5 ms·

Not at all, let's give them a profit, but pay for a decent, reliable product, that's the idea. You don't pay beforehand for something that can potentially turn

by Hoasi 6y ago

Not at all, let's give them a profit, but pay for a decent, reliable product, that's the idea. You don't pay beforehand for something that can potentially turn to be a disaster, without any liability whatsoever.

bpodgursky 6y ago
There's literally no way to get a guaranteed reliable product with shortened phase-3 trials. You can't accelerate time. You can get huge numbers of subjects, even do challenge trials, and throw every scientist in the world at it, but you cannot look at the 1-2 year effects or efficacy without 1-2 years. What you said is a very nice platitude which is simply not possible given the time constraints involved.
- tehjoker 6y ago
  This kind of rhetoric is making my vaccine safety alarm bells go off. We are considering administering this vaccine to a decent percent of the world population. If it has 1% deadly side effects, it's as bad as corona, but self inflicted. Maybe we should rethink whether rushing this is a good idea in the first place.
  - Spartan-S63 6y ago
    We really should be carefully considering the risks of this accelerated vaccine development. Though, I don’t think it’s realistic we’ll be able to actually consider the _real_ risks because the world is in a mode of always wanting to find the silver bullet at all costs - even when one doesn’t exist. We’re in an unprecedented time where people think that a COVID-19 vaccine will allow us to stop social distancing and wearing masks. With the efficacy targets of these developments, that won’t do. We need defense-in-depth _even with_ a vaccine. Once we have it, great, we can open more things up, but social distancing and masks still need to be worn until the virus becomes endemic. I still wish the US had invoked the Defense Production Act and pressed the public and private sectors into work on a vaccine and manufacture of PPE. The fact that we didn’t is telling of how drastic leaders want to respond to this. In my view, this is a war against a virus, but we’re not acting like the situation requires a war-levels of effort.
    - tehjoker 6y ago
      I agree with what you said. I am very concerned about the well documented possibility of vaccines sometimes making the disease course worse or causing auto-immune problems down the line. After all, one problem with sars-cov-2 is that the virus mimics human self-identification all over the place, one reason it is so effective. What if a non-negligible part of the population develop a chronic auto-immune disease? Those diseases are treated with steroids. If we have to give immune-suppressing steroids to a large part of the population, are we not setting ourselves up for a second pandemic? These are just speculations, but I am extremely adverse to this rush mentality like we're trying to get a new software UI out and it doesn't matter if it breaks. While we are under the gun here, I still think we should take a considered approach and indeed mobilize against the virus. Much of this mobilization would involve not only production, but also non-production i.e. paying people to stay home and building structures that enable safe socialization etc. There's a mentality that we must preserve our highly competitive way of life at all costs, and the people leading us are the ones that "won". I think this is the wrong course. Further, I think this discussion of liabilities and profits is insanity. The relevant phrama companies should be nationalized and anyone harmed should be able to make a claim against the government. I don't understand why an entire civilization needs to rely on the kindness of buisness people.
      - Spartan-S63 6y ago
        Absolutely. I agree. Production of remedies is just as important as non-production of non-essential industries. The fewer people there are out and about, the better off we are during this pandemic. The fact that there's been so little direct aid to people directly impacted is baffling to me. Corporations don't need money to sustain themselves. That's classical neocon supply-side thinking at work. We're in a situation where demand-side thinking and stimulus is critical. If nothing else, I have a foolish hope that this pandemic will force us to reexamine our way of life and alter it to be more community-centric and relax our competitiveness. There's no reason life has to move at the speed it does. There's no reason the workweek needs to be 40 hours. There's no reason parents can't spend more time with their children and all people can have more leisure and unstructured playtime. And finally, I 100% agree. I have little faith in most corporations that are doing things that shouldn't be scarce goods - such as medical care and pharmaceuticals. Relying on them to deliver us through this disaster is foolish. Their incentive is _not_ on getting us through this. It's on delivering shareholder value and right now, they're delivering all kinds of value since they're in higher demand. We should view it as a failing when private industry is our only hope of deliverance from a disaster.
  - toast0 6y ago
    The problem is, by the time we know what the best course of action is, it will be much too late to take that action. I think the data on vaccines that have been around for decades is clear, but new vaccines are always going to have unknown risks. New diseases also have unknown risks. It's hard to weigh unknown risks and decide what's the best action to take.
  - tripletao 6y ago
    There's effectively zero chance that the vaccine kills 1% of those vaccinated. They would have caught that in the Phase II, and probably the Phase I since they do also track adverse events short of death. The risk is e.g. that the vaccine has unforeseen side effects that kill or seriously injure one person in 10^4 or 10^5. That could still be a highly favorable tradeoff for society; but if AstraZeneca gets no credit for the people their vaccine saved and pays out normal rates--potentially billions of dollars--for the people their vaccine injured, then it's a terrible tradeoff for AstraZeneca. All vaccines present some version of this problem, and that's why the American government takes liability for vaccine injuries. I'd guess that Europe has been able to avoid that (so far) only because their socialized health care reduces the need for injured patients to sue to recover their medical expenses, and because of their less litigious society in general.

