Nothing like waking up quite literally the morning after receiving your long-awaited COVID vaccine to the news that the CDC was pausing distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Janssen. I wasn’t sure if I read the headline correctly as I was still shaky from the insane fever I had from getting injected with that exact vaccine 18 hours before the CDC put out its statement. 

Apparently they were halting its rollout “out of an abundance of caution” after news that, of the six million recipients of the vaccine at that point, six — yes, six — women between the ages of 18-42 had developed a rare blood-clotting disorder. Have I mentioned that I, also a woman between the ages of 18-42, got the vaccine less than 24 hours before news of this broke?

Anyway, since the CDC is willing to halt vaccine rollout (and send a totally responsible message about vaccinations to Americans, one-fourth of whom say they will refuse the vaccine), I would like to submit some other things I consider public health emergencies that the CDC should “put a pause on,” while they’re at it:

1. Guns. 

“Six cases out of 6 million” is almost the same as “39,000 deaths each year” or “100 deaths every single day,” right? 

2. Zoom meetings over 20 minutes.

At this point, being forced to stare at Brady-Bunch-from-Hell style squares, even when it’s people I care about, for more than 20 minutes is just too much.

3. Zoom meetings under 20 minutes.

Could be an email.

4. Swimsuit ads.

Stop forcing me to think about what my post-Quarantine body would look like in a bikini. The constant deluge of size negative-4 models in swimsuit ads on my social media is frankly more abhorrent and dangerous than Trump’s tweets, and thus deserves similar punishment to his.

5. My loud, male neighbors.

I can hear all of their bad conversations and their even worse taste in music. “Public health emergency” is an understatement.

5. Tucker Carlson.

Talk about injecting poison into Americans.

 

These are just things to get started on, CDC. I have plenty of other ideas. Ya know, just “out of an abundance of caution.”