Does it really show that? Looks hoplessly confounded to me:
Among fully vaccinated persons, 93 of 122 (76%) Pfizer-BioNTech recipients and 0 of 50 (0%) Moderna recipients had been vaccinated ≥4 months before the outbreak (p<0.001). A larger proportion of Pfizer-BioNTech recipients had diabetes (p = 0.02) or hypertension (p<0.001) than Moderna or Janssen COVID-19 vaccine recipients, and a higher proportion of Pfizer-BioNTech and Janssen recipients had a history of smoking (p<0.001) than Moderna recipients
This sounds like serious confounding. In all likelihood, prison docs had X doses and triaged, and then repeated.
I will say though—I do still think Moderna primary was likely better, but I’ve (since writing) found out that the booster is half the dose of the primary dose—so I doubt Moderna’s increased efficacy translates to the booster.
On somewhat further investigation (really limited here—lets not lean too much on it) -- the Moderna boosters are half the dose of the Moderna primaries. If you believe, as I do, that the primary reason for increased Moderna efficacy in trials was due to dosing, then the reduced booster dose means that the reason I give above (higher efficacy) is no longer a relevant factor.
I do think @npostavs is right that this study is likely quite confounded. Though I do still believe Moderna primary doses had reasonably better efficacy against OG covid, and in all likelihood against delta and now omicron.
This prison study is weird but appears to show that Moderna is MUCH more effective than the other vaccines. Applying Robin Hanson’s heuristic that the non-headline numbers in a study are less biased than the headline numbers, we should maybe treat this as more credible than official estimates of relative efficacy.
Does it really show that? Looks hoplessly confounded to me:
This sounds like serious confounding. In all likelihood, prison docs had X doses and triaged, and then repeated.
I will say though—I do still think Moderna primary was likely better, but I’ve (since writing) found out that the booster is half the dose of the primary dose—so I doubt Moderna’s increased efficacy translates to the booster.
On somewhat further investigation (really limited here—lets not lean too much on it) -- the Moderna boosters are half the dose of the Moderna primaries. If you believe, as I do, that the primary reason for increased Moderna efficacy in trials was due to dosing, then the reduced booster dose means that the reason I give above (higher efficacy) is no longer a relevant factor.
I do think @npostavs is right that this study is likely quite confounded. Though I do still believe Moderna primary doses had reasonably better efficacy against OG covid, and in all likelihood against delta and now omicron.