Linked List: April 26, 2021

Monday, 26 April 2021

Unvaccinated Americans Now Fear the J&J Vaccine ★

Amy Goldstein and Scott Clement, reporting for The Washington Post:

Fewer than 1 in 4 Americans not yet immunized against the coronavirus say they would be willing to get the vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll that finds broad mistrust of the shot’s safety after federal health officials paused its use.

The nationwide survey shows that slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults overall say they consider the Johnson & Johnson vaccine very or somewhat safe after its use was halted this month following reports of rare, severe blood clots.

This is exactly why I’ve been so critical of the way the CDC and FDA handled this. They’ve trashed the reputation of an excellent vaccine over an extremely rare complication.

Did the Costs of Pausing the J&J Vaccine Outweigh the Benefits? ★

James Surowiecki:

This was described at the time as the panel choosing to make no decision about whether the vaccine was safe. But as Dr. Nirav Shah, Maine’s CDC director, said at that first meeting, making no decision was a decision. While the U.S. has plentiful supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines, the J&J vaccine — which only requires one shot — has been very valuable in vaccinating people who might have a hard time returning to the same location three or four weeks later to get a shot, including homeless people, people who live in remote locations, and transient workers, as well as college students who may soon be going home from school. So you can’t just substitute Pfizer and Moderna shots for all J&J shots. What this means is that the decision to keep the vaccine pause in place amounted to a decision not to vaccinate lots of people who otherwise would have gotten vaccinated. Some of those people who did not get vaccinated have been or will be infected with Covid, and some of them will be hospitalized, and some will die. That was a concrete and undeniable consequence of the decision to extend the pause.

Ballpark numbers:

At Friday’s meeting, the CDC’s Sara Oliver said that over the next 6 months, the J&J vaccine would be expected to result in 800–3500 fewer ICU admissions, and 600–1400 fewer deaths, while causing 26–45 cases of clotting. If you extrapolate from those numbers, they suggest that if the pause had ended 10 days earlier, somewhere between 33 and 75 lives would have been saved, at the cost of 1–2 cases of clotting.

And those cases of clotting likely would not have been fatal.

No More Writing About Face Masks Without Emphasizing Vaccinations ★

Tara Parker-Pope, writing last week for The New York Times:

“I think the guidelines should be based on science and practicality,” said Dr. Marr. “People only have so much bandwidth to think about precautions. I think we should focus on the areas that have highest risk of transmission, and give people a break when the risk is extremely low.”

Dr. Marr uses a simple two-out-of-three rule for deciding when to wear a mask in public spaces or when she doesn’t know everyone’s vaccination status. In these situations, she makes sure she’s meeting two out of three conditions: outdoors, distanced and masked. “If you’re outdoors, you either need to be distanced or masked,” she said. “If you’re not outdoors, you need to be distanced and masked. This is how I’ve been living for the past year. It all comes down to my two-out-of-three rule.”

This is fine advice — for the unvaccinated. But those of us who are vaccinated have no need to wear a mask outdoors or indoors, other than for social compliance. This article should have been published months ago, not last week. Articles published now should emphasize that getting vaccinated is our way out of this “face masks everywhere you go” morass.

Inside the Right-Wing Nonsense Machine, Red Meat Edition ★

Daniel Dale, reporting for CNN:

The paper, by scholars at the University of Michigan and Tulane University, estimates how greenhouse gas emissions would be affected if Americans hypothetically decided to change their diets in various ways, such as cutting their consumption of beef to four pounds per year. The paper does not suggest a mandatory four-pound beef limit — and, more importantly for the purposes of this fact check, the paper is just not related to Biden’s plans.

The paper was published before Biden had won the Democratic presidential nomination. The paper does not even mention Biden’s name. And Biden has never publicly mentioned the paper. So… frankly, you can stop reading here if you just wanted to know if it’s true that Biden is trying to take away your sacred right to a rib eye. That claim is complete nonsense.

But if you’re interested in how right-wing media figures and elected officials turned a little-known academic analysis into a scary presidential plot to limit Americans’ hard-earned cookout freedoms, read on.