Shipments of Johnson & Johnson vaccine halted

Shipments of Johnson & Johnson vaccine halted

Rough spot to be in. I hope they can get this resolved quickly. I know several people who would prefer to take their vaccine over the others available.

What do you think?

 

I think it's a blessing in disguise. Johnson & Johnson Covid Vaccine doesn't exactly have the best of records:
Johnson & Johnson Pauses COVID Vaccine Trials After ‘Unexplained Illness’

The company as a whole doesn't have a good record either:
Johnson & Johnson Has a Long Rap Sheet — Why Should We Trust Its Vaccine?

 

I was leaning toward that one because it's only one shot and doesn't have the mRna. Now, I'm back to square one on trying to decide which one I'm least afraid of. Sigh.

I wonder if they'll be able to recover their reputation enough to send the shipments later. This doesn't do much for their public image.

 

I had the two shot Pfizer vaccine over a month ago and never had a side effect of any kind. Nothing, zip, zero, nada.

 

It doesn't matter to me because I'm not taking it, but it is fun to talk about.

From the cynical view, I can't help but wonder if any vaccines have been 'forgeries' with nothing but saline, but that's not likely the case.

No matter, it appears highly likely that as the virus mutates as all virus do, the currently fashionable injections will become obsolete.

The Great Vaccine Scam: Even Establishment Experts and Scientists Admit the Jabs Are Ineffective - LewRockwell

This sounds like a win-win for Pharma, as desperate citizens will be taking these shots for long into the future, ensuring long term profits for Pharma. It's not really about Public Health, and never has been. As Rand Paul noted to Fauci, it's about theater. And profits.

 

I had no adverse reaction to both Moderna shots with the 2nd shot being Feb 2nd and no, I'm not over 65

 

Glad you are doing well with your vaccinations.

 

I'm glad you had no adverse effects, you decided to take it as it is your decision, and I intend to pass as it is mine (at least until they make it a FELONY not to). And I'm no rabid anti-vaccer, next year I'll be getting my flu shot as I have for 30 years. But what precious little trust I had in the government and it's agencies went out the window with Covid, utterly politized from the get-go.

 

the part in bold is quoted for truth

 

The Defender seems to have a hard-on for slamming J&J, unless they treat all big companies that way. I read both articles in your links, & they did not seem especially concerning, to me. There were two basic lines of criticism. The first is that J&J is new to the vaccine business, which suggests that all their experience w/ other medical products, devices, drugs, etc., is inapplicable to vaccines. The second line of attack is one any problems, corrupt practices, or investigations that have ensued from their pharmaceutical, medical device (e.g., artificial hip), & consumer products (e.g., baby powder) divisions. Here's the thing-- if one is not to think of those things as counting as part of J&J 's experience, when it comes to vaccines, then it seems inconsistent to count any negatives from those pursuits against them: since they are supposedly completely unrelated. See what I mean? Count both the good & the bad, in the other parts of their business, or count neither, seems the fair way to do it.

As to those, "bads," while we would, of course, prefer our vaccine-maker to have a 141 year history that is beyond reproach, that's not the case with ANY big Pharma company. In fact, in many of the specific instances mentioned, J&J is joined by a cadre of other big-name players. The fact of the matter is that these sorts of things just come with the territory, are to be expected, if one looks into almost any big player in the pharmaceutical field. It's kind of like studying airlines, in search of the ones with no crashes in their history (I think that's only Quantas).

But RELATIVELY speaking, the things cited in the articles were not particularly damning. A lot of it, in fact, has more to do with unfair business practices like antitrust accusations, price-gouging, & paying doctors to push their products. Unfortunately, this is par for the course. Certainly not enough to make me doubt the safety of their vaccine. I'm confident that their trials have been thoroughly reviewed. They've partnered with long-experienced Merck, for production of their vaccine (whom I no longer hold against them, their having producing Pervitin, methamphetamine pills for the Nazi army). In fact, since the adenovirus method J&J uses is well studied & understood, the case can be made that this established technology is the safer route, compared to the completely new mRNA vaccines. That is, even though we don't KNOW of any reason to be worried about this new type of vaccine-- in fact, there are a good number in the medical field, it seems, who believe, at this point, that mRNA is the safest way, yet, to vaccinate-- we really have little reason to believe that, if there were going to be unforseen problems with that method, especially long-term ones, that we WOULD know about them.

The adenovirus vector has numerous advantages over conventional vaccines. Adenovirus, btw, is the common cold. This vaccine, like the mRNA ones, inserts a gene for the body to produce a Covid-19 spiked protein, & then mobilize against it, readying the immune system to fight off an actual Covid infection. The adenovirus vaccine was used extensively, in Africa, with an Ebola vaccine, so we do have a better sense of its safety. There are several others of this general, viral-vector type, that have been developed & are in trials, for things from TB, to Flu, to HIV, to Rabies. Here are several interesting articles.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/hcp/viral-vector-vaccine-basics.html


https://www.news-medical.net/amp/health/What-are-Adenovirus-Based-Vaccines.aspx


https://www.medpagetoday.com/podcasts/trackthevax/91323


Here's a SNIP from the 2nd one:

What are the advantages of adenovirus-based vaccines?
There are several benefits of using adenoviral vectors for transferring viral antigens into host cells to trigger desired immune responses. For example, because of the relatively large-sized and well-characterized genome, adenoviruses are easy to manipulate genetically. Because adenoviruses cause mild infections in humans and their viral replication can be inhibited by genetic modifications, adenovirus-based vaccines are mostly safe and come with very few side-effects.

