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Vaccine NewsJohnson & Johnson vaccine is delayed by a U.S. factory mixup. (nytimes.com)

submitted by StevenSanders90210I'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹

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[–]doctorwhodioI'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 308 points309 points  (94 children)

Okay, how bad is this?

[–]LMoE 503 points504 points  (60 children)

15 million does in trash

[–]iuthnj34Boosted! ✨💉✅ 115 points116 points  (2 children)

And since J&J is a one shot dose, this would be like 30 million doses destroyed if it was Pfizer/Moderna.

[–]aimglitchz 24 points25 points  (1 child)

J&j is still testing their 2 shot

[–]kex06Boosted! ✨💉✅ 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Hopefully those two guys won't be in charge if the testing either

[–]Vagabond21 47 points48 points  (1 child)

It’s about 6 days worth of shots given at our current rate.

[–]alexbananas 34 points35 points  (0 children)

12 since its one dose

[–]IanMazgelis 107 points108 points  (6 children)

Fortunately the bulk of the vaccine plan wasn't relying on Johnson and Johnson, and it is the least effective vaccine. That's still unbelievably awful. I just can't believe the raw volume of doses lost, you'd think they'd have procedures in place to prevent this kind of thing from happening on such a massive scale.

[–]CarmelizedEggroll 42 points43 points  (2 children)

I work in quality management; can confirm they should have procedures; I found people don’t like reading or following procedures though. Usually some salty old dude who’s “worked here for 30+ years” and “knows what they’re doing”

[–]Night_RunnerI'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 91 points92 points  (0 children)

It was still going somewhere, though. Now 15 million people won't get vaccinated quite as soon. Statistically speaking, this caused at least a couple of deaths...

[–]I__like__men 35 points36 points  (0 children)

Still 100% effective at keeping you from dying and out of the hospital so really it's still a huge loss.

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    [–]doctorwhodioI'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 10 points11 points  (12 children)

    Shit, does this affect any projections that have been made recently?

    [–]ford_cruller 23 points24 points  (0 children)

    Seems like both yes and no. On the one hand, this could greatly reduce J&J's shipments for April and maybe even May, because they were planning on switching to using this factory for their US supply. On the other hand, Pfizer is now ahead of schedule, and Moderna looks like they'll soon be able to start pumping out vaccines even faster. So still on track to have vaccines for every adult by end of May, but now with less leeway.

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      [–]Lyrrad0 28 points29 points  (4 children)

      The report in the New York Times has been updated since it was first posted. It doesn't seem as bad as the original report suggested, since the issue was likely discovered several weeks ago and recent projections likely took this into account.

      15 million doses contaminated (article initially stated "ruined"), several weeks ago, and was undiscovered for "days". This means that the problem was probably known over a month ago.

      • The investigation "delayed the authorization of that plant’s production lines". This is needed in order to ship vaccines made from that plant.
      • "In a statement late Wednesday, the company said it expected [...] to deliver 24 million doses by the end of April [...]. But that depends on whether Johnson & Johnson satisfies Food and Drug Administration regulators."
      • From the Financial Times (Paywall): "[T]he company said it still expected to deliver 100m doses for use in the US during the first half of the year, and that it aimed to hit that target by the end of May."

      Reading this, it seems that the recent projections were based upon knowledge of this contamination, and that if FDA approval is given, J&J still expects to be able to ship 24 million doses in April and another 50 million or so by around the end of May.

      I'll note that the NY Times report suggests it's not entirely J&J's fault. The plant where the issue occurred also produces the AstraZeneca vaccine and the production processes apparently got mixed up, since they attempted to use the AstraZeneca vector in the J&J vaccine.

      ​

      Edit: A Politico report says the problem became known by "senior Biden administration health officials, including some within the White House" two weeks ago from Wednesday, so any projections from after that date might have taken the situation into account. The article also says the HHS department only found out about it last week. It's unclear if or when other government officials knew about this at an earlier date, as the initial incident happened "several weeks" ago and it was not discovered for "days", which are ambiguous lengths of time.

      Edit 2 (a week later): Some of my assumptions of the timeline appear to be contradicted by later reporting. I recommend reading more recent reports about issues at Emergent for a more accurate view, such as these New York Times stories from Tuesday, February 6, and Wednesday, February 7.

