Does Moderna have a future?

... and does the Emperor have any clothes on?

Summary

Products of Moderna (MRNA) and Pfizer/BioNTech (BNTX) are single-protein mRNA COVID-19 vaccines that worked great against the original virus carrying those specific proteins. As of approximately July 2021, the game has changed and they no longer work against some strains of the virus, leading to emergence of a very disturbing “pandemic of the vaccinated”. Their single-protein vaccines prove to be a dead end and make the pandemic situation worse, rather than better. New therapeutics such as Israeli’s EXO-CD24, if  approved, would make such vaccination wholly unnecessary. Both companies, but especially MRNA, being priced to perfection and forever sales, in fact face near extinction as their products are rapidly becoming useless.

Introduction

In the history of stock markets, it rarely happens that no one is allowed to question the product of a public commercial company. We can all discuss the downsides of sweet Coca-Cola drinks, we can all question whether Nike shoes are any good, badmouth Microsoft products, and so on. 

Two companies, however, have products that are beyond questioning and can only be praised publicly! Who are they?

Nobody is allowed to question the products of MRNA and BNTX -- the mRNA vaccines. Questioning their usefulness makes you labeled “anti-vax” and gets you “deleted” from the Internet. This forced apparent “consensus” makes their investors blind as to what is the company -- and the product -- whose stock they are actually buying. They only hear good things about their products, claims repeated relentlessly thanks  to the drive to vaccinate everybody. The result is unhealthy groupthink.

The markets, apparently, embrace this seeming consensus, and think that MRNA has a perfect future, pricing in future sales of numerous vaccine doses to every resident of our planet, for many years. As an analyst said recently, Moderna is “priced to perfection”, recently priced to sell at least 20 doses to every resident of the planet Earth.. 

But is their product truly so wondrous? It seemed just this way up until July, but not any more. The data from July and August show sharp increases in cases among the vaccinated among all states, and heavily vaccinated countries, that can only be explained by the major vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech) providing NO protection against certain strains of the virus. I will explain the reasoning for this conclusion.

What mRNA vaccines do

Those who know how Moderna and BioNTech work, can skip to the next part. Both of them provide fat-encapsulated bits of “messaging RNA”, which work in our cells to create vital proteins, upon instructions from our cellular DNA. These bits with mRNA get inside human cells and instruct them to produce a specific protein, in our case the “spike protein” from the original Covid19 virus. This spike protein acts as an “antigen”, causing our bodies to develop an immune reaction and produce “antibodies”, which react to this specific protein in the future, helping our organisms fight infections exhibiting these specific proteins. 

As long as the virus presents a specific antigen protein, which in our case is the spike protein of the original Covid19 virus, the antibodies rush to react to it, bind to it and prevent the virus from replicating. 

Rise and imminent fall of mRNA vaccines

Vaccine approval usually takes a long time due to the need to test various safety aspects, and efficacy of, the proposed vaccines. In the case of Covid pandemic, testing was dramatically sped up and clinical trials took only a few months. 

During trials, vaccines performed admirably, providing their users with almost ironclad protection from illness and death, and preventing the vaccinated from passing the virus on. After mass vaccinations, this protection lasted for several months as the pandemic raged on, resulting only in occasional “breakthrough infections”, usually for people with compromised immune systems. 

We were promised to “stop the pandemic”, create “herd immunity”, and confine covid to the uncultured, unvaccinated masses, to die out due to their small numbers below the virus’s reproduction potential.

Then something else happened.

In the middle of July, it became apparent that something was rapidly changing. Two separate events half the world apart stand out: a rapid growth of COVID19 in Israel, which vaccinated 90% of its eligible population, and a bombshell report by the CDC about a “Barnstable county outbreak”. 

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/israel/

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7031e2.htm

The CDC Barnstable study was especially clear and troubling. It researched an outbreak of Covid that violated all prior expectations. Its key findings are as follows:

• In a county that is 69% vaccinated, 74% of infections occurred among vaccinated people

• The “viral loads”, meaning the amount of virus detected, were slightly HIGHER among the vaccinated, than among the unvaccinated

• Vaccinated individuals were getting ill, passing the infection on and infecting other vaccinated individuals

• Out of 5 hospitalized persons, four were vaccinated.

