Last week, Donald Trump appointed a vaccine Tsar to lead and fast track "Operation Warp Speed". His name is Moncef Slaoui, a former executive with vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline, and only just resigned from Moderna.

 

Operation Warp Speed program is focusing on four vaccines, with the hopes of testing and producing 100 million doses by October 2020, 200 million by December, and 300 million doses by January

The US is going "warp speed" with vaccine making. The vaccine is combining two previously unsuccessful methodologies. A coronavirus has been tried before, but safety issues prevented it from being rolled out. The other is a new vaccine based on messenger RNA (mRNA) that will go into cells to create antibodies, rather than let the immune system build those antibodies.

Stock market stupidity

Slaoui has conflicts of interest in his new position to direct the vaccine efforts of the US. He as most recently on the board of Moderna prior to taking up the position as vaccine chief, which re resigned from when he was appointed. Slaoui also held almost $2.4 million in Moderna stock last week.

Moderna is the leading vaccine maker leading the race to the new corona/RNA vaccine. Earlier this week they made a "victory lap" announcement about Phase 1 of their drug trial. The announcement touted a whole 8 people developed antibodies.

What happened to their stock? It skyrocketed 26%. Business insider described the pump as "a perfect storm of stupid in the stock market right now."

Why? Because all it took was Moderna to make a vague statement about 8 people develop antibodies, and the stock pumped $1.4 billion into company. Then people started to actually read the announcement more carefully, and also reviews of the announcement.

After 24 hours of figuring out that 8 people developing antibodies isn't that great of a result in your trial, they also noted that NIAID, who partnered with the company, didn't even endorse the results of Moderna. The stock fell back down to where it was before the pump.

The is the psychology of markets and jumping on any "good" news. Another example of this is with another vaccine maker in the race for a COVID-19 vaccine. Inovio Pharmaceuticals announced a success of their animal testing producing positive results. Their stock jumped up 8%.

This is FOMO in action. Be it on Wall Street or alt-coins, people try to capitalize on the perception of positive news that might get them to score big if they get in before a pump.

Moderna nothingness

Taking a look at Moderna, they are a company worth billions, apparently. But what have they produced? Nothing. They have never put out a product in the marketplace before. As Jon Rappoport states:

Forbes, May 8: “It’s a big bet for the ten-year-old company, which currently has 24 products in its pipeline—but nothing yet on the market. The biotech sports a huge market cap of $17.5 billion, but it posted a net loss of $514 million on revenues of just $60 million last year. And most of that incoming cash came from government grants and research collaborations with big pharmaceutical companies.”

Moderna has never put a single product into the marketplace.

Last year, it lost $514 million.

It took in $60 million.

But it’s somehow worth billions.

The COVID vaccine it’s working on utilizes brand new RNA technology.

No RNA drug or vaccine product has ever been certified for public use.

Other companies have tried and failed, mainly because safety was a serious problem.

Moderna is partnering with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the federal agency headed up by Tony Fauci.

How many red flags do you need?

Slaoui and the Gates Foundation

Speaking of red flags. I've spoken about Fauci's connection to the Gates Foundation, and his mirroring the statement of Gates about no end to the lockdown until there is a vaccine two days after Gates said it. But Slaoui also has ties to the Gates Foundation.

During his time at mega vaccine maker GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), he was on the board of Directors of GlaxoSmithKline between 2006 and 2015. He was also in many senior research and development roles, including Chairman of Global Vaccines. GSK worked with teh Gates foundation "on projects such as the development of a malaria vaccine and anti-HIV compounds used as microbicides."

Dr. Slaoui worked for 27 years on the malaria vaccine, ultimately partnering with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to develop a $600 million malaria vaccine. When Slaoui took over at GSK, his predecessor, Tachi Yamada, joined the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

He's also still on the board of several pharmaceutical companies and biotechnology organizations. One of notice is Galvani Bioelectronics, which was formed out of an agreement with Verily Life Sciences LLC (formerly Google Life Sciences), an Alphabet company, and GSK. The goal is to "enable the research, development and commercialisation of bioelectronic medicines."

Bioelectronic, cyborg and nanotechnology is a rising field which DARPA has a keen interest in funding. One such device Slaoui is involved in through Galvani is "to use miniature implantable devices within the body was described by MIT Technology Review as 'acking the nervous system'".

Slaoui said:

“We hope to have approval and be in the marketplace in the next seven to 10 years. It’s not science fiction. And it’s progressing quite well.”

Moderna victory lap

And about the Moderna victory lap, a well known site called STATNews that advocates for the biopharma industry, was not so excited about the Phase 1 results.

The silence of the NIAID

The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases has partnered with Moderna on this vaccine. Scientists at NIAID made the vaccine’s construct, or prototype, and the agency is running the Phase 1 trial. This week’s Moderna readout came from the earliest of data from the NIAID-led Phase 1.

NIAID doesn’t hide its light under a bushel. The institute generally trumpets its findings, often offering director Anthony Fauci — who, fair enough, is pretty busy these days — or other senior personnel for interviews.

But NIAID did not put out a press release Monday and declined to provide comment on Moderna’s announcement.

...

Later, the statement indicated that eight volunteers — four each from the 25-microgram and 100-microgram arms — developed neutralizing antibodies. Of the two types, these are the ones you’d really want to see.

We don’t know results from the other 37 trial participants

The report of neutralizing antibodies in subjects who were vaccinated comes from blood drawn two weeks after they received their second dose of vaccine.

Anna Durbin, a vaccine researcher at Johns Hopkins University was quote as saying:

"That’s very early. We don’t know if those antibodies are durable."

"I do think it’s a bit of a concern that they haven’t published the results of any of their ongoing trials that they mention in their press release. They have not published any of that."

We also don't know of any long-term side-effects of this new mRNA vaccine. But we do know there are some short-term side effects, as 3 of the participants in the trial developed "grade 3 systemic symptoms":

There were no adverse reactions in the lowest dose group, and one in the middle 100 microgram group – a so-called grade 3 erythema (redness) at the site of injection. In the high-dose group, there were three participants with systemic reactions, and the company doesn’t go into the details, but those would generally be fever, flu-like symptoms, perhaps body rash.