      [–]doctorwhodioI'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 5 points6 points  (0 children)

      Thank you for that summary! That makes it sound a lot better than what I initially thought.

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        [–]Delvin4519Boosted! ✨💉✅ 24 points25 points  (1 child)

        The US currently administers about 1.4-1.5 million first doses per day. 15 million would be about 10-12 days worth at that vaccination pace.

        So, that would cost, about 10-12 days setback, assuming the only other options is Pfizer/Moderna. This does not count the extra 2nd dose for those two.

        [–][deleted] 99 points100 points  (11 children)

        Very very bad.

        15 million doses trashed, regulators delaying authorization of production facility now, and this is going to have downstream impact for anti-vaxxers now having more reason to not get vaxxed

        [–]IanMazgelis 48 points49 points  (6 children)

        this is going to have downstream impact for anti-vaxxers now having more reason to not get vaxxed

        I've heard this said about the Astrazeneca vaccine as well, but in my mind- Granted I really can't get into that mindset since I just don't agree with the foundations of that thinking- seeing government bodies reject, recall, and dispose of vaccines that might be unsafe gives me more confidence in the ones they approve of.

        I could easily imagine a scenario where all the vaccines are allowed and stories like this get buried, then people- Reasonably so- would say that they don't want to get vaccinated since the government is applying safe and equal standards to the vaccines.

        [–]mosaic_hops 15 points16 points  (5 children)

        JJ needs to market it as the “anti-vaccine”. Problem solved. All the half wits will get vaccinated and we’ll survive as a human race!

        [–]exjackly 27 points28 points  (1 child)

        The vaccine the government doesn't want you to get. (tm)

        [–]mosaic_hops 5 points6 points  (0 children)

        I love it.

        [–]Underscore_Guru 9 points10 points  (2 children)

        The other shitty side of this is that the manufacturing company (Emergent Biosolutions in Baltimore, MD) that messed up the vaccine doses is also a manufacturing site for the AZ vaccine as well. So not only will the J&J vaccine manufacturing will be delayed, the AZ one will be affected as well until regulators can give them the go ahead for that site.

        [–]Rivster79 1 point2 points  (0 children)

        Yup. I read that the doses were botched because Emergent biosolutions mixed up an ingredient meant for one, into the other. It’s a cartoon-level fuck up on Emergents part.

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            [–]kokin33 10 points11 points  (0 children)

            very

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              [–]Enders_Sack 207 points208 points  (10 children)

              15 million gone. Oops lol

              [–]YeahSureAlrightYNot 75 points76 points  (6 children)

              Well, throw the first stone those that never delayed a vaccination program by weeks during a pandemic.

              [–]Cappylovesmittens 25 points26 points  (0 children)

              Yeah we’ve all been there.

              [–]pudding7 10 points11 points  (3 children)

              Man if I had a nickel...

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                  [–]ExcellentsBerry 361 points362 points  (34 children)

                  Workers at a Baltimore plant manufacturing two coronavirus vaccines accidentally conflated the vaccines’ ingredients several weeks ago, ruining about 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and forcing regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines.

                  You had one job

                  [–][deleted] 250 points251 points  (10 children)

                  Ugh I know how they feel. The other day I mixed up the garlic powder and the onion powder in my pantry and completely ruined the taco seasoning I was making.

                  [–]Bravot 49 points50 points  (0 children)

                  RIP

                  [–]Never_Guilty 30 points31 points  (4 children)

                  Wait how did it ruin it? I feel like onion and garlic powder would both work well in a taco seasoning mix.

                  [–][deleted] 37 points38 points  (3 children)

                  I was supposed to put in about four times the amount of garlic powder as onion powder but I accidentally switched them up so it was far too oniony and not garlicky enough. So I know what the J&J workers are going through.

                  [–]Never_Guilty 12 points13 points  (0 children)

                  Oof I take back what I said. RIP your tacos 🪦

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                    [–]jneil 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                    I don’t know what taco seasoning recipe you’re using but mine is equal parts garlic and onion powders.

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                      [–]IanMazgelis 94 points95 points  (2 children)

                      From what I can tell we're still on track to have a majority of American adults vaccinated in April even without the boost this would have given us, but 4% of the country is still pretty awful. Thank God other manufacturers are still accelerating.

