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Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. Oxford develops the vaccine with public money. We also,

Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. Oxford develops the vaccine with public money. We also, god willing, need to manufacture billions of them and transport them around the globe. For that manufacturing, give me a solid existing multinational with a proven manufacturing record and base please, not some non-profit startup.

alxlaz 6y ago
> not some non-profit startup. There's no(t necessarily a) question of any non-profit startup there. The problem is that the people who paid for the development of the product should also hold rights over the product. If the vaccine was developed with public money, it should be publicly available -- not necessarily (but yes, also to) non-profit startups, but also to any other manufacturer in the pharmaceutical industry, since they (allegedly, in any case...) pay taxes, too, and have therefore invested in this product. If Merck wants to use their proven manufacturing base with an excellent delivery track record (which nobody is denying, after all), that's great. They can: 1. Put their money into the development of said vaccine, or 2. Acquire the license to manufacture it, at a reasonable price, like they do with any technology that wasn't developed using public money, or 3. If we don't want stuff that's already been paid for with public money to be sold to manufacturers, which I don't disagree with at all, then, sure, they should get it for free -- but in that case they shouldn't be the sole owner of the rights towards that product, either. (Edit: FWIW, I'm all for 3. I've worked in the medical industry and I know full well that there's a great deal of work that goes between first-stage research and final production, and that it's incredibly hard and expensive to take the result of a publicly-funded research program and turn it into a product. That doesn't change the fact that said research programs are publicly-funded -- their results should be available to anyone who paid for them. If someone wants exclusive rights to the result of some research program, then they're welcome to pay for it themselves.) As it stands now, they own the rights (including licensing rights!) to a bunch of products that they haven't paid for at all. All the suits blabber on and on and on about how the government should keep its nose out of their business. How about they tell the government where to stick it when it's about paying for their research, too?
just-juan-post 6y ago
> I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. The government did this. They are the ones who put the restrictions in place. They are the ones who choose not to remove them. The government pulled a fast one on most people: They broke our leg, they handed us a crutch, and we thank them. Don't pretend the vaccine is our savior. The government has the power to end the restrictions at any time but they choose not to.
skocznymroczny 6y ago
"I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal." Sounds like the media panic is working.
- mssundaram 6y ago
  Indeed, people willing to give up anything. I don't see any return to'normal' anytime soon
  - anoncake 6y ago
    I mean, I would gladly give companies a couple of billions if it means people stop panicking and we all can start living again. The vaccine doesn't even have to actually work.
landryl 6y ago
Is it needed to hold the patent to be profitable as a manufacturer ? If the research has been already paid out, I'd prefer healthy competition.
- bufferoverflow 6y ago
  The patent protects from somebody simply copying the formula. Which is many orders of magnitude cheaper than doing research and development, especially on human subjects.
  - hobofan 6y ago
    > If the research has been already paid out
  - JshWright 6y ago
    Why does that matter if the research and development costs were publicly funded?
    - bufferoverflow 6y ago
      Because they can and it will make them a ton of money. The laws need to change.
      - gambiting 6y ago
        But, for instance - public money is used to build roads, yet companies that build them make money in the process. There is no state-owned road building company. What's the difference here?
        onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
        You don't die if you can't afford to drive on the road. That's the difference.
        6y ago
bufferoverflow 6y ago
I care. Just like about the bailouts. Socializing the funding/losses and privatizing the profits is just pure corruption.
- _Microft 6y ago
  The nominal world economy 'GDP' was $90T in 2019 [0]. An economic contraction of 5% because of the pandemic would mean a loss of $4500B. If a vaccine helps to avoid that, even a cost of dozens of billion dollars for it would be peanuts in comparison. This is only the economic cost avoided let alone the human tragedies. Edit: german Wikipedia suggest that the contraction is only expected to be 3% but because of the numbers involved even that doesn't really matter for the argument. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy
  - strgcmc 6y ago
    This is also how criminal mobs operate, in terms of protection money, extortion, ransom, etc. The underlying economic principle is the same ("gee, sure would be a shame if this expensive thing X were to break..."). Beware of relying on this as the only reason to justify the cost. Hopefully there is some other significant differentiating characteristic or attribute to justify this state of affairs between society and big pharma, that would distinguish it from the same analysis you would use to pay a ransom or protection fee.
    - _Microft 6y ago
      This is not a good argument. We are talking about a company providing a service. They might not have invented the vaccine but they are providing the means to bring it from proof of concept into mass production. The commenter seemed to think that this isn't worth money. I argue that you get quite a bang for the buck.
      - Retric 6y ago
        The question is not if it’s valuable, the question is if it’s subsided. Farmers producing corn add some value to the process, but in western countries ~100% of their profits are from government subsidies. This does incentivize them to be more efficient, but it also means their constantly looking for a larger handout. In the case of farm subsidies it’s grown to the point of being actively unhealthy both in economic terms and the actual root cause of the obesity epidemic. Without sufficient calories you can’t have an obese population due to physics. Medical subsidies have resulted in a host of related problems not just in economic costs, but also in what research gets done and how efficient that is. The cost of Medical studies in the US has grown wildly out of proportion because their a profit center. This perversely slows down the rate of medical research, even in the case of emergencies like covid 19.
eumenides1 6y ago
