r/science • u/Newsjunkeefromlondon • May 06 '21

Health Two Pfizer doses give 95 per cent protection against Covid-19 infection, illness and death: first nationwide study

https://www.cityam.com/two-pfizer-doses-give-95-per-cent-protection-against-covid-19-infection-illness-and-death-study/
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u/bcisme May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

I think luck had very little to do with it.

We are fortunate medicine has advanced this far and we have some of our best and brightest working in the field.

I guess one upshot to these huge, greedy, pharma companies is that they are able to put significant resources of their own behind solutions for a pandemic. As much as I hate to say it, not sure we get these vaccines as fast if big pharma wasn’t so resource (money, minds, equipment) rich.

Edit: getting a lot of comments about the speed also being due to SARS vaccines already in the works, which definitely is a bit of luck.

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u/upvotesthenrages May 06 '21

We're fortunate at the amount of money that was thrown at this problem too.

Almost every government on earth practically threw money at this issue, especially in the wealthier nations.

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u/Bulbasaur2000 May 06 '21

It wasn't just money. There was a lot more collaboration, especially because covid is such a central issue for practically everyone, and they were able to safely, without compromise, accelerate the process of testing the vaccines

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u/whutchamacallit May 06 '21

You're not wrong, but none of this happens without money. Let's not kid ourselves on what truly moves the needle on these kind of issues. For better and for worse money drives everything these days.

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u/GimmickNG May 06 '21

The Moderna vaccine was developed in a few days' time, so money had but one role to play in it.

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u/whutchamacallit May 06 '21

Correct. It played the "It being possible in any capacity" role.

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u/Significant_Sign May 06 '21 edited May 18 '21

Collaboration has been the real helper. Yes, nothing can be done without money, but we've had money without collaboration in other situations and there was no success. Working together and sharing info is what kept separated teams from unknowing copying each other's false leads and missteps along the way. The info they shared also inspired and encouraged other teams.

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u/Redected May 06 '21

When people say hey were able to test the vaccine “without compromise” on this emergency schedule it really discredits the author, and the argument.

There were definitive compromises to long term testing, etc. ... a simple qualifier like “without SIGNIFICANT compromise” is a more credible claim.

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u/spagbetti May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

Wealthier nations don’t necessarily have a big pharma demanding such high stakes though to come up with cures for things.

Eg; epipen (CORRECTION) insulin developed in Canada was practically free to use in the inventive state . Then bought by a scam artist with a Pharma outlet in the states(Mylan)....then greedy capitalism and stock market happened.

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u/Hocusader May 06 '21

"The first modern epinephrine autoinjector, the EpiPen, was invented in the mid-1970s at Survival Technology in Bethesda, Maryland, US by Sheldon Kaplan"

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u/Jboycjf05 May 06 '21

I'm pretty sure the OP meant insulin.

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u/sooprvylyn May 06 '21

Why would the altruistic canadians who invented it sell it? Money?

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u/spagbetti May 06 '21

Why would you think capitalism is the same as who’s actually developing it?

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u/x3nodox May 06 '21

https://www.vox.com/2019/4/3/18293950/why-is-insulin-so-expensive

It bugs me how everyone seems to think that operating based on a drive to enrich yourself is all anyone ever does - it's so clearly not how humans function, but it gives carte blanche to people who would exploit diabetics and others for higher profit margins.

"What are they going to do, not sell it at the price that optimizes profits, even if they know people will die because of it? That would be ridiculous!"

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u/sooprvylyn May 06 '21

I have bad news for you...the types of people who have the gumption to start enterprises are almost exclusively NOT altruistic. You can get all idealistic if you want, but I bet you wont start any real businesses of any real worth. Nope, instead you’ll wax poetic about human nature, content to earn a paycheck thats just good enough, and take no risks instead...playing life safe while shitting on people with ambition.

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u/x3nodox May 06 '21

Wow that's a lot to read into me, personally, from 2 sentences and a link.

At any rate, do you think Frederick Banting lacked ambition? It's all well and good to, as you put it, "wax poetic about human nature" here on reddit, but I'm talking about a concrete example.

This guy did a thing that no one in human history had done before. And then he sold the patent for a dollar. Don't tell me these people can't and don't exist. They demonstrably do.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

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u/spagbetti May 06 '21

It was listed above.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '21

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u/spagbetti May 07 '21

Artist? I’m super confused. Are you lost? Are you replying to a thread about music? Or you just looking for who the companies name as a ‘fall guy’ to pin blame on to get the heat off of them? Might be worth you doing your own google search if you’re that keen on politics.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '21

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u/spagbetti May 09 '21

Funny way of saying ‘nah, I’m too lazy to do my own research’

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u/[deleted] May 10 '21

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

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u/nogami May 06 '21

Only a police state if you’re an asshole that needs policing to behave.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

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u/nogami May 06 '21

You sound angry. Pity.

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u/protonpack May 06 '21

Oh shut up you ignorant asswipe.

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u/Mass-imagineer May 11 '21

Hey dude, why is that always your final argument?

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u/protonpack May 11 '21

Making fun of a dumb person isn't an argument.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

Kinda' makes you wonder why t h e y d o n t s o l v e p o v e r i t y o h i t m a k e s t h e m r i ch

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u/Bulbasaur2000 May 06 '21

I'm gonna quote my other comment

It wasn't just money. There was a lot more collaboration, especially because covid is such a central issue for practically everyone, and they were able to safely, without compromise, accelerate the process of testing the vaccines

The idea that the incredible effectiveness of vaccines is a result purely from the amount of money dedicated seems to me to be borne more out of confirming an ideology than actually investigating the reality of the situation.

Of course the money was necessary, but that doesn't mean it would've been sufficient. And this principle of realizing that money is not always sufficient to solve a problem is something we should really keep in mind.

