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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

#61

Post by nailer »

Majromax wrote: post #22
noworriesnate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head: First they were supposed to prevent COVID. That turned out to not be true, so then they were supposed to lessen the symptoms. Everyone I know who still frequently gets COVID had the shot. Anyone paying attention was lied to. There were tons of surprise side effects especially relating to women’s periods getting screwed up. They were administered to children, when children were not in any serio…

> First they were supposed to prevent COVID. That turned out to not be true, In fact, the vaccines did a fantastic job at preventing covid's spread. The problem was that they were developed for (and had clinical trial results for) the variant-free covid-classic. By the time they were widely deployed, the virus in circulation was already one of several more-easily-spread variants. Had covid not mutated into variants,…

> Had covid not mutated into variants, it seems very likely that widespread vaccination would have given us true 'herd immunity'.

If my uncle was a woman, he'd be my aunt.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#62

Post by mike_hearn »

leoh wrote: post #40
matthewdgreen wrote: post #2

This seems kind of bad.

Fortunately, Moderna is well capitalized and will likely find ways to continue development of said vaccine if the risks (financial, health-wise, etc.) are outweighed by anticipated benefits; this is one of the advantages of capitalistic systems. That said, certainly, yes, cancelling a contract like this is not ideal.

Nope. Moderna's share price and general outlook has flatlined at its pre-2020 levels a long time ago. They have no products, they aren't well capitalized and they might liquidate at some point. This vaccine was a no-hoper like all other Moderna's products. That's why the article says: "Shares of Moderna were flat in after-market trading." The smart money wasn't surprised because this was never going to make it to market.

Although this will be interpreted on the left as a partisan move (with the administration lying under duress or something), it's likely that they're telling the truth about why it was cancelled. Trump after all was a big supporter of the Moderna vaccines. But mRNA tech just doesn't work when normal safety standards are re-imposed. I wrote about the problem here a couple of weeks ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44003338

It's easy to forget that the COVID vaccines were an emergency measure. The way they were judged wasn't how pharma products are normally judged.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#63

Post by const_cast »

kelipso wrote: post #33
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 medical community, the government, and the media in general hid, downplayed, and censored discussions about the negative side effects of mRNA vaccines. Thus creating an aura of suspicion around the mRNA vaccine and loss of trust in the medical community. Once they publish tons of trustworthy research on the side effects of mRNA vaccines, then people will have confidence in them. > trustworthy Yes. It will probabl…

The problem with mRNA vaccines is that we did not downplay and censor charlatans enough. We allowed anti-vax rhetoric to spread like wildfire on Twitter, Facebook, and the like. Our scientists and doctors actually humored these people, and that was a huge mistake.

As soon as you tell an anti-vaxxer something like "there are risks, but..." all they hear is "aha!! I knew it was poison!".

Nobody on planet Earth said that the vaccine was 100% safe, nor that it was 100% effective. Because no vaccine, and no medicine, is. But we allowed people to revel in their own fear and anti-establishment mentality, and because of that, a lot of people died that did not need to.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#64

Post by Izkata »

mike_hearn wrote: post #62
leoh wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fortunately, Moderna is well capitalized and will likely find ways to continue development of said vaccine if the risks (financial, health-wise, etc.) are outweighed by anticipated benefits; this is one of the advantages of capitalistic systems. That said, certainly, yes, cancelling a contract like this is not ideal.

Nope. Moderna's share price and general outlook has flatlined at its pre-2020 levels a long time ago. They have no products, they aren't well capitalized and they might liquidate at some point. This vaccine was a no-hoper like all other Moderna's products. That's why the article says: "Shares of Moderna were flat in after-market trading." The smart money wasn't surprised because this was never going to make it to mar…

On the lipid nanoparticle toxicity, I remember an article from either 2020 or 2021 that claimed they had some sort of breakthrough in 2019 that reduced the toxicity, though didn't solve it completely. Unfortunately I don't remember the details and hadn't been able to find it again when I tried a year or two afterwards.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#65

Post by const_cast »

seanclausi wrote: post #24
noworriesnate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head: First they were supposed to prevent COVID. That turned out to not be true, so then they were supposed to lessen the symptoms. Everyone I know who still frequently gets COVID had the shot. Anyone paying attention was lied to. There were tons of surprise side effects especially relating to women’s periods getting screwed up. They were administered to children, when children were not in any serio…

> Everyone I know who still frequently gets COVID had the shot. Your observation matches what I'm seeing among the many people I know. One middle-aged man in particular, who's quite active and otherwise healthy, got at least 3 of those shots back then so he could travel overseas. There were at least 2 separate international trips he subsequently went on where he got sick on the way home, tested positive once back, an…

Could it be because anti-vaxxers are generally anti-medicine and are therefore not getting tested when they probably should?

