Unconscionable caution

And just like that, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of vaccine doses were destroyed.

I am not joking. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, one of three lines of covid vaccines and our best bet for underserved populations, is gone. Toast. Done. Finito. As with the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe, J&J will forever be known to consumers as the blood clot shot. There is no unringing that bell.

There is nothing our wise federal government officials can do to walk this disaster back. They could tomorrow line up a hundred blue-ribbon experts with twenty Ivy-curated letters after each name to sing the praise of the J&J shot. It would not matter one whit. Your average schmoe, already leery of the shots due to months of vaccine skepticism by conservative outlets, will absolutely shut down any thought of getting the blood-clot-shot forever.

And guess what’s a far more effective generator of blood clots than the one-in-a-million covid jab? Yep: actual covid-19, which millions of suckers will now catch due to the jibbering incompetence of the bureaucrats who decided to scotch an entire line of vaccines over this incredibly rare side effect. But hey, I may have an MD but not an MPH, so let’s go to the tape:

When I was managing inpatients last year, every last patient with severe Covid got put on blood thinners if they were able to tolerate them. It was part of the automatic protocol. Because these people put up some absolutely insane clot-related lab values. Veteran ICU docs saw levels of one called D-dimer that they had literally never seen before.

What the FDA/CDC could have done, “in an abundance of caution” (not much good follows those dreaded five words!), is advise everyone getting the J&J jab to take baby aspirin for two weeks or so after. But hey, it’s just academic now. Because as of this morning, there is no J&J shot.

The trolley was headed towards six people, and our fine public servants just pulled the lever to send it towards six million.

I suppose conservatives were correct to loathe the “deep state” federal health bureaucrats, if for the wrong reason. These people weren’t in a grand conspiracy with Bill Gates to implant microchips or to take down their beloved Fanta Fuehrer. They couldn’t even manage a successful conspiracy to tie their own shoes. These people just plain suck.