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Comment by poof131 | Hacker News Reader

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 developed.[1] The whole things seems tragic, hypocritical, and an inevitable blow to America abroad.

1. https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/bidens-failure-on-covid-v...

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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.

First, the science in developing a vaccine is not the only work involved. Clinical trials and scaling up manufacturing to name a few.

Second, it actually is the scientists getting rich at least in some cases: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/10/business/biontech-covid-v...

Here is a profile of the billionaire inventors of the Pfizer vaccine as a counterexample:

https://www.businessinsider.com/a-billionaire-couple-is-behi...

I was going to say the the same thing, just have both, well educated, funded scientists working for the Government (funded but still independent) and private companies competing with them too.

Huh? The Moderna employees have made out very well based on equity appreciation. And Pfizer scientists are well compensated including stock.

That’s a straw man argument. They’ve made billions and will make billions more. Nothing is being given away for free. But currently, it is in their financial interests for this pandemic to go on indefinitely with continued mutations and a never-ending need for boosters. And our free market always seems to tilt in favor of monopolies. Shut down small businesses but don’t put any pressure on big pharma. Similar to 2008, let average people suffer but prop up the banks. I believe in free markets, but there is a reason people are turning against capitalism. No markets are truly free and we need consistent values applied to players big and small. Helping the world get vaccinated is the morally right thing to do, not optimizing pharma profits for the next decade under the guise of “incentives.”

Please forgive my personal pet peeve, but nothing BurningFrog said was a straw man as far as i can tell. I don't see any way they misrepresented your argument.

“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?

For poor people in India or Africa - yes.

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...

I was responding to this, written by someone else:

> force the drug manufactures to share the capability with the rest of the world

This reads like a copy/paste of the usual comments on HN about big tech, but almost none of it actually applies to most vaccine manufacturers.

So does that mean they would have not done anything unless they got paid? They would have just let people die? This is one of the many factors that doesn't add up when telling people they have a civic duty, yet the large corporations can't be held accountable and also make a huge profit.

There are some less than amazing ideologies present in the US. Property and money are valued above human life by many.

Government could have easily forced a reasonable license where the original manufacturer gets paid per shot but is not in a position to limit availability. They are not the only ones able to manufacture these vaccines.

For the mRNA vaccines, I think they actually are.

Only experimental batches had ever been made before, and then they had to invent ways to make billions of doses.

Wait, i thought this is what we negotiated when the initial development and payment for the vaccine happened?!

There is some movement in this area. While this is not absolute it at lease a reversal on the US's previous stance of protecting patents on the vaccine.

> Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine patents to boost supply - 06 May 2021

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57004302

As I recall, this move needs further agreement between the US and its allies.

Capitalism doesn't work that way for health. It's only too predictable now.

To be fair, the vaccines we have today were literally the first ones out of the gate, and they should be considered a stopgap solution that only serves to mitigate the problems caused by the global pandemic, but they patently don't work in eliminating it or even reach herd immunity.

Basically the current batch of vaccines (the best ones, to boot) just train the immune system for it to have a fighting chance at not being overwhelmed by covid. But that's it.

Some vaccination locations even make it their point to distribute pamphlets stating quite clear that the vaccine is not a silver bullet, and all basic health and higiene precautions in place should continue to be followed.

It's far too early to talk about preventing mutations or any scenario where the current vaccines making covid is a thing of the past. If anything, the economical gains from the vaccines illustrate that much needs to be done to get a better, long-term solution.

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