The above findings, in a sample of 469 people, are completely inconsistent with vaccines providing any protection, from illness, infection, or hospitalization, for that specific virus strand. If the vaccines provided even a ridiculously low 50% protection, the above numbers would be a statistical impossibility.

This leads me, among others, to believe that there is a strain of the Covid19 virus that fully bypasses vaccine protection. See also:

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/08/breakthrough-covid-19-cases-may-be-a-bigger-problem.html 

Numerous other findings, too many to list here, support the same conclusion -- that vaccines provide NO protection against some strains of the virus. 

Below are some samples.

• Shedding of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 Despite Vaccination when the Delta Variant is Prevalent - Wisconsin, July 2021 -- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v3.full-text

  • The SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant and its sublineages (B.1.617.2, AY.1, AY.2, AY.3; [1]) can cause high viral loads, are highly transmissible, and contain mutations that confer partial immune escape

  • Viral loads (inverse of Ct values) are actually HIGHER in the vaccinated than unvaccinated

  • 252 of 276 individuals who were not fully vaccinated (91%) reported symptoms at the time of testing, while 228 of 240 people who were fully vaccinated (95%) reported symptoms.

• Santa Clara County, CA reports on “cases”. As of the last few weeks, the percentage of cases among the vaccinated, is rising as a percentage of the total, rising to 46% of total being vaccinated as of Aug. 5 from 30% a month before. The measure of “relative risk” between the unvaccinated and vaccinated similarly declined from 4.88 times to 3.09 times.  

https://covid19.sccgov.org/dashboard-case-rates-vaccination-status

• In Illinois, hospitalization among the vaccinated grew by 28% last week, from 714 to 899 cases (Illinois does not report by weeks, so I have to save screenshots of data) -- https://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/vaccinedata?county=Illinois

• In Massachusetts, the number of breakthrough infections grew by 21.4% week of Aug 3, and by 28.85% week of Aug 10, showing the same accelerating pattern of illness among the vaccinated. https://www.mass.gov/doc/daily-covid-19-vaccine-report-august-3-2021/download , https://www.mass.gov/doc/daily-covid-19-vaccine-report-august-10-2021/download

• In Indiana, breakthrough cases increased from 5,323 on Aug 5, to 6,740 on Aug 12, which is 43.5% increase. https://www.indystar.com/story/news/health/2021/08/05/covid-delta-variant-indiana-how-state-ids-tracks-breakthrough-cases/5378233001/

Most media reporting and the so-called “fact checkers” typically respond to this breakthrough outbreak by citing statistics that average July and August cases with all other cases starting on January 1, and averaging months when vaccines were providing protections, with the month when they were not. They would then incorrectly state that such a comparison “debunks” the fact that the vaccines stopped working. This is a completely misleading argument. What is important is what is going on now, and not what happened 5 months ago. I am not going into media analysis, but please see for yourself and find any evidence of ongoing protections in the three examples listed above!

Okay. The vaccinated get sick. What about hospitalizations and deaths?

Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to find an authoritative source of breakthrough infection information, that would present a timeline of all three: cases, hospitalizations, as well as deaths among the vaccinated vs unvaccinated, for one locality. It is very strange that this information, that would be so helpful to make informed decisions, is so hard to come by. We can only guess why it is so difficult to find. 

I am inviting everyone to share with me what state or even a large county reports all three in a manner that can be analyzed (at least week by week for all three counts). 

The main question to ask is: if the vaccine does not prevent infection, and does not lessen viral replication (as evidenced by the viral loads), how can it protect from hospitalizations and deaths?

My answer to this question is that vaccination probably does not lessen hospitalizations and deaths, for the evading strains, either. The Barnstable county study found that four out of five people hospitalized were vaccinated. It is a small sample, but it is telling. 

Some tidbits that I found show that the death rates (CFR) in breakthrough cases are similar to the general COVID death rates. It is important to compare deaths to cases reported about 2-3 weeks ago, as deaths lag cases by 2-3 weeks. Since this is a new development and I started saving data only two weeks ago, I divide deaths by the previous week's cumulative count of ill. This artificially lowers the estimate of death rate but this is the best I can do.

