors not a media story to “pause the vaccine”. These incompetent idiots are killing people.
I’m basically on board with “this just sucks no matter what way you slice it”. I think “hiding” this extremely rare side effect would be wrong and potentially end up worse than what’s happening now, so I’m not exactly sure what else they should have done with this news. Maybe release the information and say they’re looking into it without the pause? I’m curious about how a side effect of this rarity would be treated in a typical clinical trial - would it just be part of the long list of stuff they read at the end of the commercial, or would this be a “black box” type of warning?
But yeah, the amount of fodder this gives the “I don’t want a rushed vaccine” crowd is so bad. “What ELSE aren’t they telling us? What ELSE don’t they know?” And like somebody else said, the inability of people to compare relative probabilities is at the root of so many problems.
That’s basically how I see it. Americans are barely willing to get a vaccine that’s 100% safe, the vaxx truther crowd is going to go nuts and even regular Joes are going to be discouraged if they hear there’s even a one in a million chance that it will kill you. idk, maybe the right thing is to continue distributing it but it’s still going to suck no matter what.
Really looking forward to most of my family now permanently refusing to get any vaccine and continuing to treat Covid like it’s fake. Thank God I got my parents to get vaccinated a couple weeks ago. Wonder how many funerals I will get to go to over the next few years because of insanely dumb shit like this.
Also Clovis is right, the breathless media reporting on this is criminal.
This relates to a post I made before about how public health as a profession lacks necessary behavioral science skills and knowledge. If a vaccine has a 1 in 1,000,000 chance of killing someone that needs to be described to the public as X times safer than not getting vaccinated.
The public health officials are behaving like journalists - just put the information out there and let people decide!
On the Media (the best podcast nobody listens to) has been all over this exact point for months.
This is an outgrowth of the awful, pervasive economics theory that choice is always good.
Healthcare, 401k, benefits at work, vaccines - everyone is a rational consumer so if you just give individuals the most choices possible, people will be better off!