Your questions, answered "If a person received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine and is now eligible for a booster, the Pfizer vaccine booster would be a full dose. But [if] the choice was to get a Moderna shot, would it be a full dose or a half dose of the vaccine?" — Mary in Pennsylvania "[Last week] you said someone who got two full doses of Moderna could get a J&J shot (as a booster). However, I got J&J in the spring and can't even get ONE full shot of Moderna (I can only get a half-dose booster because J&J is still approved as a one-shot only). How on earth is this inequity possible?" - Joanne in Ohio Millions of people got the Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine because it was the first shot available to them. They were doing the right thing at a point in the pandemic when vaccine distribution was limited and health officials were telling Americans not to be picky. So it's understandable that they're concerned by reports that the single-dose regimen offers less protection than its counterparts from Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech. And now that the booster shots are here, it's also reasonable to wonder whether the Moderna half-dose offers enough additional protection to these patients. Fortunately, it does. Any of the three boosters on top of a dose of Johnson & Johnson will give you robust protection against dangerous illness. Health officials say any combination is fine, though the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech shots performed somewhat better than an extra dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. The fact that the Moderna dose is half the size of the original doesn't mean it's less effective, said Namandje N. Bumpus, director of the Johns Hopkins University department of pharmacology and molecular sciences. "More is not always better," Bumpus told me. "You shouldn't feel at all like you're being short changed because you're getting that." When it comes to vaccines, or any drug for that matter, the goal is generally to administer the lowest dose that will trigger the desired benefits, Bumpus said. Vaccinated people's immune systems have already been instructed on how to fight covid-19 — the boosters just wake those defenses back up. Because the Moderna booster is smaller than the original dose, the side effects may be lower, Bumpus said. And using less vaccine per person means there's more to go around. There's also no reason to believe that protection from the Moderna booster won't last as long as the others, according to Bumpus. "All of these vaccines are a little bit different and they're all going to work a little differently. Their ingredients are different," she said. "If you're eligible for a booster, getting a booster is what's important." | 
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