6 ms·

US cancels funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine

111 points by geox 1y ago

matthewdgreen 1y ago
This seems kind of bad.
- krapp 1y ago
  There's a lot of that going around lately.
  - burnt-resistor 1y ago
    Memetic bird flu preferring self-harm.
- leoh 1y ago
  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.
  - drannex 1y ago
    context: worked in network security and automation for intra-government health departments throughout COVID, so I heard everything and felt everything. -- The other problem with the cancellation: Budgets are likely already set, personnel hired, and roadmaps planned based on the expectation of secured funding and secured funding _sources_. Funding doesn't just mean cash being deposited, it usually on this level is additionally knowledge funding and sharing between organizations. Cancelling funding, like this, also reduces input from the funder, the knowledge share, and expectations. Now, you will have legions of [1]technicians, scientists, researchers, testers, legal, business, marketing, safety, regulation experts, engineers, hiring, and even HR,[/1] that are going to have to rework likely _months_ of planning and expectations. One side is that now everything is in chaos and there are a lot of people that were part of this without a roadmap forward. Second side is that now you have a authority or expectations vacuum based on uncertainty and now there will be an internal 'war' between ideological camps and ideas on how to move forward, meaning loss of internal communication. The third part? Now, you have legions of *[^1] who are exhausted and feel like their time has been wasted and now are just frustrated. This isn't even discussing that multi-year budgets and quotas have been set, and now to supplement the funding and knowledge drop, they will have to pull from other areas, causing a cascading effect.
  - mike_hearn 1y ago
    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 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.
    - Izkata 1y ago
      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.
      - mike_hearn 1y ago
        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.
    - leoh 1y ago
      They currently have a market cap of $10B.
      - Aloisius 1y ago
        What does that have to do with well capitalized a company is? It looks like Moderna have enough capital available to meet their obligations for a while, but they do appear to be burning through it.
jleyank 1y ago
Most people find it difficult to bend reality to match their worldview. Doesn’t stop people from trying. The hope is that the number of people affected from these efforts is minimized.
- conartist6 1y ago
  Nobody throws you a parade for preventing a disaster from happening. Let the disaster happen though and you have a chance to look like a hero!
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    You just described working in cyber security. The difference is you're to blame if the disaster happens.
    - Alive-in-2025 1y ago
      Trump is lauded for stopping the libs no matter what destructive & unnecessary actions he foments that hurt his supporters. It's a now daily exercise to see an article about huge Medicaid cuts planned in the stupid big bill that will hurt his supporters. Then there are the requisite quotes from people who voted for him, and are really concerned with lots of fraud in Medicaid AND are set to lose their just admitted crucial medicaid insurance. Their self destructive choices based on years of TV propaganda is frustrating to see over and over again.
      - dekhn 1y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_one's_nose_to_spite_one's_face https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_one's_nose_to_spit... See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_bomb_Voronezh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_bomb_Voronezh
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
msgodel 1y ago
[flagged]
- jghn 1y ago
  How exactly were they "sloppy"?
- boroboro4 1y ago
  I’m still excited about MRNA vaccines (and therapies). What’s wrong with Covid vaccines apart from particular politicians demonizing them and their respective electorate getting all crazy about non existing issues in their heads?
  - noworriesnate 1y ago
    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 serious danger. 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. Despite the above, there was tremendous pressure from left wing institutions to vaccinate everyone, proving that their values were about pharmaceutical profits instead of my body my choice. Anyone who investigated the origin story became spontaneously racist. But then later morality reversed and it was fine.
    - helsinki8 1y ago
      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" was a common symptom for weeks or months, sometimes longer) and many children died or developed serious health issues like diabetes from the virus. But needles are scary, so some people will claim anything to justify their aversion rather than admit they have a phobia of injections.
bediger4000 1y ago
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, which of course failed. But Trump's Base decided for Trump about this issue. Trump leads from behind on this one.
- boroboro4 1y ago
  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).
  - potato3732842 1y ago
    >Which is so unfortunate given the potential mRNA vaccines and therapies have. There's what should be a glaringly obvious lesson about ends and means here but nobody will learn it.
  - amluto 1y ago
    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 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 years later. Or not. The COVID vaccine trials were very focused on the efficacy of a 1-3 dose series, in people with no previous immunity, at preventing disease or reducing its severity over a period of weeks to months after the vaccine series. This is not at all the situation with influenza or the situation now with COVID. Compare to vaccines like MMR or Varicella, which were, and still are, studied over a period of many years.
linotype 1y ago
Sounds like an opportunity for Europe to pick up the tab.
- kjkjadksj 1y ago
  Europe has had to pick up a lot of tabs lately on the offchance the Fulda Gap is breached.
  - linotype 1y ago
    Europeans paying for their own defense, what a concept.
insane_dreamer 1y ago
The critical thing is that part of the funding was for additional clinical studies, which is exactly what is needed to determine efficacy / safety, and answer lingering scientific questions. I guess mRNA vaccines are "woke" now (or maybe they always were, dunno). More stupidity.
matty22 1y ago
But what about those egg prices?