Obviously, if you don't believe in Covid, you're going to have way less Covid. Because you don't even believe it exists - so when would you ever admit to having it?

It could also be that the people who get boosters happen to be the most likely to contract Covid, and that's why they're getting the booster. Like if they're immune-compromised, or work at an Airport or something.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#66

Post by Izkata »

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…

> 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 years later. Or not.

Flu vaccine effectiveness has been trending slowly downwards for about a decade. I don't recall any established reasons for it, though.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#67

Post by mike_hearn »

Izkata wrote: post #64
mike_hearn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Moderna's share price and general outlook has flatlined at its pre-2020 levels a long time ago. They have no products, they aren't well capitalized and they might liquidate at some point. This vaccine was a no-hoper like all other Moderna's products. That's why the article says: "Shares of Moderna were flat in after-market trading." The smart money wasn't surprised because this was never going to make it to mar…

On the lipid nanoparticle toxicity, I remember an article from either 2020 or 2021 that claimed they had some sort of breakthrough in 2019 that reduced the toxicity, though didn't solve it completely. Unfortunately I don't remember the details and hadn't been able to find it again when I tried a year or two afterwards.

I looked for such a breakthrough at the time and could find no evidence of such a thing. They also claimed in 2020 that mRNA was some sort of easily programmable bio-software that would let them launch new vaccines within weeks, but that didn't happen either.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#68

Post by Izkata »

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.

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

My experience actually looking at these groups is they did understand it better than most. The various studies people are pulling up in this thread today, showing more research is needed? They were sharing and talking about similar studies in 2021 and 2022 during the period everyone else was blindly repeating the "safe and effective" mantra.

Quick edit for an example of one of these earlier studies they were sharing: https://www.mdpi.com/1467-3045/44/3/73

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#69

Post by Izkata »

Majromax wrote: post #22
noworriesnate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head: First they were supposed to prevent COVID. That turned out to not be true, so then they were supposed to lessen the symptoms. Everyone I know who still frequently gets COVID had the shot. Anyone paying attention was lied to. There were tons of surprise side effects especially relating to women’s periods getting screwed up. They were administered to children, when children were not in any serio…

> First they were supposed to prevent COVID. That turned out to not be true, In fact, the vaccines did a fantastic job at preventing covid's spread. The problem was that they were developed for (and had clinical trial results for) the variant-free covid-classic. By the time they were widely deployed, the virus in circulation was already one of several more-easily-spread variants. Had covid not mutated into variants,…

> > The official story was that we were trying to make COVID die out before it mutated again, but to do that would have required vaccinating all animals as well.

> As far as I'm aware, every circulating covid variant that we've traced has likely come from mutations inside humans, not zoonotic intermixing.

IIRC the original Omicron has a strange lineage that looks like a second spillover event, from some animal that had been infected with one of the first variants instead of any that were going around at the time.

Re: US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

#70

Post by Izkata »

helsinki8 wrote: post #17
noworriesnate wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off the top of my head: First they were supposed to prevent COVID. That turned out to not be true, so then they were supposed to lessen the symptoms. Everyone I know who still frequently gets COVID had the shot. Anyone paying attention was lied to. There were tons of surprise side effects especially relating to women’s periods getting screwed up. They were administered to children, when children were not in any serio…

This is all misinformation. The vaccine significantly reduced severity of infection, likelihood to become infected at all, and likelihood of transmitting there infection. The side effects impacting periods were incredibly rare, mild and fully disclosed. Children's test scores are still substantially lower now than pre-covid, likely some of that is due to brain damage from the covid virus (remember that the "brain fog…

> The vaccine significantly reduced severity of infection, likelihood to become infected at all, and likelihood of transmitting there infection.

The first was what the clinical trials tested for, the second and third were hopes that we never had confirmation of. And with how much the waves continued to spike everywhere afterwards, those two seem to have been false - that the mRNA vaccines only suppressed symptoms without reducing infection/transmission.

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