411–420 of 569 posts
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Will you then also pay those who put huge effort and expense in to research that was perhaps necessary but didn't lead anywhere?
Most research is government funded
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To be fair, Johnson & Johnson (a US company) also made a similar pledge to AstraZeneca. These two companies have collectively received more than $1.5 billion from the US government [1]. As I understand it, Pfizer have not taken any federal funding. They do have government purchase agreements, but they are dependent on Pfizer delivering a viable vaccine. Their partner BioNTech received German government funding: Berli…
>These two companies have collectively received more than $1.5 billion from the US government [1]. As I understand it, Pfizer have not taken any federal funding. They do have government purchase agreements, but they So where did Pfizer's capital come from to shoulder these costs? It didn't come out of thin air, they've accumulated capital from somewhere. If not from taxpayers, someone is subsidizing Pfizer's expenses…
Here [1] it says the vaccine was designed mostly over the weekend of 11th Jan 2020. Here we are 10 months later and we know it works. If our knowledge of vaccine design is so good experts can design a vaccine that works over a weekend, what new breakthroughs are required to reduce the time between then and now substantially? A lot of benefit could have been had if we'd been able to get along this path more quickly. […
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> Pay them their costs and not one cent more. I prefer a system where it's very worthwhile for people to risk a lot and work hard to save my life. If it was all about altruism, I doubt a vaccine would be developed for many more years.
Regarding vaccines and altruism I suggest you read up on Jonas Salk, who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines[1] Money quote from linked article: "News of the vaccine's success was first made public on April 12, 1955.[7] Salk was immediately hailed as a "miracle worker", and chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution." [1] https://en.wikiped…
The organizations who funded the research looked into the viability of a patent and concluded it wouldn't have succeeded.
"the idea of patenting the vaccine had been directly analyzed and the decision was made not to apply for a patent mainly because it would not result in one."[1]
The distinction should also be made that a patent doesn't necessarily affect global distribution. It just gives the rights to license the technology. They could have patented it and then licensed it for free.
[1]https://www.bio.org/blogs/real-reason-why-salk-refused-paten...
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The safety concerns cannot be resolved yet. Effective - yes. Safe? We won’t know for a while. Pandemrix, a flu vaccine, caused a notable uptick in narcolepsy in Sweden, Finland and likely the UK. This was not (and could not) be seen in smaller trial populations. It is not a given that any of the covid vaccines is safe enough. Historically, two cases of rushed vaccines (cutter polio and Gullah barre) were worse than t…
> Pandemrix, a flu vaccine, caused a notable uptick in narcolepsy in Sweden, Finland and likely the UK. "The increased risk of narcolepsy due to vaccination was 1 in 18400 or 0.005%."[1] Considering the fatality and long term disability rate of Covid, and the way testing and safety protocols are done for vaccines, I don't really see how there could be an unknown and unseen risk that would outweigh the risk of contrac…
It might be, but it’s not open and shut.
It's interesting to layman's eyes that the dosing regime using 1.5 doses is more effective than the one using 2 doses as I would expect the inverse; are there any plausible explanations for this?
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I thought adenoviral vaccines were also relatively new. Not as new as mRNA which is bleeding edge, but still i think this would be the first time this technique would be approved for human use should it be approved.
The article says adenovirus vaccines have been "researched and used extensively for decades."
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Will you then also pay those who put huge effort and expense in to research that was perhaps necessary but didn't lead anywhere?
The society at large is making huge sacrifices and making painful changes to address this collective problem. Are these companies part of "Human society" or not? If they are party of Humanity, then they can make 'adjustments' as much as we are asked to make adjustments.
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I’ve seen this number with some justification being the amortized cost of a successful product, which covers r&d and marketing but also the failed attempts that lead nowhere in between. There are plenty of 50-100M pharma startups; they wouldn’t exist if your number was right.
90% of start ups fail, so the numbers in that case would be about correct.
GP said idea to product costs 1B just for r&d. That and 1B amortized over failures (and including marketing) cannot be true at the same time unless there are no failed attempts and unless marketing cost is zero.