The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research. I suggest that we should give merek the for profit monopoly, but allow for non profit manufacturing. If another organization wants to make the vaccine but not derive profit from the process, let them. Manufacturing takes time and money to develop. Revenue should pay for those costs. The non-profit gains experience, but no profit. The for-profit gains profit. If the for-profit decides to raise prices too high, there will be a willing and capable competitor waiting in the wings.
- ebg13 6y ago
  > I suggest that we should give merek the for profit monopoly, but allow for non profit manufacturing. If another organization wants to make the vaccine but not derive profit from the process, let them. Not-for-profit manufacturing would have to be done by the government itself, wouldn't it? Otherwise, what other entity would and could actually pay to set that up?
  - krferriter 6y ago
    Non-profit companies exist all over the US. Even non-profit drug manufacturing is done to some extent, but at a much smaller scale right now than we could have. The companies still charge money for services, the employees get paid, but the governance of the company is not focused solely on increasing profit margins. Most medical core science is done non-profit right now, at US universities. Many universities have on-premise small-scale manufacturing capabilities which serve their own needs, in medical labs but also others, like materials sciences and chemical science/engineering. There's no intrinsic reason why those couldn't be ramped up, or even pooled between physically close universities by creating a joint non-profit entity.
- notankies 6y ago
  Can someone explain profit motive to him? I'm too tired to be constantly educating people
- arcticbull 6y ago
  > The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research. Now we can disagree on term length, but, a temporary monopoly to a company is what a patent is defined as and lasts 20 years.
tw04 6y ago
Then it needs to be a cost-plus model. They should absolutely be able to make a profit for manufacturing and handling logistics. They shouldn't be making a 4000% profit when "we" collectively funded all the research.
- specialist 6y ago
  What about holders of patents funded by govt also paying royalties? Just a notion I've been pondering. Sure, taxation could do the same job. Hypothetically. Hollywood accounting and such. Maybe straight up royalties would be less prone to gamification.
- reegnz 6y ago
  The possibility of them 'being able to do that' is because of laws that got passed by democratically elected officials. If you don't like that, vote someone in power who regulates that more. The problem with these discussions is that nobody tells their opinions to their representative, they just blurt it out into the 'aether' on a rando internet forum. True change starts with calling your representative. If they don't do what you ask them to, then have other people ask as well. Finally, have them vote them out of office if a sufficient ammount of people want the same thing that the representative won't do (eg. represent their constituents).
  - tw04 6y ago
    >If you don't like that, vote someone in power who regulates that more. That's an awful lot of assumptions on your part. I have voted out someone who didn't represent these values in exchange for someone who does. I don't need to contact my representative on this specific issue because I already know where she stands, but if we were in disagreement I would (and have). Posting about it on the internet is to garner additional support and discussion... you know the entire reason HN exists?
backtoyoujim 6y ago
I care. I care that we look past the end of our nose for public health to give the Saulks of the world a chance and let the billionaires grab some fucking pine.
0goel0 6y ago
As a US taxpayer, I care. Why am I paying twice for the same product, that makes the outcome worse for everyone on average.
- Gys 6y ago
  Luckily for you, Oxford University is British. Public funding refers to the UK governement. Btw AstraZeneca is also British.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zucker42 6y ago
They don't need the patent in order manufacture the vaccine. Only allowing one company to manufacture the vaccine (or to control who manufactures the vaccine) will likely rise prices.
amyjess 6y ago
The United States Military has the best logistics system in the world. I'd rather have them handle manufacturing and rollout than either a multinational or a startup.
- apexalpha 6y ago
  The US government has one of the worst track records in the entire Western world when it comes to access to healthcare and affordable medicine. They also have 0 experience in developing a vaccine and it's transport. But I guess they can transport some tanks and troops quickly, sure.
monkeynotes 6y ago
> Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. This kind of thinking is worrisome to me. It sets a horrible precedent. Previously in times of war private business would be forced into helping the people fight a common enemy. These days a war on a virus has zero help from business and they essentially have a position of power to sit on their hands taking billions of public subsidy and then take the people's money and effort for their own. Why do we take this with such apathy? Why is it that a country run by the people for the people has no power in the populace hands? We are doing everything we can to help, committing billions of dollars which represents millions of hours of public production to solve a problem that CEOs only want to assist in if they can up their share price. Since we care so much about our health and the health of loved ones why have we not used these unprecedented times to reform the healthcare industry? We are paying twice for this. Once to fund the research, which we then give away, and then again for the manufacture and distribution which is priced as if the pharma did all the research. These vaccines are going to cost anywhere between $15 and $37 a shot. You cannot tell me that's how much these vaccines cost to make in quantity. Why is there any profit at all? Let's get ourselves out of this shit without encumbering any more debt on top of an economy that is already falling into a black hole. This stuff is morally corrupt, and to say 'who cares' makes me sad. We should care, maybe we accept the shit we have, but we should care about it. This stuff should be criticized, we should use our agency to change what is wrong, not to support it. Every day I fear we are all fucked. This sort of thinking is why we deserve the likes of Trump and Boris. We bring this crap on ourselves and then moan about it. You talk about getting back to 'normal', well we slowly sold normal. These decisions do not have zero impact on the future, they affirm a shitty attitude and set the path for future generations who won't know any better. /rant
- nugget 6y ago
  Do you think that the more profit available to pharma, the more capable the workers attracted to the field will be? And therefore the faster results will be achieved? I don’t mean just the bench scientists, but all the other people - programmers, lawyers, managers, fabrication engineers, supply chain ops, etc - required to take an idea from paper to mass production. Having worked in biotech startups myself I understand how inefficient the current system is, but at the same time I can’t foresee a better one.

