This Is Fine

11:49 AM

U.S. calls for pause on Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine reut.rs/3g5Hchu

Blood clots again

Memor-X

does Astrazenica and Johnson & Johnson both use that new RNA Technology that's supposedly a game changer to Crononoviruses?

@Memor-X no, actually

they use the older method of using a benign virus to introduce the protein

Memor-X

are they are only ones (we know of) that do that? because i'm curious that if the blood clotting is only happening with a certain subset of similar vaccines

would also be curious if like Astrazenica the chance of clotting goes up the younger you'd get. seems almost the reverse of what you'd expect to happen

@Memor-X no, they are based on adenoviruses

and yes, there is a suspicion that the adenovirus part could trigger this particular side effect

To put the AZ vaccine into perspective:

source: twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/1381935085629407233

11:57 AM

@Memor-X the immune system of younger people is stronger, so it's plausible that a side effect mediated by the immune system would trigger more in young people compared to older people with weaker immune systems

@Nzall the AZ and J&J side effects are a different and unusual kind of thrombose, which are much more dangerous, you can't compare the numbers like that

and the AZ frequency is estimated at 1 in 100,000 right now. And the 16.5% for COVID look far too high, I'd suspect that is among hospitalized cases or patients in intensive care

Besides, seems pretty normal to go "hang on what" for a thing that lacks full approval

Memor-X

@MadScientist i was thinking if that could be the reason like an allergy or something where the immune system is going into overdrive and overkills

and now i'm thinking of blood clots in the same way as how the mRNA Vaccine is described in XKCD - xkcd.com/2425

AZ and J&J blood clots are just all the destroyed X-Wings in your blood system

or maybe just Porkins

Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia

The mechanism is suspected to be similar to this one:

Heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) is the development of thrombocytopenia (a low platelet count), due to the administration of various forms of heparin, an anticoagulant. HIT predisposes to thrombosis (the abnormal formation of blood clots inside a blood vessel) because platelets release microparticles that activate thrombin, thereby leading to thrombosis. When thrombosis is identified the condition is called heparin-induced thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (HITT). HIT is caused by the formation of abnormal antibodies that activate platelets. If someone receiving heparin develops new or worsening...

12:17 PM

@MadScientist It's hard to really establish how frequent it really is. It is such a low frequency that even a single case more or less has significant impact on the X in the "1 in X cases" rate. At most it's a dozen per million. And it's possible that this is linked to the Adenovirus that's being used as a carrier for the viral load, and not the virus itself. theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/13/… states there's a test

that can be done in order to determine whether someone is suffering from this side effect

@Nzall The 1 in 100,000 is an estimate from the EMA press conference. There's of course a huge error bar there, but there are more than a hundred cases for AZ known, so it's not like this is a complete guess

@MadScientist It appears to also depend on location. Europe is reporting a higher frequency than Australia

In the US, they had 6 cases of this clot out of almost 7M people who were vaccinated using J&J

like yeah this shit sucks but again, they want to be certain it's only 6

12:46 PM

While the trial of Derek Chauvin is ongoing, Brooklyn Center MN police shoot and kill a 20 year old unarmed black man during a traffic stop

@Unionhawk Is this the same case where the officer claimed they meant to use their taser, or is this a different case?

this is the same

IT's hard to keep track.

After MN police killed Phillando Castille during a traffic stop in 2016, the state invested $12m in additional training

Which clearly worked

oopsie woopsie I only meant to electrocute a guy during a traffic stop not shoot him

mr governor of MN can the rest of the department terrorize everyone in the twin cities area some more because of my mistake thanks

(the governor issued a 7pm curfew and departments across the region just went hog wild, pun intended, including one instance of chemical weapons deployment inside an apartment building)

1:01 PM

@MadScientist I haven't yet figured out what the bad conspiracy take is going to be but Hillary Clinton got CVST in 2012 so I'm sure someone will come up with something

@Unionhawk I suppose you need to do something to control all these riots. I mean, what else are they supposed to do, stop shooting unarmed black men so these riots don't happen to begin with?

So far a few states have simply swapped out the J&J vaccine for one of the others for appointments that were scheduled today, so no immediate impact for those areas

Since the one US-based production vendor for the J&J vaccine had all those violations and ruined a bunch of doses I'm not sure what the stockpile breakdown looks like right now

1:46 PM

The White House is saying J&J only accounts for 5% of vaccinations now and that they're working with state and local partners to swap in Moderna or Pfizer vaccines instead

Not sure if the wording is meant to imply that only 5% of administered vaccinations have been J&J (which isn't that useful) or if 5% of available vaccinations (possibly including those already administered) are J&J

2:33 PM

FDA meeting seems to imply the pause should only be for a few days to update guidance

Yuuki

2:56 PM

i'm seeing posts from /r/Conservative and /r/Libertarian hitting /r/all and they're about how the police should be accountable for incompetence (i.e. mistaking a gun for a taser) and i'm wondering if i'm taking crazy pills

SaintWacko

@Yuuki Yeah, occasionally rational posts pop up in there and I have to double check what sub they're from

Yuuki

huh, so apparently that's a thing

3 hours later…

5:39 PM

@Unionhawk The officer has resigned forbes.com/sites/melissaholzberg/2021/04/13/…

> Kim Potter, a 26-year veteran of the Brooklyn Center Police Department, wrote in her resignation letter that it was in the “best interest” of the department and community that she resigned “immediately.”

She also used to be a union president: washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/04/13/…

6:40 PM

Police chief has also resigned reut.rs/3uQRlTd

5 hours later…

11:34 PM

> The #Nevada Assembly has voted 26-16 to abolish the state's #deathpenalty. The death-penalty repeal bill, AB 395, now advances to the state senate

Jolenealaska

Oooh, I love seeing that

Have you seen anything about its chances in the senate?