Wall Street investors, local health departments, and political leaders can all be excused if Monday’s Moderna coronavirus vaccine announcement has them feeling a bit whipsawed. Buyer’s remorse has heads spinning from Pfizer’s SARS-CoV-2 vaccine to Moderna’s. Get used to it. With more than 200 vaccines in development, there will be months of confusion and tougher choices ahead.
Based on press releases—which is all the world has at this point to work with—the COVID-19 vaccine announced last week by Pfizer and BioNTech, which uses mRNA as genetic code for the spike proteins that protrude from the surface of spherical viruses, offers more than 90 percent protection after recipients had two doses administered. But the product is highly unstable, requiring storage and transport in freezers that can hold temperatures below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
