4 ms·

The risk that you’re talking about is the “risk” of these products not being developed and working when we needed them. We probably would have been in lockdown

• dns_snek 4y ago
  Why should they be allowed to profiteer off of life-saving vaccines in the middle of a pandemic? If any other business price gouged essential supplies to the degree these pharmaceutical companies are doing, they would likely end up in prison. If there is a credible risk of vaccines not being developed, as you say, perhaps it's time to think about either: a) nationalizing the key players in pharmaceutical industry, or b) introducing laws (if none already exist) that allow governments to compel these companies to allocate resources to work on specific projects. Vaccines are not a luxury item sold on a free market and we shouldn't have to rely on profit-seeking companies to develop and appropriately distribute them in the most beneficial way, it's simply incompatible with what's best for humanity during a pandemic. We've seen this play out, US & EU countries created massive stockpiles of vaccines because they had dozens of billions of taxpayer money to pay for extortionate prices while poorer countries still had 1% vaccination rates. This has lead to hundreds of millions (!) of doses of Covid vaccines expiring and being wasted. The side effect of this is increased likelihood of mutations that has the potential to harm everyone.
  • SllX 4y ago
    > Why should they be allowed to profiteer off of life-saving vaccines in the middle of a pandemic? If any other business price gouged essential supplies to the degree these pharmaceutical companies are doing, they would likely end up in prison. Endemic. Pandemic implies an end. They also make money off flu vaccines and measles vaccines. What’s the difference? That they can make money at all doing it is why they continue to do so and why governments don’t have to try and figure out supply and demand themselves. > If there is a credible risk of vaccines not being developed, as you say, perhaps it's time to think about either: a) nationalizing the key players in pharmaceutical industry, or b) introducing laws (if none already exist) that allow governments to compel these companies to allocate resources to work on specific projects. It’s not just about developing vaccines in the middle of pandemics; it’s about having an incentive to develop every type of vaccine we could possibly need, eventually, finding new applications for vaccine technology and improving the development and manufacturing processes. You need smart people, smart people want money and not just the thanks of their neighbors, ergo profits. Sure the government is a cushy job, but private sector pays more and as long as there’s profits, the “key players” as you call them aren’t limited to the ones that exist today. > Vaccines are not a luxury item sold on a free market I don’t know about “luxury” but they are sold on a free market. > and we shouldn't have to rely on profit-seeking companies to develop and appropriately distribute them in the most beneficial way, it's simply incompatible with what's best for humanity during a pandemic. The COVID vaccines set a record for research, development and dispersal and those profit seeking corporations pulled that off both because they could and they had an incentive to. > We've seen this play out, US & EU countries created massive stockpiles of vaccines because they had dozens of billions of taxpayer money to pay for extortionate prices while poorer countries still had 1% vaccination rates. Would you feel better about the US, UK, EU, and Israel putting themselves at the front of the line as long as they had nationalized their pharmaceuticals companies first?