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Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

reuters.com

251–260 of 712 posts

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#251
post #222

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the vaccine that killed a test subject? https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/volunteer-astraze...

A person who got the vaccine died; "vaccine killed a test subject" is quite misleading.

Right, further investigation is needed, but how about this one: https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/17/health/astrazeneca-vaccin...

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#252
post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A person who got the vaccine died; "vaccine killed a test subject" is quite misleading.

Unfortunately that's how most newspapers released the news, so I'm not surprised he's confused

Maybe yes, but this is the second time there is trouble with this specific vaccine.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#253

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the vaccine that killed a test subject? https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/volunteer-astraze...

No, that's completely wrong. The person who died was in the control group: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-54634518

They don't release more details officially due to patient confidentiality, but the unofficial word was that a young doctor treating COVID patients died of COVID during the trial, but was in the control group and did not receive the vaccine. It is very sad whenever a doctor dies trying to save others, but especially because they may still be alive if they had been randomized to the vaccination group (of course we don't know that for sure though, since the vaccine may still prove to be effective or ineffective).

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#254
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If "we" gave you $20B to move a vaccine from proof-of-concept to production, could you do it? I know I couldn't... That's a service, it's worth money, it's worth paying for. Edit: people don't seem to understand that there are several stages in pharma development... (1) research, (2) trials, (3) scaling production. It sounds to me that even if (1) and (2) are "paid for" (with public money), (3) is still non-trivial a…

> it's worth paying for And "we" are already paying for it. Let's not let them double-dip.

No, we're only paying for part of 'it'. The cure isn't just research, it's also logistics and there does not exist a capable non-profit to do the logistics part of it in such a short time. Also you underestimate how much it costs to build such a supply chain capable of producing and shipping that many vaccines around the world. Hint: the research costs are just a fraction of the logistics cost, you just don't see that up front because it's also used to ship other stuff besides vaccines.

These things cost money, and you assume your taxes are covering them in full. They don't.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#255

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't this the vaccine that killed a test subject? https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/volunteer-astraze...

No, that's completely wrong. The person who died was in the control group: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-54634518 They don't release more details officially due to patient confidentiality, but the unofficial word was that a young doctor treating COVID patients died of COVID during the trial, but was in the control group and did not receive the vaccine. It is very sad whenever a doctor dies trying to…

Ah, right. Didn't know that! thanks!

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care. Just like about the bailouts. Socializing the funding/losses and privatizing the profits is just pure corruption.

The nominal world economy 'GDP' was $90T in 2019 [0]. An economic contraction of 5% because of the pandemic would mean a loss of $4500B. If a vaccine helps to avoid that, even a cost of dozens of billion dollars for it would be peanuts in comparison. This is only the economic cost avoided let alone the human tragedies. Edit: german Wikipedia suggest that the contraction is only expected to be 3% but because of the nu…

You missed the point that we already paid for the development of this vaccine by paying taxes. We should now only pay for the production, not for the intellectual property rights.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. Oxford develops the vaccine with public money. We also, god willing, need to manufacture billions of them and transport them around the globe. For that manufacturing, give me a solid existing multinational with a proven manufacturing record and base please, not some non-profit startup.

The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research. I suggest that we should give merek the for profit monopoly, but allow for non profit manufacturing. If another organization wants to make the vaccine but not derive profit from the process, let them. Manufacturing takes time and money to develop. Revenue should pay for those costs. The non-profit gains e…

> The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research.

Now we can disagree on term length, but, a temporary monopoly to a company is what a patent is defined as and lasts 20 years.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But, for instance - public money is used to build roads, yet companies that build them make money in the process. There is no state-owned road building company. What's the difference here?

Public money pays for the roads. After the road is built, the road belongs to the public. Public money pays for the research. After the research finishes, the results should belong to the public, the same way as the road does.

They belong to a publicly funded research institute that was given the right by the public to sell it's research to private enterprise.

The 'public' wanted that by voting in the lawmakers making that possible.

That's how democracy works.

Also we're not talking about physical things, but something 'intellectual' like software, so the comparison is inaccurate.

More accurate would be IT research done in a publicly funded university.

Re: Vaccine hopes rise as Oxford jab prompts immune response among old and young

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. Oxford develops the vaccine with public money. We also, god willing, need to manufacture billions of them and transport them around the globe. For that manufacturing, give me a solid existing multinational with a proven manufacturing record and base please, not some non-profit startup.

The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research. I suggest that we should give merek the for profit monopoly, but allow for non profit manufacturing. If another organization wants to make the vaccine but not derive profit from the process, let them. Manufacturing takes time and money to develop. Revenue should pay for those costs. The non-profit gains e…

Exactly. The idea that the public funds research, but corporations can monopolies the results of that research for profit, is just disgusting. Non-exclusive deals are fine. Exclusive ones not, at least not within the country/countries that funded it; they already paid for it, and denying them access is basically theft.
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