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US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

reuters.com

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Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#41

Post by boroboro4 »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #38
csense wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I've had with MRNA vaccines is that we decided a lengthy multi-year trial protocol was necessary to ensure vaccines are safe and effective. Then COVID hit, and suddenly we decided to rush MRNA [1] vaccines into mass production without those protocols. Moreover, at one point they wanted to force [2] them on the population. The thing that bothered me most is the government passed a law to prevent people fro…

The right's "rushed into production" talking point is especially amusing given their other messaging about cutting through government red tape. It's all just vibes.

We had a disease killing 10000s (if not 100000s) people in the country and you think government shouldn't adjust their regulatory framework to it? I would be very unhappy if they did not, government suppose to be conservative, but not that conservative. Calling this "just vibes" is very hypocritical in my opinion.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#42

Post by boroboro4 »

amluto wrote: post #27
boroboro4 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is so unfortunate given the potential mRNA vaccines and therapies have. They would have made fighting flu so much easier (for the context current flu vaccines take a lot of time to be made each season and hence not very agile towards dominant strain and sometimes miss it a lot, mRNA potentially improves this).

I would have liked to see some actual studies of whether multiple doses, over the course of years, of mRNA vaccines are a good idea. Take a look at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adg7327 and related papers. Is the propensity to generate IgG4 antibodies specific to mRNA vaccines? Is it a problem? It seems entirely plausible that an mRNA flu vaccine would look amazing for one season and less amazing ye…

This is fascinating study, thanks for sharing!

It definitely brings questions about repeated mRNA vaccinations (and mRNA therapies I guess then too?).

Good thing repeated boosters for COVID shouldn't affect other diseases if I understood the study correctly (since target protein is different). Can be an issue for flu vaccines for sure (or it's not since protein used slightly different year to year?).

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#43

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

boroboro4 wrote: post #41
add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right's "rushed into production" talking point is especially amusing given their other messaging about cutting through government red tape. It's all just vibes.

We had a disease killing 10000s (if not 100000s) people in the country and you think government shouldn't adjust their regulatory framework to it? I would be very unhappy if they did not, government suppose to be conservative, but not that conservative. Calling this "just vibes" is very hypocritical in my opinion.

Right, my point is that we did appropriately cut through red tape when it became important to do so. Which (1) weakens arguments that complain about red tape and (2) exposes hypocrisy about claiming to oppose government red tape but then taking a bad faith stance about the vaccine being "rushed".

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#44

Post by ethbr1 »

boroboro4 wrote: post #39
csense wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I've had with MRNA vaccines is that we decided a lengthy multi-year trial protocol was necessary to ensure vaccines are safe and effective. Then COVID hit, and suddenly we decided to rush MRNA [1] vaccines into mass production without those protocols. Moreover, at one point they wanted to force [2] them on the population. The thing that bothered me most is the government passed a law to prevent people fro…

> The problem I've had with MRNA vaccines is that we decided a lengthy multi-year trial protocol was necessary to ensure vaccines are safe and effective. I, actually, agree on this. It was hard balancing act of protecting the population (quite successfully I will note) vs lack of perfect certainty about safety. I've read there've been clinical trials of other mRNA vaccines in mid 2010s so there've been some research…

The thing I wish was more understood in anti-mRNA vaccine circles was how mRNA vaccines work vs traditional vaccine platforms.

Personally, I feel safer taking mRNA vaccines. (And definitely an apples-to-apples novel mRNA vs traditional vaccine!)

Simpler and consumed, so fewer chances for things to go wrong via adverse immune system reactions.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#45

Post by boroboro4 »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #43
boroboro4 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We had a disease killing 10000s (if not 100000s) people in the country and you think government shouldn't adjust their regulatory framework to it? I would be very unhappy if they did not, government suppose to be conservative, but not that conservative. Calling this "just vibes" is very hypocritical in my opinion.

Right, my point is that we did appropriately cut through red tape when it became important to do so. Which (1) weakens arguments that complain about red tape and (2) exposes hypocrisy about claiming to oppose government red tape but then taking a bad faith stance about the vaccine being "rushed".

