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So we should manage virus defence the same way we manage national defence. We don’t have a privatised military, so it makes sense to have a Public Health Servic

by simonh 6y ago

So we should manage virus defence the same way we manage national defence. We don’t have a privatised military, so it makes sense to have a Public Health Service. As aBrit I agree completely. We have both a national health service and an army. So far so good. Vaccines are products though. They undergo research and development, manufacturing, marketing and sales. Even if you are developing them for domestic use, you’ll still want to sell them abroad so they’re still a commercial product. So in this analogy vaccines are guns and planes, which surprise surprise are overwhelmingly products manufactured and sold by commercial companies like Colt and Lockheed. Nationalisation works well for service organisations, not product development and manufacturing.

lucideer 6y ago
> Nationalisation works well for service organisations, not product development and manufacturing. Citation needed. Admittedly I don't have many good counterexamples of efficient nationalised manufacturing, purely because in today's world there are SO FEW of them of any form (efficient/inefficient), but software products are a reasonable proxy. Take, for example, the healthcare.gov debacle, or the much publicized Standish Group stats of the ~83% failure rate of private software projects. Now look at some of the publically-produced civic software in the EU, or GDS in the UK (or even 18F though that's not really as clear cut and seems to be on the way out for not making enough profit or something....) People accuse the public sector of inefficiency, when all of the actual real inefficiencies therein tend to be caused by its interfaces with the private sector.
ianai 6y ago
For that, they could reward med companies with awards in trade for being able to license and produce the medication or tech. Ie 5 billion for a new drug, company can still produce and sell it, the state can produce and deliver it to citizens/medical providers without further restrictions from the company.
- simonh 6y ago
  So again, you want to get the state into the product manufacturing business. Historically that really doesn’t work out very well. What makes you think this would be cheaper or more efficient than the private sector? Why not do it for other products? I’m not against the state being a service provider. In many cases this makes sense. I’m a Brit but even though I’m a conservative I support the NHS, it just works and is dramatically more efficient than the US model. Manufacturing is another matter though. State run manufacturing has a terrible track record over here, and in fact almost everywhere.
  - ianai 6y ago
    It’s more to act as a reward for developing things normal incentives wouldn’t otherwise fund. Ie companies love to develop long term treatments but actual, “one treatment” cures wouldn’t be developed as they’re not long term revenue streams. Other meds go undeveloped for similar reasons. If the government will reward development of such treatments then there’s the possibility to be massively rewarded for developing otherwise “unrewarded” treatments.

by simonh 6y ago

lucideer 6y ago

> Nationalisation works well for service organisations, not product development and manufacturing. Citation needed. Admittedly I don't have many good counterexamples of efficient nationalised manufacturing, purely because in today's world there are SO FEW of them of any form (efficient/inefficient), but software products are a reasonable proxy. Take, for example, the healthcare.gov debacle, or the much publicized Standish Group stats of the ~83% failure rate of private software projects. Now look at some of the publically-produced civic software in the EU, or GDS in the UK (or even 18F though that's not really as clear cut and seems to be on the way out for not making enough profit or something....) People accuse the public sector of inefficiency, when all of the actual real inefficiencies therein tend to be caused by its interfaces with the private sector.

ianai 6y ago

For that, they could reward med companies with awards in trade for being able to license and produce the medication or tech. Ie 5 billion for a new drug, company can still produce and sell it, the state can produce and deliver it to citizens/medical providers without further restrictions from the company.

simonh 6y ago
So again, you want to get the state into the product manufacturing business. Historically that really doesn’t work out very well. What makes you think this would be cheaper or more efficient than the private sector? Why not do it for other products? I’m not against the state being a service provider. In many cases this makes sense. I’m a Brit but even though I’m a conservative I support the NHS, it just works and is dramatically more efficient than the US model. Manufacturing is another matter though. State run manufacturing has a terrible track record over here, and in fact almost everywhere.
- ianai 6y ago
  It’s more to act as a reward for developing things normal incentives wouldn’t otherwise fund. Ie companies love to develop long term treatments but actual, “one treatment” cures wouldn’t be developed as they’re not long term revenue streams. Other meds go undeveloped for similar reasons. If the government will reward development of such treatments then there’s the possibility to be massively rewarded for developing otherwise “unrewarded” treatments.