Yeah, I mean this is just rephrasing the question. Why wouldn't a company attempt to solve a global pandemic even without the promise of eternal profit? These are exceptional circumstances. Even if pandemics become more common in the modern world, it's not like this is going to happen every 5 years. How can these people not be willing to make a sacrifice (where sacrifice here means saving the world but maybe having to find a new job in ~10 years).

They saved the world already. It's just not evenly distributed yet. It's a bit like me saying, "hey, you know climate change? that's an exceptional circumstance, well why don't you go live a hunter gather existence like our ancestors did to reduce your carbon footprint as much as possible?"

Because that would be a very large sacrifice with a very small benefit. Conversely, Moderna has the opportunity to make a relatively small sacrifice for an incomprehensibly enormous benefit.

If my becoming a hunter gatherer would single-handedly eliminate 50% of global emissions or something, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I see, so long as it's someone else's sacrifice, it's fine, they should do that.