Did Pfizer Peak Too Soon?
The Delta variant’s arrival this summer delivered a blow to the nation’s entire coronavirus arsenal, but its impact on the champion of last year’s vaccine race—Pfizer—has been particularly humbling. Compared with Moderna’s competing shot, Pfizer’s vaccine seems to induce half the amount of virus-fighting antibodies, and is associated with nearly twice as many breakthrough infections, according to two recent studies. Pfizer’s shots remain highly protective against hospitalization, but the latest numbers from the CDC suggest that their effectiveness has dropped from 87 percent to 80 percent during the Delta wave, while that of Moderna’s shots remains in the 90s.
Although Pfizer has now sold authorities around the world on the imminent need for third shots to combat waning immunity, the company doesn’t believe that its vaccine, worth to its bottom line, is inferior in any way to competitors. Recipients of Moderna’s shots, after all, may also need a booster eventually. “All of the real-world evidence you have to take with caution,” Pfizer’s chief scientific officer, Mikael Dolsten, told me recently. “It’s very hard to compare two very effective interventions.” Other experts see the evidence of a difference, however slight, starting to grow. Shane Crotty, a researcher at to market, ended up delivering the second-best product?
