3 ms·

>> "Capitalism produced the vaccine in record time" No. mRNA vaccines are the result of decades of research with support of and collaboration with government

by mkr-hn 4y ago

>> "Capitalism produced the vaccine in record time" No. mRNA vaccines are the result of decades of research with support of and collaboration with government and academia. Even the covid vaccine only happened as fast as it did because Chinese researchers sequenced and released the DNA of the virus for free online.

zozbot234 4y ago
Researchers sequence SARS-CoV2 variants all the time, all over the world - it's a pandemic after all. The Chinese did some great work, but had they not done it first others would have.
- mkr-hn 4y ago
  Sorry, I forget this detail is not widely known. They were the first working on it from samples at ground zero, before it was a pandemic. Back when nobody knew anything. https://www.science.org/content/article/chinese-researchers-reveal-draft-genome-virus-implicated-wuhan-pneumonia-outbreak https://www.science.org/content/article/chinese-researchers-... The free and public release gave the world a head start on what was then a very localized thing with little if any spread. Remember: my comment was in response to an attempt to credit capitalism with the speedy development of a vaccine. Capitalism helped, but wasn't what did it.
baryphonic 4y ago
The CCP was pretty obviously against the release of this gene sequence. Thank God Zhang Youngzhen followed liberal norms of the scientific community and shared it with the world. [0] Science's triumph began in in liberal societies, and both fed on and accelerated the advance of capitalism. The industrial revolution was essentially a virtuous cycle (maybe a vicious cycle depending on your perspective) of capitalism and scientific knowledge (thermodynamics & mechanics mostly). Sure, the research was going on for decades in universities funded by governments, but once a profitable use for that research presented itself, an effective good utilizing it went into production rapidly. [0]https://time.com/5882918/zhang-yongzhen-interview-china-coronavirus-genome/ https://time.com/5882918/zhang-yongzhen-interview-china-coro...
- mkr-hn 4y ago
  Yes. So you agree with me that capitalism is a symbiosis with the public systems it depends on and not solely responsible as your comment seemed to indicate. Moderna wouldn't have produced so much so quickly without a government ready to buy up their supply. Many more people would have died, and possibly from more variants, had it not been freely available. The US would be a breeding ground for variants if most of the population weren't vaccinated, and it wouldn't be if they weren't free in this one exceptional case. Almost 80% of the US has at least one dose compared to the usual ~50% with the flu vaccine. The second dose is ticking up toward 70%.

by mkr-hn 4y ago

zozbot234 4y ago

Researchers sequence SARS-CoV2 variants all the time, all over the world - it's a pandemic after all. The Chinese did some great work, but had they not done it first others would have.

mkr-hn 4y ago
Sorry, I forget this detail is not widely known. They were the first working on it from samples at ground zero, before it was a pandemic. Back when nobody knew anything. https://www.science.org/content/article/chinese-researchers-reveal-draft-genome-virus-implicated-wuhan-pneumonia-outbreak https://www.science.org/content/article/chinese-researchers-... The free and public release gave the world a head start on what was then a very localized thing with little if any spread. Remember: my comment was in response to an attempt to credit capitalism with the speedy development of a vaccine. Capitalism helped, but wasn't what did it.

baryphonic 4y ago

The CCP was pretty obviously against the release of this gene sequence. Thank God Zhang Youngzhen followed liberal norms of the scientific community and shared it with the world. [0] Science's triumph began in in liberal societies, and both fed on and accelerated the advance of capitalism. The industrial revolution was essentially a virtuous cycle (maybe a vicious cycle depending on your perspective) of capitalism and scientific knowledge (thermodynamics & mechanics mostly). Sure, the research was going on for decades in universities funded by governments, but once a profitable use for that research presented itself, an effective good utilizing it went into production rapidly. [0]https://time.com/5882918/zhang-yongzhen-interview-china-coronavirus-genome/ https://time.com/5882918/zhang-yongzhen-interview-china-coro...

mkr-hn 4y ago
Yes. So you agree with me that capitalism is a symbiosis with the public systems it depends on and not solely responsible as your comment seemed to indicate. Moderna wouldn't have produced so much so quickly without a government ready to buy up their supply. Many more people would have died, and possibly from more variants, had it not been freely available. The US would be a breeding ground for variants if most of the population weren't vaccinated, and it wouldn't be if they weren't free in this one exceptional case. Almost 80% of the US has at least one dose compared to the usual ~50% with the flu vaccine. The second dose is ticking up toward 70%.