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

reuters.com

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

#91
post #79
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Giving away their vaccine” is the straw man. There is a huge range between free and maximum profits. I’m not arguing that they shouldn’t be incentivized with a profit, the question is how much and what's in the best interest of the American people, not just Pfizer and Moderna.

Do you think the ~$20/dose Pfizer and Moderna are charging is unreasonable?

At $20/dose you can vaccinate all of humanity twice for $300B. An incredible bargain.

The US government has spent $5300B in pandemic relief packages. Vaccinating the planet could have been a cheap PR win barely noticed among that.

Except there just isn't production capacity for that on the planet.

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/heres-everything-congress-...

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there compelling evidence that "lockdowns" in the west actually had a significant impact on the spread?

Not a scientist, but again the fact that we nearly eliminated the flu through our countermeasures strikes me as strong circumstantial evidence. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm

I wonder how many people got the normal flu and did not report it because they did not / could not got to the doctor because of covid social distancing policies. What goes unreported does not cease to exist.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a scientist, but again the fact that we nearly eliminated the flu through our countermeasures strikes me as strong circumstantial evidence. https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm

I wonder how many people got the normal flu and did not report it because they did not / could not got to the doctor because of covid social distancing policies. What goes unreported does not cease to exist.

Pediatric deaths were down from 199 to 1. Admittedly the 199 was a peak, but still that’s an impressive drop.

Even if we assume last year was traumatic enough that things got missed, it seems evident that the flu took it on the chin.

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

#94
post #76
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?

If they had taken the risks and incurred the costs of development themselves, of course. But they were massively subsidized. In that case, the state should either get a share of the profits or negotiate fair prices that exclude all too huge profits.

Where should the line be?

For creating a vaccine which solves a global pandemic I think the rewards should be pretty steep. 60 billion is peanuts on the global scale. Millions of lives have been saved.

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

#95
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the ~$20/dose Pfizer and Moderna are charging is unreasonable?

At $20/dose you can vaccinate all of humanity twice for $300B. An incredible bargain. The US government has spent $5300B in pandemic relief packages. Vaccinating the planet could have been a cheap PR win barely noticed among that. Except there just isn't production capacity for that on the planet. https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/heres-everything-congress-...

> Except there just isn't production capacity for that on the planet.

But it's not like we're fully utilizing the available production capacity.

https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/do...

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

#96
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fine with that if it happens in a free market under informed consent and for curing real diseases. But big pharma, big media, big tech, government and law enforcement acting in complete lockstep to forcibly inject experimental vaccines into your veins for something that amounts to a bad variant of the flu is something else entirely.

Did you ever have the flu? I bet you didn't and if you think you did, you probably had a cold instead. A runny nose, headaches, and a sore throat doesn't mean you got the flu. The flu will bind you to your bed for at least a week and you will need 3-6 weeks to recover. You will feel like somebody ran you over with a truck. It's not fun, it's highly dangerous.

> The flu will bind you to your bed for at least a week and you will need 3-6 weeks to recover.

It can, but this isn't a given. Tens of millions of people get influenza yearly in the USA, and there's a wide range of estimates of asymptomatic cases, with 50% being a reasonable baseline to work from.

See, e.g. Seasonal Incidence of Symptomatic Influenza in the United States: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/66/10/1511/4682599

> Estimates of the percentage of influenza infections that are asymptomatic include a common approximation of 50% [33], 33% in 1 review [34] and 4%–28%, 0–100%, and 65%–85% in another review [35]. Both asymptomatic and symptomatic infections are captured in serological studies. The commonly cited “5%–20%” figure came from a serological study [5], and so represents both symptomatic and asymptomatic disease among a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. If 50% of influenza were symptomatic, this would correspond to “2.5%–10%” with symptomatic disease, which is very similar to the range that we report.

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

#97
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people always says this? I've had the flu, I'm sure nearly everyone has had it once. It's not really incredibly uncommon.

People do tend to conflate all sorts of "coughs" together as the "flu", including many illnesses that are a lot more mild than the flu.

> People do tend to conflate all sorts of "coughs" together as the "flu", including many illnesses that are a lot more mild than the flu.

People do, but if you look at CDC estimates, tens of millions of people get influenza in any given year, so it's fairly like that any given adult individual has contracted influenza multiple times in their life.

Disease Burden of Influenza: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html

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