A perfect storm has been brewing with health, politics, and the economy all crashing together at the center. Folks, it’s time to batten down the hatches, because we’re about to face this mess with fewer resources than we’ve ever had before. So here’s the story: the price of eggs played a significant role in the Mango Taco getting back into office. A contributing factor to the high prices has been a bird flu epidemic on the rise since 2022. Fun fact: the oldest way of manufacturing flu vaccines is to grow the virus in eggs; it allows the virus to replicate and then be inactivated, thus safe to inject and inoculate. Lucky for us, scientists have been developing mRNA vaccine technology for decades, which is what allowed Pfizer and Moderna to roll out the Covid vaccines as swiftly as they did. Well, the Department of Health & Human Services may have kneecapped the CDC’s communications team, but they made sure to get the word out on Wednesday that they’re canceling a $766 million contract with Moderna for a bird flu vaccine that was being developed using mRNA.
“After a rigorous review, we concluded that continued investment in Moderna’s H5N1 mRNA vaccine was not scientifically or ethically justifiable,” HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon said in a statement.
“This is not simply about efficacy — it’s about safety, integrity, and trust. The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested, and we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars repeating the mistakes of the last administration, which concealed legitimate safety concerns from the public,” Nixon said.
He added that “the move signals a shift in federal vaccine funding priorities toward platforms with better-established safety profiles and transparent data practices. HHS remains committed to advancing pandemic preparedness through technologies that are evidence-based, ethically grounded, and publicly accountable.” The official did not provide any additional details.
Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of Brown University’s Pandemic Center, said the decision was “disappointing, but unsurprising given the politically-motivated, evidence-free rhetoric that tries to paint mRNA vaccines as being dangerous.”
“While there are other means of making flu vaccines in pandemic, they are slower and some rely on eggs, which may be in short supply,” Nuzzo added in an email. “What we learned clearly during the last influenza pandemic is there are only a few companies in the world that make flu vaccines, which means in a pandemic there won’t be enough to go around. If the U.S. wants to make sure it can get enough vaccines for every American who wants them during a pandemic, it should invest in multiple types of vaccines instead of putting all of our eggs in one basket.”
The cancellation comes even though Moderna says a study involving 300 healthy adults had produced “positive interim” results and the company “had previously expected to advance the program to late-stage development.”
…According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the H5N1 flu virus has spread to 1,072 dairy herds, more than 173 million poultry, and caused 70 human cases. While the virus has had a high mortality rate in other countries, so far H5N1 has only caused one death in the U.S. and has not shown any signs of spreading easily from one person to another. But infectious disease experts are concerned that the more the virus spreads, the greater the chance it could mutate into a form that would spread from person to person, which would increase the risk of a pandemic.
“The reality is that mRNA technology remains under-tested, and we are not going to spend taxpayer dollars repeating the mistakes of the last administration…” Ok, first of all, mRNA technology has been researched and tested for longer than Trump has dabbled in politics — by a couple decades. Second, the Covid vaccine was developed under Trump’s first term!!! Operation Warp Speed, remember?! Trump was squawking with the CDC to get the vaccines out in time to be his 2020 October Surprise, and then after he lost the election he was still pushing for it to be called “the Trump Vaccine.” (Barf) These f–king idiots.
I must applaud the elegant way in which Jennifer Nuzzo took a hatchet to HHS’s lies, complete with delicious egg references throughout. Her final caution against “putting all of our eggs in one basket” in particular was the icing on the cake. Or poached egg on an English muffin, as it were. The way Nuzzo also slid in that line that eggs “may be in short supply” was likewise, perfection. But it’s also the fraught position in which we find ourselves: eggs are in short supply in America — enough that people are stealing them off trucks — and this administration just cut us off from a viable, totally sound alternative.
Which came first: the chicken, or the eggheads running our government… into the ground.
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