You might be interested in Helen Branswell’s side-by-side comparison of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines at STAT. AFAICT the biggest distinction is a business one:
The ultracold storage requirement is not the only challenging aspect of the Pfizer vaccine. The minimum amount of vaccine a location can order is 975 doses. A large teaching hospital might need several of those. But there are plenty of places across the country that don’t need 975 doses to vaccinate the people currently eligible for vaccination — health workers and nursing home residents. This is the vaccine that needs to be kept at -94 F. The minimum order size will limit the locations in which this vaccine can be used.
The Moderna vaccine’s minimum order is 100 doses, a much more manageable number.
The Pfizer vaccine is shipped in five-dose vials; Moderna’s vaccine is shipped in 10-dose vials.
Here’s her description of the side effects:
The most common side effects are injection site pain, fatigue, headache, muscle pain, and joint pain. Some people in the clinical trials have reported fever. Side effects are more common after the second dose; younger adults, who have more robust immune systems, reported more side effects than older adults.
Other than the injection site part that’s how I feel normally.
We haven’t seen much in the way of side effects. The larger lots and storage temperature will be an issue when you start sending these out for police, teachers, bus drivers grocery workers, etc. 900 vaccines to a larger hospital isn’t that big of an issue. Dividing 900 among several police stations, schools, etc would be a hassle.
Steve