I don't really understand, why would people stop going into medicine or starting research labs? How would Moderna releasing their process crash the entire field? I'm not making a general argument that all medical research should be publicly available forever (although...), I'm making a very specific argument that in this global emergency, the benefits massively outweigh the risks. "Should I save the world or should I protect my brand" is a joke, it's not even worth asking.

I don't know if the polio analogy is overplayed at this point, but this is like polio. The vaccine needs to be freely available to the world. The absolute "worst case" is that Moderna faces increased competition in like 10 years and eventually goes out of business and its employees go work for different labs in different companies.