The good old “abundance of caution” is back in the news, thanks to Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which, like the AstraZeneca, is in the spotlight for potentially causing blood clots. Both of those are adenovirus vector vaccines, as opposed to the mRNA Pfizer/Moderna vaccines (no accusations of blood clots there), so that adds to the correlation.

Here are some numbers:

In the U.S., close to 7 million doses of J&J have been administered. There have been reports of 6 potential cases of blood clots. That’s less than a one-in-a-million chance of developing this particular complication… and one of those cases was lethal, so there’s a close to one in 7 million chance of dying from the J&J vaccine. If it’s responsible for that.

Of the 6 cases, 100% of them were young women between the ages of 18 and 48.

Here’s something else that young women ages 18 to 48 do… they take birth control pills, and they have babies. If you throw that into the mix:

We hear that 1 in 1,000 women on birth control develop blood clots. The number is actually a little lower… more like 0.3 to 0.9… as in 3 to 9 out of 10,000. Also relevant is that in the 3 months after giving birth, that number goes up to 40 to 60 out of 10,000.

I really have no idea how much of that applies to these particular women, except to note that throwing a one-in-a-million factor into it changes nothing. It’s the sort of rounding error that gets lost in the mix. Insurance companies view events beyond one-in-a-million as “impossible”, which makes them easy to insure.

Nevertheless, in this age of litigation and ass-covering and risk mitigation, the CDC and FDA slammed on the brakes until everyone dances around a bit and indemnifies themselves, and then they can get back to it.

In the meantime… as with AstraZeneca, I assume the U.S. is sitting on large shipments of unused J&J vaccine. J&J has, for the moment, halted shipments to Europe. Don’t let it go to waste! We here in Canada would welcome it with, literally, open arms.

Dr. Henry and Premier Horgan and Minister Dix continually remind us all that our infrastructure presently supports much more vaccine-delivery capacity than the supply that’s feeding it. Great! Please secure a few million unused doses of that J&J and get it up here. Perhaps don’t make it the first choice to give young women (optics), but I know a lot of old men (I’m one of them!) who’d happily, unquestionably, without hesitation and with profound gratitude accept it.

Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen… one, because we here in B.C. have zero leverage to be asking for anything… and two, the Americans will quickly come to their senses and realize that even if these two vaccines, J&J and AstraZeneca, actually introduce a one-in-a-million chance of a complication, the benefit is far outweighed by the risk… and the intelligent thing would be to resume vaccinations as soon as possible. As soon as the $2,250-per-hour lawyers are done with it, they’ll be back in business.