[deanhills]

@deanhills
How did the SA authorities react to these J&J latest development?

Here's a good article about the status in South Africa presently:
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/...ost-lives/

In summary, South African authorities temporarily stopped vaccinations however authorities are under great pressure by local public health specialists to continue as soon as possible as only 230,000 health workers have been vaccinated to date. The Government is very behind in its immunization programme. South Africa currently only has the one vaccine - Johnson&Johnson (Pfizer is in the works but will only arrive a few weeks from now.  Johnson&Johnson is also better suited for a third world country, only one dose needed, no fancy refrigeration).  South Africa is very heavily committed and invested in the J&J vaccine.  J&J has an agreement with a pharmaceutical company in South Africa to manufacture the J&J vaccine locally that they won't be able to get out of as it is too far along.  With Oxford Astra Zenica South Africa could easily recoup its losses.  But J&J goes much deeper.  So I'm almost certain that South Africa will continue with J&J soon.  It just wants to go through the motions of appearing to be concerned and following J&J in the US.  I'm almost certain the US will resume with J&J soon as well.

I like what the article above says about chances of getting blood clots from Covid 19 being much greater than from the vaccine - I believe it is true:

But the risk of blood clots from Covid is at least several times higher. And the risk of dying from Covid versus an adverse reaction of a vaccine is barely comparable: if we achieve our goal of vaccinating 40 million people, then, in the worst scenario, about 40 may die from an adverse reaction of the vaccine. Without a vaccination programme, many thousands more will die of Covid.

I also agree with Dr. Alex Spyropoulos (see article at link below) that the blood clot comes from the body's immune response  more than from the vaccine itself.  And it is an extremely rare event with one in a million chance of occurring.

"It's not the vaccine that's causing it -- it's the body's immune response to the vaccine," said Dr. Alex Spyropoulos, a blood clot specialist and professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/scientists...d=77093834

It's still not clear why a vaccine would trigger this cascade of events, but researchers said it mimics another well-documented reaction to heparin, a common blood thinner. For this reason, the CDC and FDA have warned against using heparin to treat anyone recently vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.