Dow Slips Due to Johnson & Johnson Report

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Reports of blood clots has lessened investor faith in the third vaccine.

Prior to the beginning of trading today, the Dow Jones average declined slightly, losing 0.3% of its value. For the most part, the market was actually doing okay prior to this slide; stocks on major companies like Microsoft, Boeing, and Tesla are rising in value, and after a decline in Tesla’s case. The slide in the Dow, rather than coming from a variety of sources, arose from a single source, albeit an important one to the current climate of consumer confidence: pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson.


Johnson & Johnson produced the third viable COVID-19 vaccine after Moderna and Pfizer, and the rollout of its single shot system was a big part of the United States’ mass-inoculation procedures. However, confidence in that shot was shaken this morning when a joint series of tweets from the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control announced that they would be recommending a pause on the distribution and usage of Johnson & Johnson vaccines to several cases of potentially life threatening blood clots in those who received the shot.

“Today FDA and @CDCgov issued a statement regarding the Johnson & Johnson #COVID19 vaccine,” the first in the series of tweets read. “We are recommending a pause in the use of this vaccine out of an abundance of caution.”

To be more specific, six cases of blood clots have been reported in those inoculated with the Johnson & Johnson shot. All six of these people are women between the ages of 18 and 48; one has died from a blood clot, while another is currently in emergency care. The FDA and CDC have clarified that this kind of reaction is extremely rare, likely due more to preexisting conditions rather than the shot itself, but as they said, the pause is more out of caution than anything else. The recommendation caused Johnson & Johnson’s stock values to go down by 3%.

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