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I actually have no problem with pharma companies seeing huge profits from the covid vaccines. Should they not be compensated for their extremely difficult/impa

by rank0 5y ago

I actually have no problem with pharma companies seeing huge profits from the covid vaccines. Should they not be compensated for their extremely difficult/impactful work? Why won’t someone else do it for cheaper?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
least 5y ago
Regulatory capture and patent laws are pretty big inhibitors to competing with massive pharmaceutical companies generally speaking.
- elevenoh 5y ago
  And the insider-friendly FDA process.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
Big phrama and their lobbyists will have more money now to influence policy.
gurleen_s 5y ago
That money will be largely going to executives and shareholders, people who had very little hand in the science.
guidovranken 5y ago
I'm fine with that if it happens in a free market under informed consent and for curing real diseases. But big pharma, big media, big tech, government and law enforcement acting in complete lockstep to forcibly inject experimental vaccines into your veins for something that amounts to a bad variant of the flu is something else entirely.
- foepys 5y ago
  Did you ever have the flu? I bet you didn't and if you think you did, you probably had a cold instead. A runny nose, headaches, and a sore throat doesn't mean you got the flu. The flu will bind you to your bed for at least a week and you will need 3-6 weeks to recover. You will feel like somebody ran you over with a truck. It's not fun, it's highly dangerous.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    Why do people always says this? I've had the flu, I'm sure nearly everyone has had it once. It's not really incredibly uncommon.
    - bawolff 5y ago
      People do tend to conflate all sorts of "coughs" together as the "flu", including many illnesses that are a lot more mild than the flu.
      - Marsymars 5y ago
        > People do tend to conflate all sorts of "coughs" together as the "flu", including many illnesses that are a lot more mild than the flu. People do, but if you look at CDC estimates, tens of millions of people get influenza in any given year, so it's fairly like that any given adult individual has contracted influenza multiple times in their life. Disease Burden of Influenza: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
  - glandium 5y ago
    FWIW, I've had the flu (confirmed with nasal swab). I was bound to bed for 2-3 days, with fever spikes above 41°C but it didn't take several weeks to recover. Barely a few days.
  - Marsymars 5y ago
    > The flu will bind you to your bed for at least a week and you will need 3-6 weeks to recover. It can, but this isn't a given. Tens of millions of people get influenza yearly in the USA, and there's a wide range of estimates of asymptomatic cases, with 50% being a reasonable baseline to work from. See, e.g. Seasonal Incidence of Symptomatic Influenza in the United States: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/66/10/1511/4682599 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/66/10/1511/4682599 > Estimates of the percentage of influenza infections that are asymptomatic include a common approximation of 50% [33], 33% in 1 review [34] and 4%–28%, 0–100%, and 65%–85% in another review [35]. Both asymptomatic and symptomatic infections are captured in serological studies. The commonly cited “5%–20%” figure came from a serological study [5], and so represents both symptomatic and asymptomatic disease among a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. If 50% of influenza were symptomatic, this would correspond to “2.5%–10%” with symptomatic disease, which is very similar to the range that we report.
proc0 5y ago
> I actually have no problem with pharma companies seeing huge profits from the covid vaccines. Not that long ago people were talking about how the for-profit medical industry didn't have the best interest of the people in mind because their priority was to make money, to the detriment of people who can't afford healthcare. Now that seems to have vanished and all of a sudden they are able to still make profit while at the same time get massive public funding.
- bawolff 5y ago
  Sure, that criticism might apply generally and previously - but i don't think its applying all that much to covid vaccines.
mdbug 5y ago
If they had taken the risks and incurred the costs of development themselves, of course. But they were massively subsidized. In that case, the state should either get a share of the profits or negotiate fair prices that exclude all too huge profits.
- rank0 5y ago
  Where should the line be? For creating a vaccine which solves a global pandemic I think the rewards should be pretty steep. 60 billion is peanuts on the global scale. Millions of lives have been saved.

by rank0 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

least 5y ago

Regulatory capture and patent laws are pretty big inhibitors to competing with massive pharmaceutical companies generally speaking.

elevenoh 5y ago
And the insider-friendly FDA process.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

Big phrama and their lobbyists will have more money now to influence policy.

gurleen_s 5y ago

That money will be largely going to executives and shareholders, people who had very little hand in the science.

guidovranken 5y ago

I'm fine with that if it happens in a free market under informed consent and for curing real diseases. But big pharma, big media, big tech, government and law enforcement acting in complete lockstep to forcibly inject experimental vaccines into your veins for something that amounts to a bad variant of the flu is something else entirely.

foepys 5y ago
Did you ever have the flu? I bet you didn't and if you think you did, you probably had a cold instead. A runny nose, headaches, and a sore throat doesn't mean you got the flu. The flu will bind you to your bed for at least a week and you will need 3-6 weeks to recover. You will feel like somebody ran you over with a truck. It's not fun, it's highly dangerous.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  Why do people always says this? I've had the flu, I'm sure nearly everyone has had it once. It's not really incredibly uncommon.
  - bawolff 5y ago
    People do tend to conflate all sorts of "coughs" together as the "flu", including many illnesses that are a lot more mild than the flu.
    - Marsymars 5y ago
      > People do tend to conflate all sorts of "coughs" together as the "flu", including many illnesses that are a lot more mild than the flu. People do, but if you look at CDC estimates, tens of millions of people get influenza in any given year, so it's fairly like that any given adult individual has contracted influenza multiple times in their life. Disease Burden of Influenza: https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/index.html
- glandium 5y ago
  FWIW, I've had the flu (confirmed with nasal swab). I was bound to bed for 2-3 days, with fever spikes above 41°C but it didn't take several weeks to recover. Barely a few days.
- Marsymars 5y ago
  > The flu will bind you to your bed for at least a week and you will need 3-6 weeks to recover. It can, but this isn't a given. Tens of millions of people get influenza yearly in the USA, and there's a wide range of estimates of asymptomatic cases, with 50% being a reasonable baseline to work from. See, e.g. Seasonal Incidence of Symptomatic Influenza in the United States: https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/66/10/1511/4682599 https://academic.oup.com/cid/article/66/10/1511/4682599 > Estimates of the percentage of influenza infections that are asymptomatic include a common approximation of 50% [33], 33% in 1 review [34] and 4%–28%, 0–100%, and 65%–85% in another review [35]. Both asymptomatic and symptomatic infections are captured in serological studies. The commonly cited “5%–20%” figure came from a serological study [5], and so represents both symptomatic and asymptomatic disease among a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated persons. If 50% of influenza were symptomatic, this would correspond to “2.5%–10%” with symptomatic disease, which is very similar to the range that we report.

proc0 5y ago

> I actually have no problem with pharma companies seeing huge profits from the covid vaccines. Not that long ago people were talking about how the for-profit medical industry didn't have the best interest of the people in mind because their priority was to make money, to the detriment of people who can't afford healthcare. Now that seems to have vanished and all of a sudden they are able to still make profit while at the same time get massive public funding.

bawolff 5y ago
Sure, that criticism might apply generally and previously - but i don't think its applying all that much to covid vaccines.

mdbug 5y ago

If they had taken the risks and incurred the costs of development themselves, of course. But they were massively subsidized. In that case, the state should either get a share of the profits or negotiate fair prices that exclude all too huge profits.

rank0 5y ago
Where should the line be? For creating a vaccine which solves a global pandemic I think the rewards should be pretty steep. 60 billion is peanuts on the global scale. Millions of lives have been saved.