51–55 of 55 posts
This is why vaccine development and pharmaceuticals in general should be a public good, owned by the public sector, priced as a public good.
This will greatly decrease R+D spending on disruptive new pharmaceutical drugs. The Covid vaccines were developed and deployed by private industry.
In terms of how much benefit a company provides, Moderna and Pfizer vaccines literally provided trillions of dollars of benefit as it saved a bunch of lives and enabled economies to restart. I want these types of companies to make obscene amounts of money. I want entrepreneurs and venture capitalists to fund these companies thinking they can make obscene amounts of money from them. I want bright young people to dream…
Wait, did pfizer really develop the vaccine? Iirc, it was BioNTech, and Pfizer is just the exculsive distributor in the US.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As customers of the vaccine to deliver to their citizenry. You might as well say Microsoft is funded by the US government (and others) because they buy Windows and Office licenses: technically true and also misleading because it’s revenue for a product they sold them for a profit. Those profits fund further R&D into new products, some of which will be sold on the private market and some of which will be sold to gover…
Your analogy doesn't hold up. Initial R&D of Covid vaccines was largely funded by taxpayers in addition to advance purchase guarantees and limitation of legal liability to eliminate any risk whatsoever. After the public assumed any and all risk, profits are now going in private pockets. Your analogy is misleading and dishonest. > Since 2006, Congress has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars that BARDA used to…
Yes, they received grants. Yes also that they developed the finished products which were then purchased at a discounted rate and they received Emergency Use Audits and accelerated review processes to put them out there. Pretty much anyone that’s wanted to get their COVID vaccines and boosters has gotten them and they didn’t have to pay out of pocket at the time of injection. J&J, Moderna, Sanofi and AstraZeneca are now free to pursue other opportunities. Why shouldn’t they make a profit?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your analogy doesn't hold up. Initial R&D of Covid vaccines was largely funded by taxpayers in addition to advance purchase guarantees and limitation of legal liability to eliminate any risk whatsoever. After the public assumed any and all risk, profits are now going in private pockets. Your analogy is misleading and dishonest. > Since 2006, Congress has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars that BARDA used to…
The risk that you’re talking about is the “risk” of these products not being developed and working when we needed them. We probably would have been in lockdown mode for another year if we hadn’t. Yes, they received grants. Yes also that they developed the finished products which were then purchased at a discounted rate and they received Emergency Use Audits and accelerated review processes to put them out there. Pret…
If there is a credible risk of vaccines not being developed, as you say, perhaps it's time to think about either: a) nationalizing the key players in pharmaceutical industry, or b) introducing laws (if none already exist) that allow governments to compel these companies to allocate resources to work on specific projects.
Vaccines are not a luxury item sold on a free market and we shouldn't have to rely on profit-seeking companies to develop and appropriately distribute them in the most beneficial way, it's simply incompatible with what's best for humanity during a pandemic. We've seen this play out, US & EU countries created massive stockpiles of vaccines because they had dozens of billions of taxpayer money to pay for extortionate prices while poorer countries still had 1% vaccination rates.
This has lead to hundreds of millions (!) of doses of Covid vaccines expiring and being wasted. The side effect of this is increased likelihood of mutations that has the potential to harm everyone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The risk that you’re talking about is the “risk” of these products not being developed and working when we needed them. We probably would have been in lockdown mode for another year if we hadn’t. Yes, they received grants. Yes also that they developed the finished products which were then purchased at a discounted rate and they received Emergency Use Audits and accelerated review processes to put them out there. Pret…
Why should they be allowed to profiteer off of life-saving vaccines in the middle of a pandemic? If any other business price gouged essential supplies to the degree these pharmaceutical companies are doing, they would likely end up in prison. If there is a credible risk of vaccines not being developed, as you say, perhaps it's time to think about either: a) nationalizing the key players in pharmaceutical industry, or…
Endemic. Pandemic implies an end. They also make money off flu vaccines and measles vaccines. What’s the difference? That they can make money at all doing it is why they continue to do so and why governments don’t have to try and figure out supply and demand themselves.
> If there is a credible risk of vaccines not being developed, as you say, perhaps it's time to think about either: a) nationalizing the key players in pharmaceutical industry, or b) introducing laws (if none already exist) that allow governments to compel these companies to allocate resources to work on specific projects.
It’s not just about developing vaccines in the middle of pandemics; it’s about having an incentive to develop every type of vaccine we could possibly need, eventually, finding new applications for vaccine technology and improving the development and manufacturing processes. You need smart people, smart people want money and not just the thanks of their neighbors, ergo profits. Sure the government is a cushy job, but private sector pays more and as long as there’s profits, the “key players” as you call them aren’t limited to the ones that exist today.
> Vaccines are not a luxury item sold on a free market
I don’t know about “luxury” but they are sold on a free market.
> and we shouldn't have to rely on profit-seeking companies to develop and appropriately distribute them in the most beneficial way, it's simply incompatible with what's best for humanity during a pandemic.
The COVID vaccines set a record for research, development and dispersal and those profit seeking corporations pulled that off both because they could and they had an incentive to.
> We've seen this play out, US & EU countries created massive stockpiles of vaccines because they had dozens of billions of taxpayer money to pay for extortionate prices while poorer countries still had 1% vaccination rates.
Would you feel better about the US, UK, EU, and Israel putting themselves at the front of the line as long as they had nationalized their pharmaceuticals companies first?