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Comment by pizzathyme | Hacker News Reader

I can understand the current global/political environment against mRNA accounting for a 90% fall in revenues and valuation. But if the mRNA tech is still progressing and promising for a variety of ailments like cancer, then the company still has substantial future value coming

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The business model for pharma and drug discovery is unfortunately one that requires a lot of upfront investment for research and trials that may or may not pay off as revenue one day.

The technology they invented is incredibly promising for new vaccines and they should be attracting enough investment (through contracts or other deals) to continue innovating and saving lives. Maybe they can license it as a last ditch effort to build revenue, but unfortunately the public perceptions about vaccine efficacy is on the wane and government contracts are no longer there to support this vital work both in the present and as a hedge against future pandemics.

It's tough to get people to want a vaccine which knocks you off your feet for 3 days and needs to be repeated every 6-12 months. I'm very bullish on mRNA vaccine technology - but it's potentially a poor fit for rapidly changing viruses.

If you mean covid, most people aren’t knocked off their feet at all. If you mean cancer, that’s a dream compared to chemo.

Is this a serious comment? Covid killed over a million people in the United States alone.

Reread it until you understand that we were talking about the vaccine not the disease

That was the initial shock, we're all better now, with or without the vaccine.

That sucks if that's your experience, but it's not the universal, or even the common, experience.

For reference, I get a sore-ish shoulder the next day, and that's it. Also for reference, when I got Actual Covid, I was knocked on my ass for almost two weeks. So for me, at least, the choice is easy.

It's my unfortunate experience, when I've had covid its a 6-12 hour affair that happens once every 12-24 months. My 3rd vaccine shot had me in bed for 3 days. Leading to continued vaccination being unsustainable. My wife has a similar experience to yours, and gets moderate to severe covid. She gets the vaccine every year to help avoid it - but still gets moderate COVID roughly once per 6 months.

It's unfortunate that the vaccine has such radically different outcomes within a single household, if it was a flu shot like experience I'd happily get it once per year.

> it was a flu shot like experience

Flu shot experience varies too. The last several have been very low response, but the first few were a miserable couple days and I stopped getting them because certain misery was worse than a chance of misery that I'd never know if it was flu or not, because testing was inaccessible.

Last year I skipped the flu vac (I had a zillion for tropical diseases so I though come one not another one) and lo, I got a flu about every 4 weeks, so like over 6 the whole season. I'm on a way to get it this year.

at least the vaccine greatly reduce the severe conditions such as death.

COVID is a nasty virus. I need my brain way to much to FAFO.

COVID-19 may Enduringly Impact Cognitive Performance and Brain Haemodynamics in Undergraduate Students - ScienceDirect https://share.google/49ER4VjJUwipGotZO

Wait, you're saying that when you got COVID, it lasted six hours?

At least testably/symptomatically, I'm asthmatic as well - so it's surprising that the impact is so small. My wife gets it for 1-2 weeks whenever she comes down with it.

He is, but it's certainly not plausible.

As a data point, my experience with the shot was a sore arm and chills for a couple days.

When I got Covid later, it was slightly worse chills for 3 days. By the 4th time I got Covid, it was just chills for a day.

If I knew that would be the experience, I'd probably have skipped it. That said, it's completely possible it was having the vaccine that made getting real Covid not so bad.

you're also ignoring the long term damage that COVID appears to do

In what way? I made no claims about that, curious what you're alluding to.

You said: "When I got Covid later, it was slightly worse chills for 3 days. By the 4th time I got Covid, it was just chills for a day. If I knew that would be the experience, I'd probably have skipped it."

I'm saying that's not an apples to apples comparison due to the growing evidence of how much long term damage a COVID infection can cause.

Ah I see, thanks. Yep, it's definitely not apples to apples in either event. As in, not having the vaccine could have made getting it, at least the first time, way way worse to deal with.

Wait, you got the Covid vaccine, it reduced your symptoms, and your conclusion was "I should have skipped it?"

That's not how I intended to frame it. I don't regret the vaccine or anything. And my last sentence admitted that was probably the case.

By the time it was my turn to get Covid I’d been twice vaccinated. It’s the most exhausted I can remember ever feeling. Let me tell you, the whole time I kept thinking: How much more miserable would this have been without the vaccine to blunt the impact? Felt grateful and humbled

That was my experience. A bit of tenderness at the injection site, the same thing I get from a flu shot.

People have varying immune responses to getting vaccines, but feeling crummy after getting a flu shot has nothing to do with whether the vaccine used mRNA technology or not.

I would say people who end up bedridden for 3 days are in the minority for most vaccines immune responses, but people also need to make peace with the idea that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

It has affected me for at most 16 hours. I have never heard 3 days, though I'm sure there are some rare outliers. And, not being at high risk, I don't "need" it more than once a year. This kind of exaggeration is one of the things that doesn't help public opinion. Especially when there are people actively looking for ways to subvert it.

Reactions vary. I got a COVID shot on Friday. I had to massage my arm a little bit Saturday, but nothing more incovenient than that.

To put some numbers to trying to develop a single therapy (where candidates etc. will fail as you try them)

- Plan to sink $180-500M+ just in R&D

- Factor in failures, regulatory, clinical, recruitment, phase 1/2 trials and you arrive very quickly around $1.3-2.1 BILLION USD per therapy approved.

...there is a 90% chance that you will spend that $1B+ - and it will fail completely.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00043-x

https://greenfieldchemical.com/2023/08/10/the-staggering-cos...

According to your numbers, Moderna got lucky at a 10% chance of producing the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine in 48 hours of computation? I don't know, but there seems to be more factors at play.

https://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=57148.php

Moderna got lucky in that we know enough about that virus that the chance of a COVID-19 vaccine was a lot more than 10%. The more general case of a drug is a lot more than specific one

$180-500M+, doesn't sound that much really. You can barely get a decent ballroom for that.

Or a bad marvel movie.

That's ballroom + bunker, you prole

Are you trying to say that Pharma R&D is ~ $10-20B to yield 1 approved therapy? 10 * $1-2B "at bats" = 1 run?

Honestly it doesn't sound that bad considering these pharma revenues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_biomedical_com...

not bad at all - it would not be bad if it was 5x+ that...

Quite a lot of the low-hanging fruit from pharma has already been picked. The modern business model for pharma involves coming up with a patentable new drug that does the same thing as an older drug that's now out of patent and available for manufacture as a generic.

Making pharmaceuticals subservient to the whimsy of the stock market is a bad idea. It introduces incentive distortions where none should be.

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