alxlaz 6y ago

> not some non-profit startup. There's no(t necessarily a) question of any non-profit startup there. The problem is that the people who paid for the development of the product should also hold rights over the product. If the vaccine was developed with public money, it should be publicly available -- not necessarily (but yes, also to) non-profit startups, but also to any other manufacturer in the pharmaceutical industry, since they (allegedly, in any case...) pay taxes, too, and have therefore invested in this product. If Merck wants to use their proven manufacturing base with an excellent delivery track record (which nobody is denying, after all), that's great. They can: 1. Put their money into the development of said vaccine, or 2. Acquire the license to manufacture it, at a reasonable price, like they do with any technology that wasn't developed using public money, or 3. If we don't want stuff that's already been paid for with public money to be sold to manufacturers, which I don't disagree with at all, then, sure, they should get it for free -- but in that case they shouldn't be the sole owner of the rights towards that product, either. (Edit: FWIW, I'm all for 3. I've worked in the medical industry and I know full well that there's a great deal of work that goes between first-stage research and final production, and that it's incredibly hard and expensive to take the result of a publicly-funded research program and turn it into a product. That doesn't change the fact that said research programs are publicly-funded -- their results should be available to anyone who paid for them. If someone wants exclusive rights to the result of some research program, then they're welcome to pay for it themselves.) As it stands now, they own the rights (including licensing rights!) to a bunch of products that they haven't paid for at all. All the suits blabber on and on and on about how the government should keep its nose out of their business. How about they tell the government where to stick it when it's about paying for their research, too?

just-juan-post 6y ago

> I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. The government did this. They are the ones who put the restrictions in place. They are the ones who choose not to remove them. The government pulled a fast one on most people: They broke our leg, they handed us a crutch, and we thank them. Don't pretend the vaccine is our savior. The government has the power to end the restrictions at any time but they choose not to.

skocznymroczny 6y ago

"I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal." Sounds like the media panic is working.

