If you are going to attempt to prove how safe the vaccine is by comparing it to other death risks, then you ought to learn how to present death rate data, unless of course your goal is to mislead the reader.
The reason for the pause is that there is a 1 in a million rate in a ONE WEEK reporting period. If you wish to point out that the death rate for lightning is 1 in 700,000 per year then you must if you are correctly using the data, tell us what the rate is for a one week period. As there are 52 weeks in a year, the rate is 1 in (52 times 700,000) or 1 per 36 million per week. So the clot rate is 36 times greater than the lightning rate. We do not know the clot risk associated with vaccine at any other time period yet. We have no reports but that is not the same as no risk.
If smoking one cigarette had a clot rate of one in a million that is a very different statistic from the risk from smoking thousands of cigarettes. Similarly for contraceptives.
The reported clots are entirely different than those caused by long air flights which are clots which form usually in the lower leg and potentially break free and travel to the lungs. The reported clots are of a clot in what is essentially a large vein in the brain where the clot is associated with a significant decrease in platelets, a cell in your blood that makes your blood clot when you are cut. The treatment for the typical leg clot is heparin acutely. However, with these brain clots heparin is not what the patient should get, and the heparin will make you worse or kill you.
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As of April 12, more than 6.8 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson (Janssen ) vaccine have been administered in the U.S. CDC and FDA are reviewing data involving six reported U.S. cases of a rare and severe type of blood clot in individuals after receiving the J&J vaccine. In these cases, a type of blood clot called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) was seen in combination with low levels of blood platelets (thrombocytopenia). All six cases occurred among women between the ages of 18 and 48, and symptoms occurred 6 to 13 days after vaccination. Treatment of this specific type of blood clot is different from the treatment that might typically be administered. Usually, an anticoagulant drug called heparin is used to treat blood clots. In this setting, administration of heparin may be dangerous, and alternative treatments need to be given.
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A Dutch article reports the annual rate of CVST of 13.2 per 1 million adults. That would translate to 13.2 divided by 52 to get the weekly rate 1/4 case per million per week. So the rate reported is 4 times the background rate in that study. The rate was higher in women than men and over 1/2 the cases in women were patients on oral contraceptives or pregnant.
A 2018 review article says the background rate is much smaller, only 3 to four cases per million
Very importantly all the cases reported to the CDC are women 18 and 48. While it is too soon to know as the sex finding may be random, this suggests that women are far more at risk of the clot complication. Other factors may be at play. Were they on oral contraceptives or pregnant both of which increase the risk.
Pausing the J & J vaccine is prudent. It may be that the ultimate recommendation be that woman in the childbearing age range not use this vaccine if other choices are available.