They talk about this being entirely self-funded. I wonder about the lack of a cold vaccine - presumably the value would be enormous in terms of avoiding lost productivity. I’ve always been under the impression that a vaccine for the “common cold” is very difficult because of its rapid mutations, mRNA or not. I’m curious why COVID is going to be much different.

Early on I remember an epidemiologist/virologist interviewed on JRE saying that building a point-in-time vaccine isn’t difficult, building a human-safe vaccine with long term efficacy is what’s difficult.

Vaccination is not without risk. Sometimes, but rarely, people have bad reactions to vaccines.

The ethical case for vaccinating against rhinoviruses isn't really there, even if it were viable to do so.

There is a good reason to develop at least one rhinovirus vaccine, though: so we have the expertise to deal with a bad rhinovirus strain if one should arise later. The coronavirus experience - SARS, MERS, and now COVID-19 - seems to suggest that such groundwork on common virus types would be a good idea.

Yes, specifically for cancer. I believe both Moderna and Biontech were working on it for cancer treatment.

BioNTech was doing various phase-one trials for cancer treatment. I don't know about Moderna.