Comparing safety profiles of the three COVID vaccines.
So now that almost 50% of Americans have received at least one COVID-19 shot and 30% are fully vaccinated, it’s worth looking at CDC VAERS adverse event reporting for instances of death, life threatening, permanent disability, hospitalized, and emergency room that have been collected thus far to compare the real world safety profiles for the different vaccines.
One thing to keep in mind before continuing is that VAERS is a voluntary reporting system, so the data is only as complete as what’s being reported, meaning there may be additional cases that went unreported.
In any case, at first glance it appears as if Johnson and Johnson is safer as it has less adverse events overall, but it was not only late to the party but had less doses administered overall. In the current month of April, Johnson and Johnson triggered more than double the adverse events Pfizer and Moderna triggered, with far fewer doses administered.
Total adverse events reported over total shots in arms comes out to the following.
Johnson & Johnson: 1,532 / 8,166,410 = 0.0188%
Moderna: 7,432 / 103,474,188 = 0.0072%
Pfizer : 7,532 / 125,540,172 = 0.0060%
Pfizer is the safest, followed by Moderna.
With three times as many adverse events per doses reported as Pfizer, Johnson and Johnson is the least safe, which is that much more fascinating, considering Johnson and Johnson was supposed to the the single shot non-mRNA that wasn’t going to turn you into a Zombie like the experimental mRNA ones will.
If you’re in the market for a vaccine, but aren’t sure which one to get, to minimize your risk, these numbers suggest staying away from Johnson and Johnson.
The last thing worth mentioning is that there is another vaccine candidate called Novavax coming up soon which includes neither mRNA nor an adenoviral vector, and includes only a spike protein with an adjuvant. Will it be safer than Pfizer? I can’t say. Maybe the devil you know is better than the one you don’t, who knows.
I guess in the interest of full disclosure, I should also mention that these numbers, while seemingly low, are all higher than for annual flu vaccines.
Good luck, and have fun.