Was the approved vaccine the same as the one given?

This claim stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the vaccine manufacturing process. Manufacturing vaccines for a small batch for a trial is a very different process than manufacturing of thousands of doses at a time. Process 1 is the small batch process, while process 2 is the scaled-up version. Although the processes are different, they are both held to the same safety and quality standards.

As for the plasmids that were found, while these are used in the manufacturing of mRNA vaccines, they are not considered an ingredient in the vaccines as the vast majority of it is removed during production.

Claims that DNA plasmids were found in mRNA vaccines at a higher proportion of mRNA to DNA than is allowed by FDA guidelines stem from a preprint paper acknowledging that one limitation of the study is the “unknown provenance of the vaccine vials under study.” They also note that the vaccines arrived without proper cold chain processes and were all expired. As mRNA degrades much faster than DNA, especially when held in suboptimal conditions  (not in cold storage), any proportion of trace amounts of DNA used in manufacturing would be amplified in expired vials not held at the proper temperatures.