4 ms·

> There is profit to be made in vaccines, sure. But it's hardly the same as in patented drugs. But there is also good chance to convince government to buy huge

• pessimizer 13y ago
  >just a bad year. 1918 was just a bad year, too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic >It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—3 to 5 percent of the world's population at the time—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.
• bayesianhorse 13y ago
  Exactly the kind of attitude which can hurt people. Even kill them.
  • altero 13y ago
    Yes, and someone who thinks that NSA is spying on him is tinfoil-hat.
  • bayesianhorse 13y ago
    Actually last year, most people who thought the NSA was spying on everyone, were in fact highly vulnerable to all sorts of conspiracy theories. There just was no evidence. Today, with all the data we have on incompetence and failure in most intelligence agencies, we can still have some hope...
    • altero 13y ago
      Echolon is widely known since 1980ies, "spying on everyone" is just question how filters were set. And "all the data on incompetence and failure" you have now are just a few PowerPoint slides and speculations. I would say NSA is actually very competent. And checking basic facts != conspiracy theories.
• dalke 13y ago
  Nah, that's a poor argument. The medical industry would make more money if they let the people get sick so they need to be hospitalized for weeks or even, in the case of some polio victims, need to be in an iron lung for the rest of their lives. (In Ontario, for example, a cost-benefit analysis shows that a universal free influenza inoculation program reduces costs of the medical system; see http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1000256 http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fj... .) I can turn the argument around: companies don't want people to get vaccinated so they can sell more expensive palliative care. Why would a hospital want to get less business if more people are vaccinated and so don't need their services? If a given argument predicts X and it predicts not-X, then it's a poor argument. This appeal to the profit motive is a poor argument.
  • altero 13y ago
    > The medical industry would make more money There is strong competition in medical industry. One company sells vaccine, some others sells medicine and hospital equipment.
    • bayesianhorse 13y ago
      In theory maybe. The data suggests that the same companies are providing vaccines and drugs. Competition in the US Health System certainly doesn't do a good enough job at driving costs down... I don't like to use these strong words, but I do find it dangerous and reckless when people with nearly no medical knowledge want to reason against proven methods on the basis of costs and the hatred of "evil, profit seeking companies". If mistakes were made it's up to the medical establishment to judge about and avoid them in the future. Anticapitalists should not play a role in that.
      • route66 13y ago
        I don't believe what I'm reading here: You suggest that the medical industry is more or less a monopoly / oligopoly with lack of competition and at he same time barf at people dependent on that system to keep out of the discussion? Maybe you (or I) missed a sarcasm tag ... Otherwise it might be the place to remind you that the medical industry does not operate on a free market because sick people mostly don't have much to choose from. I cannot imagine why the profit seeking aspect of that industry should not be questuined and/or observed?
• mpyne 13y ago
  The DOD mandates flu vaccination every year for their servicemembers (who can't simply "take a couple of weeks off"). It does indeed usually significantly decrease the incidence of flu infection. If it didn't the DOD would probably find some better way to spend that money, like buying a missile or something. :P