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Some people are saying that this is notable because Pfizer has a financial incentive to keep vaccine mandates. That is not true. Pfizer is going to be making a
by sudosysgen 5y ago
Some people are saying that this is notable because Pfizer has a financial incentive to keep vaccine mandates.
That is not true. Pfizer is going to be making a lot more money from their COVID treatments than from the vaccine.
- Arnt 5y agoI think so too, but do you know? I mean, only a few per cent of infectees require much medicine, and Pfizer's market share won't be 100% of that. It's not obvious that x>y. Anyway, he may also well be thinking that the best policy is to have a history of assessments that turn out to be correct in hindsight. "Drop restrictions when the number of infections declines" is at least plausible.
- sudosysgen 5y agoPaxlovid is interesting in that it is only really effective if you take it as soon as you show any symptoms. Once production is scaled up, hundreds of millions of courses of treatment will be sold. Each around 100x more expensive than a vaccine dose. It will soon be Pfizer's financial benefit to have as many infections as possible.
- fileeditview 5y agoI doubt that. Consider no one was vaccinated and 1% of humans would need medication because of a "serious" case. Then the medicine would need to be 100x more expensive than the vaccine considering the alternative is everyone was vaccinated. Now consider many people got 3 or even 4 shots. It's 300x-400x now. Also you can give the medicine to already vaccinated people that also have serious cases. So you still can sell it in a lower capacity. Also you can sell both vaccines and medicine to states in large batches which is great. It's a big golden goose for the pharma industry.. let's never forget that.
- yucky 5y agoFortunately we can trust that they aren't using any of those billions they have made to manipulate public opinion on the issue, because that would be immoral and therefore off limits.
- fileeditview 5y agoThank god!
- peter422 5y agoIt’s literally a miracle drug for a virus that is killing thousands of people a day, that likely will work for all variants. Can you stop complaining for one second about the price and acknowledge that it is amazing that they invented it?
- bryanlarsen 5y agoPavloxid works best if you use it at symptom onset, so it should be used on all symptomatic infections, not just serious cases.
- sudosysgen 5y agoThe medicine is not indicated to be given to serious cases. It is indicated for use as soon as possible, when you have your first symptom. Right now this isn't the case because there aren't enough to go around, but this is the premise of the trials, so this is how they will be sold. People also get COVID more than once.
- Hamuko 5y agoSo basically they're expecting everyone to have a pack in their medicine cabinet, next to the aspirin and bandages?
- sudosysgen 5y agoWell, given they're selling it for thousands of dollars, I think not.
- Hamuko 5y agoWait, if it costs thousand of dollars, isn't it basically automatically going to be going only for the serious cases?
- sudosysgen 5y agoNo, because it's priced so that the expected cost of untreated illness is still going to be higher. Hospitalization is very very expensive! Also, they will probably be bought in bulk by the government and negotiated down by insurance companies to less than a thousand dollars per treatment,
- Hamuko 5y agoBut doesn't it still rely on a person getting early symptoms of COVID-19 seeking medical aid? I can't really imagine someone developing a cough and then immediately heading to their physician to get their antiviral pills.
- xscott 5y ago> Then the medicine would need to be 100x [300x-400x] more expensive than the vaccine I'm not suggesting this is true, but it would need to be 100x-400x more profitable, and that includes cost to make and store as well as the price is charged. Maybe making mRNA vaccines costs much more than a simpler molecule like Paxlovid [0], and hospitals generally seem to charge much more than the over the counter price for everything. You've seen horror stories about $25 aspirin [1] which is easily 400x more expensive than the penny per pill cost of 500 tablets in a $5 bottle [2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirmatrelvir https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirmatrelvir [1] https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/blog/why-aspirin-taken-hospital-can-cost-upwards-25 https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/blog/why-aspirin-taken... [2] https://amazon.com/Basic-Care-Aspirin-Regular-Strength/dp/B0779D4BTN https://amazon.com/Basic-Care-Aspirin-Regular-Strength/dp/B0...
- fileeditview 5y agoThis is what i meant (profitable). Sorry bad translation. However their vaccine research was highly funded by states (at least here in Germany and I suspect everywhere else too) so.. not sure how easy it would be to calculate all of that.
- xscott 5y agoThat's another subtlety. They've already been funded to make the mRNA vaccine, so maybe that has been milked dry and it's time to move on to the next profitable cow. Obviously I'm just speculating that it's possible.
- AndrewUnmuted 5y agoI cannot recall another example in my lifetime of a global populous all agreeing to purchase a pharmaceutical company's medical product - not just once, but 2-3x per person - in under two years' time. The implications of this phenomenon on Pfizer's business model are enormous. Pfizer & others would be foolish to not pay close attention to this and figure out a way to exploit it for further gains.
