Headlines were made today that the drummer in the Offspring, Pete Parada, was dropped from the band due to not having received a COVID-19 vaccine. [link] Parada made his decision not to vaccinate based on two things, 1. he has already had COVID-19 which can offer some small amount of protection and 2. he has Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). There have been a lot of discussions today about how to weigh real medical risk of getting a COVID-19 vaccine against someone’s health conditions, so let’s break that down a little bit with this post.
GBS is a pretty rare and mysterious disease that can cause the immune system to attack the person’s nerves. This disease has fairly high mortality (4-7%) and can leave people paralyzed due to the damage the immune system inflicts on their nerves. [link] The scary thing about GBS is that not only do we not have a cure, but the trigger for the syndrome isn’t clear. Most people experience GBS after illness, but even then outbreaks are not consistent for a type of illness, a person, or any other clear event.
GBS has become a favorite of the antivaccine/antivax/antiva crowd because the disease is both severe and unpredictable. Because an infectious disease is one of the few known triggers of GBS, any time it pops up after vaccination there are some who capitalize on the opportunity to say “I told you so” rather than to try and determine the true cause. Generally speaking, a majority of GBS patients will have a respiratory or digestive illness in the 6 weeks preceding the occurrence which gives a nice large window of time for someone to recover from a cold, get a vaccine, and then develop GBS symptoms. Of course included in those disease categories are some nasty diseases like Zika and COVID-19.
In July of 2021, the FDA revised its provided fact sheet for the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine to include a warning about GBS that reads as follows.
Based on an analysis of Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) data, there have been 100 preliminary reports of GBS following vaccination with the Janssen vaccine after approximately 12.5 million doses administered. Of these reports, 95 of them were serious and required hospitalization. There was one reported death. Each year in the United States, an estimated 3,000 to 6,000 people develop GBS. Most people fully recover from the disorder. GBS has also been observed at an increased rate associated with certain vaccines, including certain seasonal influenza vaccines and a vaccine to prevent shingles. Although the available evidence suggests an association between the Janssen vaccine and increased risk of GBS, it is insufficient to establish a causal relationship. No similar signal has been identified with the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines.
FDA Coronavirus (COVID-19) Update: July 13, 2021 [link]
To summarize, of 12.5 million J&J doses administered, 100 people were found to develop GBS post vaccination, which is a number of people so small in a population so large that causality between the vaccination and GBS could not be established. The risk is recognized, but it is rare. Another warning on the J&J vaccine is because of an association with a rare (6 cases in 6.8 million doses) blood clotting side effect that caused the vaccine to be put on pause for two weeks. This is enough evidence that the Guillian-Barré Syndrome/Chronic Inflammatory Demyelinating Polyneuropathy (GBS|CIDP) Foundation International released a statement supporting people who have suffered GBS to get their vaccination from COVID-19 saying ” The risk of death or long term complications from COVID in adults still far exceeds the risk of any possible risk of GBS by several orders of magnitude.” [link]
Ideally, the people who are at risk for a variety of vaccine complications would be protected by herd immunity. If 90% of the total population, kids and adults, were vaccinated we would be able to cut off the people COVID-19 can spread to and it would allow people with real risk to not face the awful choice between vaccinating themselves and hiding from the virus. However most areas are nowhere near the necessary numbers of vaccinated people so those with GBS and other autoimmune diseases have a difficult choice to make.
It appears that a lot of places looking to hold large events, such as concerts featuring The Offspring, are requiring all people on staff to be vaccinated. In this instance, by dropping Parada from the band The Offspring is doing what they see as best for all parties involved by not taking a high risk person on tour through crowded and frequently changing venues. If there’s any band to make a fair choice on keeping ’em separated, I’ll trust the one fronted by someone with a PhD from University of Southern California in molecular biology.
Mask up if your area is seeing an increase in cases and carry on,
-Your friendly neighborhood scientist
P.S. If you like this type of post let me know and I’ll put some more together in the future
PMP in the Lab 