• In Indiana, 69 people died out of (previous week) 5,323 infected, which is a death rate of 1.3% (see above and https://www.coronavirus.in.gov/vaccine/2680.htm)

• In Massachusetts, death rate among the vaccinated is about 1.37% 

https://www.mass.gov/doc/daily-covid-19-vaccine-report-august-3-2021/download

• In Minnesota, I only have last week’s cumulative total of infections and deaths, so no previous week, but assuming 25% growth rate, it would be the CFR of 1.27%.

https://www.health.state.mn.us/diseases/coronavirus/stats/vbt.html

• In Israel, 306 fully vaccinated persons are severely ill, versus 209 unvaccinated, as of Aug 13. 

https://datadashboard.health.gov.il/COVID-19/general

Again, the cumulative numbers mix the past (January-June) with the present, and present a decidedly incomplete picture. But since better data is not available, this is all that I can find and use week by week snapshots to decipher the situation.

What about the future?

Predicting future trends in any pandemic is exceedingly difficult for many reasons. One of them is that the course of the pandemic depends on the society’s reaction to it. If everyone is locked down at home (and the economy is paralyzed), then the pandemic will slow down, at a terrible cost. 

I am certainly not able to predict such developments with certainty and I can only speculate. I will skip the social and political discussion entirely. However, I must note that if strains of the virus that “evade vaccines” exist, as it is the case now, they will proliferate among the vaccinated people, naturally spilling over into the remaining unvaccinated people who do not yet have natural immunity. 

For the vaccinated and unvaccinated alike, there is nothing that would stop vaccine-evading virus from infecting them. Since about half of the entire population is vaccinated, the vaccine-evading virus will quickly become dominant and infect, hospitalize and kill patients regarding of vaccination status.

Providing “booster shots” of the same vaccine that is evaded by the virus, will not stop that virus either. 

Considering the Santa Clara county above, for example, we can project that in two more weeks, the number of vaccinated cases will probably be 55-65% of all new cases, compared to 46% now. The deaths will follow two weeks behind. 

At some point, the king’s media and fact checkers will not be able to hide the fact that the king has no clothes and the existing vaccines are no longer working. They might try to hide this fact by more media contortions, but likely this will prove to be impossible. 

So, the vax is no longer working, now what?

The companies that market single-protein mRNA vaccines, such as Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer, will no doubt propose to make new vaccines to address the “variants”. In fact, they, being not stupid, already mention this. In the context of the pro-vax media campaign, this might seem like a net positive for the vaccine companies, increasing their future sales. 

There are five problems with this argument:

• The rollout of the new “variant vaccines” requires time, at least 100 days, according to one of these companies, and likely longer. This time is an epoch when cases among the vaccinated are rising exponentially and will likely rise slightly faster as the vaccine evading virus takes dominant hold in the population.

• Convincing people, and foreign governments, that they should buy these so-called “variant vaccines”, becomes more and more difficult and arguments in favor, more and more contorted. 

• In the face of the “pandemic of the vaccinated” that will likely unfold in the open in September and October, many vaccinated people will acquire natural immunity or die, reducing the target market. Likely the vaccines will become PR disasters by then. 

• The risk of single-protein mRNA based vaccination to create new virus variants will not escape public scrutiny

• The new Covid19 therapeutics may lessen the risk of severe outcomes in already infected persons, making vaccination unnecessary. 

The more likely outcome, in my opinion, is that governments will find it politically easier to opt towards not using these vaccines, and hoping for natural immunity Sweden style. Most likely this is the outcome that will happen regardless of government posturing. 

Valuation of Moderna and BioNTech

Current valuations of both MRNA and BNTX assume that they will be selling their vaccines to every resident of the world, many times over, in perpetuity. In light of the above, this is becoming less and less plausible.

The likelier outcome is a PR and health disaster in September and October, mostly natural immunity and a collapse in new sales and prestige of these players and their single-protein vaccines.

It will become apparent that the “emperor is without clothes” and I hope to be the first person who said so!

Disclaimer

The author is not a medical doctor, not a scientist and not an epidemiologist. My background is computer science and data analysis. My background and position confers no special authority on me and you should simply think about what I said and evaluate it independently.

In addition,as of the last two weeks, the author holds trading positions in Moderna and BioNTech that would benefit from a decline in their share prices.