The company Moderna was created over a decade ago for the sole purpose of unlocking mRNA-based medicine. It's right there in the name: ModeRNA. Because of their scientists' relentless work, the "delivery vehicle" for these vaccines was ready and waiting for our inevitable next pandemic. When it happened, the sequencing took two days and they had a testable vaccine in 41 days. [1]
So, over a year ago, the culmination of over a decade of research and development came together and we started trials. This is the part most people are actually concerned about. I see the following concerns all the time:
"They skipped animal testing" -- Not true [2]
"They skipped phases of human testing" -- Not true [3]
"We have no idea what the ingredients are" -- Not true [4]
"The trials were too short; they MUST take 3 to 5 years" -- Not true [5]
Regarding human testing, the Phase 1 (dosage and safety) started in March 2020. The Phase 3 (efficacy and rare side effects) started in July 2020. Full disclosure, I'm in a Phase 3 trial for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine. The trials are ongoing.
Regarding ingredients, it's simple: Four fats (lipids) so the body can absorb the shot, four salts to get the right pH, one sugar (sucrose) to keep everything emulsified, and mRNA.
Regarding trial length, it has been a long time since we've been in such a dire situation due to a deadly and contagious virus -- which is a bad thing in most ways, but a good thing for clinical trials.
The goal of a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial is to reach a certain number of infections, unblind the independent monitors, and let them see how many of those infected people had a vaccine versus a placebo. We got there SUPER-QUICKLY -- so quickly, in fact, that we didn't have the requisite two months of safety data from the large number of volunteers yet.
Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna actually had to wait a bit so they had enough safety data to submit alongside their efficacy data because the virus was spreading so quick (in the placebo group). That's why things were able to move so quickly, without any sort of sacrifice at all in data quality -- which has now been confirmed by large-scale studies in Israel confirming that the real world is matching the clinical trial numbers. [6]
So the last concern people bring up is the one about "long-term effects," and for this one, it's important to know that the human body doesn't let mRNA stay around very long. The vaccine is injected, the mRNA says "hey, build these proteins that look like a harmless part of this virus," and within three days, the mRNA is completely degraded and gone.
There's no vaccine left -- it is literally wiped out entirely, so there is nothing left behind to potentially cause long-term effects. No heavy metals, no secret ingredients, etc. [7]
Instead, the body builds that protein and then says "nah I don't like the looks of that," then destroys the protein it made. (The "side effects" you feel after your shot are a result of the body's natural immune response to these proteins.)
While doing this, it's also looking at that protein and committing it to memory so that it can be ready to go full-force against anything that looks like it later -- and thus, your body develops a natural immunity to the virus because of the instructions from the vaccine. [8]
Sources:
[1]
https://time.com/5927342/mrna-covid-vaccine/[2]
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.09.08.280818v1[3]
https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04368728[4]
https://www.hackensackmeridianhealth.org/HealthU/2021/01/11/a-simple-breakdown-of-the-ingredients-in-the-covid-vaccines/[5]
https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/30/a-huge-experiment-how-the-world-made-so-much-progress-on-a-covid-19-vaccine-so-fast/[6]
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210311005482/en/[7]
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC403777/[8]
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html