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Because the need for massive, acute production capacity for a specific variation of vaccine is short-lived. What's the odds that we're going to have another pa
by jariel 6y ago
Because the need for massive, acute production capacity for a specific variation of vaccine is short-lived.
What's the odds that we're going to have another pandemic in the next 10 years that has nRNA vaccine?
There's no need for massive production capacity other than during a global pandemic, and you probably don't know what you need, supply chains etc. until the time of production or thereabouts.
So - the money won't go into building out production capacity for something, when we don't know what that something is, it's constituent parts, or what technologies will be utilized.
- xiphias2 6y agoThe money printing that has been done because of COVID (that shows the economic damage) is many trillions of dollars, while the whole market cap of Moderna and BioNTech are in tens of billions. The amount we're spending on productionizing vaccines is nothing compared to the damage the virus creates every day. Businesses a failing every day, and when they go bankrupt they won't be able to come back.
- jariel 6y agoYes, I know, but it doesn't matter. Spending more on vaccines now probably won't help us create more vaccines 'the next time'. Other things, such as government support for spending more on vaccines overall - this might help.
- xiphias2 6y agoI see...the RNA vaccine factory is useful though. Moderna announced already months ago that it is planning to have a flu vaccine next year. And for them changing the RNA sequence is really easy, so they can adapt their vaccine as the flu virus is mutating (just like what they are doing right now with coronavirus).