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As someone who was happy to get the vaccine (and would do it again if necessary), I find it eerie that there's basically no discussion anywhere in the mainstrea

As someone who was happy to get the vaccine (and would do it again if necessary), I find it eerie that there's basically no discussion anywhere in the mainstream about how any of this affects the bottom lines of vaccine producers. Why would they NOT want to develop a product that produces a neverending revenue stream?

allturtles 5y ago
So your theory is they know how to make a vaccine that will last for life, but they didn't because it would make them less money? a) This would require global collusion and conspiracy, since any vaccine maker who could make a durable vaccine would drive its competitors out of the market. b) This greatly overestimates, IMO, the capabilities of our biotech/pharma industry. It's an amazing and spectacular achievement that they were able to make working vaccines at all in a < 1 year time frame. They don't have any secret immunity-boosting technology in ther back pockets.
- mrguyorama 5y ago
  You're forgetting the most important point: c) There are several vaccines produced that DO provide lifetime or near lifetime immunity. Pfizer isn't making me get a new polio shot every year. If conspiracy theorists were to be believed, shouldn't we have an entire gamut of shots to take every fall instead of just the flu?
- tablespoon 5y ago
  c) It confuses an isolated incentive for action. That's an error that's super common in conspiracy-theory thinking: focus on one hypothesized incentive (out of many) that usually has nefarious undertones, assume that's the main or only incentive at play, and assume the party in question is successfully acting on that incentive.
- NackerHughes 5y ago
  >This would require global collusion and conspiracy No it wouldn't. It would only require incentive for profit. If a company makes a highly durable vaccine, its competitors wouldn't make very much money, but neither would the company itself. Less profit. Make a vaccine that wears off after a slightly longer time than your competitors, and you can claim to be the best product on the market while keeping your users coming back for more. Guaranteed ongoing revenue stream. 'Conspiracy' is a loaded term that is used solely to discredit the opposing argument.
AshamedCaptain 5y ago
This is like claiming -- why it would it NOT be in the best interests of tech companies to create software that is extremely buggy so that people need to stay with them for upgrades? Sure, the stimulus exists. But unless you have a monopoly/cartel, this is very hard to pull off. And that's what antitrust laws are for. People would obviously flee from your lousy product to the first manufacturer who didn't do that. If it was not hard to produce a established long-term vaccine, would any consumer/country stay with the short-term one?
- generalizations 5y ago
  > This is like claiming -- why it would it NOT be in the best interests of tech companies to create software that is extremely buggy so that people need to stay with them for upgrades? See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
  - AshamedCaptain 5y ago
    Even that article claims "works best on monopolies"... Anyway, planned hardware obsolescence is a wildly different situation. Manufacturers get way with it because practically no consumers choose one product over another based on durability. To this day you still have all kinds of products with user replaceable batteries, but customers do not buy those in droves. They apparently prefer to have a 0.0001% thinner product. They buy those in droves... Compare this with a vaccine that promises N years of immunity. To be an apt analogy, you have to think of some metric that is evidently visible, highly desirable by customers, yet literally no manufacturer offers it.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      > Compare this with a vaccine that promises N years of immunity. Except that they've backtracked: it no longer promises "immunity" and apparently it no longer promises "years". The vaccine doesn't have to be the best possible. It's obviously hard to make a good one; the problem is, the biggest players are the ones best suited to put the work in for a good vaccine, and if they don't choose to, it's possible they can just swallow up a smaller player that does manage to pull it off. There's been so many conversations on HN about the antitrust situation with the big tech corporations; is it so hard to consider that maybe there's a similar situation in biotech? Consumers aren't looking for the best vaccine; they're looking for the first one available, so they can be less scared about dying. That's the metric that's visible and desirable.
Barrin92 5y ago
because it would be a subpar product and because this is conspiratorial thinking. It would only take one competitor to produce a long lasting vaccine and that competitor would take the entire market, so suggesting that all vaccine producers across national boundaries, not to mention all scientists involved are somehow in cahoots is absurd.
- generalizations 5y ago
  > It would only take one competitor to produce a long lasting vaccine and that competitor would take the entire market You're assuming a free market, not one that's stuffed full of highly paid lobbyists.
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    I'm not at all assuming an idealized free market. Lobbyists can exist but even lobbyists for particular firms compete with other lobbyists. Again, for something like this to make sense you would need to show how every scientific institution on earth somehow coordinates to not produce a superior vaccine. Someone in the US can lobby all they want, if someone in India or China, any public research institute, any state agency produces a superior vaccine they will lose. Are you saying tens of thousands of scientists and competing businesses, from Cambodia to Cuba to Russia to the US, to organisations that don't even have a profit motive like public university researchers, have all conspired to lock away some magic vaccine in a box? Let's say the entire US has been captured by the vaccine lizard people, do you think China or Russia would forego the opportunity to expose to the entire world that this has been happening while also capturing the entire global market with a better product?
    - generalizations 5y ago
      > Are you saying [extreme borderline-strawman statement that is obviously not what I said at all] I'm saying it's possible that a few extremely powerful corporations chose to develop a vaccine that is less useful than it could have been, and are profiting off the difference. I'm also saying that the big ones might have enough influence to get away with a less-effective vaccine than some smaller player who can get swallowed up, if needed. I'm also aware that the scientific consensus you seem to think exists about the vaccine, doesn't. I'm also aware that you don't need to get all those experts on board - just like 20 years ago when it was the tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who thought the government was spying on them, all you have to do is make the dissidents look ridiculous. Lizard people, eh?
mywittyname 5y ago
Nature has a never-ending supply of dangerous bugs to vaccinate against. One of the big benefits of the mRNA technology behind the covid 19 vaccine was the ability to rapidly develop, produce, and deploy it. Plus, people will lose confidence if the damn thing doesn't work. The optimal business strategy here is to demonstrate how effective this technology is, so that they continue to get contracts/grants to develop future vaccines.
- johnisgood 5y ago
  What do people care? Look at how many people have already gotten the vaccine before they knew about their effectiveness or anything really. Many people got it just so they will not be trashtalked (to be part of the group, peer pressure, yadda yadda), to be able to visit cinemas, to be able to keep their job, and in some places because it was mandatory. Hear this rather funny story: someone wanted to visit their family member who was staying at the psychiatric hospital. They could only do that once vaccinated. What happened? The woman walked 100 meters, got the vaccine, and immediately went to visit the family member. Yes, no waiting required, which is the funny bit. The vaccine obviously was not mandated for what you and I would think it was, otherwise they would have given a crap about the time after vaccination.