mssundaram 6y ago
Indeed, people willing to give up anything. I don't see any return to'normal' anytime soon
- anoncake 6y ago
  I mean, I would gladly give companies a couple of billions if it means people stop panicking and we all can start living again. The vaccine doesn't even have to actually work.

landryl 6y ago

Is it needed to hold the patent to be profitable as a manufacturer ? If the research has been already paid out, I'd prefer healthy competition.

bufferoverflow 6y ago
The patent protects from somebody simply copying the formula. Which is many orders of magnitude cheaper than doing research and development, especially on human subjects.
- hobofan 6y ago
  > If the research has been already paid out
- JshWright 6y ago
  Why does that matter if the research and development costs were publicly funded?
  - bufferoverflow 6y ago
    Because they can and it will make them a ton of money. The laws need to change.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      But, for instance - public money is used to build roads, yet companies that build them make money in the process. There is no state-owned road building company. What's the difference here?
      - onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
        You don't die if you can't afford to drive on the road. That's the difference.
        6y ago

bufferoverflow 6y ago

I care. Just like about the bailouts. Socializing the funding/losses and privatizing the profits is just pure corruption.

_Microft 6y ago
The nominal world economy 'GDP' was $90T in 2019 [0]. An economic contraction of 5% because of the pandemic would mean a loss of $4500B. If a vaccine helps to avoid that, even a cost of dozens of billion dollars for it would be peanuts in comparison. This is only the economic cost avoided let alone the human tragedies. Edit: german Wikipedia suggest that the contraction is only expected to be 3% but because of the numbers involved even that doesn't really matter for the argument. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy
- strgcmc 6y ago
  This is also how criminal mobs operate, in terms of protection money, extortion, ransom, etc. The underlying economic principle is the same ("gee, sure would be a shame if this expensive thing X were to break..."). Beware of relying on this as the only reason to justify the cost. Hopefully there is some other significant differentiating characteristic or attribute to justify this state of affairs between society and big pharma, that would distinguish it from the same analysis you would use to pay a ransom or protection fee.
  - _Microft 6y ago
    This is not a good argument. We are talking about a company providing a service. They might not have invented the vaccine but they are providing the means to bring it from proof of concept into mass production. The commenter seemed to think that this isn't worth money. I argue that you get quite a bang for the buck.
    - Retric 6y ago
      The question is not if it’s valuable, the question is if it’s subsided. Farmers producing corn add some value to the process, but in western countries ~100% of their profits are from government subsidies. This does incentivize them to be more efficient, but it also means their constantly looking for a larger handout. In the case of farm subsidies it’s grown to the point of being actively unhealthy both in economic terms and the actual root cause of the obesity epidemic. Without sufficient calories you can’t have an obese population due to physics. Medical subsidies have resulted in a host of related problems not just in economic costs, but also in what research gets done and how efficient that is. The cost of Medical studies in the US has grown wildly out of proportion because their a profit center. This perversely slows down the rate of medical research, even in the case of emergencies like covid 19.

eumenides1 6y ago

The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research. I suggest that we should give merek the for profit monopoly, but allow for non profit manufacturing. If another organization wants to make the vaccine but not derive profit from the process, let them. Manufacturing takes time and money to develop. Revenue should pay for those costs. The non-profit gains experience, but no profit. The for-profit gains profit. If the for-profit decides to raise prices too high, there will be a willing and capable competitor waiting in the wings.

ebg13 6y ago
> I suggest that we should give merek the for profit monopoly, but allow for non profit manufacturing. If another organization wants to make the vaccine but not derive profit from the process, let them. Not-for-profit manufacturing would have to be done by the government itself, wouldn't it? Otherwise, what other entity would and could actually pay to set that up?
- krferriter 6y ago
  Non-profit companies exist all over the US. Even non-profit drug manufacturing is done to some extent, but at a much smaller scale right now than we could have. The companies still charge money for services, the employees get paid, but the governance of the company is not focused solely on increasing profit margins. Most medical core science is done non-profit right now, at US universities. Many universities have on-premise small-scale manufacturing capabilities which serve their own needs, in medical labs but also others, like materials sciences and chemical science/engineering. There's no intrinsic reason why those couldn't be ramped up, or even pooled between physically close universities by creating a joint non-profit entity.
notankies 6y ago
Can someone explain profit motive to him? I'm too tired to be constantly educating people
arcticbull 6y ago
> The point is that we should reconsider giving (temporary) monopolies to companies that are based public research. Now we can disagree on term length, but, a temporary monopoly to a company is what a patent is defined as and lasts 20 years.

