What J&J Can Still Teach Us
The Johnson & Johnson vaccine, perhaps more than any other COVID shot, knows what it is to be bullied by the American public. Since the spring, the shot’s been roasted, and roasted, and roasted again—first for its late arrival and its imperfect performance in trials, then for a rare but concerning side effect that temporarily halted its distribution in April. Tweets, memes, and listicles dragged it. SNL skewered it. CVS pharmacies stopped offering it. Then, in October, federal officials urged everyone on Team J&J to get another shot—any shot (but also, maybe try Moderna this time?)—rendering the vaccine’s one-and-done protection, its clearest advantage over its mRNA competitors, just about moot. The underdog dose, the “second class” shot, the nation’s vaccine-a non grata, seemed as good as dead.
This incessant ragging has been all too easy—and maybe shortsighted. According to some experts, the haters are overlooking a trait that could rescue J&J’s reputation, and possibly even keep it in scientific contention. “I think there is a silver lining to this vaccine that a lot of people don’t see,” David Martinez, an immunologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who is studying immune responses to COVID-19 shots, told me. It’s a trait called durability—the ability of a vaccine’s protection to persist, despite the ravages of time. Several researchers, including representatives of the company that designed the J&J vaccine, say they’re seeing early hints of this with the shot. “It’s unequivocal,” Mathai Mammen, the global head of research and development for Janssen, the vaccine-manufacturing pharmaceutical company owned by Johnson & Johnson, told me. In tracking the vaccine’s effectiveness, “there is no change, month over month over month.” The shot’s initial magnitude of protection against sickness might not match Moderna’s or Pfizer’s. But after they’re built, J&J’s defenses seem to stick around in a way that their mRNA-driven counterparts might not, like a low-wattage bulb that keeps burning, long after all the other lights in the room have flickered and died.
