We're not at a stage yet when we can play favorites. It'll be a long time before we have the supply to prefer one over the other (except maybe in the US where there will be enough mRNA vaccines to go around).
A vaccinated person can have no symptoms of covid and still be spreading (This may or may not be true).
Folks are still studying how effective the vaccines are at preventing spread.
Aren't the efficacy numbers from the phase 3 trials based on giving periodic PCR tests to everyone that was participating in the trials? And not just based on people self-reporting symptoms?
It would be very surprising if there were a new kind of asymptomatic carrier that emerged only for people having taken certain vaccines in which they would never test positive on a PCR test but could still spread covid. The odds that this is how the vaccines work seems very small, relative to the number of times this argument that "we don't know yet" is getting repeated.
It just seems strange to me that so many people are hung up on pointing out that this small possibility is still a possibility. It seems more likely that this will drive more people to skip the vaccine, since they're being told they can't even go back to normal once vaccinated, than anything else.
There's some additional data which indicates Pfizer and Moderna are likely to limit transmission, but from my understanding it's not as ironclad as the symptomatic cases data.
For most trials, no. You have to look at each individual study, but most commonly, they only test after people show specific symptoms.
That said, I'm smarting a bit (even though I understand why) that the fully vaccinated guidelines cover 2 weeks after J&J, while it's looking likely the mRNA vaccines give you better protection even 2 weeks after the first shot. (You really do want the second... the 6-month Moderna study shows you get about 10x the antibodies from the second one, which means the protection lasts much longer if nothing else.)
https://www.vox.com/22311625/covid-19-vaccine-efficacy-johns...
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/my...
See "Why you can't compare Covid-19 vaccines":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A
You're welcome.
The J&J vaccine is marketed as a single-dose vaccine, unlike the others which all require two doses to reach their reported efficacy. Single-dose is a massive advantage which will greatly speed up vaccination progress, especially in developing countries.
And 66% seems pretty good for a single dose.
Such a vaccine would also have two doses and require intense refrigeration which are the primary issues blocking it... additionally many of those jurisdictions might not accept a US vaccine. China, maybe, since they admitted their own vaccines aren't working super well. Russia doesn't have anything wrong with its vaccine but the Kremlin admitted no one is taking it, apparently because they don't believe in covid.
Despite what the press has reported, that's not really what happened. In a conference talk on vaccines, the head of China CDC made a general statement about what to do about "low vaccine efficacy." That's been blown up in the Western media into an "admission" that all Chinese vaccines supposedly have low efficacy.
It doesn't even make sense to talk about the efficacy of "Chinese vaccines." Chinese vaccines run the gamut, from inactivated whole virus to protein subunit to adenovirus vectors. There's even a Chinese partner to Biontech, which is going to manufacture the latter's mRNA vaccine.
Exactly. There should be no place for vaccine profiteering, especially now that we have two extremely good vaccines. But in the interest of pharma profits, instead of cooperatively manufacturing the best vaccines, unburdened by patent hurdles, instead we have massive amounts of public funding going to pharma corps so that they can make profits off this medical crisis. Truly shameless.
Would you want the chef at your local takeout to be vaccinated to 66.3% efficiency? or 94%?
Why was this vaccine even approved, instead of just having J&J produce the same vaccine Pfizer and Moderna are making, which would be in the best interest of the world? Is this some utterly idiotic capitalism bullshit that prevents J&J from making a 94% vaccine as well?
Why can't we just take $100B out of the $1T military budget, throw it at Pfizer and Moderna to shut up their patent lawyers, and then hand the formula to J&J to become a 3rd factory for a good 94% mRNA vaccine?
And then hand that formula to the rest of the world including Brazil, India, China, and other recent new COVID hotspots so that the virus doesn't boomerang back to the US in an evolved form?
At least that's what I would do if I was president.