Widespread Claims Misrepresent Effectiveness of COVID-19 Vaccines

Viruses mutate, or change, as they replicate. That’s largely why the currently available vaccine formulas aren’t working as well at preventing infection with the virus that causes COVID-19.

Those vaccines — made by Moderna, Pfizer/BioNTech and Johnson & Johnson — were highly effective in preventing both symptomatic infection and serious illness against early strains of the virus. But they are less effective against infection from the currently circulating subvariants of the omicron variant.

Public health officials have acknowledged this shift and changed their advice accordingly, in an effort to deal with a disease...