Gotcha, so you were criticizing right's hypocrisy on "rushed to production". I misunderstood you and got it opposite way.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#46

Post by ethbr1 »

exceptione wrote: post #26
bediger4000 wrote: post #9

The ideological revulsion about mRNA vaccines in particular is an interesting phenomenon. The vaccines were developed during the first Trump administration. Trump himself wanted credit for developing them. He mentioned Operation Warp Speed in some of his 2020 rallies, and got booed for it. Trump's Base decided mRNA was bad, with influencers making bizarre predictions about the vaccinated bleeding out in the streets,…

> But Trump's Base decided for Trump about this issue. Trump leads from behind on this one. 1. The base doesn't decide out of thin air, the USA audience have been primed for decades with `government = bad` (anything `social = bad` really). We have evidence of orchestrated anti covid campaigns on Twitter, but the soil was well prepared for it. 2. Trump always leads from behind. He is allowed some personal space and he…

Vaccine skepticism (and the broader medical skepticism) is a weird one though.

Because it's patently counterproductive -- modern medical science saves lives.

So what you really have is a bunch of people getting riled up about something because they don't currently need it, then making dumb choices at critical moments, then denying their actions caused consequences if they have bad luck.

A partner was a critical care nurse during COVID, and said she had people dying in beds who still denied COVID existed. Mind-boggling.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#47

Post by BryantD »

csense wrote: post #35
boroboro4 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is so unfortunate given the potential mRNA vaccines and therapies have. They would have made fighting flu so much easier (for the context current flu vaccines take a lot of time to be made each season and hence not very agile towards dominant strain and sometimes miss it a lot, mRNA potentially improves this).

The problem I've had with MRNA vaccines is that we decided a lengthy multi-year trial protocol was necessary to ensure vaccines are safe and effective. Then COVID hit, and suddenly we decided to rush MRNA [1] vaccines into mass production without those protocols. Moreover, at one point they wanted to force [2] them on the population. The thing that bothered me most is the government passed a law to prevent people fro…

One factual note here: mRNA vaccines were not brand-new with the COVID ones. The first human clinical trials using an mRNA vaccine were conducted in 2013.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#48

Post by ethbr1 »

pengaru wrote: post #37
bediger4000 wrote: post #9

The ideological revulsion about mRNA vaccines in particular is an interesting phenomenon. The vaccines were developed during the first Trump administration. Trump himself wanted credit for developing them. He mentioned Operation Warp Speed in some of his 2020 rallies, and got booed for it. Trump's Base decided mRNA was bad, with influencers making bizarre predictions about the vaccinated bleeding out in the streets,…

> The vaccines were developed during the first Trump administration. Trump himself wanted credit for developing them. No. They were produced at scale during his administration to combat the pandemic, but were developed well before that, with support from a government actually funding vaccine R&D: > Moderna was also awarded a $25,000,000 grant by DARPA through a program > Autonomous Diagnostics to Enable Prevention an…

The history of DARPA funding mRNA vaccine platforms should be more widely known, because it's exactly what the government should be doing.

DARPA identified novel pathogens with pandemic potential as a key threat to the US (and everyone else), identified mRNA vaccine platforms as something that would allow more rapid responses to novel pathogens, and invested in it.

And then when exactly that happened -- there were mRNA vaccine platforms ready.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#49

Post by boroboro4 »

ethbr1 wrote: post #44
boroboro4 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem I've had with MRNA vaccines is that we decided a lengthy multi-year trial protocol was necessary to ensure vaccines are safe and effective. I, actually, agree on this. It was hard balancing act of protecting the population (quite successfully I will note) vs lack of perfect certainty about safety. I've read there've been clinical trials of other mRNA vaccines in mid 2010s so there've been some research…

The thing I wish was more understood in anti-mRNA vaccine circles was how mRNA vaccines work vs traditional vaccine platforms. Personally, I feel safer taking mRNA vaccines. (And definitely an apples-to-apples novel mRNA vs traditional vaccine!) Simpler and consumed, so fewer chances for things to go wrong via adverse immune system reactions.

Yeah, mRNA vaccines to old style vaccines are similar to hardware + software vs analog machines of the past. Cool and "simple" tech. However there might be unintended consequences we need to study - for example from a comment above: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciimmunol.adg7327
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