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Friday’s vote by an advisory committee to the Centers for Disease and Control Prevention to resume administering the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine was the right decision, but with a serious mistake: There should be an explicit warning against the vaccine’s use in women under the age of 50. I’m in this group. I’m also a participant in the Johnson & Johnson clinical trial who was told that I’d received the placebo. I then opted to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. If I knew then what I know now, I would have chosen the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines instead. (Leana S. Wen, 4/24)

California’s overwrought vaccine eligibility criteria have fallen away, once-scarce vaccination appointments are proliferating and half of American adults have experienced the oddly joyful soreness of a shot in the arm. It’s a triumph of international science and a success — if a delayed and heavily qualified one — for local, state and federal logistics. A little over a year since the arrival of the novel coronavirus in the Bay Area and the United States, we’re on the brink of protecting a majority of the population from the deadly disease it causes. (4/25)

To judge by the headlines, you’d think the most critical immunization issue facing the world is the safety and hesitancy concerns over the AstraZeneca Plc and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. That debate is genuinely important. Still, it shouldn’t distract from the biggest challenge the world will face over the coming months: the grossly unequal distribution of vaccines between rich and poor countries. (Brooke Sample, 4/24)