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Tag: Moderna

  • HELP committee focuses on Moderna pricing of COVID vaccines

    HELP committee focuses on Moderna pricing of COVID vaccines

    Now that the COVID-19 public health emergency is coming to an end and the government will stop covering the cost of COVID-19 vaccines and booster shots, Moderna is planning to raise the price of its vaccines significantly. Senator Bernie Sanders’ HELP Committee is holding a hearing on Moderna’s pricing of these vaccines.

    Make no mistake, COVID-19 vaccines cost almost nothing to manufacture, about $3 a vaccine. The big cost of tbe vaccjnes is for the research and development. And, while there are ongoing costs as the virus mutates, to date, taxpayers have funded a significant share of the research and development costs.

    Over the last few years, mRNA COVID vaccines have saved millions of lives. Not only did our government fund a large share of their development costs, it paid for them at a bulk price so that Americans who wanted the vaccine did not face financial barriers. Now, with the end of the public health emergency, Americans will be forced to pay for these vaccines outright or through higher insurance premiums and copays.

    Moderna says it will raise the price of its COVID vaccines to as high as $130, a price that will be unaffordable for millions of Americans. Many Americans will die or get very sick as a result.

    Moderna claims higher vaccine prices support ongoing research and development costs, which are several billion dollars. It says its patient assistance program will cover costs for those who can’t afford the vaccine. But, a patient assistance program is no substitute for a fairly priced vaccine. Most people are not able to navigate through the administrative hurdles these programs pose.

    For sure, the COVID-19 vaccines have value. But, that is no justification for hiking the price of a drug every American needs to protect themselves from the sometimes deadly consequences of the COVID-19 virus. Moreover, government scientists and taxpayers contributed billions of dollars to the development of these vaccines.

    Moderna contributed to the vaccine’s research and development, but it was hardly the sole inventor. Moderna has tried to bury the fact that researchers at the National Institutes of Health invented a critical part of the vaccine.

    Moderna’s CEO and other executives are now billionaires, and Moderna has raked in tens of billions of dollars in profits from the COVID vaccines. Now, Moderna plans to hike prices, which is its right under the law. It’s due time our government ended that right and set fair drug prices in the US, as governments do in virtually every other wealthy country.

    Congress should not allow pharmaceutical companies to set prices for any drugs, let alone life-saving drugs. By so doing, Congress discriminates against Americans with low incomes who desperately need these drugs. Until Congress takes charge of drug pricing, our government should continue buying vaccines for Americans and providing them free of charge to ensure everyone has access to them.

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  • Coronavirus: Older adults without booster shots are still at significant risk

    Coronavirus: Older adults without booster shots are still at significant risk

    The latest COVID-19 data reveal that vaccines are not enough to protect many older adults from serious illness if they have the virus. Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating report for The Washington Post that a higher proportion of vaccinated older adults are dying. Apparently, over time, COVID-19 vaccines do not work as well as you might hope; to minimize risk, older adults need booster shots.

    In January and February, more than four in ten people who died of COVID-19 were vaccinated. Most of them had not received a booster shot. Last September, just 23 percent of people who died of COVID-19 were vaccinated.

    Researchers who analyzed the data found no meaningful difference between people who had had the Pfizer vaccine and people who had had the Moderna vaccine. For both, it appears that the vaccine’s full protection lasts for about three months after the second vaccine.  That said, one CDC expert said that Moderna appears to offer a somewhat more effective vaccine against hospitalization than Pfizer.

    For people over 65, Moderna is 87 percent effective against hospitalization versus Pfizer, which is 77 percent effective. And, the effectiveness of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine appears to increase over time.

    Some people are mixing up the types of vaccines they receive. But, they do so at their own risk. There is no data on whether that is either safe or effective.

    Note: People who are unvaccinated are most likely to die from COVID-19.  In fact they have a 20 times greater likelihood of dying from a COVID-19 infection than people who are vaccinated and boosted. Still, two-thirds of deaths from the omicron variant of COVID-19 were people over 75. Most of those deaths, among the vaccinated, were people who had not gotten a booster shot.

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  • Coronavirus: Real progress towards vaccine, but it still could be 18 months away

    Coronavirus: Real progress towards vaccine, but it still could be 18 months away

    The New York Times reports that the pharmaceutical company, Moderna, has tested a vaccine for COVID-19 on eight people, and it appears to be safe and effective. To establish that it works, however, Moderna will need to test it on thousands more people. Meanwhile Anthony Fauci, the top infectious disease person in the federal government says that, if things happen quickly, it will still take 12 to 18 months before everyone in the country is vaccinated.

    We will need to know a lot more about the Moderna vaccine before it can be made widely available. It could have harmful side effects. It could even make the disease worse. But, early signs suggest that it enabled the eight people who have received the vaccine to develop the same antibodies as are present in people who have had COVID-19.

    Even though Dr. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says it could easily take 18 months before everyone in the US is vaccinated, President Trump is claiming that a vaccine will be available by the end of 2020. His administration will allow pharmaceutical companies to manufacture the vaccine before the FDA has determined it is effective. It is partnering with pharmaceutical companies to find both treatments and vaccines for the novel coronavirus.

    Moderna is just beginning its second phase of trials on 600 people. And, it plans to begin its third phase in July on thousands of people. The Moderna vaccine could be approved by the end of the year, but it will be many more months before it is available to everyone. People will need two shots four weeks apart.

    One pharmaceutical company alone cannot create and manufacture a vaccine for everyone who needs it. We will need several COVID-19 vaccines to ensure everyone is inoculated. Pfizer and AstraZeneca, among others, are currently working on a vaccine as well. As for the vaccine’s cost, no one has yet established a price for a COVID-19 vaccine; it is the subject of much debate.

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