Dr. Stuart Weiss: COVID-19 Update Tuesday 13-April-2021
By Dr. Stuart Weiss, Intelligent Crowd Solutions – Rapid Test Center of NY
Rapid Test Center of New York
Dr. Stuart Weiss, FACEP, FAAP, CBCP
| April 13, 2021 CoViD-19 News and Information you can trust. Welcome new readers from the Rapid Test Center. Topics: Pause in the use of Johnson and Johnson CoViD-19 vaccine |
| Pause in the use of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine Today, both the FDA and the CDC issued a pause on the use of the Johnson and Johnson CoViD-19 vaccines. So lets take a look at what happened and what this means. So what happened? There were six cases of very rare brain blood clots reported through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System or VAERS. These six cases were reported since the middle of March. So far, 6.85 million doses of the J&J vaccine have been administered. These cases were all in women who were between 18 to 48 years old. In these cases, after an average of 9 days after receiving the J&J vaccine, the women developed a headache. 4 of the 6 developed neurological symptoms (weakness, difficulty speaking or changes in vision). All six had a brain scan which showed a condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) which is a rare blood clot in the brain. What is especially unusual is that all six also had low platelet counts (platelets are a small colorless disk-shaped cell fragments usually found in large numbers in blood and help in clotting). So we had blood clots in people who had low platelets which should usually make it harder to form clots. Four of the women went on to bleed in their brains and one died. Two of them had blood clots in other areas of their bodies as well. So what could be happening?This blood clot issue is similar to what has been seen with the AstraZenica/Oxford vaccine. Both of these vaccines use weakened adenovirus to cause our cells to make spike protein. As you may remember, Pfizer and Moderna use a different approach where they insert messenger RNA directly into cells to cause them to make spike protein. Both types of vaccines cause our body to make spike protein but with the AstraZenica and J&J vaccines, its the adenovirus that may be causing the problem. In these rare instances, the adenovirus may be causing an immune response where our bodies make antibodies against platelet factor-4. These antibodies end up activating our platelets which causes them to do what they normally do when activated. They clump together and form a big blood clot. Because so many of these platelets are activated and clump together, these patients begin to run out of platelets and can bleed in other places. Its a clotting mess and the usual methods for treating blood clots may actually make the situation much worse. This problem is very rare and has only been seen with the adenovirus based vaccines. There have been NO cases of this in people who received the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines. That makes sense since those two vaccines do not have any adenovirus in them. So where do we go from here? Well, lets put this into perspective first. The risk of a blood clot from the J&J vaccine is 0.000088%. The risk of a blood clot from birth control pills is 1000 times worse at 0.05%-0.1%. The risk of a blood clot from smoking is 2 times higher at 0.18%. And here is the important figure, the risk of a blood clot from CoViD-19 itself is 100 times worse than that at 16.5%, So if my math is right (and it might not be) the risk of a blood clot from CoViD-19 is 187,000 time more likely than the risk from the CoViD-19 vaccine. So its clearly much safer to get the vaccine than to get actual CoViD-19. Even if you are not so happy with those odds, there are no cases of this rare blood clot issue with the mRNA vaccines. NONE. So go get yourself a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. So what happens next?Well, the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) will meet on Wednesday to review the findings. A different group called the Clinical Immunization Safety Assessment will also review this. They will look at all the data and make recommendations. This will take some time but as Dr. Fauci said today, it will take days to weeks and not months to make a recommendation. In the meantime, vaccination efforts will continue with Moderna and Pfizer. We still have a pandemic to beat. If you have received the J&J COVID-19 vaccine and develop severe headache, abdominal pain, leg pain, or shortness of breath within three weeks after vaccination, contact your healthcare provider, or seek medical care immediately. Make sure you tell them that you received the J&J vaccine. That is very important in case they find a blood clot in you. They should not treat you with the usual blood thinner, called heparin in most circumstances (but not all circumstances). I still tell you to get your self vaccinated quickly so we can get through this together. Dr. Stu WeissSign Up For Our Newsletter |