tw04 6y ago

Then it needs to be a cost-plus model. They should absolutely be able to make a profit for manufacturing and handling logistics. They shouldn't be making a 4000% profit when "we" collectively funded all the research.

specialist 6y ago
What about holders of patents funded by govt also paying royalties? Just a notion I've been pondering. Sure, taxation could do the same job. Hypothetically. Hollywood accounting and such. Maybe straight up royalties would be less prone to gamification.
reegnz 6y ago
The possibility of them 'being able to do that' is because of laws that got passed by democratically elected officials. If you don't like that, vote someone in power who regulates that more. The problem with these discussions is that nobody tells their opinions to their representative, they just blurt it out into the 'aether' on a rando internet forum. True change starts with calling your representative. If they don't do what you ask them to, then have other people ask as well. Finally, have them vote them out of office if a sufficient ammount of people want the same thing that the representative won't do (eg. represent their constituents).
- tw04 6y ago
  >If you don't like that, vote someone in power who regulates that more. That's an awful lot of assumptions on your part. I have voted out someone who didn't represent these values in exchange for someone who does. I don't need to contact my representative on this specific issue because I already know where she stands, but if we were in disagreement I would (and have). Posting about it on the internet is to garner additional support and discussion... you know the entire reason HN exists?

backtoyoujim 6y ago

I care. I care that we look past the end of our nose for public health to give the Saulks of the world a chance and let the billionaires grab some fucking pine.

0goel0 6y ago

As a US taxpayer, I care. Why am I paying twice for the same product, that makes the outcome worse for everyone on average.

Gys 6y ago
Luckily for you, Oxford University is British. Public funding refers to the UK governement. Btw AstraZeneca is also British.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zucker42 6y ago

They don't need the patent in order manufacture the vaccine. Only allowing one company to manufacture the vaccine (or to control who manufactures the vaccine) will likely rise prices.

amyjess 6y ago

The United States Military has the best logistics system in the world. I'd rather have them handle manufacturing and rollout than either a multinational or a startup.

apexalpha 6y ago
The US government has one of the worst track records in the entire Western world when it comes to access to healthcare and affordable medicine. They also have 0 experience in developing a vaccine and it's transport. But I guess they can transport some tanks and troops quickly, sure.

monkeynotes 6y ago

> Who cares. I'd gladly give this company a couple of billion if it means they can get us back to normal. This kind of thinking is worrisome to me. It sets a horrible precedent. Previously in times of war private business would be forced into helping the people fight a common enemy. These days a war on a virus has zero help from business and they essentially have a position of power to sit on their hands taking billions of public subsidy and then take the people's money and effort for their own. Why do we take this with such apathy? Why is it that a country run by the people for the people has no power in the populace hands? We are doing everything we can to help, committing billions of dollars which represents millions of hours of public production to solve a problem that CEOs only want to assist in if they can up their share price. Since we care so much about our health and the health of loved ones why have we not used these unprecedented times to reform the healthcare industry? We are paying twice for this. Once to fund the research, which we then give away, and then again for the manufacture and distribution which is priced as if the pharma did all the research. These vaccines are going to cost anywhere between $15 and $37 a shot. You cannot tell me that's how much these vaccines cost to make in quantity. Why is there any profit at all? Let's get ourselves out of this shit without encumbering any more debt on top of an economy that is already falling into a black hole. This stuff is morally corrupt, and to say 'who cares' makes me sad. We should care, maybe we accept the shit we have, but we should care about it. This stuff should be criticized, we should use our agency to change what is wrong, not to support it. Every day I fear we are all fucked. This sort of thinking is why we deserve the likes of Trump and Boris. We bring this crap on ourselves and then moan about it. You talk about getting back to 'normal', well we slowly sold normal. These decisions do not have zero impact on the future, they affirm a shitty attitude and set the path for future generations who won't know any better. /rant

nugget 6y ago
Do you think that the more profit available to pharma, the more capable the workers attracted to the field will be? And therefore the faster results will be achieved? I don’t mean just the bench scientists, but all the other people - programmers, lawyers, managers, fabrication engineers, supply chain ops, etc - required to take an idea from paper to mass production. Having worked in biotech startups myself I understand how inefficient the current system is, but at the same time I can’t foresee a better one.