I will try to keep this brief, but a little background. I finally (long story) after quite a while of “eligibility” got my first world privilege vaccination dose #3 yesterday afternoon. My arm is sore, hot, swollen, and cooking up initial info from the Moderna shot to add to the remaining mRNA markers from the two Pfizer shots I got last Spring. This is about why I made the choice I did, and it is easy I think to understand, and the facts underlying it might help others.
My decision was, in the end, based on the active dosage amount in the mRNA booster shots, that took me anyways a bit of time to discover and understand. I went with a third vax that provided a larger amount of mRNA.
There are significant differences in the amounts of primary vaccination dosages that Pfizer and Moderna (and J&J, the non-mRNA vaccine available, which has it’s own dosage and efficacy story to tell) specify for administration. Pfizer’s vaccinations earlier this year were 30 micrograms of mRNA each, totaling 60 micrograms of mRNA. They are offering the “booster” dose at that same amount, 30 micrograms of mRNA, so that would total 90 micrograms of mRNA vaccine from Pfizer over almost an eight month period.
Moderna, however, offered two first primary dosages of 100 micrograms of mRNA vaccine. Their offered “booster” dose is one half of one of their first primary doses (.25ml actually, versus .5ml), thus giving 100 micrograms of mRNA each for dose 1 and 2. So, Moderna vaccine recipients have received 200 micrograms of mRNA, and when they get a half dose “booster” they are getting one half 100 micrograms of mRNA.
So I yesterday received 50 micrograms of mRNA Vaccine from the brilliant minds there, and traveling medical workers standing in all day windy cold, and that means I now have received 30+30+50 = 110 micrograms of mRNA total. Had I instead chosen to get Pfizer, it would have been the same as their primary doses, and 30+30+30 = 90 micrograms of mRNA, which is in my head about a 22% amount less than the micrograms of mRNA I got by choosing Moderna. So, that is the general story.
I may or may not have a chance to answer questions. I have omitted lots of other decision points, any discussion of Johnson’s vaccination, but in the end I was left with trying to decide on two extremely similar biotechnologies, and I decided that one simply, in my case, delivered more of the micrograms of mRNA that produce the front line antibodies to tamp down the disease. Here is a link to one of my reads : www.theatlantic.com/..., there were many others, hopefully this info piece is OK with Mark. Anyone will find that Atlantic story interesting, and it does look at efficacy and dosage amounts of the Johnson vaccine also in some detail. I encourage folks to read that, if nothing else, but still much is unknown about this damnable virus.
Good Luck.