Moderna has a great technology which greatly speeds up all vaccine development - PEG-lipid encapsulated mRNA.
This will enable Moderna to produce flu vaccines months closer in time to each flu season, so their flu vaccine will more accurately match that season's new mutated influenza virus.
This slso provides a short path to developing other vaccines. - That's fantastic but I have no idea what stock price that business justifies.
Pfizer uses a less stable encapsulization medium which is not market viable in the future, but they're developing something better themselves.
Johnson & Johnson has a cheap stable live-adenovirus vaccine they've supposedly already produced a billion doses of. But they won't finish their clinical trial for months. Using the same technology as the Astra-Zeneca live-adenovirus vaccine, J&J will also likely find they need to first adjust their dosing sizes as Astra-Zeneca did by accident to achieve a high level of effectiveness, requiring they start a new clinical trial.
We're very unlikely to have any vaccines other than Moderna and Pfizer for far longer than many anticipate. Sad, but there it is.
Many nations are using the far less effective Chinese and Russian vaccines, not tested in clinical trials. They may also be interested in using the current less effective doing protocol for the J&J and Astra-Zeneca vaccines.
We've run out of other people's Social Security taxes needed to subsidize our low income tax rates.
