When the vaccines were first being developed, the oft parroted narrative at the time was that by targeting the spike protein, the virus will have to mutate and lose it's ability to infect new cells.
It was a totally unproven theory, and a weak one IMO, but curiously enough, we had several major manufacturers all attempt the same thing. J&J, AZ, Moderna, Pfizer all released products that instructed your body to produce the spike protein.
Sinovac and Sputnik V used different approaches.
It's interesting that in all this time, nobody has stepped up and declared which vaccine is best. Clearly, if any of them worked or still worked, we'd know which one was most efficacious by now.
> It was a totally unproven theory, and a weak one IMO...
It's not weak at all. The structure of that spike protein is extremely important in the virus's ability to "trick" host cells into letting it inside. Target the spike, and you'll always have a valid target unless that spike changes, which would likely interfere with the virus's ability to infect cells. Pretty strong logic to me.
> J&J, AZ, Moderna, Pfizer all released products that instructed your body to produce the spike protein.
Close, but no. J&J is a traditional vaccine, not an mRNA one. It doesn't instruct your body to produce the spike protein, it's just an inactivated form of COVID itself that triggers an immune response. The others you're correct about.
> It's interesting that in all this time, nobody has stepped up and declared which vaccine is best. Clearly, if any of them worked or still worked, we'd know which one was most efficacious by now.
J&J is 66.3% effective, AstraZeneca is 72% effective, and Moderna & Pfizer are around the same 95% effectiveness (all of these numbers are first-dose efficacy; boosters increase them all).
So... that data is available, I'm not sure why you think it's not.
> Close, but no. J&J is a traditional vaccine, not an mRNA one.
That's incorrect; I didn't claim it was an mRNA vaccine. It's a viral vector instead of nano-lipid mRNA. Both the viral vector and mRNA vaccines are different technologies to deliver instructions to have your own cells produce the spike protein.
A traditional vaccine would be an attenuated or inactive pathogen. J&J is not this.
> J&J is 66.3% effective, AstraZeneca is 72% effective, and Moderna & Pfizer are around the same 95% effectiveness
Surely after all this time, there would be a clear winner between Modern and Pfizer, right? There's no reason to believe both products would be equally efficacious and safe over such a time period.
You're correct about the J&J vaccine; I misread its description, and I apologize. The rest of my reply stands, though.
> Surely after all this time, there would be a clear winner between Modern and Pfizer, right? There's no reason to believe both products would be equally efficacious and safe over such a time period.
Of course there's reason to believe they'd be equally efficacious and safe: because they're almost the same tech. It's like saying that a Granny Smith apple should have significantly different health effects as a Red Delicious apple just because they're different colors.
> Surely after all this time, there would be a clear winner between Modern and Pfizer, right? There's no reason to believe both products would be equally efficacious and safe over such a time period.
Moderna and Pfizer both use the same techniques to create an mRNA vaccine that targets the same spike protein. Why would you expect significant difference between them? What you would expect and what the data shows is that any difference between their effectiveness is smaller than the margin of error in evaluating their effectiveness.
You’re looking for a problem where there does not appear to be one.
> Compared with those who received the Moderna vaccine, recipients of the Pfizer vaccine had a 27% higher risk of documented SARS-CoV-2 infection and a 70% higher risk of COVID-19 hospitalization when Alpha was the predominant variant.
Seems far from identical in a study of almost 450k patients. Seems like they're not nearly identical. This is to say nothing about safety. Dosing, manufacturing, ingredients are probably all different.
Those stats were from early 2021, and they show the efficacy wasn't similar for Pfizer and Moderna. There's no current recommended 'best' as I stated, because there's no basis for saying which is best at this point, because the products fundamentally don't work. Also, that efficacy was about infection, rather than hospitalization/death, which we now know, the shots have essentially zero efficacy against infection.
We know they don't work because even Fauci himself, 4 doses in still got sick, and then had a rebound after paxlovid (which should have been entirely unnecessary if the vaccines worked at all).
> Those stats were from early 2021, and they show the efficacy wasn't similar for Pfizer and Moderna. There's no current recommended 'best' as I stated, because there's no basis for saying which is best at this point, because the products fundamentally don't work. Also, that efficacy was about infection, rather than hospitalization/death, which we now know, the shots have essentially zero efficacy against infection.
Your own source shows at least one of these reduced hospitalizations upon infection, and reduced infection rates, compared to the other. How do you start with that data and then conclude "therefore they don't work at all"?
> We know they don't work because even Fauci himself, 4 doses in still got sick, and then had a rebound after paxlovid (which should have been entirely unnecessary if the vaccines worked at all).
I'm not sure you understand what the words "know" and "work" mean. Are you really claiming "if the vaccines worked at all" then anyone fully vaccinated would never get sick and, if they did, would never have severe symptoms? Is your understanding of the world truly that black and white that you think if something isn't 100% effective, it doesn't work "at all"? If so, I'm very sorry to tell you this, but the entire world might be terrifying to you, because nothing is 100% guaranteed. Ever. Nothing is 100% effective, ever. Everything in the universe is based on probability, not guarantees. Every medication you take, even prescribed by doctors to you while you're in the hospital, is based on how likely they are to be effective, and how effective they might be for you. Nothing is "all or nothing".
That's why statistical analyses exist and are a foundational part of science: we decide if things are true or effective based on their probability of working and the average effectiveness, not whether they solve a problem 100% of the time. Such a thing doesn't exist. Even poisons aren't 100% like that; that's why poison toxicity is measured in LD50, which is the amount that would kill 50% of people -- and leave 50% alive. Because NOTHING, not even arsenic or broad-spectrum antibiotics, are 100% effective at ANYTHING.
All I can say is that twice my roommate has brought covid into the house, neither time did I catch it after 3 doses of Pfizer and zero precautions since he announced that he was sick in my face without warning, this last time I even had covid tests and never tested positive (some commenters from the first time claimed I may have been asymptomatic; nobody can know about that time, but this second time I can confirm that rapid testing showed nothing for me but quite clearly for my unvaccinated and twice-sick roommate)
