I enjoy subscriber's access to the New York Times, below, the new Moderna vaccine and the risk of "disease enhancement" from undertested vaccines.  We must go easy...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/18/health/coronavirus-vaccine-moderna.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Moderna Coronavirus Vaccine Trial Shows Promising Early Results

The company said its preliminary test in 8 healthy volunteers was safe. It is on an accelerated timetable to begin a larger human trial soon.

By Denise Grady

• May 18, 2020Updated 1:17 p.m. ET

  
  

The first coronavirus vaccine to be tested in people appears to be safe and able to stimulate an immune response against the virus, its manufacturer, Moderna, announced on Monday.

The findings are based on results from the first eight people who each received two doses of the experimental vaccine, starting in March.

Those people, healthy volunteers ages 18 to 55, made antibodies that were then tested in infected cells in the lab, and were able to stop the virus from replicating — the key requirement for an effective vaccine. The levels of those so-called neutralizing antibodies matched or exceeded the levels found in patients who had recovered after contracting the virus in the community.

Though encouraging, the findings do not prove that the vaccine works. Only larger, longer studies can determine whether it can actually prevent people in the real world from getting sick. Moderna’s technology, involving genetic material from the virus called mRNA, is relatively new and has yet to produce any approved vaccine. 

Early results from a handful of test subjects may not seem like much to go on, but the world is desperate for good news. With the highly contagious virus defying most efforts to control its spread, vaccines are seen as the best and perhaps only hope of stopping or even slowing a pandemic that has sickened nearly 5 million people worldwide, killed 315,000 and locked down entire countries, paralyzing their economies. 

Moderna produced the vaccine in collaboration with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the institute led by Dr. Anthony Fauci, which has been leading the clinical trials. That institute, a part of the federal National Institutes of Health, is also involved in research on other experimental coronavirus vaccines.

The news helped buoy Wall Street, rallying the markets. In recent months, Moderna’s stock has soared as it pursued a vaccine, and it was up 23 percent in early trading on Monday.

Dozens of other companies and universities are also rushing to create coronavirus vaccines, and several have also begun to test their candidates in human subjects, including Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, the Chinese company CanSino, and the University of Oxford, working with AstraZeneca. 

Experts agree that it is essential to develop multiple vaccines, because the urgent global need for billions of doses will far outstrip the production capacity of any one manufacturer. 

At the same time, there is widespread concern that haste could compromise safety, resulting in a vaccine that does not work or even harms patients. Vaccines have generally taken years, sometimes a decade or more, to reach the market. A significant part of that time is taken up by large trials in thousands of subjects, waiting to see if the vaccine prevents infection and making sure that it does not make the illness worse — a known, though uncommon effect called disease enhancement. 

Moderna’s early stage of testing, phase 1, is continuing, Two more age groups, 55 to 70, and 71 and over, are now being enrolled to test the vaccine.

John L.