opinicus

The J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines are both based on adenovirus vectors. This platform has a little more history, having been used in a recent ebola vaccine, but the number of doses administered has been relatively tiny. I'd say both vector-based and mRNA very new, pioneering tech.

An analysis of the relative risks is obviously the objectively correct answer from a rational perspective, but most people aren't making decisions based on that kind of statistical reasoning (though we'd doubtless have better outcomes if they did). There's a serious risk that problems like this can spark a backlash against all COVID vaccines if not handled conservatively--there are plenty of people just waiting to have their anti-vaccine confirmation biases triggered. How to handle these events is as much a question of social behavior and public relations as it is of science.

Interesting project. Outside of interface choices, are there any differences between this and some of the existing offerings like DoYouNeedVisa[1] or VisaMapper[2] (which is crowdsourced and includes the very important information of whether visa are available at the border)?

[1] http://www.doyouneedvisa.com/ [2] http://visamapper.com/