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The Johnson&Johnson Vaccine’s “Stop, Drop & Roll” Moment
The Pause, The Outcome
I’m a Boston-based cancer doctor and I’ve been writing weekly fact-based-no-blame-no-rumors-all-science-all-the-time essays about Covid-19 since March 2020.
You can read my views on ways to navigate our post-vaccine world here — or about vaccines in general here — or you can read about vaccines/anti-vaxxers throughout history here.
So, J&J.
Bottom line, once again, hooray for science. As I have written from the start of all this, “The science will save us.” And look, it’s done it again.
Our scientists built complicated side-effect screening systems to catch any rare events happening after vaccines were given. They said, “We tested a hundred THOUSAND people and didn’t see anything serious but we are keeping our eye on the ball. If anything happens after a MILLION vaccines, we’ll be on it like white on rice.”
They wanted to catch everything — people hit by lightning after a vaccine, people watching a scary movie and feeling heart palpitations after their shot, people getting rashes on their earlobes, people getting blood clots — whether it was related to the vaccine or not.
They watched for side effects in real time.
They hadn’t seen anything much…
