pfizer did not take the time to check how much warmer the freezers could get without impacting vaccine viability. moderna did. pfizer knew a certain threshold w

pfizer did not take the time to check how much warmer the freezers could get without impacting vaccine viability. moderna did. pfizer knew a certain threshold was safe, so they put it on the tin. moderna tested, found their “real” threshold. note pfizer beat moderna to patient arms by about a week or so. both companies made series of these tradeoffs during development due to speed. i think moderna is being slightly more cautious (testing maximum temperature; testing their asymptomatic trial participants, which pfizer did not do) because they got federal dollars and this is their first product out of phase 3. hard to have a bigger rodeo as your first biomedical product.