These viruses are capable of infecting a wide range of dividing and nondividing cells because of broad tissue tropism. Other factors that make adenovirus-based vaccines more advantageous include higher thermostability, ability to grow to high titers, and easy application through systemic or respiratory mucosal routes.

Unlike other viral vectors, such as lentivirus and retrovirus, the risk of insertion mutagenesis is much less in the case of adenoviruses as they do not integrate the viral genome with the host genome.

Another major advantage of adenovirus-based vaccines is their ability to induce strong and sustained innate and adaptive immune responses. In particular, adenoviruses can induce both CD4+ T cell- and CD8+ T cell-mediated immune responses, which make them appropriate candidate vectors for developing vaccines against pathogens that are primarily eliminated by the cell-based immune system.

 

Continued from the previous post.
SNIP from the third link, which is a podcast interview:

And that's where the adenoviral vaccines come in. We've been working with these really since the 1970s. We've been studying, working with these. So not just two decades, but I guess we're going to say 50 years, five decades.

This was the technology that was used when they had issues with Ebola, right, in West Africa. They were very able to quickly get a couple of these up and running. Two Ebola vaccines were actually engineered using the viral vector technology, and were used in a couple hundred thousand people in the outbreaks in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

So yeah, in many ways this is technology that hundreds of thousands of people have used. We have a side effect profile. We have safety profile data. And now with AstraZeneca and J&J we have a couple of COVID vaccines with really good, good data as well as really impressive safety profiles.

Marshall: Now, this is interesting, Dr. Griffin, because you mentioned that the research goes back five decades, but you only really mentioned the Ebola vaccine. Is that the only vaccine that currently exists because that's only a couple of years old?

Griffin: Yeah. The challenge with vaccine technology has often been the market for our newer ideas. Right. You know, we do the flu vaccine, a number of the childhood vaccines. But we really have a price point for vaccines being: "Oh, it's only going to cost a few dollars."

I don't think we've appreciated until this current pandemic, how valuable it can be to spending money on vaccines and getting new technologies out there. We've been working with these viral vectors for decades now. But it wasn't until we had issues like Zika, RSV, malaria. And then as I mentioned, the Ebola outbreaks, where we really took these viral vectors and really got them out there to hundreds of thousands of people.
<END SNIP>


And, from the 1st link (which is the CDC site):

• Vaccines of this type have been well-studied in clinical trials, and viral vector vaccines have been used to respond to recent Ebola outbreaks.
• Viral vector vaccines use a modified version of a different virus as a vector to deliver instructions, in the form of genetic material (a gene), to a cell. The vaccine does not cause infection with either COVID-19 or the virus that is used as the vector.
• The genetic material delivered by the viral vector does not integrate into a person’s DNA.

A Vehicle for Vaccine Delivery
Many vaccines use a weakened or inactivated form of the target pathogen to trigger an immune response. Viral vector vaccines use a different virus as a vector instead, which delivers important instructions (in the form of a gene) to our cells. For COVID-19 vaccines, a modified virus delivers a gene that instructs our cells to make a SARS-CoV-2 antigen called the spike protein. This antigen triggers production of antibodies and a resulting immune response. The virus used in a viral vector vaccine poses no threat of causing illness in humans because it has been modified or, in some cases, because the type of virus used as the vector cannot cause disease in humans.


A Closer Look at How COVID-19 Viral Vector Vaccines Work
In the development of viral vector vaccines, several different viruses have been used as vectors, including influenza, vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), measles virus, and adenovirus, which causes the common cold. Adenovirus is one of the viral vectors used in some late-stage COVID-19 vaccine trials.

In viral vector vaccines, a gene unique to the virus being targeted is added to the viral vector. For COVID-19 vaccines, this gene codes for the spike protein, which is only found on the surface of SARS-CoV-2. The viral vector is used to shuttle this gene into a human cell. Once inside a cell, the viral vector uses this gene and the cell’s machinery to produce the spike protein and display it on the cell’s surface.

Once displayed on the cell’s surface, the protein (or antigen) causes the immune system to begin producing antibodies and activating T-cells to fight off what it thinks is an infection. These antibodies are specific to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which means the immune system is primed to protect against future infection.

Viral Vector Vaccines Have Been Used for Recent Disease Outbreaks
Since the 1970s when scientists began creating viral vectors, hundreds of scientific studies have been done and published around the world concerning the creation of viral vector vaccines. A number of human clinical trials have been conducted for viral vector vaccines against different infectious diseases, including Zika virus, influenza viruses, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), HIV, and malaria. Two Ebola vaccines using viral vector technology have been used in recent Ebola outbreaks in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


Challenges and Benefits of Viral Vector Vaccines
Because humans develop immune responses when exposed to viruses, our bodies can potentially have pre-existing immunity to vector viruses. Since adenoviral vectors are based on natural viruses that some of us might already have been exposed to, the vaccines might not work for everyone. To overcome this challenge, scientists have used uncommon viruses or viruses only found in other species (such as chimpanzees) as viral vectors.

Adenoviruses are often used for viral vector vaccines because they can induce a robust immune response. The adenovirus genome has been well studied by scientists. Adenovirus vector vaccines are easy to design and produce on a mass scale, making them well suited for pandemic response. VSV has been used effectively as a vector for Ebola vaccines, and numerous other viral vectors have shown promise in early clinical trials.