                      [–]peachaleach 32 points33 points  (1 child)

                      You had one job

                      No, they were manufacturing two vaccines (Astrazeneca & J&J), which cause the mix up of ingredients.

                      [–]YeahSureAlrightYNot 18 points19 points  (2 children)

                      For fucks sake, Baltimore.

                      [–]Gullil 5 points6 points  (1 child)

                      Damnit.. we're trying. We have JHU. Does that even things out?

                      [–]restore_democracy 14 points15 points  (0 children)

                      Whoops. People will die as a result.

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                        [–]NikeMUT 155 points156 points  (36 children)

                        Bruh

                        [–]StrangelyBrown 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                        Has anyone done this yet?

                        [–]BuySellHoldFinance 105 points106 points  (8 children)

                        I hope this puts the whole vaccine rollout into perspective. People think vaccines are simple things to make. They are not. The fact that we stood up so many billions of doses of capacity within the timespan of a year is a miracle itself.

                        [–]EggsegretBoosted! ✨💉✅ 17 points18 points  (0 children)

                        Oh yh vaccine production is clearly a much more complex thing than any of us think If it was so simple countries such as Canada or EU countries wouldn't be facing the supply issues they have especially when they have so many vaccines on order

                        [–]BS_Is_Annoying 8 points9 points  (2 children)

                        Yeah, a lot of people have ignored that. You are putting something in your blood that didn't exist a year ago.

                        And there are a million ways to screw it up. Especially when they are going quickly and they might start an order based on one email.

                        It better damn well have all the quality control in place!

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                          [–]yrdzBoosted! ✨💉✅ 87 points88 points  (21 children)

                          Important note:

                          It does not affect Johnson & Johnson doses that are currently being delivered and used nationwide. All those doses were produced in the Netherlands, where operations have been fully approved by federal regulators.

                          Still obviously a massive fuckup, but everyone should know that current J&J doses are 100% safe.

                          [–]Bladex20 26 points27 points  (3 children)

                          Thats a bad day at the office

                          [–]EggsegretBoosted! ✨💉✅ 14 points15 points  (1 child)

                          Makes me kind of feel less guilty about the fuck ups I've had at work. Atleast i haven't fucked up a life saving vaccine lool

                          [–]disneyprincesspeach 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                          It reminds me of something my manager said to me at my first corporate job out of colkege: "you may have some dumbass moments, but your dumbassery isn't as bad as some other people's dumbassery"

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                            [–]thesteelsmithy 80 points81 points  (0 children)

                            Just a reminder that the party responsible is Emergent BioSolutions, the same slimy company that had the ability to determine the federal emergency medical reserve's procurement for years, causing it to far over-purchase their anthrax vaccines instead of buying useful supplies like masks and ventilators.

                            [–]PBFT 37 points38 points  (6 children)

                            Yeah, those guys are out of a job.

                            [–]J_Pizzle 26 points27 points  (0 children)

                            Unless they already had major issues, honestly probably not.

                            Why fire someone you just spent millions of dollars training? They'll sure as shit never make this mistake again (unless they're incompetent but that falls into the other major issues you'd probably catch)

                            [–]ahatzum 6 points7 points  (0 children)

                            That’s not how it works. There are standard operating procedures for everything, so either those procedures were not good enough or the training was not good enough. Human error is almost never an accepted root cause for an error like this.

                            [–]EggsegretBoosted! ✨💉✅ 22 points23 points  (2 children)

                            Not going to look good on their CV.

                            Interview: "could you explain why you left your job at J&J"

                            Guys: "yh about that i may have or may not have fucked up a life saving vaccine"

                            [–]GuitarGuru2001 9 points10 points  (1 child)

                            To be fair, JnJ found then flagged the fuckup and raised hell. The subcontractor is at fault.

                            [–]Rivster79 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                            Correct. This is not on J&J, but ultimately people will not remember it was the contractors fuck up.

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                              [–]WallStapless 26 points27 points  (0 children)

                              Devastating loss. 15 million doses...

                              [–]rocketwidgetBoosted! ✨💉✅ 25 points26 points  (0 children)

                              The equivalent of 30 million Moderna or Pfizer doses. Wow.

