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There was time. I work in manufacturing, we plan factories years in advance of manufacturing start. Abandoned biotech factory cost is a drop in the ocean compar

by lnsru 6y ago

There was time. I work in manufacturing, we plan factories years in advance of manufacturing start. Abandoned biotech factory cost is a drop in the ocean compared to weekly lockdown cost. Why countries failed here? If I would do such crap professionally, shelves of electronics stores would be empty.

est31 6y ago
Absolutely agree. They should have started such projects back in February/March 2020. But while small countries can obtain quicker deliveries by ordering better, for large countries this venue is not open as manufacturing capacities are limited. My point was that looking at the problem in terms of how you ordered is misguided. Instead you should look at it in terms of how you have failed to help the manufacturers to expand production capacities.
saiya-jin 6y ago
You are an expert with hand-on experience. Here decisions were done by career politicians, who are utterly clueless in any hard science, and basically often have only one skill mastered - the skill of selling themselves to population to get voted in. Hence the results.
- Anthony-G 6y ago
  Electronics manufacturing is very different from pharmaceutical manufacturing. Decision-makers can't just magically hand-wave the problem away and if politicians were to invest money in building up the infrastructure for all possible vaccine solutions, they would later face huge criticism for wasting public finance on all the potential vaccines that didn't pan out. I'm still hugely impressed that we have any vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 just under a year after the virus was discovered.
  - saiya-jin 6y ago
    We don't have vaccines thanks to politicians making mass production of vaccines a top national priority, we have them despite politicians, thanks to private companies and basic research done on universities. Maybe your specific country handled things around covid great, but not the place I come from, not its neighbors, not the place I live in currently, and not its current neighbors (covered some 15 european states by this in east & west/south). Money spent on vaccine infrastructure would be absolutely nothing, especially when pooled by few/many states together, compared to havoc covid is wreaking on economies and still will in incoming months, no way to avoid it. Plus the small benefit of actually saving many lives should also hold some, not only political capital.
chki 6y ago
There were/are multiple vaccine candidates with different production needs. How do you decide which factories to build? I think there are a lot of unrealistic expectations when it comes to these highly sophisticated vaccines. It's not comparable to your average electronics product.
- lnsru 6y ago
  Build 10 damn factories if needed. For biotech it is cheap - hundreds of millions, not billion range as for semiconductor. As a reminder - saving Lufthansa alone consumed €9B: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52801131 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52801131
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Sure, and it is the mney that is building these factories? You need people, you need certification. And that is once the building and equipment is their. No dea why people always ignore the time aspect of supply chains. Having more capacity in 4 months isn't any good now. Nor is it n 4 months when existing capacites are suffcient in 4 months anyway. And they are using new site, Biontech in Marburg (a reporposed existing facility if memory serves well), Sanofi will be ready in summer to produce the Biontech vaccine as well. These things take time, rushing them is never a good idea.
    - isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
      There's a lot of software engineers here who are used to having a prototype banged out in a few weeks and think it applies to everything else.
- corty 6y ago
  > How do you decide which factories to build? All of them. Or at least all of the different kinds of factories (mRNA, vector, live vaccine) for the most promising candidates. If there is a shortage of something, force production, apply imminent domain, force cooperation. War against Corona should be handled like a war, not like a toilet paper shortage.

by lnsru 6y ago

est31 6y ago

Absolutely agree. They should have started such projects back in February/March 2020. But while small countries can obtain quicker deliveries by ordering better, for large countries this venue is not open as manufacturing capacities are limited. My point was that looking at the problem in terms of how you ordered is misguided. Instead you should look at it in terms of how you have failed to help the manufacturers to expand production capacities.

saiya-jin 6y ago

You are an expert with hand-on experience. Here decisions were done by career politicians, who are utterly clueless in any hard science, and basically often have only one skill mastered - the skill of selling themselves to population to get voted in. Hence the results.

Anthony-G 6y ago
Electronics manufacturing is very different from pharmaceutical manufacturing. Decision-makers can't just magically hand-wave the problem away and if politicians were to invest money in building up the infrastructure for all possible vaccine solutions, they would later face huge criticism for wasting public finance on all the potential vaccines that didn't pan out. I'm still hugely impressed that we have any vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 just under a year after the virus was discovered.
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  We don't have vaccines thanks to politicians making mass production of vaccines a top national priority, we have them despite politicians, thanks to private companies and basic research done on universities. Maybe your specific country handled things around covid great, but not the place I come from, not its neighbors, not the place I live in currently, and not its current neighbors (covered some 15 european states by this in east & west/south). Money spent on vaccine infrastructure would be absolutely nothing, especially when pooled by few/many states together, compared to havoc covid is wreaking on economies and still will in incoming months, no way to avoid it. Plus the small benefit of actually saving many lives should also hold some, not only political capital.

chki 6y ago

There were/are multiple vaccine candidates with different production needs. How do you decide which factories to build? I think there are a lot of unrealistic expectations when it comes to these highly sophisticated vaccines. It's not comparable to your average electronics product.

lnsru 6y ago
Build 10 damn factories if needed. For biotech it is cheap - hundreds of millions, not billion range as for semiconductor. As a reminder - saving Lufthansa alone consumed €9B: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52801131 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52801131
- hef19898 6y ago
  Sure, and it is the mney that is building these factories? You need people, you need certification. And that is once the building and equipment is their. No dea why people always ignore the time aspect of supply chains. Having more capacity in 4 months isn't any good now. Nor is it n 4 months when existing capacites are suffcient in 4 months anyway. And they are using new site, Biontech in Marburg (a reporposed existing facility if memory serves well), Sanofi will be ready in summer to produce the Biontech vaccine as well. These things take time, rushing them is never a good idea.
  - isbvhodnvemrwvn 6y ago
    There's a lot of software engineers here who are used to having a prototype banged out in a few weeks and think it applies to everything else.
corty 6y ago
> How do you decide which factories to build? All of them. Or at least all of the different kinds of factories (mRNA, vector, live vaccine) for the most promising candidates. If there is a shortage of something, force production, apply imminent domain, force cooperation. War against Corona should be handled like a war, not like a toilet paper shortage.