allturtles 5y ago

So your theory is they know how to make a vaccine that will last for life, but they didn't because it would make them less money? a) This would require global collusion and conspiracy, since any vaccine maker who could make a durable vaccine would drive its competitors out of the market. b) This greatly overestimates, IMO, the capabilities of our biotech/pharma industry. It's an amazing and spectacular achievement that they were able to make working vaccines at all in a < 1 year time frame. They don't have any secret immunity-boosting technology in ther back pockets.

mrguyorama 5y ago
You're forgetting the most important point: c) There are several vaccines produced that DO provide lifetime or near lifetime immunity. Pfizer isn't making me get a new polio shot every year. If conspiracy theorists were to be believed, shouldn't we have an entire gamut of shots to take every fall instead of just the flu?
tablespoon 5y ago
c) It confuses an isolated incentive for action. That's an error that's super common in conspiracy-theory thinking: focus on one hypothesized incentive (out of many) that usually has nefarious undertones, assume that's the main or only incentive at play, and assume the party in question is successfully acting on that incentive.
NackerHughes 5y ago
>This would require global collusion and conspiracy No it wouldn't. It would only require incentive for profit. If a company makes a highly durable vaccine, its competitors wouldn't make very much money, but neither would the company itself. Less profit. Make a vaccine that wears off after a slightly longer time than your competitors, and you can claim to be the best product on the market while keeping your users coming back for more. Guaranteed ongoing revenue stream. 'Conspiracy' is a loaded term that is used solely to discredit the opposing argument.

