I don’t know what to make of this story. It seems like a bunch of propaganda but like with all the news this year I don’t understand the endgame. Why report on December 7, 2020 that Moderna’s mRNA vaccine was shipped to the NIH for Phase I trials before China admitted SARS-CoV-2 could be transmitted between humans, before the first reported case in the U.S., and even before the first reported COVID-19 death in the U.S.
How is it possible that we had a vaccine in testing for a virus in which no one knew was a threat? If this is true doesn’t this make all the conspiracy theories about this virus being manufactured in a lab more credible? How can they design the vaccine 2 days before it was even made public?
The story does nothing to explain any of these questions. It just simply lauds the miracle of how quickly modern science can whip up a cure. It also talks about whipping up cures for the next pandemic. What games are being played here?
You may be surprised to learn that of the trio of long-awaited coronavirus vaccines, the most promising, Moderna’s mRNA-1273, which reported a 94.5 percent efficacy rate on November 16, had been designed by January 13. This was just two days after the genetic sequence had been made public in an act of scientific and humanitarian generosity that resulted in China’s Yong-Zhen Zhang’s being temporarily forced out of his lab. In Massachusetts, the Moderna vaccine design took all of one weekend. It was completed before China had even acknowledged that the disease could be transmitted from human to human, more than a week before the first confirmed coronavirus case in the United States. By the time the first American death was announced a month later, the vaccine had already been manufactured and shipped to the National Institutes of Health for the beginning of its Phase I clinical trial.
NY Magazine
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