Originally posted on Quora
Despite having an inadequate sample size in the hundreds with infected participants in the teens, no randomized double blind testing, and not making their phase 3 infection data available to the advisory committee, Moderna still received approval from the advisory committee and $5 billion in taxpayer dollars for their new booster that was administered to 48 million people. Moderna assumed participants who recieved the updated booster would have a lower infection rate because they had a higher anti-body count, but when the data was finally presented it showed a 68% higher infection rate for those who got the updated booster compared those who had only received the original booster: 1.9% who received the original booster were infected compared to 3.2% of participants who received the new booster. Infection data comes from only 16 participants who became infected and does not include any information on how many were asymptomatic or sick or hospitalized, but does corroborated findings from three other studies including the Cleveland Clinic study that had over 51,000 participants, that found higher risk of reinfection in participants who got updated shots compared with those with only the first booster or primary series.