                              An explanation of why this sort of thing wasn't checked by multiple people would be nice.

                              [–]elcuervoI'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 24 points25 points  (5 children)

                              I'm guessing that this is what caused the February issues, since it happened several weeks ago and they were able to fulfill their March goal?

                              It looks like the delay is due to the FDA investigation; hopefully that clears quickly. It sucks but 15 million doses isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things, and it's not like we're in dire need of supply.

                              [–]northboundnovaI'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 33 points34 points  (3 children)

                              But the rest of the world is in dire need of supply, and the sooner the US can finish its vaccination, the sooner it can start sending the doses produced there to other places that need it, too.

                              I know we’ll all get there eventually and this might not be the biggest setback imaginable, but it’s still 15 million people who have to wait longer, 15 million shots less on the way to ending this as soon as possible. Some states and countries don’t even have that many people living in them.

                              [–]columbo222 23 points24 points  (0 children)

                              Yup especially since this is a one-dose vaccine. This loss would have been enough to cover half of Canada's adult population, 1/4 of South Africa, 100% of the Netherlands, etc.

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                                [–]Natrym 6 points7 points  (0 children)

                                15 million doses not that much huh... Say that to the Netherlands. Lol we could vaccinate our whole country with it.

                                [–]adrianmonk 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                                (Non-paywalled) CNN article about the same thing:

                                https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/health/johnson--johnson-vaccine-manufacturing-problem/index.html

                                [–]J_Fre22 12 points13 points  (0 children)

                                Well this is fucking terrible

                                [–]djm19 4 points5 points  (3 children)

                                I don't know how the plant, for something this big and in the public eye, doesn't have eyes watching from day one inspecting the whole process.

                                [–]supes1I'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                                They do. They have eyes up front during the production process, and eyes on the back end for quality checks. We're lucky the eyes on the back end at least caught this so we didn't distribute and administer these doses. That would have been even more catastrophic, but the safety measures in place succeeded in stopping it.

                                Sometimes multiple failure points just line up in a way that leads to disastrous consequences (it's the swiss cheese model of accident causation). It's impossible to be perfect even with multiple layers of safeguards.

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                                  [–]Joe4o2 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                                  Wow, way to upstage Disney by releasing the bad batch 4 days early.

                                  [–]bigguydoingketo 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                                  It's obvious few here have much experience in high tech manufacturing. If you did, you'd know this is bad but also something that usually happens with a new manufacturer at test run scale. It's never reported on because it's small, the process gets fixed, and then the company continues testing for a bit before ramping.

                                  But now we're just going for it. New partner to produce the vaccine? No problem, manufacture 15 million+ doses within a couple months of EUA, newbie manufacturer.

                                  This was always going to be a risk because we're skipping steps. That doesn't make it ok, but it makes it understandable and not some crazy outlier outcome once you examine all the factors at play.

                                  [–]DuckAdditional5761 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                                  Thats a sad story as the world need all doses to count.

                                  EU insisted that the J&J produced in Belgium could not go for filling in US as was the plan - that was probably a very wise decision.

                                  [–]Miss_holly 7 points8 points  (3 children)

                                  Anyone know where Canada’s doses are supposed to arrive from in the end of April? US factories or European?

                                  [–]AWildDragonBoosted! ✨💉✅ 20 points21 points  (0 children)

                                  Europe as US isn’t exporting yet.

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                                    [–]EvilChameleon09[🍰] 14 points15 points  (10 children)

                                    So if I have a J&J vaccine appointment tomorrow, is that now in jeopardy?

                                    [–][deleted] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

                                    No currently distributed doses are totally ok and are from their production facility in the Netherlands which has already been approved by regulators.

                                    [–]kataskopo 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                                    lol I have an appointment tomorrow too, I hope it goes well.

                                    [–][deleted] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

                                    Vaccines no longer go brrrr

                                    [–]cdiddy19I'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                                    That's really unfortunate for all of us

                                    [–]saltyb 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                                    Reading Emergent Biosolutions Glassdoor reviews is interesting.

                                    [–]wip30ut 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                                    i really don't understand how they can effff this up! It's not like they're mixing these chemicals by hand. Everything is automated. They'd literally have to be mislabeling the agents in the actual shipping containers they're arriving in. The FDA better step in and see what kind of operation J&J is running.

