A friend of mine once applied for a job in Japan. Due to the politeness of Japanese culture, when he received a letter from the company a week later, he had to read it several times to work out whether he'd gotten the job or not. (He hadn't)

It's a bit like that with trying to determine the effectiveness of vaccines against the UK and SA variants.

The Headline says: Moderna Vaccine appears to work against new variants

The word 'appears' is the troubling one. So i read on.

Early laboratory tests suggest antibodies triggered by the vaccine can recognise and fight the new variants.

Sounds good, but 'early' and 'suggest' are the qualifiers here.

For the Moderna study, researchers looked at blood samples taken from eight people who had received the recommended two doses of the Moderna vaccine.

Eight people? Hang on, haven't millions around the world been vaccinated by now? Why not do a study with 30 000 people? What's 8 people gonna prove?

The findings are yet to be peer reviewed, but suggest immunity from the vaccine recognises the new variants.

Hopefully the peer reviewer is going to say 'You've only sampled 8 people!'

Blood samples exposed to the new variants appeared to have sufficient antibodies to achieve this neutralising effect, although it was not as strong for the South Africa variant as for the UK one.

Hmm, so it doesn't work well against the SA variant?

Moderna says this could mean that protection against the South Africa variant might disappear more quickly.

Oh, finally the bottom line (which should be he headline): not as effective and protection disappears more quickly.

But Hey! just take it anyway - you'll be supporting a growing industry and boosting the economy - especially Moderna's.