Podcast: How Much Should You Really Worry About the Vaccine-Blood-Clot News?

Despite weeks of growing vaccinations and good news, headlines about blood clots and a “pause” in deploying the much-anticipated Johnson & Johnson shots have people worried.

Atlantic science writer Katherine J. Wu joins hosts James Hamblin and Maeve Higgins on the podcast Social Distance to explain the situation. Listen to their conversation here:

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What follows is a transcript of their conversation, edited for length and clarity:

Maeve Higgins: You wrote about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause recently. Could you fill us in on what happened?

First, to put it in perspective: This was identified very quickly and then addressed very quickly. And that is all a good thing. But basically the situation is: The CDC and FDA reported that they had picked up on six cases of a very specific kind of blood clot in six women under the age of 50. They detected the blood clot in these women within about two weeks of when they had gotten their Johnson & Johnson vaccine. And this is out of