The Moderna flu jab has a comically bad risk-benefit ratio. Will the FDA give into political pressure and approve it?

Moderna's own trial shows the shot causes hundreds (yes, hundreds) of SEVERE side effects for each serious flu case it prevents. Naturally, the legacy media is ignoring this inconvenient truth.

Moderna just published the full results from its pivotal 40,000-person trial comparing its mRNA flu jab to a standard flu shot.

They are awful. Not that you would know from the legacy media’s coverage, or Moderna’s press release promising “potential approvals expected to begin in 2026.”

The trial showed severe side effects from the mRNA shot dwarfed whatever protection against flu it may offer.

Compared to a standard flu shot, the mRNA jab prevented about 1 hospitalization in every 5,000 people who received it.¹ But compared to the standard shot, the mRNA jab caused severe after-injection side effects such as vomiting or a 102- to 104-degree fever in an extra 1 out of 18 people.

In other words, Moderna’s own data show that about 270 people will suffer severe vaccine side effects from its shot to stop a single flu hospitalization. In what world does that risk ratio make sense?²

The trial also showed that more people who received the mRNA shot died from all causes in the next six months than those who got the standard jab.

The difference was small, and Moderna claimed none of the deaths were related to the shot. But the trial marks yet another case of a big clinical trial where volunteers who received an mRNA shot died more often than those who didn’t. That’s certainly not evidence mRNA is safe as a vaccine for widespread use in healthy adults or kids.

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Of course, that’s now the legacy media reported the results of the trial, which the New England Journal of Medicine published Wednesday. NBC News wrote:

Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine more effective than standard shot in late-stage trial… An mRNA-based flu shot could make a huge difference in flu prevention…

Side effects such as fatigue, headache and arm pain were more common in the mRNA group, but were mild and short-lived. People often have similar reactions after getting a traditional flu shot.

Technically, NBC did not lie: mRNA could make a huge difference in flu prevention, in the same way that I could win a Pulitzer Prize for this article. Anything’s possible, right?

And, yes, the standard flu shot also sometimes has side effects, and they are sometimes severe — in about 1 percent of patients, compared to 6.4 percent who receive Moderna’s mRNA shot. (In the same way, a person who makes $100,000 and someone else who makes $640,000 could both be described accurately as having an “above-average” income.)

But portraying the trial’s results as a success is dishonest to the point of absurdity. It’s what one would expect from a Moderna press release, not a supposedly independent news organization.

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(The real news from the trial is in blue, everything else is a detail.)

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Yet the trial has already succeeded as far as Moderna and Big Pharma are concerned.

Two months ago, Dr. Vinay Prasad was forced to resign as the chief medical officer of the Food and Drug Administration, largely because of pressure from Moderna — and Blackstone, the giant private equity company that has invested $750 million into Moderna’s mRNA flu shot.

Prasad had refused even to accept Moderna’s FDA application for its shot, opening himself to criticism as being biased against the company. He said Moderna should have tested its shot against a more effective, higher-dose version of the older flu jab, not the standard dose jab it used for comparison.

The newly published results show Prasad would have been better off accepting Moderna’s filing — and rejecting it on the basis that its side effect profile is so bad that it is not approvable for sale.

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(Battling for the truth with every story — even when the odds are long.)

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Now, though, Moderna and Blackstone — whose chief executive Stephen A. Schwarzman gave $5 million to President Trump’s political action committee last fall and attended the White House state dinner for King Charles last week — have beaten Prasad and shown FDA commissioner Dr. Marty Makary their power.

Will Makary be willing to risk his job to stop this shot?

We will find out later this year.

But history suggests the odds are long.

1. The stays were likely brief, as Moderna reported no deaths or intensive care hospitalizations from flu in either group.

2. Moderna did not test its shot against a placebo in this trial. The side effect profile would like have looked even worse if it had.