Tag Archives: health care

A Thought on the J&J Vaccine

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A couple of nuggets in a Tuesday Wall Street Journal editorial prompt this in my pea brain. The editorial itself concerns [t]he issue [of] how best to address public anxiety over rare blood clots seemingly associated with the J&J anti-Wuhan Virus vaccine.

The nuggets are these:

six US cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) [in] 6.8 million who have received J&J’s vaccine

and

This particular brain blood clot is extremely rare in the general population—five individuals per million per year….

The J&J association—if it is more than coincidence—works out to less than one incident of this particular brain blood clot per million getting the J&J vaccine, if my third-grade arithmetic is any good.

The question that occurs to me (and that I’ve seen no evidence is being considered) is whether the J&J vaccine has the happy side effect of providing a measure of protection against this already extremely rare type of clot.

A bonus question from my pea brain. The clots seemingly associated with the J&J vaccine have all occurred in women in the age range of 18 to 48. Assuming the clot-vaccine association is more than coincidence, is there something in the metabolism of women, or in some other factor particular to women, that leaves them susceptible to the clot, even if less so than the general population for having had the vaccine? Alternatively, is there something in the metabolism of men, or in some other factor particular to men, that makes them proof against the clot for having had the vaccine?

A Couple Errors about to be Reversed?

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Here’s one, maybe.

President [Joe, D] Biden on Tuesday announced that all adults will be eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccination by April 19, which is even earlier than the May 1st date that he announced last month.

That pretty tightly coincides with the predicted achievement date the prior administration made months ago and that until very recently Biden and his Progressive-Democrats had derisively pooh-poohed.

Here’s another.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told department employees he may restart border wall construction to plug what he called “gaps” in the current barrier.

OK, that’s only a partial correction that may be in the offing, but still….

Hmm….

Panic-Mongering and the Wuhan Virus

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Here are some examples of that panic-mongering. They are far from an exhaustive list, but they are illustrative.

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo estimated that, based on the epidemiological curve at the time, “in 45 days [the state] could have up to an input of people who need 110,000 beds that compares to our current capacity of 53,000 beds, 37,000 ICU units, ventilators, which compares to a capacity currently of 3,000 ventilators.”

Yet,

COVID hospitalizations in the state peaked roughly a month later, coming in at just under 19,000…. Total ICU COVID patients peaked shortly thereafter at 5,225, or at just 13% of the governor’s forecast.

And this one:

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom estimated that, on top of its existing 75,000 hospital beds, the state would require “an additional 50,000 beds in our system.”
“Our new modeling suggests 50,000 is the new target number[.]”

Yet,

California data show that the state’s current peak in hospitalized patients came in early January of this year and totaled just under 23,000….

And this one:

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington predicted on March 31 of last year that Michigan would see peak COVID-19 hospital usage on April 10, topping out at about 14,000 COVID patients in beds.

Yet,

Data from the COVID Tracking Project shows that on that date hospitalized patients in the state totaled just over 3,800. That number plummeted in the weeks that followed, and though it rose again during the fall/winter spike, its peak on December 2 was still just 4,300, significantly less than IHME’s springtime projection.

And this one:

[From] New Jersey, an analysis out of Rutgers University in mid-March 2020…determined that, with about 23,000 hospital beds statewide, the state might face a peak shortfall of over 300,000 beds in a worst-case model positing minimal action to curb the spread of COVID.

Yet,

Hospital usage…peaked in the state on April 16 at 8,224 before falling sharply. During the fall spike, the COVID hospital census there plateaued around 3,600.

It’s hard to believe that such learned persons could be so far wrong—and not move quickly to correct their errors.

Maybe it’s time to look at their motives for making those projections. Maybe that time has come, especially, against the naked power grab that is the Progressive-Democrats’ American Rescue Plan, which they masqueraded as a Wuhan Virus relief bill, even though less than 10% of that nearly $2 trillion bill has anything even remotely related to the virus.

Failure to Perform

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As the California Republican delegation to the US House of Representatives have shown, California’s Governor Gavin Newsom (D) is failing—in particular in getting Federally supplied Wuhan Virus vaccines actually injected into California’s citizens.

California’s distribution of supplied vaccines to locations where citizens can get injected is execrable. As a result, California’s injection rate is execrable. As a result of that cascade failure, California’s citizens are at severe—and unnecessary—risk.

The 11-member delegation are demanding answers from Newsom:

The state of California should explain to Californians why the vaccine distribution has had such failures, despite having months to prepare prior to the development of the vaccine[.]
…
We write to express our serious concerns regarding the State of California’s slow, opaque decision-making process, and ever-changing approach to distributing COVID vaccines, which has been met with confusion and frustration by our constituents, local public health officials, and front-line health care providers[.]

Concretely, out of 7.8 million vaccine doses delivered to California by the Federal government, the State has injected only a bit over 5 million. That leaves more than a third of the doses undelivered, potentially going to waste, since the current iterations of the vaccines have a relatively short shelf life.

Newsom’s excuse?

The issue at the end of the day is supply. We need to manufacture more Moderna vaccine, more Pfizer vaccine. We need to get the federal approval of the J&J vaccine. We need to provide ample supply so we can plan

That is, to use the technical term, a crock. It’s also insulting to our intelligence.

California, despite being told for months that one or more vaccines would be ready by the end of the year (originally by November, but medical developments don’t follow government schedules), declined to bother to plan for their delivery to the State, and so California failed to plan the logistics chain of getting delivered supplies injected into citizens.

Nor does California have a supply problem, not with that third of the supply they already have delivered undistributed and uninjected.

California—Newsom’s administration—has a performance problem. It’s still not bothering with the supplies on hand.

There’s another dark aspect to this failure to perform. That is that Newsom’s attitude is typical of Progressive-Democrats’ demand for and acceptance of control from the center. It’s also typical of the dual that is their avoidance of their personal and political responsibility as State governing personnel in our federal republic—a structure which makes States first and primarily responsible for their own domestic practices.

Too Much Dependence

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…on the central government in DC.

Sunday’s Wall Street Journal had a piece decrying the problems with getting the Wuhan Virus vaccines “the last mile” into folks’ shoulders. They’re right that that’s a serious problem. Even though the Federal government is behind schedule on getting vaccine doses into the States’ hands, those States have the bulk of those delivered vaccines still in the refrigerators, uninjected—they’re vastly behind schedule.

The States and locals, though, are mischaracterizing the problem. Typical is this:

Jeff Duchin [Health Officer & Chief, Communicable Disease Epidemiology & Immunization Section, Public Health], Seattle and King County, WA, said the federal government succeeded in helping fund and purchase vaccines that were developed in record-breaking time, but said it didn’t do nearly enough to ensure that the “last-mile” distribution efforts would be successful.

He’s badly mistaken, and that’s dangerous for Washington’s citizens, and the error itself is dangerous for all Americans. That “last mile” is, and can only be, the responsibility of the States. The Federal government has no authority there.

That’s the nature of our federal republic structure of governance.

The States—Progressive-Democrat-run and Republican-run alike—had been told for months that vaccines would be available by the end of the year. Where was their planning? Even if they didn’t believe the ability to execute commitment, or the commitment itself, that prior planning would have been useful whenever the vaccines arrived. The States chose not to bother.