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Warp Speed tried to fund Pfizer, Pfizer declined. That's hardly the administrations fault. Also not including Moderna in your list of first vaccines is pretty

• sofixa 6y ago
  > Warp Speed tried to fund Pfizer, Pfizer declined. That's hardly the administrations fault. Indeed, it's not their fault, but it's also wrong to say they have anything to do with it. > Also not including Moderna in your list of first vaccines is pretty self-serving considering it was approved (fine, EUA'd) one week after Pfizer. Indeed i fucked up, i wanted to say none of the initial ones bar Moderna, and then say only Moderna and the J&J one were funded by the US, but changed the structure to avoid repetition and it came out wrong. > Even the claim that Pfizer wasn't funded by the US is disingenuous; the US placed an order for 100 million doses of it in July for almost $2 billion. Ordering something with payment on delivery doesn't fund its development: quote from the press release: > The U.S. government will pay the companies $1.95 billion upon the receipt of the first 100 million doses, following FDA authorization or approval. The U.S. government also can acquire up to an additional 500 million doses.
  • robomartin 6y ago
    Clearly you have no business experience. Two scenarios: First: "Please develop a vaccine for us. Go quickly. Invest massive amounts of money and resources. We might buy some from you. If someone else comes up with it first, we'll buy from them." Second: "Here's an irrevocable order for two billion US dollars for a product we need you to develop immediately. Go! Go! Go!". No business with risk it all under the first scenario. It would be suicidal. The second scenario. One where you are given guaranteed payment for a result as well as everything else that goes with it (lowering regulatory barriers, fast-track FDA action, help in mass manufacturing and organizing mass distribution, etc.). Yeah, the second scenario is vastly different. Put it in terms of a startup. Imagine going to a VC and saying "I have this idea but no clue if anyone will buy it", vs. "I have this idea and I have this irrevocable US government order for two billion dollars of my product and all the support I need to make it happen quickly". Which one of the two do you think will get funded in a microsecond? Yeah. That's the difference.
    • sofixa 6y ago
      Yes, because making a vaccine for which there are over 7 billion customers that need it is absolutely the same as selling whatever. Production capacity is so far below what is needed that any vaccine manufactured in the first year or two is guaranteed to be bought. In any case, the question at hand was whether or not the US admin funded Pfizer, and it did not. It gave them assurances, but so did many other entities ( like the EU), so the US really cannot be hailed as some sort of visionaries that made the vaccines possible with their generous help ( which was what GP was claiming).
      • Godel_unicode 6y ago
        You've missed the real issues; they weren't the only one making a vaccine and their vaccine wasn't by any means guaranteed to be good much less the best. Without that pre-order, they had no guarantee that they would get any money. What if their vaccine turned out to be 50% effective? 30%?
  • Godel_unicode 6y ago
    Stop moving the goal-posts. You said that the administration should have funded vaccine development. They offered funding and were declined. They also funded J&J and Moderna, and provided purchase guarantees for Pfizer when they weren't allowed to fund it. In other words, the plethora of vaccines that we have is in part thanks to the actions of the administration. What, specifically, are you suggesting they should have done that they didn't with regard to funding? Edit: there are innumerable things we can point to that the Trump administration did wrong during the pandemic that made things worse. We don't need to invent new ones that are easily disproved.