CDC Vaccine Advisory Panel to Meet on Severe Condition Linked to J&J’s COVID-19 Vaccine

By Zachary Stieber December 16, 2021 Updated: December 16, 2021biggersmaller Print

A panel of experts who advise the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccines is meeting Thursday to discuss updates to a severe condition linked to Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine.

The panel will listen to presentations by CDC officials on thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), which U.S. drug regulators say has a “causal relationship” with the jab, according to a draft agenda for the meeting.

The syndrome is a combination of blood clots and low blood platelet levels.

Concern over patients getting the syndrome after getting the vaccine led to a near-nationwide pause in administering the shot in the spring, but the pause was lifted after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) determined the benefits of the vaccine outweighed its risks.

Since then, more evidence has emerged linking the syndrome to the vaccine.

Researchers with the CDC last month found people who got the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shot were far more likely to experience the syndrome when compared to people who got a Moderna or Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine.

The reporting rate to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a system run by the CDC and the FDA, was 3.55 per million doses administered for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, compared to 0.0057 per million doses administered after one of the other vaccines.

The rate was the highest among women aged 30 to 39.

As of Dec. 16, 1,700 cases of TTS following administration of J&J’s vaccine were reported to VAERS, according to an Epoch Times review of the database. There were also 1,429 reports of thrombosis and 265 reports of thrombocytopenia. Altogether, the conditions were said to have resulted in 89 deaths.

VAERS is a passive system that anyone can report to but studies have indicated the number of reports submitted to the system is an undercount of issues following vaccination.

The FDA updated fact sheets for the vaccine this week, warning people with a history of TTS following vaccination not to get the J&J jab. TTS is now listed as a contraindication. That means people can potentially obtain medical exemptions to vaccine mandates if they have had adverse reactions to adenovirus-vectored vaccines like the J&J shot.

“The FDA continues to find that the known and potential benefits of the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine outweigh its known and potential risks in individuals 18 years of age and older. Individuals should speak to their health care provider to determine which COVID-19 vaccine is most appropriate for their own situation,” the agency said in a statement.

J&J told news outlets in a statement that company officials have been working on understanding and communicating all known risks, including TTS, and “strongly support raising awareness of the signs and symptoms of this rare event.”

The CDC panel meeting starts at 12 p.m. Eastern. Members are scheduled to vote on “updated recommendations for use” of J&J’s vaccine at 2:30 p.m. Eastern, according to the draft agenda. The Epoch Times will stream the meeting on its website.

The panel is meeting “to hear the latest information on vaccines and disease epidemiology,” Jasmine Reed, a CDC spokeswoman, told The Epoch Times in an email when asked about the particulars of the vote and more details on the meeting.

Panel members weighed recommending officials list specific warnings to women under 50 who were considering or about to get the vaccine, but ultimately decided against that path.

The CDC tells clinicians that women younger than 50 “should be made aware of a rare risk of blood clots with low platelets following vaccination and the availability of other COVID-19 vaccines where this risk has not been observed.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/cdc-vaccine-advisory-panel-to-meet-on-severe-condition-linked-to-jjs-covid-19-vaccine_4160946.html

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China Poses Bigger Threat to Democracies After 2022 Winter Olympics, Expert Says

By Frank Fang and Joshua Philipp December 16, 2021 Updated: December 16, 2021biggersmaller Print

The communist regime in China is going to be a bigger threat to the international rules-based order after the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics, a China expert warned.

“The regime is going to become, I would expect, even more hostile to the established order than it has been before,” said Bradly Thayer, adding the Games would embolden Beijing to increase its push against some democracies, particularly India and Taiwan.

Thayer is one of the founding members of the U.S.-based group Committee on the Present Danger: China (CPDC), and coauthor of the book “How China Sees the World.” He sounded the alarm on Dec. 15 during an EpochTV webinar titled “China’s Genocide Games.”

China also hosted the 2008 Summer Olympics and Thayer explained that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) sees the Games as an opportunity to boost its “prestige,” as well as “forcing the world to recognize what [the] CCP has accomplished.”

“It also allows Beijing to project the message that the future belongs to China,” he added.

Inside China, Thayer said that China’s current human rights abuses are “going to remain and certainly will tighten” next year after the Games.

The 2022 Winter Olympics are scheduled to start in China’s capital of Beijing on Feb. 4 next year and end on Feb. 20.

More than half a dozen countries have announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Games, including Australia, Belgium, Canada, Lithuania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Biden administration announced the boycott on Dec. 6, saying Washington “cannot proceed with business as usual” in the face of the communist regime’s “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity.”

In response to the U.S. boycott, China’s foreign ministry said that it will take “absolute countermeasures” and the United States will “pay a price” for its decision.

On Dec. 13, a coalition of more than 250 campaign groups—representing Tibetans, Uyghurs, Hongkongers, Chinese, Southern Mongolians, Taiwanese, and others—issued a joint letter, calling on European Union leaders to boycott the Games.

It was a “moral failure of the West,” Thayer said, that the Chinese regime was allowed to host the event. As for the U.S. diplomatic boycott, he said it was “the least” of what the United States should do.

“So much more should have been done by the Biden administration. They should have worked far earlier, to bring about a coalition of nations to send very important signals to the Chinese regime,” he said.

Some U.S. lawmakers have called on the Biden administration to impose a total boycott of the Games, meaning that U.S. athletes would not compete in the event.

The safety of U.S. athletes was also discussed during the webinar, particularly over whether the Chinese regime would kidnap U.S. athletes as retaliation against the United States.

On the kidnapping concern, Laura Harth, campaign director and human rights activist at Madrid-based Safeguard Defenders, said, “I would say it’s too far-fetched … imagine the backlash.”

However, she explained that the concern is still there considering the regime’s past record on hostage diplomacy and exit bans.

“I’d be very careful if I were just an athlete. And I’d be very careful I were the governments or the National Olympics Committee sending them,” Harth added.

Currently, the State Department’s travel advisory on China warns U.S. citizens that Beijing “arbitrarily enforces local laws” and that they could be wrongfully detained or subject to an exit ban “without due process of law.” What’s more, it also says the Chinese regime uses arbitrary detention to “gain bargaining leverage over foreign governments.”

Harth pointed to a case involving Jeff Harper, a former Iowa Wesleyan University basketball player. Harper was held in isolation at an apartment complex in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen for eight months before he was released in September 2020. He was detained and accused of causing a man’s death following an altercation.

In a recent report by Safeguard Defenders, Harper stated he lost 40 pounds during his solitary confinement. He was quoted as saying: “I would just sit around all day and do push-ups and work out. Stare out the window and look at the airplanes go by and hoping that this day would pass.”

“So I mean, this has happened. Why not again?” Harth said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-poses-bigger-threat-to-democracies-after-2022-winter-olympics-expert-says_4160800.html