Moderna’s CEO Stéphane Bancel has made a striking admission about the Covid-19 boosters that has dealt a major blow to the Biden administration’s narrative that Americans need universal vaccinations and boosters for Covid-19 in perpetuity.
Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna are the two major pharmaceutical companies whose mRNA shots for Covid-19 have been ‘fully authorized’ in the United States (although their mRNA shots appear to be distributed entirely under Emergency Use Authorizations or EUAs).
Bancel was interviewed by Yahoo Finance and repeatedly compared Covid-19 to the flu and framed recommendations for ‘annual Covid boosters’ in terms that are similiar to those for seasonal flu shots.
“So, I think we should not forget with Covid, which is the virus has changed a lot,” Bancel said. “And if you remember when the virus was mutating very slowly like Alpha and Deta in 2021, you saw great performance of a vaccine. We should not forget that with Omicron, the genetic drift was so gigantic in only one step that I think no vaccine, no technology would’ve been able to hold efficacy of infection strongly, because it’s linked to antibodies and antibodies wane with time…. that is linked to all immune system as humans.”
“The piece that is very important to see is that despite the lowering of efficacy against infection, the efficacy against hospitalization and index are still very, very high,” he added. “And that’s because as we believe there is very strong T-cell immune memory component in term of a technology.”
“So I think it’s a bit like flu,” he continued. “You know, you need to get the annual flu shot, not because the protein technology is not good. I believe it is really good, but because it’s a different virus. And so you need to eradicate your immune system for these different virus, especially if you’re at high risk. Again, a 25-year-old doesn’t get an annual result of ‘am I gonna die?’ if you have no comorbidity. Highly unlikely. But a 60-year-old person that has a comorbidity factor needs their booster because the antibody is a very important component of that protection.”
Bancel was then asked about the relatively low uptake of the boosters compared to the original vaccines.
“I think it’s going to be like the flu, which is again, ‘if you’re a 25-year-old, do you need an annual booster every year?’ If you’re healthy, you might want to protect other people in my, because you don’t want to get sick and miss work or miss vacation or so on,” he said. “But I think it’s going to be very similar to flu where the key is gonna be people at high risk, people above 50 years of age, people with comorbidity, people with cancer and other condition of transplant.”
The Moderna CEO’s comments are remarkable because the vast majority of Americans under the age of 50 do not take annual flu shots and rely on their own immune systems to fight viral infections. In the United States, influenza vaccination rates vary greatly by age. During the 2020-2021 flu season, for example, around 75 percent of those aged 65 years and older received an influenza vaccination, while just 38 percent of those aged 18 to 49 years took them. This was the case despite the CDC recommending that everyone six months and older in the United States get seasonal flu shots every year, with few exceptions.
The Moderna CEO’s remarks come amid spreading reluctance for people who got the Covid-19 jabs and got sick anyway to sign up for the ‘boosters.’ The New York Times reports that about 33% of the American people are ‘boosted,’ while 80% are vaccinated and 68% are ‘fully vaccinated.’
Furthermore, these is very little evidence that the boosters provide much additional protection to those who have natural immunity due to prior infection. However, they do provide a risk to young persons, due to known adverse events, such as myocarditis and pericarditis.
The Big Pharma CEO’s remarks aren’t startling because they are some profound insight that tells Americans something they don’t already know. They are striking because of the source. While scientifically literate Americans have been begging for years for public health officials to recognize the vast difference in risk between healthy young people and elderly people who are obese or immunocompromised, the Biden administration has acted more like vaccine salesmen than honest brokers of the actual science.
Indeed, data from the Office for National Statistics (U.K.) show decisively that Covid-19 was never more dangerous for young people and children than the seasonal flu. Nonetheless, the CDC is quietly pushing to make annual Covid boosters a part of its recommended childhood vaccination regimen.
Current Founder, CEO and Chief Editor of Becker News. Former Writer & Associate Producer at Fox News for #1 top-rated prime-time cable news show. Former Director of Viral Media and Senior Managing Editor for award-winning startup website IJReview, which grew to a readership of 20-30 million Americans a month. Led editorial and social media team that was #1 ranked news & politics publisher on Facebook for story engagement. Writer whose thousands of digital articles have been read by over 100 million unique users.