Bear in mind, they are experimenting on the youngest of the young: babies from 5 months to 2 years of age, and we are dealing with a disease that 90% of babies will catch in their first two years. Some of these babies will get a severe life threatening disease, but as I reported last month, the ones who are deficient in vitamin D are 5 to 10 times more likely to end up in intensive care. We can already do a lot to protect these babies, more cheaply and with far less risk than testing immature and complex therapies.

Maryanne Demasi reports that things are looking bad for the new RSV vaccine:

Moderna's mRNA vaccine against RSV takes a tumble
The latest trial data demonstrates the dangerous speed of innovation.

This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) disclosed that vaccinated children in the trial experienced higher rates of severe RSV compared to those in the placebo group.

The data was striking: 12.5% of vaccinated children developed severe or very severe RSV disease, compared to just 5% in the placebo group.

Moreover, among those who developed symptomatic RSV, 26.3% of vaccinated participants progressed to severe illness, sharply contrasting with the 8.3% in the placebo group.

The trials were stopped in July after five babies aged 5 to 8 months developed severe cases of RSV. The FDA has since put the experiment on hold.

With uncanny timing, Moderna's massive new vaccine factory opened in Victoria two weeks ago. It will "have the capacity to produce up to 100 million vaccine doses each year for respiratory diseases including influenza, Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), and COVID-19." As Demasi points out the Australian Federal government signed a $2 billion agreement, committing to the purchase of Moderna's locally produced vaccines for at least a decade.  (Damn.)

History rhymes — in the long, unfortunate quest for vaccine development for RSV

Back in 1966, researchers tried killing the virus and then injecting it into twenty-five children. The results were disastrous — about 80% of the children caught RSV regardless of the vaccination, and worse, 80% who caught the illness went on to have a severe form of the disease. Sadly, two children died.  People were still publishing papers on why that happened forty years later.

Years later researchers figured out that the formalin used to kill the virus chemically changed the shape of the key markers, meaning that the children developed immunity to the dead form of the virus which was different from the live form. We trained their bodies to make antibodies that were not at all effective.  This was not just  a major drain on resources (all those expensive proteins get used to make the wrong weapons), but worse, these antibodies helped the virus gain entry to cells. It was the first instance of vaccine induced antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE).