Nix Vax

The Johnson and Johnson COVID vaccine is easily the biggest letdown of the year, and it's only April.

The government has put a pause on Johnson & Johnson vaccines due to the vaccine possibly causing blood clots in six individuals who received them, and though that is a miniscule number in comparison to the large number of people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the Food and Drug Administration ad the Centers for Disease Control are taking no chances.  The pause may be as short as six days, or - more likely - it may last into infinity.

Johnson & Johnson's vaccine was considered a game changer when it was first approved for emergency use in late February, as it is easier to store and transport than the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines and requires only one dose.  It could have raised the number of fully vaccinated Americans exponentially, but thanks to all sorts of problems with it - this latest one being a game changer in reverse  - it never got going.  

So now, herd immunity is going to take more time than hoped for.  Not so much in the United States - it turns out that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine accounts for less than 5 percent of the U.S. vaccine supply - but, keeping in mind that the similarly single-dose, easy-to-store AstraZeneca vaccine has also been linked to blood clots, it will make vaccinating the Third World much more difficult simply because transporting and distributing the two-dose mRNA vaccines that have to be frozen at a hundred below in places like Ecuador or Nigeria as easy as raising the Titanic.  Even less easy will be convincing vaccine-hesitant Americans to take any vaccine.  You know what that means? Walking around looking like ninja warriors and keeping six feet or more apart well into this decade, never mind this year.  Because the COVID pandemic isn't over anywhere until it's over everywhere.

It looks more and more, in fact, like we won't end the pandemic.  The pandemic will end us. 😟