As Virus Data Mounts, the J.&J. Vaccine Holds Its Own

Roughly 17 million Americans received the Johnson & Johnson Covid vaccine, only to be told later that it was the least protective of the options available in the United States. But new data suggest that the vaccine is now preventing infections, hospitalizations and deaths at least as well as the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.

The reasons aren’t clear, and not all experts are convinced that the vaccine has vindicated itself. But the accumulating data nonetheless offer considerable reassurance to recipients of the vaccine and, if confirmed, have broad implications for its deployment in parts of the world.

The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was billed as an attractive option for communities with limited access to health care, including some within the United States, because of its ease of delivery and mild side effects. But it has had a bumpy journey.

The shot seemed to produce a weaker initial immune response, and more people who got the single-dose vaccine had breakthrough infections, compared with those who got two doses of Pfizer or Moderna, the mRNA vaccines.

In April, federal health officials in the United States and in South Africa paused the J.&J. vaccine’s distribution as they examined reports of a rare blood-clotting disorder in women. Though both countries resumed the rollouts soon after, the vaccine’s reputation never fully recovered.

But the notion that the vaccine is inferior has grown outdated, some experts said: More recent data suggest that it has more than held its own against its competitors.

As of Jan. 22, the latest data available, unvaccinated people were 3.2 times as likely to become infected as those who received the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine; they were 2.8 times as likely to become infected as those who received two doses of the Moderna vaccine and 2.4 times as likely as those with two doses of Pfizer-BioNTech. Overall, then, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine appeared to be somewhat more protective against infection than the two alternatives.

Among Americans who got booster doses, all the vaccines appeared to have roughly the same effectiveness against infection. A booster shot did not add much to Johnson & Johnson’s previous level of protection [although the data do not indicate who received which type of booster shot].

Gupta explained that with respiratory viruses like COVID-19 or the flu, it's not possible to fully prevent infections, but vaccines keep them from becoming severe and leading to hospitalization or death.

Originally Posted By rectifryer⏩

Originally Posted By katya422⏩

Originally Posted By Anachron⏩

mRNA is essentially a little piece of code that the vaccine delivers to your cells. The code serves as an instruction manual for your immune system, teaching it to recognize the virus that causes COVID-19 and attack it, should it encounter the real thing.

Instead of using mRNA, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses a disabled adenovirus to deliver the instructions. This adenovirus is in no way related to the coronavirus. It is a completely different virus. Although it can deliver the instructions on how to defeat the coronavirus, it can’t replicate in your body and will not give you a viral infection.

- the spike protein is damaging even without the virus on board [yes, in before "the spike protein built due to the mRNA shots isn't the same", there are sure a lot of people with the same sort of negative effects].

- the mRNA appears to be traveling throughout the body instead of remaining localized or confined to the lymphatic system/kept out of the vascular system

- the delivery mechanism of the mRNA [lipid nano particles] may also be harmful in their own right; the LNPs concentrate in the ovaries and bone marrow and the type of LNPs found to be most effective also binds to liver cells

The most effective nanoparticles were ones that the body mistook as low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol—commonly called bad cholesterol. Proteins that recognize LDL cholesterol in the blood bound to some of Alnylam’s nanoparticles and carried them to LDL receptors on liver cells, which then caused the cells to engulf the nanoparticles in an endosome. It was the kind of complex interplay that studies in a petri dish missed.

Originally Posted By katya422⏩