One might argue that vaccines must be held to the highest standards, so no one doubts that they are safe. Unlike other medicines, they are administered to otherwise healthy individuals. First do no harm. This logic may be what motivated the regulators to pause the vaccine: If you make the approval process look rigid, even at the expense of a few net deaths, more people will have confidence in that process. But rather than shield people from risks, in hopes of winning their confidence, why not inform them of the risks in comprehensible ways, and win their confidence through honesty? Do not hide the risks. Enumerate and explain them. The FDA could issue an advisory for a clotting issue and note that it is as rare as a lightning strike, and say that the vaccine is still in use because getting it is safer than not getting it. Pausing all J&J doses, to all ages and sexes, will make people think of tainted cantaloupe or pickup trucks recalled for faulty brakes; the stigma may never disappear. Right now there are no “otherwise healthy individuals.” Even those of us who have escaped infection are sick of being cooped up, held hostage to our Netflix queues, and starved of friendship, work, and leisure. And I expect that the pause in J&J distribution, however brief, will make many people doubt vaccines irrationally, rather than thank their regulatory overlords for averting a lightning strike. I would rather die of a blood clot, ideally 7,000,000 years from now, than spend another day in quarantine.