                                    [–]Caprylate 3 points4 points  (1 child)

                                    Paywall. OP post full text.

                                    [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                                    Someone has to held responsible for this.

                                    [–]Monkey1Fball 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                                    I don't know how this happened, but this is a pretty MASSIVE Quality Control failure. Yikes.

                                    Our government would be well within their rights to hold back payment for this too. J&J failed, it's their own fault.

                                    [–]jerseygirl2006 5 points6 points  (16 children)

                                    Sigh. I had the option last week to sign up for Pfizer or Johnson and Johnson and chose J&J because it was one and done, tested while variants were circulating and closer to a more traditional vaccine. I got it Monday and know it’s not an affected vaccine, but after this and the news about Pfizer this week being so much more effective after one dose and essentially stopping transmission I am really regretting not getting Pfizer instead.

                                    [–]stave000 42 points43 points  (0 children)

                                    Good data about Pfizer does not equal bad data about J&J. There will be more data about your vaccine soon, you're protected, that's what matters

                                    [–]elcuervoI'm fully vaccinated! 💉💪🩹 28 points29 points  (4 children)

                                    Talk about first world problems.

                                    [–]NoNutNorris 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                                    Glad to have that type of problem. Who wouldn’t..

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                                      [–]yrdzBoosted! ✨💉✅ 17 points18 points  (0 children)

                                      Efficacy rates aren't everything. Every vaccine thus far has been virtually 100% effective against hospitalization and death. That's not even to mention the fact that J&J's trial was conducted during the worst COVID spike, likely hurting it's raw efficacy percentage in comparison to the others that were conducted earlier.

                                      https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johnson-moderna-pfizer

                                      And congrats on getting your shot! Let's hope everyone can soon enough.

                                      [–]SkittlesAreYum 9 points10 points  (0 children)

                                      Why would a production mixup after you got your vaccine affect your opinion of your past decision?

                                      And the news articles did not say Pfizer is more effective than J&J. It was not a comparison.

                                      [–]Cappylovesmittens 10 points11 points  (0 children)

                                      You’re vaccinated. Don’t complain, be happy you are about to be fully protected against severe disease and death and very strongly protected against any sort of infection.

                                      [–]EggsegretBoosted! ✨💉✅ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

                                      The data from pfizer doesn't make J&J any less worthy of a vaccine. End of the day all these vaccines will help us in our fight against covid and save lives regardless of what the efficiency numbers may be. Remember yes whilst efficiency numbers may vary the one thing all the vaccines have in common is that during the trials none of the vaccinated people needed hospitlisation or died. Showing that even if you are unlucky and get symptoms these vaccines should still save your life and mean a much more mild case of covid than without the vaccine. And ultimately thats the key bit here. Vaccines isn't just about stopping you from getting covid but also meaning even if you do get it it's hopefully alot milder.

                                      Pfizer has also been out several months now and given t9 far more people hence we will be getting alot of real world data about it. Be patient but soon enough once J&J is used more across the world and the US we'll have good real world data coming out about J&J soon enough

                                      And to put in perspective. There are millions of people around the world waiting patiently to get vaccinated but with no date in sight yet here you are protected against covid and only a year after it started affecting our lives. That itself is incredible.

                                      [–]duncan-the-wonderdog 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                                      Here's some news about J&J and transmission: https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/946401?src=mkm_covid_update_210224_MSCPEDIT&uac=369146AN&impID=3211625&faf=1

                                      [–]Puddleswims 1 point2 points  (0 children)

                                      Why do people keep repeating this stuff about J&J being tested during a surge so that's why its efficacy is lower, that is not true. Real world data has come in about the mRNA vaccines and they are a head above J&J. The variants do not hurt the efficacy of Pfizer as shown in Isreal where almost all there cases are the UK variant. And J&J got more favorable conditions in the US trials and still only got 72% protection from symptomatic infection while ONE! shot mRNA vaccines are 80% effective against all infections including asymptomatic and if you exclude asymptomatic infections then they provide 90% protection.

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                                        [–]Dedicated4life 4 points5 points  (0 children)

                                        That's the equivalent of 30 million Pfizer/Moderna jeeez. Likely enough to prevent 20,000 deaths... Fuck up indeed.

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