ADVERTISEMENT

Did the FDA/CDC Kill Novavax?

Nov 28, 2010
83,700
37,523
113
Maryland
Cui Bono?

I'm looking at you Pfizer and Moderna (especially Pfizer). And whoever you paid off.

The article gives the impression that Novavax's woes are due to having been only recently approved. But that's extremely misleading. Pfizer and Moderna received emergency authorization in late 2020. Novavax was a a couple of months behind on trials. The FDA apparently used that as an excuse not to give it emergency authorization. Meaning Novavax had to wait for final authorization, which takes a whole lot longer.

Sweeet deal for P and M when the FDA keeps a competitor off the market for a year and a half.

Novavax was my first choice because of its protein subunit design (vs mRNA). Instead of injecting something that hijacks your cells machinery to produce spikes, Novavax just injects the spikes with adjuvent and your body reacts to that.

It's not approved as a booster, either, so P and M maintain their shared monopoly.

Sure, it could be all on the up and up, but I'm skeptical.

Novavax shares plunge on weak demand for its COVID-19 vaccine


Shares of COVID-19 vaccine maker Novavax cratered Tuesday as the U.S. biotech company slashed its sales forecast due to a slump in demand for its shots. The company's stock dived 31% after it cut its 2022 sales outlook in half.

Novavax's protein-based vaccine was a latecomer to the market. It was authorized by the Food and Drug Administration for use by adults in the U.S. only last month, long after a majority of adults had already been vaccinated with Pfizer, Moderna or Johnson & Johnson shots. Only 7,381 Novavax vaccine doses have been administered in the U.S., government data shows.

 
  • Like
Reactions: Titus Andronicus
Poor Management.

Novavax has been losing money for years. Novavax is good at R&D, but is amateurish when it comes running a business and having scalability. They have no business sense. Pfizer and Moderna had better financial backing and were much better able to rise to the occasion to get through the approval process and then scale up production.

It's too bad, because the NVAX vaccine is a pretty decent one, better than J&J. I actually bought some of the stock, watched it go up quite a bit and then come down......lucky to get out with a 10% loss.

The huge money in Covid vaccines has already been made. The ship has mostly sailed.....unless more destructive variants come to the forefront. MRNA has come back down to earth a bit, and NVAX will continue to lose money.
 
Poor Management.

Novavax has been losing money for years. Novavax is good at R&D, but is amateurish when it comes running a business and having scalability. They have no business sense. Pfizer and Moderna had better financial backing and were much better able to rise to the occasion to get through the approval process and then scale up production.

It's too bad, because the NVAX vaccine is a pretty decent one, better than J&J. I actually bought some of the stock, watched it go up quite a bit and then come down......lucky to get out with a 10% loss.

The huge money in Covid vaccines has already been made. The ship has mostly sailed.....unless more destructive variants come to the forefront. MRNA has come back down to earth a bit, and NVAX will continue to lose money.
I don't disagree with anything you said. But I can't help wondering if the FDA's refusal to let it on the market early in the pandemic - when it had met the same criteria that P and M had met to get emergency approval - was totally on the up-and-up.

I mean, let's face it, the pandemic was raging and people were freaking out that they couldn't find vaccines. It took me a month after I was eligible to get vaccinated. And I have younger friends who waited even longer - and not for lack of trying.

Surely it would have made sense to have another provider on the market. Not to mention that some folks like me would have preferred the Novavax methodology. Which might have reduced some of the vaccine hesitancy we saw.

Something doesn't smell right.
 
I don't disagree with anything you said. But I can't help wondering if the FDA's refusal to let it on the market early in the pandemic - when it had met the same criteria that P and M had met to get emergency approval - was totally on the up-and-up.

I mean, let's face it, the pandemic was raging and people were freaking out that they couldn't find vaccines. It took me a month after I was eligible to get vaccinated. And I have younger friends who waited even longer - and not for lack of trying.

Surely it would have made sense to have another provider on the market. Not to mention that some folks like me would have preferred the Novavax methodology. Which might have reduced some of the vaccine hesitancy we saw.

Something doesn't smell right.


I don't think there was anything unscrupulous going on. NVAX was given a ton of govt. money but they couldn't get to scale. Having a good vaccine is one thing, but can you mass-produce it? Pfizer and MRNA were able to secure ample production facilities during the initial days/months of the pandemic. NVAX wasn't as nimble. It shouldn't come as a surprise. NVAX has had shoddy management for years. They should fire their marketing department.

Realistically, I'm shocked they got as far as they did. MRNA was a bit of a wildcard (everyone know PFE has the ability to produce big-time drugs), but Bancel and Co. knocked it out of the park, in terms of development of the product, securing production facilities and marketing. All NVAX had was a good product. Running a succesfull business takes more than just a good product.

I don't think the NVAX covid-vax would have done much to change peoples' opinions on the vaccine. You're giving the company way more credit than it deserves. Maybe a few people......but nothing material.
 
ADVERTISEMENT