111 points by geox 1y ago

matthewdgreen 1y ago

This seems kind of bad.

krapp 1y ago
There's a lot of that going around lately.
- burnt-resistor 1y ago
  Memetic bird flu preferring self-harm.
leoh 1y ago
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.
- drannex 1y ago
  context: worked in network security and automation for intra-government health departments throughout COVID, so I heard everything and felt everything. -- The other problem with the cancellation: Budgets are likely already set, personnel hired, and roadmaps planned based on the expectation of secured funding and secured funding _sources_. Funding doesn't just mean cash being deposited, it usually on this level is additionally knowledge funding and sharing between organizations. Cancelling funding, like this, also reduces input from the funder, the knowledge share, and expectations. Now, you will have legions of [1]technicians, scientists, researchers, testers, legal, business, marketing, safety, regulation experts, engineers, hiring, and even HR,[/1] that are going to have to rework likely _months_ of planning and expectations. One side is that now everything is in chaos and there are a lot of people that were part of this without a roadmap forward. Second side is that now you have a authority or expectations vacuum based on uncertainty and now there will be an internal 'war' between ideological camps and ideas on how to move forward, meaning loss of internal communication. The third part? Now, you have legions of *[^1] who are exhausted and feel like their time has been wasted and now are just frustrated. This isn't even discussing that multi-year budgets and quotas have been set, and now to supplement the funding and knowledge drop, they will have to pull from other areas, causing a cascading effect.
- mike_hearn 1y ago
  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 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.
  - Izkata 1y ago
    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.
    - mike_hearn 1y ago
      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.
  - leoh 1y ago
    They currently have a market cap of $10B.
    - Aloisius 1y ago
      What does that have to do with well capitalized a company is? It looks like Moderna have enough capital available to meet their obligations for a while, but they do appear to be burning through it.

jleyank 1y ago

Most people find it difficult to bend reality to match their worldview. Doesn’t stop people from trying. The hope is that the number of people affected from these efforts is minimized.

conartist6 1y ago
Nobody throws you a parade for preventing a disaster from happening. Let the disaster happen though and you have a chance to look like a hero!
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  You just described working in cyber security. The difference is you're to blame if the disaster happens.
  - Alive-in-2025 1y ago
    Trump is lauded for stopping the libs no matter what destructive & unnecessary actions he foments that hurt his supporters. It's a now daily exercise to see an article about huge Medicaid cuts planned in the stupid big bill that will hurt his supporters. Then there are the requisite quotes from people who voted for him, and are really concerned with lots of fraud in Medicaid AND are set to lose their just admitted crucial medicaid insurance. Their self destructive choices based on years of TV propaganda is frustrating to see over and over again.
    - dekhn 1y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_one's_nose_to_spite_one's_face https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_off_one's_nose_to_spit... See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_bomb_Voronezh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_bomb_Voronezh
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]

msgodel 1y ago

[flagged]

jghn 1y ago
How exactly were they "sloppy"?
boroboro4 1y ago
I’m still excited about MRNA vaccines (and therapies). What’s wrong with Covid vaccines apart from particular politicians demonizing them and their respective electorate getting all crazy about non existing issues in their heads?
- noworriesnate 1y ago
  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 serious danger. 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. Despite the above, there was tremendous pressure from left wing institutions to vaccinate everyone, proving that their values were about pharmaceutical profits instead of my body my choice. Anyone who investigated the origin story became spontaneously racist. But then later morality reversed and it was fine.
  - helsinki8 1y ago
    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" was a common symptom for weeks or months, sometimes longer) and many children died or developed serious health issues like diabetes from the virus. But needles are scary, so some people will claim anything to justify their aversion rather than admit they have a phobia of injections.

bediger4000 1y ago

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, which of course failed. But Trump's Base decided for Trump about this issue. Trump leads from behind on this one.

boroboro4 1y ago
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).
- potato3732842 1y ago
  >Which is so unfortunate given the potential mRNA vaccines and therapies have. There's what should be a glaringly obvious lesson about ends and means here but nobody will learn it.
- amluto 1y ago
  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 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 years later. Or not. The COVID vaccine trials were very focused on the efficacy of a 1-3 dose series, in people with no previous immunity, at preventing disease or reducing its severity over a period of weeks to months after the vaccine series. This is not at all the situation with influenza or the situation now with COVID. Compare to vaccines like MMR or Varicella, which were, and still are, studied over a period of many years.

linotype 1y ago

Sounds like an opportunity for Europe to pick up the tab.

kjkjadksj 1y ago
Europe has had to pick up a lot of tabs lately on the offchance the Fulda Gap is breached.
- linotype 1y ago
  Europeans paying for their own defense, what a concept.

insane_dreamer 1y ago

The critical thing is that part of the funding was for additional clinical studies, which is exactly what is needed to determine efficacy / safety, and answer lingering scientific questions. I guess mRNA vaccines are "woke" now (or maybe they always were, dunno). More stupidity.

matty22 1y ago

But what about those egg prices?