AshamedCaptain 5y ago

This is like claiming -- why it would it NOT be in the best interests of tech companies to create software that is extremely buggy so that people need to stay with them for upgrades? Sure, the stimulus exists. But unless you have a monopoly/cartel, this is very hard to pull off. And that's what antitrust laws are for. People would obviously flee from your lousy product to the first manufacturer who didn't do that. If it was not hard to produce a established long-term vaccine, would any consumer/country stay with the short-term one?

generalizations 5y ago
> This is like claiming -- why it would it NOT be in the best interests of tech companies to create software that is extremely buggy so that people need to stay with them for upgrades? See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence
- AshamedCaptain 5y ago
  Even that article claims "works best on monopolies"... Anyway, planned hardware obsolescence is a wildly different situation. Manufacturers get way with it because practically no consumers choose one product over another based on durability. To this day you still have all kinds of products with user replaceable batteries, but customers do not buy those in droves. They apparently prefer to have a 0.0001% thinner product. They buy those in droves... Compare this with a vaccine that promises N years of immunity. To be an apt analogy, you have to think of some metric that is evidently visible, highly desirable by customers, yet literally no manufacturer offers it.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    > Compare this with a vaccine that promises N years of immunity. Except that they've backtracked: it no longer promises "immunity" and apparently it no longer promises "years". The vaccine doesn't have to be the best possible. It's obviously hard to make a good one; the problem is, the biggest players are the ones best suited to put the work in for a good vaccine, and if they don't choose to, it's possible they can just swallow up a smaller player that does manage to pull it off. There's been so many conversations on HN about the antitrust situation with the big tech corporations; is it so hard to consider that maybe there's a similar situation in biotech? Consumers aren't looking for the best vaccine; they're looking for the first one available, so they can be less scared about dying. That's the metric that's visible and desirable.

Barrin92 5y ago

because it would be a subpar product and because this is conspiratorial thinking. It would only take one competitor to produce a long lasting vaccine and that competitor would take the entire market, so suggesting that all vaccine producers across national boundaries, not to mention all scientists involved are somehow in cahoots is absurd.

generalizations 5y ago
> It would only take one competitor to produce a long lasting vaccine and that competitor would take the entire market You're assuming a free market, not one that's stuffed full of highly paid lobbyists.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  I'm not at all assuming an idealized free market. Lobbyists can exist but even lobbyists for particular firms compete with other lobbyists. Again, for something like this to make sense you would need to show how every scientific institution on earth somehow coordinates to not produce a superior vaccine. Someone in the US can lobby all they want, if someone in India or China, any public research institute, any state agency produces a superior vaccine they will lose. Are you saying tens of thousands of scientists and competing businesses, from Cambodia to Cuba to Russia to the US, to organisations that don't even have a profit motive like public university researchers, have all conspired to lock away some magic vaccine in a box? Let's say the entire US has been captured by the vaccine lizard people, do you think China or Russia would forego the opportunity to expose to the entire world that this has been happening while also capturing the entire global market with a better product?
  - generalizations 5y ago
    > Are you saying [extreme borderline-strawman statement that is obviously not what I said at all] I'm saying it's possible that a few extremely powerful corporations chose to develop a vaccine that is less useful than it could have been, and are profiting off the difference. I'm also saying that the big ones might have enough influence to get away with a less-effective vaccine than some smaller player who can get swallowed up, if needed. I'm also aware that the scientific consensus you seem to think exists about the vaccine, doesn't. I'm also aware that you don't need to get all those experts on board - just like 20 years ago when it was the tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists who thought the government was spying on them, all you have to do is make the dissidents look ridiculous. Lizard people, eh?

mywittyname 5y ago

Nature has a never-ending supply of dangerous bugs to vaccinate against. One of the big benefits of the mRNA technology behind the covid 19 vaccine was the ability to rapidly develop, produce, and deploy it. Plus, people will lose confidence if the damn thing doesn't work. The optimal business strategy here is to demonstrate how effective this technology is, so that they continue to get contracts/grants to develop future vaccines.

johnisgood 5y ago
What do people care? Look at how many people have already gotten the vaccine before they knew about their effectiveness or anything really. Many people got it just so they will not be trashtalked (to be part of the group, peer pressure, yadda yadda), to be able to visit cinemas, to be able to keep their job, and in some places because it was mandatory. Hear this rather funny story: someone wanted to visit their family member who was staying at the psychiatric hospital. They could only do that once vaccinated. What happened? The woman walked 100 meters, got the vaccine, and immediately went to visit the family member. Yes, no waiting required, which is the funny bit. The vaccine obviously was not mandated for what you and I would think it was, otherwise they would have given a crap about the time after vaccination.