COVID vax from J&J not available

The COVID vaccine from Johnson and Johnson is no longer available in the United States, by order of the CDC.

COVID vax dropped

The Johnson and Johnson COVID vaccine, also known as the Janssen vaccine, apparently is no longer made. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued this statement last week. “All remaining U.S. government stock of Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine expired May 7, 2023,” the statement said. “Dispose of any remaining Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine in accordance with local, state, and federal regulations.”

The next orders in the statement seem to be contradictory. On one hand, it treats adults who received one J&J COVID vaccine dose as having received a single-dose “primary series.” But the statement then goes on to recommend a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, two months later, for any adult “who received 1 or 2 Janssen COVID vaccine dose.” (Perhaps the statement should read, “… one of two …”)

The CDC then referred people to this statement from the Interim Clinical Considerations page. “People ages 18 years and older who received the Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine primary series dose are recommended to receive 1 bivalent mRNA vaccine dose (Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech) at least 2 months after completion of the primary series dose (for people who have not previously received any booster doses), or at least 2 months after the last monovalent booster dose.” This applies to persons who do not suffer from moderate or severe immunocompromise.

The report comes from CNN, which cited orders from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CNN additionally says “only about 7 percent” of vaccinated patients got the J&J COVID vaccine first.

Why so few J&J doses?

Paul D. Thacker, on Twitter, explained why so few people got the J&J vaccine. “The FDA,” he said, “limited the use of this vaccine” by reason of an unusually high incidence of thrombosis. In other words, blood clotting was a common hazard with this particular COVID vaccine.

At the same time, he said, “Twitter helped their client J&J on ‘messaging strategy’ for this vaccine.” By way of illustration, he quoted a tweet from his thread last month, “The Fauci Pharma Files.”

Concerns about the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, due to autoimmune response wherever the mRNA lodges in the body, remain.