141–150 of 211 posts
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Governments should not just fund drug and vaccine research. They should employ most of the researchers and own most of the labs. Problem solved. Give a hundred billion to vaccine research and then release it to the public with a mandated price - job complete.
What about development?
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Covid antibodies, even vaccine induced ones, don't stick around for much more than 3-6 months. Whatever natural immunity you got nearly 3 years ago is long since useless. You're either getting lucky or an asymptomatic case and not knowing it. edit: Since you're unvaccinated, go get a covid antibody test and check for yourself how good (or terrible) your immunity is to the virus. You can take either one, the S type or…
This is factually incorrect. You don't have perhaps protection against infection, nor probably symptomatic disease, but there is working natural immunity, in the form of immune memory and cell based immunity (T lymphocytes). That is far, far more resistant to variants than humoral (antibody based) immunity, mainly because only antibodies neutralizing the S protein are able to prevent infection (so more vulnerable to mutations).
Cell based immunity can't prevent infection, and can not necessarily prevent disease (as in, having fever, cough...), but it is very effective in dampening the effect of infection (either through recruitment of other immune cells, or by killing infected cells). Memory T and B cells generally last quite a lot of years (and with SARS-CoV-2, up to two years at least), so this memory is long-lasting.
Can we please have this sort of research for the common cold and flu please. I hate flu season, I'm normally sick three of four times a winter. I get really sick at least once a year. I'd love to avoid that.
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Perhaps it would be worthwhile to understand the system you're criticizing a bit better before moving ahead and criticizing it
Perhaps. If you feel you have an understanding of the system I'm criticizing, why not help me understand why it has to be this way? I get it if you don't have the time or inclination to do so, but surprisingly I'm actually really open to learning new things and it would be appreciated not only by me but by other people reading your comments if you could explain the current system, perhaps other systems that have been…
The type of comment that you left is a pattern I have been noticing where someone will state that they don't understand something and then proceed to criticize it.
This does not make sense to me, as I don't understand how someone can assume they have legitimate criticisms of a system without first asking clarifying questions to improve their understanding.
Can we please have this sort of research for the common cold and flu please. I hate flu season, I'm normally sick three of four times a winter. I get really sick at least once a year. I'd love to avoid that.
Of course going through it sucks, I am in same bandwagon with 2 small kids and getting often sick with same stuff they have. And they do have stuff basically semi-constantly from mid autumn to mid spring. Half the class has constantly running noses.
How do you think kids build their immunity? You don't get it by just growing up, its exposure after exposure. Protecting them too much from common stuff is one of the worst things you can do as a parent, they will have serious health issues and allergies later on.
From the article: The researchers have applied for patents on both the antibodies and the mouse model used to produce them. They hope to see their work developed commercially. ... followed by This work was supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-021989), the National institutes of Health (NIAID Consortia for HIV/AIDS Vaccine Development UM1-AI144371, P01 AI158571, Ma…
You realize it take tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to get from this stage to an actual product and the chances of failure are 90%+? And you're mad because when the government funded 0.01% of the total cost of development you can't get it for free?
That’s also discounting the fact that they aren’t paying for all the projects that don’t make it to the “works in a lab” stage. That a significant chunk of risk that they aren’t exposed to.
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How? What’s the incentive for Pfizer to fund development if they don’t get exclusivity?
Governments should not just fund drug and vaccine research. They should employ most of the researchers and own most of the labs. Problem solved. Give a hundred billion to vaccine research and then release it to the public with a mandated price - job complete.
That seems... a spectacularly naïve idea.
Governments could have done this for fifty years, but by and large they don't, because governments are generally capricious and short termist, and don't value R&D.
Heck, the UK government just sold off it's vaccine development centre even after Covid happened. https://researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-innovation-2...
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You realize it take tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to get from this stage to an actual product and the chances of failure are 90%+? And you're mad because when the government funded 0.01% of the total cost of development you can't get it for free?
The government (or other non-profit entities) funded significantly more than 0.01% in this case. You’re not wrong that there’s still a ton of money required to get from “this works in a lab” to “this is something available at your local pharmacy”, but it’s not 4 orders of magnitude more… That’s also discounting the fact that they aren’t paying for all the projects that don’t make it to the “works in a lab” stage. Tha…
You can just look at the budget of the NIH versus private and corporate investment in drug development. What the government spends is a fraction of what private companies invest.
To get a drug approved you're looking at $5k-$15k/person/year in a Phase 3 trial (depending on the monitoring needed). You can call up an CRO and ask for a quote. I did this several jobs ago.
Just to give you a sense, the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine was 47,000 patients [1]. These patients were followed for 2 years. For a rough estimate, that's $5,000 x 47,000 x 2 years = $470M.
Half a billion dollars, just for one clinical trial.
That's already 3 orders of magnitude larger than a typical $500,000 grant for basic lab research like this paper.
And that's just the clinical trials. It doesn't include the trials leading up to the pivotal trial, the manufacturing development costs, the health authority submissions costs across 130 countries, etc. Then add on top the cost to make the actual drug and put it in a vial and ship it around the world.
And sure, "they aren’t paying for all the projects that don’t make it to the “works in a lab” stage". But conversely, the government never bears the risk for later development that fails. I remember Pfizer a couple decades ago spent $1B on a new manufacturing plant for a drug that never got approved.
[1]https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/about-our...
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Because they could make more than $XB by selling it afterwards? Also, who's to say that Pfizer can't make an additional deal, or funding, for this effort?
How? What’s the incentive for Pfizer to fund development if they don’t get exclusivity?
Cake and eat it.