COVID vaccines are profitable

 If you've read many of my posts you'll know I'm not anti-vax. But I have become extremely cautious with vaccines in the last few years as I've learned more about the pharmaceutical industry and how much money goes into it. It's also been a little concerning how quickly and eagerly most in the medical profession accept what is told to them by the industry.

Here's what I was reading this morning in Nature -- The tangled history of mRNA vaccines

The mRNA experiments in the late 1980's were the foundation to the COVID vaccines of today. But those experiments weren't even the beginning of mRNA research which started back in the 1960s.

For anyone with eyes, who can read, it really isn't a secret that COVID vaccines are very profitable. In the Nature.com article it states--

"Those experiments were a stepping stone towards two of the most important and profitable vaccines in history: the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines given to hundreds of millions of people around the world. Global sales of these are expected to top US$50 billion in 2021 alone."

The COVID vaccines (at least those based on the mRNA) are the "most important and profitable".

Anytime a lot of money is to be made there is bound to be corruption.

And it's not just money that fuels the issue. It's the recognition and awards. Of course awards tend to bring in more money, especially those like the Nobel. Here's more from the article

"The debate over who deserves credit for pioneering the technology is heating up as awards start rolling out — and the speculation is getting more intense in advance of the Nobel prize announcements next month."

Add to that

"The story illuminates the way that many scientific discoveries become life-changing innovations: with decades of dead ends, rejections and battles over potential profits, but also generosity, curiosity and dogged persistence against scepticism [sic] and doubt."

There are lots of people who want to do what is right, who believe they are doing what is right. But when something becomes successful and profitable, a lot of people become greedy if they can justify how they deserve some of the profit. 

In several cases in the article scientists stated that RNA has a "reputation for unbelievable instability", it's "hard to work with". 

Moderna had been trying to get a working mRNA vaccine prior to COVID since about 2015. 

"By the beginning of 2020, Moderna had advanced nine mRNA vaccine candidates for infectious diseases into people for testing. None was a slam-dunk success. Just one had progressed to a larger-phase trial."

Yet when COVID struck the world, within days of the genome sequence being available online Moderna was creating a prototype vaccine. Pfizer was close behind, and "clinical trials then moved at a record pace, going from first-in-human testing to emergency approval in less than eight months."

Moderna "got two patents last year covering the broad use of mRNA to produce secreted proteins" in its effort to create vaccines for "clinical testing for influenza, cytomegalovirus and a range of other infectious diseases". But industry insiders believe the patents are challengeable because they "don't feel there's a lot that is patentable, and certainly not enforceable".

And while the mRNA technology is being looked at a a possible solution for better vaccines for other pathogens, another article in Nature states:

"The world was able to develop COVID-19 vaccines so quickly because of years of previous research on related viruses and faster ways to manufacture vaccines, enormous funding that allowed firms to run multiple trials in parallel, and regulators moving more quickly than normal. Some of those factors might translate to other vaccine efforts, particularly speedier manufacturing platforms.

"But there’s no guarantee. To repeat such rapid success will require similar massive funding for development, which is likely to come only if there is a comparable sense of social and political urgency. It will depend, too, on the nature of the pathogen. With SARS-CoV-2, a virus that mutates relatively slowly and that happens to belong to a well-studied family, scientists might — strange as it sounds — have got lucky."

The lightning-fast quest for COVID vaccines — and what it means for other diseases

 The phrases that really jumped at me, where developing new mRNA vaccines are concerned, were the requirement for "massive funding for development" and that would only happen "if there is a comparable sense of social and political urgency". That last bit was a nice way of saying fearmongering.

How was it that the COVID vaccines were developed so quickly? Yes, there was decades of prior research. But it really came down to the huge amount of fear that politicians and the media pressed upon the populace, and then the government offering insane amounts of money for a vaccine to be developed quickly.

The mRNA is an interesting medical advancement, but the reality is it's still in its infancy, especially for use as a vaccine. There are not long-term clinical trials to prove anything one way or another, and there are short term cases that are not boding well for the vaccine.

Here's how I see it.

The COVID vaccines may help some. They appear to help reduce severe cases if you get infected with COVID after receiving the vaccine. For this reason they may be more beneficial to those who have compromised health and/or medical conditions.

But, a vaccinated individual puts others at greater risk. They are less likely to believe they have COVID when they have mild symptoms and will be more likely to be among others without precautions, thus infecting others.

And vaccine efficacy is inferior to natural immunity. With each new variant the effectiveness of the vaccine decreases, and immunity from the vaccine appears to decrease over time. Natural immunity appears to keep an individual much better protected against the new variants for a much longer time. What we're likely to be seeing in the next several months is an increasing trend of the vaccinated to become more infected with newer variants while those with natural immunity will be the ones who have the milder cases.

Of course this will just make the calls for booster shots all the louder...and vaccine manufacturers will be right behind that push, their pockets open for the fresh influx of money.

So, while I believe in the concept of vaccination, there is too much money flowing from the government to the vaccine manufacturers and too few long term studies (with large, diverse control groups) to convince me that the COVID vaccine is as great as talking heads make it out to be. It has, whether it is or not, the appearance of a conspiracy to get gain, either in money and/or power.