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The social contract that has allowed the USA to DONATE 140 million vaccine doses to 93 countries is sorta built on the foundation of us having already supplied

by Rapzid 5y ago

The social contract that has allowed the USA to DONATE 140 million vaccine doses to 93 countries is sorta built on the foundation of us having already supplied a dose to everyone domestically that wants one.. And getting our economic engine rev'd up again.

908B64B197 5y ago
Again and again it's interesting to see the US step up when faced with these world wide challenges. From bringing back peace and prosperity to Europe to protecting the western world during the cold war, it's something to see the country working hard fighting covid abroad, having invested resources for decades in fundamental research to finally be able to produce a vaccine like that. Only in America!
- SEMW 5y ago
  > Only in America! This is... not really true. The US is indeed in the lead in COVAX donations at 45 doses pledged per million dollars of GDP, and that's laudable. But it's not like no other country is close; France follows closely on the US's heels at 44, with the UK not far off at 38, Germany and the Netherlands are at 27 and 29, and so on — https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covax-donations-per-gdp https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covax-donations-per-gdp Nor is it true that the fundamental research for all the major vaccines came out of the US. Moderna indeed was, but the Pfizer vaccine was developed by BioNTech (Germany), and the Astrazeneca vaccine was developed by the University of Oxford (UK).
- kcartlidge 5y ago
  > Only in America! I'm not disparaging what the US has done during the pandemic (I have issues with a couple of your other examples, but that's not for this thread). I do however take exception to the final sentence. Astra Zeneca (UK/Sweden) has shipped over a billion doses, is massively (hugely) cheaper, and has production in 15 countries. And the reason for the cost (as little as a tenth of some others) is simple - not profiteering. So likewise, not "only in the UK" either, but both our nations need to move on from our exceptionalism and the assumption (in general) that the rest of the world does less.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    A big chunk of the funding for Astra Zeneca came from the United States [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies_receiving_research_funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies...
  - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
    Weren't many of the vaccines that America donated actually AstraZenica? IIRC the US bought 100m and they never got FDA approval, so we just gave them away. There's a difference between "making" or "shipping" a vaccine and "donating."

by Rapzid 5y ago

908B64B197 5y ago

Again and again it's interesting to see the US step up when faced with these world wide challenges. From bringing back peace and prosperity to Europe to protecting the western world during the cold war, it's something to see the country working hard fighting covid abroad, having invested resources for decades in fundamental research to finally be able to produce a vaccine like that. Only in America!

SEMW 5y ago
> Only in America! This is... not really true. The US is indeed in the lead in COVAX donations at 45 doses pledged per million dollars of GDP, and that's laudable. But it's not like no other country is close; France follows closely on the US's heels at 44, with the UK not far off at 38, Germany and the Netherlands are at 27 and 29, and so on — https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covax-donations-per-gdp https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/covax-donations-per-gdp Nor is it true that the fundamental research for all the major vaccines came out of the US. Moderna indeed was, but the Pfizer vaccine was developed by BioNTech (Germany), and the Astrazeneca vaccine was developed by the University of Oxford (UK).
kcartlidge 5y ago
> Only in America! I'm not disparaging what the US has done during the pandemic (I have issues with a couple of your other examples, but that's not for this thread). I do however take exception to the final sentence. Astra Zeneca (UK/Sweden) has shipped over a billion doses, is massively (hugely) cheaper, and has production in 15 countries. And the reason for the cost (as little as a tenth of some others) is simple - not profiteering. So likewise, not "only in the UK" either, but both our nations need to move on from our exceptionalism and the assumption (in general) that the rest of the world does less.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  A big chunk of the funding for Astra Zeneca came from the United States [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies_receiving_research_funding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed#Companies...
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  Weren't many of the vaccines that America donated actually AstraZenica? IIRC the US bought 100m and they never got FDA approval, so we just gave them away. There's a difference between "making" or "shipping" a vaccine and "donating."