Between The Headlines: J&J Vaccine Pause
4 May 2021
Federal Regulators Pause, Then Unpause, Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 Vaccine
What happened? On April 13th, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced they were putting the government’s authorization of Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot COVID-19 vaccine on pause while an independent advisory committee to the CDC evaluated the risk of rare blood clotting issues observed in some women who had taken the vaccine. Ten days later, on April 23rd, the advisory committee reaffirmed that it still recommends the vaccine — which is highly effective at preventing infection and has a perfect record so far on preventing death caused by the disease — for everyone ages 18 and older. Within hours, CDC and FDA announced that they recommended resuming the use of the vaccine without any restrictions on who should be offered it.
How was it covered? Major outlets ran stories highlighting the hold when it was announced, with many putting out “explainer” articles describing what was known about the link between the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and the rare blood clots. Some, including Fox News and NPR, followed the initial coverage with reports that a European Union regulating body had said the Johnson & Johnson shot should be labeled with a warning about unusual blood clots with low platelets.
What related misinformation circulated? These developments, especially in the interim while the vaccine was on hold, had many elements to suggest it would be vulnerable to being misused and misunderstood. There are large-number comparative probabilities involved (six cases of blood clotting out of millions of doses administered) that are hard for untrained individuals to weight correctly; a government announcement that seemed to confirm what was already being said by proponents of anti-vaccine misinformation; and a government reversal that could be twisted to look like a conspiratorial coverup, to name just a few. Indeed, two days after the pause was announced, the most popular article on it on Facebook was one posted by a “news analyst & hip-hop artist” (his words) called An0maly, who has said the pandemic is just a cover for a government power grab and who had run afoul of Facebook’s content rules just the day before. An0maly’s wording on this post was not deemed factually incorrect and so he managed to avoid having it removed, but others including known anti-vaccine personalities Robert Kennedy, Jr. and Rizza Islam, and even some (Republican) state lawmakers in Pennsylvania, pounced on the pause announcement as proof that all three of the authorized vaccines are unsafe and should be avoided. Other vaccine-related misinformation sprung up at the same time as the Johnson & Johnson pause, with posts calling the vaccines “experimental,” claiming they had skipped animal testing phases or clinical trials, or asserting that there is evidence the mRNA vaccines cause infertility, neurocognitive problems, or reduce life expectancy — despite none of thatbeing true. (Point to ponder: How would we even know, so early on, about impact to life expectancy? Hmmmm.)
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