Bragging Rights

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What's going on?

Moderna doesnt want to get into a drug-measuring contest or anything, but the biotech company did announce on Monday that its vaccine is even more effective than Pfizers.

What does this mean?

This makes Moderna the second US company to announce late-stage trial data that beat expectations. Next stop: approval from US and European regulators, which Modernas said itll officially request in the next few weeks. From there, the biotech has set its sights high: its expecting to ship 20 million doses of the dual-dose vaccine to the US by the end of this year, and between 500 million and a billion doses globally by the end of 2021.

Why should I care?

The bigger picture: The more, the merrier.


A major advantage of Modernas vaccine isnt just its 94.5% effectiveness to Pfizers 90%: its that it lasts for 30 days at refrigerator temperatures, compared to Pfizers five (tweet this). That could make distribution of the drug simpler and cheaper, since it wont need the ultra-cold storage that Pfizers will. Still, with demand for a vaccine so much higher than any one drugmaker can meet in the near term, theyll both have their time to shine. Thats certainly true in China, where vaccinations are already underway, as well as in Russia, whose Sputnik-V coronavirus vaccine which was licensed for domestic use in August is reportedly 92% effective.



For markets: Little victories.


A vaccine is considered the single best way to get the global economic recovery back on track, but theres already the odd bright spot if you look closely enough. Heres one: Chinese industrial production and retail consumption data jumped by the most this year in October. Thats a good thing for European and American companies too: it means Chinese shoppers will be more than happy to keep buying their products.

Originally posted as part of the Finimize daily email.

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