BREAKINGVIEWS-Avian flu steamrolls at penny-grabbing Uncle Sam

By Robert Cyran

NEW YORK, May 30 (Reuters Breakingviews) - There’s more to defending the United States than supplying the military, but the country’s budget priorities have been thrown badly out of whack. The Trump administration just canceled a $770 million contract with Moderna MRNA.O to develop an avian flu vaccine and the rights to buy the jabs. For the price of seven F-35 fighter jets, the government is taking a big risk against a formidable foe.

Pandemics are no longer the long-shot threat that many politicians once believed. The last one killed more Americans than all the country’s wars combined. It also cost some $14 trillion, mostly from lost business revenue, according to research from the University of Southern California. Lingering health effects add $4 trillion to the tab, Harvard University economist David Cutler estimated.

The H5N1 virus already has caused egg prices to rise. Flu is also notorious for its ability to mutate and spread to humans. A deadly infectious disease similar to the one in 1918 might lead to 70 million deaths worldwide.

Yanking money for Moderna’s research follows a bad pattern. Trump appointed a man who champions debunked anti-vaccine science to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He also has proposed slashing the already shrunken $45 billion budget for the National Institutes of Health by about 40%. Moreover, the president cut billions of funding for Harvard University, one of the world’s biggest medical researchers.

Other curious decisions abound. The government, for example, recently awarded $500 million to develop so-called universal vaccines that target multiple strains of a virus, but it’s all going to a single project linked to Trump’s former NIH chief, according to CBS News. It also uses old technology, clinical trials won’t start until next year, and the target for Food and Drug Administration approval is 2029.

Moderna’s use of messenger RNA to trigger immune responses is far more promising and more easily put into wider production. The company was aiming for a greenlight on its H5 vaccine by early 2026. From there, it’s easier to match a circulating strain and produce millions of doses.

The effort probably will be slowed rather than stopped. Moderna might secure funding from abroad or use its own cash. Even so, if an avian flu starts to spread, the United States may have to get in line behind other countries scrambling for limited production. As far as cost-benefit analyses go, this one is dangerously bird-brained.

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CONTEXT NEWS

Moderna said on May 28 that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will terminate more than $700 million in awards to advance late-stage development for vaccines against H5 types of avian flu and the rights to purchase them.

An HHS spokesperson said the agency determined that the project did not meet the scientific standards or safety expectations required for continued federal investment.