Pfizer snobs are wrong. J&J is the coolest vaccine.

“Oh, my Pfizer vaccine is cool,” I hear you saying. Let me raise my arm, which only received a single shot so it doesn’t hurt to do so, in order to stroke my chin in thought. What makes a product cool? Exclusivity, of course. The product you covet is the product you can’t get: the limited-run sneaker, the screenprint in an edition of 50, the makeup collection that sells out in an hour. Well, what could be more exclusive than a vaccine that the FDA literally wouldn’t let you take for half of April? (The pause, to check out a rare but dangerous clotting side effect, was lifted April 23; experts suggest that women under 50 who don’t have another reason to take the J&J vaccine and who can access Pfizer or Moderna might want to choose those instead.)... “Each time I got my Moderna vaccine, I posted a selfie,” you brag. Oh, each time? Funny, because I’m not sure I’ve mentioned yet that I only had to make one trip to the Lubber Run Community Center to get my one Johnson & Johnson shot. If I asked a child the number of times she wished to have a sharp needle stuck into her arm, she’d know the correct answer: zero. Which is closer to zero, one (the number of shots of the J&J vaccine I got) or two (the number of shots of the Pfizer vaccine you got)? The answer is one, the number of shots of the J&J vaccine I got. One is basically half as many as two. Not only is that half as many sharp needles piercing your skin, that’s half as many carbon-burning drives to the vaccine site, half as many hours spent standing in line, half as many chances to feel gross side effects.