1952

I guess I wasn’t disputing your ranking of the vaccines, just my understanding of when you are contagious vs when you have antibodies and the details of how your body fights off (or fails to fight off) the virus.

I feel like I have no intuition as to whether it would be better to get the same or different mRNA vaccine for a booster. I would be 0% surprised if the studies showed it to be better, worse, or the same.

1953

The Pfizer 1st/2nd dose dosage is 30ug vs 100ug for Moderna. The Pfizer booster is also 30ug, while the Moderna is 50ug. So logically the Moderna booster would be better too. Whether that really matters, who knows, probably a little bit, but again we don’t really know.

1954

I think this was the take on what I read as well. It’s a booster. You’re keeping those antibodies in the mix. Dosage probably does matter but not to the extent of initial vaccination.

1955

It’s a remarkable and amazing thing and yeah, the pandemic has made it very clear how little I knew about it. Fascinating to learn, though. Kurtzgesagt (one of my favorite science channels) has a great and easy-to-understand series on the topic:

1956

Scheduled to get my Pfizer booster tomorrow. I’ve seen that the Moderna booster may be slightly better, but I’m sticking with Pfizer since I tolerated it fairly well for the first two jabs (just about a day of fatigue after jab 2 and a few days of sore arm).

1957

I got the Phizer booster Friday and I’ve had a fever off and on for three days now. Last bout was 5 am this morning. I’m working from home today so I hope this is the last of it.

Tylenol fixes me up pretty good but the fever seems to come back a couple of times a day.

Anyway, the booster is well worth it for the peace of mind. I might get a breakthrough case but I think it’s unlikely to land me in the hospital or morgue at this point.

1958

It really doesn’t matter, but personally, if I started off with 2*Pfizer and they asked me what I wanted, I would say Moderna. As it happens I got boosted before they started mixing shots, and in fact before Moderna boosters were a thing, so I’m at 3*Pfizer. Which is also fine.

1959

Thanks - this is exactly what I was coming to ask. I have 2x Pfizer and my nearest CVS only has Moderna. Sounds like that’s fine or even desirable.

1960

This is exactly me. I got boostered pretty early, so Pfizer was my only option, but if I’d had a choice (or was given one for some hypothetical down the road booster I kind of home we won’t need) I’d probably go Moderna to mix things up.

1961

I think ultimately it won’t make a huge difference, and the response can differ from person to person. My mother received a Pfizer/Biontec booster two weeks ago. She had taken her first two Pfizer jabs really well–a bit of fatigue the most pronounced effect she felt. The booster hit her a bit harder, i.e. a bit of fever and shivers for a day. (After which everything was fine again.) A friend of the family (also triple-Pfizer) experienced the same, i.e. not having a lot of symptoms after the first two jabs, but also having a strong response to the third.

1962

I don’t think China didn’t get away with it. Their vaccine was safe. It was just not effective enough vs delta, which is not something that I think could have been forseen at the time.

Not a fair characterization.

1963

Sinovac isn’t very effective against COVID-19 in general. It isn’t literally a placebo, it’s better than nothing, but it isn’t comparable to any of the alternatives including the Russian Sputnik. Also it looks like its protection against severe disease/death degrades much faster than other vaccines.

1964

This isn’t the science and data thread, I guess, but this is what WHO says about Sinovac:

A large phase 3 trial in Brazil showed that two doses, administered at an interval of 14 days, had an efficacy of 51% against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, 100% against severe COVID-19, and 100% against hospitalization starting 14 days after receiving the second dose.

The efficacy against symptomatic COVID is quite a bit lower than the MRNA varieties, but the efficacy against severe COVID and hospitalization seems pretty good. Is the WHO wrong?

1965

No, but the trial in Brazil probably wasn’t very good.

1966

Maybe not, but I can’t find any other data that suggests that Sinovac isn’t pretty effective against severe COVID and hospitalization. Where are you seeing that?

I’m not being idly curious. Living in the third world, I’m surrounded by people who have been vaccinated with the two-dose regime of Sinovac.

1967

I have friends in Chile who were given that too, so I’d also like to see it.

1968
1969

First, that’s paywalled. Second, the NYT? Is that a study, or a news story, or an opinion piece, or what? Is the headline reflective of the content?

1970

You should be able to bypass the paywall in incognito etc. This is a news article and yes it is.

1971

Nope. Tried, but can’t.

Can you link the study they’re talking about?

Thanks!