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> Modestly larger investments would likely have been able to increase production rates well beyond where they are right now. Citation needed. Scaling an indust
by throwaway894345 5y ago
> Modestly larger investments would likely have been able to increase production rates well beyond where they are right now.
Citation needed. Scaling an industry from nothing in a year is a herculean task. I’m a staunch Trump critic, but Operation Warp Speed worked pretty well (if only because DJT got out of the way). The production rates are damn impressive and it’s not like anyone had any idea about how much vaccine we would be able to produce or how quickly. Arguments from hindsight aren’t particularly convincing.
- maxerickson 5y agoThe spending they did do was probably illegal (glad they did it). They took ~$10 billion from other programs. Why didn't Congress allocate $50 billion? The piece the New York Times did on production of the Pfizer vaccine makes it pretty clear that a lot of the production is not new (bioreactors and the like). I realize it isn't trivial to do that sort of production, and don't really disagree with "Arguments from hindsight aren't particularly convincing.", but I also haven't seen a single piece of information on what fundamental limit was run into. The mixing of the mRNA and lipids got a lot of attention, but there wasn't any clear 'here's why we can't go twice as fast' information published, as far as I saw.