re: Johnson and Johnson Vaccine Pause

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The percentage of people in the US that get blood clots each year with no identifying cause is roughly .009%. 900,000 people out of about 350 million people.

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I would agree that people don't understand basic statistics and coincidence. A lot of uncritical people see any correlation as a cause and effect relationship.

However, this is not any old embolism, so the numbers you cite are moot. In this case, we are seeing an extremely rare type of clot called Cerebral Venous Sinus Thrombosis (CVST). Johns Hopkins University's website estimates it to occur in about 5 out of one million individuals yearly. (I think I heard the FDA guy on TV say it's about 15-30 out of a million). Either way, it's very, very rare.

But that's not all. CVST is a clot, but these patients are also seeing thrombocytopenia (very low platelet counts). So you have clotting and later the platelets drop extremely low and they bleed into their brains. This is sometimes seen in people who receive the drug heparin.