Game change?
“Spectacular” may be too strong a word. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are spectacular. How about “damned good and worth getting at the first available opportunity” for J&J instead? Today’s announcement of the new FDA analysis is a prelude to the meeting of outside advisors that’s scheduled for this Friday, where experts will debate whether to recommend emergency-use authorization for the vaccine. Given these results, it’s a cinch that the answer will be yes, with approval expected sometime this weekend. Once the FDA greenlights it, two million doses will be ready to ship next week. The bad news is that number is far fewer than J&J had initially hoped to have available by the end of February. The good news is that they’re still on track for 20 million to ship by the end of March. And remember what makes J&J special: It’s a one-dose vaccine, unlike Pfizer and Moderna. Every dose administered is a *full* vaccination, not a partial one, which means a faster and simpler immunization process for millions. The tricky part in selling this to the public may be the fact that it’s “only” 72 percent effective whereas Pfizer and Moderna are upwards of 95 percent, a conundrum I wrote about here. Are we going to see Americans go “vaccine shopping”? The vaccine had a 72 percent overall efficacy rate in the United States and 64 percent in South Africa, where a highly contagious variant emerged in the fall and is now driving most cases. The efficacy in South Africa was seven points higher than earlier data released by the company. The vaccine also showed 86 percent efficacy against severe forms of Covid-19 in the United States, and 82 percent against severe disease in South Africa. That means that a vaccinated person has a far lower risk of being hospitalized or dying from Covid-19. Normally when we think of “vaccine hesitancy” we think of people who are skeptical of vaccines and want to wait and see how others fare after getting the shot before doing so themselves. The difference in efficacy between J&J and Pfizer/Moderna may lead to a new form of vaccine hesitancy among pro-vaxxers, in which some Americans who want an mRNA vaccine decide to hold out if they’re not locally available instead of taking the plunge with J&J instead. How do you convince them not to? One obvious way is to focus on what really matters. Pfizer and Moderna may be better at preventing infection, but infection isn’t why people fear COVID. Debilitation is. The endgame with the vaccines has never been about eliminating all risk of illness, which is impossible, as David Leonhardt reminded readers this morning.
