I have a different take. WGBH, Boston, for example had this to say:
Will I be as well protected against getting super sick with COVID-19 if I get the J&J shot as if I get a two-dose version from Pfizer or Moderna?
āWhen we look at the thing we probably care about most ā making sure that we donāt end up in the ICU or dying ā the efficacy of the three vaccines is virtually identical,ā says Dr. Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the department of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco.
The perception that some vaccines may be better than others has to do with the topline numbers from efficacy studies. The mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna were both found to be about 95% effective against preventing symptomatic COVID-19 after the second dose. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by contrast, was found to be 66% protective against moderate and severe disease overall worldwide, and 72% protective against such cases in the U.S.
But you canāt really compare those numbers head to head, says Pierre, because āthese were different trials in different places at different times,ā and the strains of the coronavirus running around were likely somewhat different. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was tested more recently, including in South Africa and Brazil, at a time when more contagious variants of the coronavirus were widely circulating in those countries. The Moderna and Pfizer clinical studies, meanwhile, were started earlier, before such variants had become widespread.
Given those differences, Bibbins-Domingo says āthe number you should probably compare is 85%ā ā thatās how effective the J & J vaccine was found to be at preventing severe disease four weeks after immunization.
Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, agrees that the J&J vaccine seems to be āterrificā at saving lives. He tells NPR heās advising his family members to take whichever vaccine comes their way first.
Which vaccine offers the best protection against the worrisome coronavirus variants?
We canāt compare the vaccines head to head on this question, Pierre says, because the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines havenāt been subjected to rigorous clinical trials in places where these variants are widespread. But we can say that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine performs well against the variants first detected in Brazil and South Africa, because it was tested in both countries at a time when the variants were already rampant there. And in both countries, the J&J vaccine was still shown to be highly effective against severe disease, according to an analysis posted by the FDA.
āWhat we see is that we still have good efficacy with this vaccine regardless ā even in these areas where the variants were highly prevalent,ā Pierre says. āAnd I think thatās really a fire-tested way to say that this particular vaccine is unequivocally good.ā She notes that preliminary data also suggest the J&J vaccine might offer protection against asymptomatic infection.
On a personal note:
Iām male, not female. Iām old, not young. Iāve never smoked anything, not even corn silk. And birth control has been off the table for me since the day I was born. So I remain good with the J&J vaccine.