Talk about a blast from the past.
Four years ago, the federal government was spending massive amounts of money on Operation Warp Speed, designed to deliver a vaccine for COVID-19 in record time.
Pfizer and Moderna succeeded — and lo and behold, the pharma giants announced the results of successful trials just after the presidential election. What a surprise!
Unfortunately, the coronavirus vaccines didn’t necessarily stop COVID-19 the way we were promised, and those who still believe in the product are now on something like their 53rd booster.
The government is still paying obscene amounts of money to obtain it for those on Medicare and Medicaid — up to four times what some European countries are, according to a September report — despite the fact that evidence for the efficacy of the vaccine vis-a-vis the risks is questionable for most healthy people.
That’s what dominated the 2020 election cycle. In 2024, expect much of the same.
As Barron’s reported last week, both Moderna and Pfizer are in talks with the federal government over development of a vaccine for the avian flu, prompting a huge rise in vaccine-related stocks.
Moderna, which saw a 13.7 spike in its stock price Wednesday, according to Barron’s, confirmed it was in discussions with the government regarding “advancing our pandemic flu candidate.”
While Pfizer didn’t respond to Barron’s, a Health and Human Services official acknowledged discussions were taking place.
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“We continue to have active conversations with both manufacturers, and the negotiations are ongoing,” said Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary of preparedness and response at HHS, according to Barron’s.
“We are looking to wrap this up and have something to say very soon.”
According to Barron’s, “O’Connell also said that the agency last week had begun the process of converting 4.8 million doses of avian influenza vaccine from bulk product in the government’s stockpile to finished doses ready to be administered.”
She insisted the move wouldn’t compromise the government’s ability to give seasonal flu shots.
“It takes a couple of months to be able to fill and finish vaccine doses,” O’Connell said.
“So we had these already in hand in bulk, but thought it mades sense, given what we were seeing.”
This is all after a grand total of three (3) avian flu cases in humans have been confirmed in the United States. This is the total of human infection two months after the virus was detected in dairy cattle.
“There are no immediate signs that the virus is about to cause a human pandemic, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that the current public health risk remains slow,” Barron’s noted.
Still, who doesn’t want to party like it’s 2020 again?
American taxpayers might not be, since they’re already on the hook for spending over $30 billion to develop and acquire the COVID vaccines, according to a study published in March of 2023.
Now that the pandemic is over, Stat reported last September, the government began paying over $80 for each booster from Moderna and Pfizer.
It’s understandable, then, that the major vaccine makers soared on the stock market last week — Moderna by over 23 percent, according to the Motley Fool — after avian flu was detected in an individual in Australia. Trusting the science can be profitable, indeed.
The question is whether it’s worth it. Unlike with COVID, which was spread much more easily, there doesn’t seem to be the likelihood of a mass pandemic like we saw in 2020 with avian flu. The CDC seems adamant that the risk is low.
Nevertheless, it helps with the double-masking crowd if President Joe Biden is able to tout vaccine development long after most voters stopped caring about jab-scolds and social distancing requirements.
Putting pointless inoculation back front and center for American voters might be the only thing that makes the left universally happy about the current situation.
Independent and conservative voters might be more wary, but the president will take what he can get — particularly when he looks at where he’s at in the polls.
