This is what's been frustrating for me with world health organizations.

I get the need to make sure medicine is safe and effective, and we absolutely should follow those to a T when it comes to new medicines on the market in non-emergency situations.

However, that's not the case here. vaccines are well studied in general and J&J is one of the more "normally developed" vaccines on the market. After generally ensuring that it's safe (Phase I/II tests), there should have been a damn good reason to pull it even temporarily. The "we are seeing a small increase in blood clots" really doesn't seem like a valid reason to pull a vaccine.

Personally, I lay the blame primarily on anti-vaxxers. They've made us far too cautious around vaccinations. It has screwed up our risk management rules. I've no doubt that this pull back will result in anti-vaxxers publishing BS about the safety of J&J vaccinations to try and scare people away from it.

> This is a vaccine for a disease that has killed over half a million people in the US over the past year

Serious question, how many of those people would have died in the past 12 months if they didn't get COVID? The number is most likely not 500,000, but it also probably isn't 0.

Is it most likely something insignificant like 5,000?

This is the problem with the FDA system.

If thousands are dying for lack of a drug or not has, at best, very little impact on the decisions.

The job of the FDA is to enforce regulations, not to save lives.

>The rules are not some holy writ handed down from above

I'm sorry, but when dealing with healthcare organizations and policy-makers, it's more like the "holy writ" than the idealized system you describe later.

The rules do not exist to manage risk. They exist to strike a balance between ethics and risk in emergency situations. If you’d like to change them going forward, feel free to advocate. I think it’s best we stick with our current rules this round.