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Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

reuters.com

31–40 of 97 posts

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#31
post #13

What I don’t understand is how we can shut down the economy with a huge impact on small businesses, but not force the drug manufactures to share the capability with the rest of the world. We complain about the unvaccinated in the US and the possibility of mutations, but then don’t do everything we can to help vaccinate the world and prevent mutations. And Russia and China are sharing the less effective vaccines they…

Forcing vaccine manufacturers to give away their vaccine creates strong incentives against inventing vaccines. It works once, but the next pandemic may happen without any vaccines. The consensual, win-win way is to buy vaccines from the manufacturers, at high prices. This makes manufacturers wealthy by making people healthy and aligns incentives for the common good.

Or just have government funded researchers that are well compensated, it's not the actual scientist that developed the drugs getting rich.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#34
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Medicine is the only industry that can sell flawed products, offer no guarantees, and charge arbitrary prices for services without any consequence. Where do you frame mandatory requirements for clinical trials along with your personal assertion regarding "flawed products with no guarantees" ?

Did a doctor ever give you a guarantee that their treatment would heal you? Contrast with almost any other industry... the baker telling you "this piece of bread might cure your hunger, but there is a 10% risk that it will kill you instead". Clinical trials are in many cases smoke and mirrors - very elaborate and inscrutable, but provide no guarantees in the end. When it comes down to results of medical treatments, y…

> Did a doctor ever give you a guarantee that their treatment would heal you?

You don't get a guarantee that a brand of paint will work with your walls, but that does not mean paint doesn't work.

Meanwhile, personally I've enjoyed a 100% success rate in all medical treatments I was subjected to. I might be lucky, but I'm under the impression that everyone around me has been fantastically lucky as well.

Does this mean there are no conditions for which modern medicine does not have a good answer to? Absolutely. But it's my understanding that patients are indeed briefed on relative chances of success.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#35
post #22

I actually have no problem with pharma companies seeing huge profits from the covid vaccines. Should they not be compensated for their extremely difficult/impactful work? Why won’t someone else do it for cheaper?

Regulatory capture and patent laws are pretty big inhibitors to competing with massive pharmaceutical companies generally speaking.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#36
post #12

Medicine is the only industry that can sell flawed products, offer no guarantees, and charge arbitrary prices for services without any consequence. Anyone else see parallels to organized religions of old? They even operate in the same space... curing the sick, promising long life, dictating the right way to live, holding the key to life and death. They have ordained priests that hold exclusive rights to practice the…

If you want 100% guarantees and no side effects make sure your creator is your doctor.

I am 100% enthusiastic about my doctor, if I want my actual experience to be ignored, an unwanted prescription for early-cholesterol junk to be pushed upon me, and a useless colonoscopy that ends with me just taking what's over the counter anyway.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#37
post #30
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Medicine is the only industry that can sell flawed products, offer no guarantees, and charge arbitrary prices for services without any consequence. Where do you frame mandatory requirements for clinical trials along with your personal assertion regarding "flawed products with no guarantees" ?

Did a doctor ever give you a guarantee that their treatment would heal you? Contrast with almost any other industry... the baker telling you "this piece of bread might cure your hunger, but there is a 10% risk that it will kill you instead". Clinical trials are in many cases smoke and mirrors - very elaborate and inscrutable, but provide no guarantees in the end. When it comes down to results of medical treatments, y…

Professionals hedging their bets with asterisks isn't helpful.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#38
post #6
post #3

$60 billion for two years worth of shots? Sounds like a steal. Covid has cost the global economy Trillions and Trillions of dollars already, and all the downstream costs will probably add up to $100 trillion real dollars when factoring in inflation, money printing, national debt, state/provincial debts/local debts/consumer debt increases.

The costs of the pandemic are one side. The other is the cost of developing and producing the vaccines. In a normal market situation, prices are determined by supply and demand. But that's really not such a situation here. The question from the government's point of view has to be whether you could have had the vaccine cheaper. After all, large sums of money have already been invested by the states for research and d…

Vaccine manufacturers are making $20-25/dose in revenue, not profit.

The price for vaccines currently being charged is absurdly reasonable. I would pay 10x the price out of pocket without a second thought, and I wouldn't care how much of that is profit for the manufacturer.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#40
post #35
post #22

I actually have no problem with pharma companies seeing huge profits from the covid vaccines. Should they not be compensated for their extremely difficult/impactful work? Why won’t someone else do it for cheaper?

Regulatory capture and patent laws are pretty big inhibitors to competing with massive pharmaceutical companies generally speaking.

And the insider-friendly FDA process.
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