- yonaguska 5y agoOn the flip side, we're also going to witness a very large portion of the population that rejects most all pharmaceutical treatments due to lack of trust. Anyone that has had any vaccine injury, even if minor. Reproductive issues are in a weird classification as being "minor" in that they aren't life threatening, but they certainly are major for young women that are planning on having children. Another group that will have their trust shattered are the people that got vaxxed and boosted, and still caught covid in a very bad way. And finally, the group that has been turned off by the haphazard communication (at best) and downright creepy coercion to get vaccinated. My trust in the system has been thoroughly shattered, I've gone from looking down at anti-vaxxers with disdain from before the pandemic- to now being labelled as part of that crowd because I am anti mandates. The whole timing of that terminology in and of itself is interesting as well- but that's probably going too deep down the rabbit hole.
- xadhominemx 5y ago> I cannot recall another example in my lifetime of a global populous all agreeing to purchase a pharmaceutical company's medical product - not just once, but 2-3x per person - in under two years' time. Well this is the first major global pandemic in a century, so that would stand to reason, no? Most of the world received the polio vaccine within a few years of its discovery btw
- Vecr 5y agoThe rollout of COVID-19 vaccines was far faster than Salk's polio vaccine. It was not used in lower income countries for quite a while, really until OPV came along to really get going. The vaccine was made by multiple manufacturers in the US, including what is now Pfizer.
- missedthecue 5y agoWhy not promote both though?
- xboxnolifes 5y agoAt this point, the majority of people who would take a yearly booster are going to get it regardless of a mandate.
- missedthecue 5y agoBut if it's a mandate, that's tens (hundreds?) of millions of more vaccines sold every year. My point is that if we are going to act like everything they say is solely profit motivated, they should still support mandates.
- barbazoo 5y ago> Pfizer is going to be making a lot more money from their COVID treatments than from the vaccine If you're saying it's false you should please post a source or at least some kind of napkin calculation. It's not intuitive at all. Otherwise it just sounds like you're beating the already dead "pharma companies sole motivation is money" horse.
- sudosysgen 5y agoThat is a trivial conclusion. Much has been written about it. Pfizer themselves have written they estimate 67 billion dollars in revenue each year from Paxlovid, which is way more than their vaccine revenues and it's not even close. If you want my back-of-the-napkin calculation, here it is. The cost of a generic Paxlovid course of treatment is around 40$. The cost of treatment, negotiated down by the government (and thus higher for other parties) is around 600$. So the marginal profit from a course of treatment of Paxlovid is around 540$. On the other hand, a vaccine dose costs 20$, and it is very difficult to manufacture. A reasonable estimate of profit is 10$ per dose. This is an overestimate, because Pfizer has to share a sizeable portion of the Profit with BioNTech and other companies. Paxlovid is indicated to be taken as early as possible - and priced so that it makes financial sense for insurance companies to pay for it to avoid the cost of hospitalization. Therefore we can expect a sizeable proportion of people with COVID symptoms to take it. Paxlovid reduces the symptomatic illness period, so there is also a very strong incentive for individuals to take it as it allows them to be less sick. For the less fortunate, it also means less sick days to take, which may be crucial to make ends meet. If we're expecting everyone to take a vaccine dose every six months (which we all know will never happen), that's 20$/person.year from the vaccine. If we expect everyone to have COVID symptoms every year (which is almost certainly an underestimate), at 540$/person.year, we only need to have a 3.7% take rate for Paxlovid in order for it to generate more profit than everyone taking two doses every year (which, again, will never even come close to happening). So as long as 3.7% of the population takes one Paxlovid course of treatment every year, Pfizer will make more profit from Paxlovid than the vaccine. So it is trivially true that widespread COVID infection (and low vaccination numbers) is going to be Pfizer's financial incentive.
- 5y ago
- crackercrews 5y agoThey don't have enough supply yet for this incentive to be in effect. Once they reach the tipping point, look forward to them changing their tune. The good news is that it might actually align with the public's best interest.
- sudosysgen 5y agoPfizer is going to be making 5.7 billion dollars in revenue from Paxlovid at the bare minimum in the next 6 months, in the US. That's around as much revenue as 300 million vaccine doses. We are already past the tipping point, as of around 20 days ago.
- pessimizer 5y agoAnd after mandates are over and with that the official crisis done, they will probably start charging for vaccines and boosters.
- buzzert 5y agoThey have always been charging for vaccines and boosters, but the bill has been picked up by the taxpayers.
- xdennis 5y agoIn both cases Pfizer makes money.
- RedBeetDeadpool 5y ago> That is not true. Pfizer is going to be making a lot more money from their COVID treatments than from the vaccine. Not if the vaccines don't work!