How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled : Shared by John Gilmartin

Here’s a remarkable story about Moderna of covid vaccine fame. Being in a company that’s growing very fast is in some ways harder than being inside an old stodgy dinosaur. Biotech as an investment has been very difficult to make a profit with. There is such a thing as real technical genius, and within all American pharmaceutical/biological companies there is also real marketing super selling.

I’m amazed by Americans behavior around covid. The mRNA vaccines are one of the great innovations in vaccine development. The use of mass media to politicize the vaccine is right out of Soviet active measures trade craft. I’d say the media campaign was at least as powerful as the vaccine innovation. Putting a number on how many Americans died because of a nasty political stunt to discredit a great innovation.

Moderna at $6 billion sales isn’t a major pharma business. It will likely be bought by one of the big boys. About a century ago I was part of that industry and then it was considered a “loss leader” to help sell the real money makers, hyper tension drugs. Vaccines have always had the downside of being a dangerous unpredictable product that can cause more harm to a company than good. They have also had the problem of being over sold, ie the next new vaccine will prevent 15 awful diseases. This was an issue during the CVI meeting that over lapped the Summit for Children meeting in 1990. I was there (which I still wonder how that happened), and it was a great small meeting, but tended to get carried away towards its end. We did come to a sweeping declaration, but the CVI process floundered in my view until the Gates family decided to step in and take it on.

Moderna and the Turkish German husband and wife team who created BioNTech deserve all the credit for making covid a vaccine manageable disease, them plus the creation of so called nano-particals to carry the vaccine. Pfizer came into the picture because Pfizer had licensed BioNTech to develop a new type of flu vaccine. The new covid vaccine was much better than the program management that was tasked with introducing it globally in my view.

Thanks, John

How Moderna, the company that helped save the world, unraveled
Jason Mast 

STAT
Oct 30 2025
Click here for the article:

Summary
After soaring during the pandemic on the success of its mRNA vaccine, Moderna, Inc. now faces a precipitous drop in value, failing to translate that breakthrough into a sustained pipeline of new therapies. The company’s stock has fallen by more than 90 % from its peak as its COVID-shot revenues evaporate and government contracts have been cancelled or reduced. The story is one of missteps: ambitious projections, overextension, changing regulatory and policy winds, and a business model vulnerable when the extraordinary pandemic demand evaporated.

Quotes
“The story of Moderna’s great unraveling … is neither simple nor finished.” STAT
“We’ve shown discipline on cost … If we need to be more disciplined, we will.” — Stephen Hoge