Is Moderna the Tortoise in the Vaccine Race?

President Trump’s Operation Warp speed was often likened to the Manhattan Project, but this time the Americans and the Germans were on the same side. Germany had the BioNTech mRNA vaccine, backed by Pfizer ; the U.S. had the Moderna shot, based on research conducted at a National Institutes of Health lab. The shots seemed so similar that Anthony Fauci, despite taking pride in the NIH’s work, told me he couldn’t choose between them.

Americans, including my patients, tended to lean toward BioNTech, perhaps because of its association with a famous American pharmaceutical brand. My hospital administered only Pfizer to begin with. It is the only Covid-19 vaccine so far to be fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration and was the first to receive emergency-use authorization for 16-year-olds, then 12-year-olds. The word on the medical street was that aches and fevers, headaches and muscle aches were more common with the Moderna shot.