Read on Twitter
It's also a high-stakes test for the FDA, and they failed it, because of course lots of people are going to take away the latter message. https://twitter.com/MattGertz/status/1381933962445094916
There's also data on this based on decreased public confidence in the AstraZeneca vaccine in Europe following similar pauses there. So the FDA can't even use the excuse of flying blind. https://www.politico.eu/article/trust-oxford-astrazeneca-coronavirus-vaccine-wanes-europe-survey/
Also, part of the reason media coverage may be confused is that the FDA's reasoning isn't super logical. It probably isn't rational to pause administration of a vaccine that's already been given out 7 million times for "extremely rare" events in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
Why did the FDA recommend the pause anyway? Because of a combination of institutional culture, cognitive biases, and bureaucratic imperatives incentives, they greatly overweight the importance of rare adverse effects relative to people dying from COVID.
But unless they know about that institutional culture, it's understandable that regular folks may think "hmm, maybe there's more going on". Especially when public health officials have eroded trust by telling a lot of "noble lies" to people, e.g. in the early days re: masks.
