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Flu shot: US Food and Drug Administration will review Moderna’s mRNA vaccine, company says
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- Title
- FDA reverses course and will review new mRNA flu shot, company says | CNN
- Published
- Feb 18 2026
The irony of this is that, during the pandemic, the US held on to the mRNA technology because it represents a strategic advantage. At that time we could have "open sourced" the technology which would have greatly expanded access to COVID vaccines across the globe.
Now we are squandering that "advantage" in order to pander to the anti-science brigade. What a world.
Aside: I don't agree with either move, but the inconsistency is an added layer of WTF that makes the world feel surreal.
When given an olive branch that could have turned the tide away from a competitive world to a cooperative one, America snapped the branch and screamed "Fuck you, pay me!"
Undoubtedly they could have gotten plenty of money for it, but I don't think it was a question of money. They recognized the strategic potential of the mRNA technology for future vaccines and beyond. Them chose that over saving millions of lives. I suppose that's not the first time, and won't be the last.
My struggle (as an American) is that we were taught growing up about what an amazing country America is, and the reality is a rug pull that I do not know how to recover from.
This is something I struggle with as well. I still see elements of the "amazing country America is", here and there. But largely, it's not consistent with the world view I had growing up. I always thought of America as "the good guys", but in the year 2026, I am reminded of a quote from Winston Churchill:
But rather than lean in to pessimism, I'll hold out hope that my generation, and the generations after mine, will help shape America more to positive ideals in the future.
I grew up in Canada where attitudes toward the US have historically been mixed at best.
Then 23 years ago I married an American and moved to the US. At the time she was very much of the America-is-the-greatest-country-in-the-world mindset, so we would often clash when talking about various aspects of American culture and politics.
Witnessing the gradual erosion of her pride and confidence in this country in the time since then sometimes feels like I'm watching an ex-cult-member getting deprogrammed.
I remember in freshman year of high school my history teacher taught us about American Exceptionalism. Thankfully my teacher was jaded as hell so he wasn’t saying that it was some magical force that made Americans better than anyone else, just that people believed that it did.
Growing up around the time of 9/11 everyone was pushing patriotism. American exceptionalism was reaching a peak of sorts because we were at war after what now feels like an impossibly long period of peace. Everything was patriotic. If you weren’t being extra patriotic on Independence Day, you’d be shunned.
The problem with patriotism is that the word is a euphemism for nationalism, and nationalism is the rallying cry for fascism.
I do think that it can be a good thing to be proud of your country, but the reasons why are very important. Are you proud because your country takes care of its people and orchestrates peace, or are you proud of your country because it dominates and subjugates? In this time and place, the people most proud of the US are the latter.
I spent some time listening to a podcast called American Prestige. It's political history with the view of America as waning empire. Them did some great series on Afghanistan, Vietnam, even Israel. It was very eye opening. Most of my history classes stopped at the civil war, but I think a clear eyed overview of reconstruction to the present would be good. I have s coy of Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States but so little time to read these days.
Fun fact, I actually tried to read that book in high school but stopped because it was too depressing. I then read it again because it was the textbook for my college US History class.
The crazy thing is that Operation Warp Speed was a Trump initiative, arguably the most beneficial-to-humanity thing either of his administrations has done. Literally the only thing I can honestly say Trump did right. And it lost him points from his base and garnered boos at his rallies so now he pretends it never happened.
They're so conditioned to voting against their own interests that their reaction to actual benefit is like an autoimmune response.
Also like alcohol withdrawl literally killing an alcoholic.
So drunk on propaganda that the withdrawl would kill them.
From the article:
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