by Hoasi 6y ago

bpodgursky 6y ago

There's literally no way to get a guaranteed reliable product with shortened phase-3 trials. You can't accelerate time. You can get huge numbers of subjects, even do challenge trials, and throw every scientist in the world at it, but you cannot look at the 1-2 year effects or efficacy without 1-2 years. What you said is a very nice platitude which is simply not possible given the time constraints involved.

tehjoker 6y ago
This kind of rhetoric is making my vaccine safety alarm bells go off. We are considering administering this vaccine to a decent percent of the world population. If it has 1% deadly side effects, it's as bad as corona, but self inflicted. Maybe we should rethink whether rushing this is a good idea in the first place.
- Spartan-S63 6y ago
  We really should be carefully considering the risks of this accelerated vaccine development. Though, I don’t think it’s realistic we’ll be able to actually consider the _real_ risks because the world is in a mode of always wanting to find the silver bullet at all costs - even when one doesn’t exist. We’re in an unprecedented time where people think that a COVID-19 vaccine will allow us to stop social distancing and wearing masks. With the efficacy targets of these developments, that won’t do. We need defense-in-depth _even with_ a vaccine. Once we have it, great, we can open more things up, but social distancing and masks still need to be worn until the virus becomes endemic. I still wish the US had invoked the Defense Production Act and pressed the public and private sectors into work on a vaccine and manufacture of PPE. The fact that we didn’t is telling of how drastic leaders want to respond to this. In my view, this is a war against a virus, but we’re not acting like the situation requires a war-levels of effort.
  - tehjoker 6y ago
    I agree with what you said. I am very concerned about the well documented possibility of vaccines sometimes making the disease course worse or causing auto-immune problems down the line. After all, one problem with sars-cov-2 is that the virus mimics human self-identification all over the place, one reason it is so effective. What if a non-negligible part of the population develop a chronic auto-immune disease? Those diseases are treated with steroids. If we have to give immune-suppressing steroids to a large part of the population, are we not setting ourselves up for a second pandemic? These are just speculations, but I am extremely adverse to this rush mentality like we're trying to get a new software UI out and it doesn't matter if it breaks. While we are under the gun here, I still think we should take a considered approach and indeed mobilize against the virus. Much of this mobilization would involve not only production, but also non-production i.e. paying people to stay home and building structures that enable safe socialization etc. There's a mentality that we must preserve our highly competitive way of life at all costs, and the people leading us are the ones that "won". I think this is the wrong course. Further, I think this discussion of liabilities and profits is insanity. The relevant phrama companies should be nationalized and anyone harmed should be able to make a claim against the government. I don't understand why an entire civilization needs to rely on the kindness of buisness people.
    - Spartan-S63 6y ago
      Absolutely. I agree. Production of remedies is just as important as non-production of non-essential industries. The fewer people there are out and about, the better off we are during this pandemic. The fact that there's been so little direct aid to people directly impacted is baffling to me. Corporations don't need money to sustain themselves. That's classical neocon supply-side thinking at work. We're in a situation where demand-side thinking and stimulus is critical. If nothing else, I have a foolish hope that this pandemic will force us to reexamine our way of life and alter it to be more community-centric and relax our competitiveness. There's no reason life has to move at the speed it does. There's no reason the workweek needs to be 40 hours. There's no reason parents can't spend more time with their children and all people can have more leisure and unstructured playtime. And finally, I 100% agree. I have little faith in most corporations that are doing things that shouldn't be scarce goods - such as medical care and pharmaceuticals. Relying on them to deliver us through this disaster is foolish. Their incentive is _not_ on getting us through this. It's on delivering shareholder value and right now, they're delivering all kinds of value since they're in higher demand. We should view it as a failing when private industry is our only hope of deliverance from a disaster.
- toast0 6y ago
  The problem is, by the time we know what the best course of action is, it will be much too late to take that action. I think the data on vaccines that have been around for decades is clear, but new vaccines are always going to have unknown risks. New diseases also have unknown risks. It's hard to weigh unknown risks and decide what's the best action to take.
- tripletao 6y ago
  There's effectively zero chance that the vaccine kills 1% of those vaccinated. They would have caught that in the Phase II, and probably the Phase I since they do also track adverse events short of death. The risk is e.g. that the vaccine has unforeseen side effects that kill or seriously injure one person in 10^4 or 10^5. That could still be a highly favorable tradeoff for society; but if AstraZeneca gets no credit for the people their vaccine saved and pays out normal rates--potentially billions of dollars--for the people their vaccine injured, then it's a terrible tradeoff for AstraZeneca. All vaccines present some version of this problem, and that's why the American government takes liability for vaccine injuries. I'd guess that Europe has been able to avoid that (so far) only because their socialized health care reduces the need for injured patients to sue to recover their medical expenses, and because of their less litigious society in general.