I felt like a lotto winner the day I got the J&J jab in Missouri, and I still do

I felt like a lotto winner the day I got the “one and done” Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine here in Missouri, and I’d do it again, too. That shot was my ticket to (relative) freedom, and my contribution to the herd immunity that will finally put this pandemic behind us. The more of us who get vaccinated, the better, and the sooner that happens, the safer we all will be.

Like the Pfizer and Moderna jabs, the J&J vaccine completely — yes, as in 100% — prevented hospitalizations and deaths in clinical trials. When offered this miracle in a syringe, what could possibly outweigh our best chance to get out ahead of even deadlier variants? Do you think there’s a single person grieving one of the 563,000 Americans who’ve died of COVID-19 who doesn’t wish their spouse or parent or child had had the opportunity to roll up his or her sleeve?

One of the surest living saints I’ve ever had the privilege to interview, Sister Laura Gemignani, who was working 13-hour days in the hospital she was running in Nzara, South Sudan, when I met her there in 2018, wouldn’t be in critical condition on a ventilator back in her native Italy right now if she’d had even a shot at that shot.

My extraordinarily kind former New York Times colleague Alan Finder, who died of COVID-19 in March of 2020, would still be making the world a better place, and Honestie Hodges, the young Michigan police reformer who died last November at age 14, would still be making it safer.

Because I did have the chance that so many others did not live to line up for, I can see my also-vaccinated mom without worry now, and hug my also-vaccinated friends, five of whom have already gotten the squeeze. Face-to-face interviews no longer require the socially-distanced shouting through masks at the outdoor venues that were so invigorating over the winter. And I’m hopeful that we’ll soon see our son in Vermont after nearly a year.

So this week’s news that J&J distribution has been put on “pause” because six women out of the nearly 7 million Americans who’ve gotten it have developed serious blood clots does feel like a terrible setback. The decision was clearly the right one; one of those women died.

But this pause is sure to deepen the concerns of the already vaccine hesitant, despite President Joe Biden’s sensible argument that it ought to have the opposite effect, by showing that the government really is putting safety first.

Naturally, the president who never misses an opportunity to make a bad situation worse weighed in, too: “The Biden Administration did a terrible disservice to people throughout the world by allowing the FDA and CDC to call a ‘pause’ in the use of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. The results of this vaccine have been extraordinary but now it’s reputation will be permanently challenged. … The only way we defeat the China Virus is with our great vaccines!”

If he hadn’t called it “the China Virus,” oblivious or indifferent to the harm and hurt that’s causing Asian Americans, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with that last part. Yes, end this nightmare the only way we ever will, with “our great vaccines!” Which include the already needlessly vilified Johnson & Johnson option.

Vaccines are not ‘made from aborted babies’

Months ago, I’d heard from a relative that none of her friends would get the J&J and I shouldn’t, either, because it’s “made from aborted babies.” No, it isn’t. First, fetal cell lines are not the same as fetal tissue. It is true that stem cells harvested from abortions performed in the 1970s and ‘80s have been grown in labs ever since, creating fetal cell lines that have led to the development of all sorts of lifesaving medical therapies.

Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines used a kidney cell line isolated from a fetus in 1973 — though whether from a miscarriage or an abortion is unknown — to confirm that the vaccines work, since viruses grow best in human tissue. And the J&J vaccine did use a retinal cell line isolated from a fetus in 1985 in both its development and its manufacture.

But even the Vatican has announced that “when ethically irreproachable COVID-19 vaccines are not available … it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetuses in their research and production process.”

The statement went on to say that “the morality of vaccination depends not only on the duty to protect one’s own health, but also on the duty to pursue the common good” by protecting the health of strangers. Pope Francis has said repeatedly that we have a moral duty to get vaccinated, and I have a hard time seeing anyone muddying that message as on the side of life.

In the race between the vaccines and the variants, meanwhile, too many of our Missouri officials might as well be cheering on the variants. Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, who has gone around without a mask and completely muffed vaccine distribution, unhelpfully keeps calling vaccination a personal choice. The GOP-led Missouri House is trying to keep even private businesses from requiring proof of vaccination. That’s exactly the type of government overreach they’re always decrying, but is a perfect plan if the goal is to extend this pandemic indefinitely.

So how much worse does the J&J pause make things? One Star colleague who has never taken any shot as an adult, because “I don’t like the idea of injecting anything into my body,” was never going to get any of the vaccines, he said, so this latest news didn’t mean much to him.

But a friend in Northern Virginia said her housemate is “almost gleeful that she can use this as an excuse not to get a vaccine,” which she sees as having been rushed. This popular talking point ignores the fact that scientists have been studying coronaviruses for half a century, and that the COVID-19 vaccines built on decades of previous research on related viruses.

‘Get to herd immunity without me’

Our health care decisions are very much our own business, of course, which is why some of the COVID-19 denialists claiming the whole thing was a hoax mocked pro-choicers at protests in Topeka last spring by waving anti-mask signs that said, “My body, my choice.” Now there are anti-vaccine shirts with the same message.

Fair enough, but refusing to be vaccinated is a choice that can and will kill other people — people with no choice in the matter. And again, every person who opts out of getting us closer to herd immunity prolongs this pandemic for all of us.

Several Kansas City, Kansas women I was interviewing on another topic have mentioned in passing they’d never get any vaccine, both because of the very real history of the shameful government-run Tuskegee syphilis experiments on Black men, and out of fear caused by some of the many pernicious lies about the vaccines being spread on social media. One woman mentioned the video, widely shared on Facebook last year, that falsely claimed vaccines would contain a tracking microchip. It included doctored footage that made it look as though Bill Gates was in on this nonexistent conspiracy.

The story of the six women with serious blood clots is not made up, though, and needs to be thoroughly investigated, even though COVID-19 is itself known to cause serious blood clots, and is far riskier than the vaccine. But this pause will give pause to the already skeptical. And it will give them something a lot more real than tracking chips to point to.

Sean Curry, the 44-year-old manager of Padu’s Cafe in Independence, said in an interview that yes, it has made him even more hesitant, though he wasn’t in any hurry even before hearing the news.

“I think it is a tremendous feat of science that they were able to come up with a vaccine in such a short time. But I have had reservations, especially with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. For me my trust with Johnson and Johnson has been shaky, still reeling from the whole talcum powder deal. And I have a lot of problems with a lot of big pharma companies.”

“I think I will eventually get there. I’m just one of those people who has to convince myself. Plus, there are plenty of people who should be in line ahead of me. I think they will get to herd immunity without me.”

Everything he’s saying is reasonable, and it’s great that he says he probably will get there eventually on his own. But if too many people assume we’ll get to herd immunity without them, then we won’t.

A former D.C. colleague of mine, Neda Moyer, also mentioned the Johnson & Johnson baby powder fiasco in explaining why she’s not getting vaccinated right away, either.

“Here is my reasoning for not getting the vaccine. I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 27. I used baby powder as a teen and young adult. Now there is proof that baby powder could cause ovarian cancer. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in my 50s. Then I found out that prolonged use of Zantac could cause breast cancer. … I just want more than a few months of use before I jump aboard. Thanks to all of you forging ahead.”

And thank you for explaining your understandable caution, even if my own history of breast cancer only made me more eager to get the shot, since those of us with compromised immune systems really are at greater risk of getting seriously ill if we do contract COVID-19.

I think most people will get vaccinated in the end, especially when they see others enjoying greater freedom and avoiding serious disease. Meanwhile, those of us with no such qualms need to work on our own loved ones — with love, of course, since scorn never convinced anyone.