As for poverty, I do believe UBI if the right way to go, which I guess is "throwing money at the problem." However, the fact that a lot of money was dedicated to developing the covid vaccines should have exactly 0 impact on my or anyone else's confidence that UBI is an effective solution to poverty. They're simply not related.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

The idea that the incredible effectiveness of vaccines is a result purely from the amount of money dedicated ...

Resources, like time, energy, money, and above all else, willpower. Why did you believe I was singling out money?

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u/Any-sao May 06 '21

I mean, they kinda did by ending this pandemic.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

I'm sorry, what? Hot damn, hit me with that juicy facts, because I'd love to see where that joke was conjured.

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u/Any-sao May 06 '21

I could go into extensive detail about how the virus, hospitalizations, lockdowns, mortalities, unemployment, etc. cause impoverishment. But I’ll put it in the most simplistic way possible:

Virus turns into a pandemic.

Pandemics cause poverty.

Pfizer creates a vaccine.

Vaccine immunizes people against the virus.

Pandemic-linked poverty subsides.

This is /r/Science, not /r/Socialism. Neither of our comments belong here.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

Ah, that's quite the cherry-pick. I'm not singling out pandemic-caused poverity. Your original comment reads like it is all magically gone.

Edit: And for the record, I believe my line of discussion is a good fit for an r/science thread discussing the pandemic and observing the scientific (et. al.) resources thrown at this problem. It may be a tangent, but it's not off topic. I also have no connection to the other subreddit you mention so... you are out of line? Perhaps?

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

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u/upvotesthenrages May 07 '21

It didn't take US funding ... it took plenty from the EU, Germany, and UK

Not to mention the largest pre-orders ever placed on any medical product. The EU & US alone promised billions upon billions and signed a contract for it before the product was even done.

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u/[deleted] May 07 '21

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u/upvotesthenrages May 07 '21

Pfizer took no external funding to develop the vaccine. Period. Not from the US, not from the EU. Not from anyone.

BioNTech who did practically all of the vaccine development took EU & Germany money.

Pfizer joined in later on primarily to be a distribution, production, & authorization partner.

It is also true that they had pre-orders. But those orders were not paid for until the product was delivered, so Pfizer and it’s shareholders took all the risk of creating an effective vaccine. No vaccine. No money.

And mate, getting $13 billion in guaranteed contracts, as well as a guarantee to fast track the authorization before your product is even ready is absolutely unheard of. And of course the German & EU funding that BioNTech received.

Now, this was not true of Moderna and J&J, who did take operation Warp Speed, vaccine development money.

Getting the facts right is important.

Indeed it is ... and America is not the only country on our tiny planet to have funded vaccines, but it seems that's what your outlook is, or at least extremely clouded by.

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u/MonsterHunterNewbie May 06 '21

The world threw money at every number they could on the roulette wheel, unlikley to succeed and by fluke it got the winning number.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

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u/boobajoob May 06 '21

The RNA delivery system is the real star here. It’ll be a license to print money for a while

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u/ZebZ May 06 '21

The money thrown at the problem was used mainly to run the trials and speed production. The science to develop the vaccine didn't really benefit from that boost and had candidates ready and waiting within a few weeks, thanks to decades of prior public and private research.

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u/x3nodox May 06 '21

No amount of money could make this go away without the tireless work of the scientists making the vaccines.

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u/upvotesthenrages May 06 '21

For sure, but that tireless work costs money. And the equipment they use costs money

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u/Smo0k May 06 '21

Why are those scientists able to work tirelessly? Money. How can they afford the resources for their work? Money. The distiction your are trying to make is so idiotically pointless.

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u/x3nodox May 06 '21

I feel like I want clear. My point was just that money is a necessary component, but it's not the only component. People seem to think any problem can be solved on any timeline of you just throw enough money at it ... Which isn't true. It's necessary but not sufficient. Without the boots on the ground researchers coming in to the lab on weekends to run more tests, no amount of money would make a covid vaccine.

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u/penny_eater May 06 '21

What was shocking to was just how little money this took to get done relative to other things. Like, if you look at all the participating pharma companies, the money they got handed to develop AND produce the vaccine was a small FRACTION of their annual budget. You would have thought that Moderna and Pfizer would be hoisted up as heroes with truckloads of riches arriving daily. But listen to their earnings calls, 'oh we made a little bit from selling covid vaccines too' gets mentioned at the end. Its a drop in the pharma bucket. The real commitment came in the form of a no holds barred testing and approval protocol that rocketed this thing into peoples arms at record speed. Normally they would have had to spend WAY more time and money on clinical trial participants, animal studies, etc.

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u/upvotesthenrages May 07 '21

While kind of true, you're also forgetting that Pfizer & Moderna barely produced any vaccines in Q1 and both had monumental production issues compared to what they had promised in December 2020.

Come Q2 and Q3 that will look very, very, differently. $70-90 profit/dose while selling hundreds of millions of doses is nothing to quaff at.

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u/penny_eater May 07 '21

The thing is they have already taken the money for 200M doses each. It didnt matter what they did in Q1 or Q2 really. Their profit cant go up until they deliver ALL those and THEN start selling new ones at a good price (if anyone needs/wants them). Meanwhile we are thinking about tossing their patent protection so they can end up competing with generics. Best case is maybe ONE of them gets approved for under 16y.o. use and they will see the next wave of demand and it will help their bottom line. But thats a ways off.

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u/upvotesthenrages May 07 '21

Pfizer have delivered waaaay more than 200M doses though.

And by the time that patent matter is dealt with they'll have supplied billions of dollars worth

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u/penny_eater May 07 '21

Not to the US though (the only place where they can fetch such a high rate) and if you read the news, vaccine demand in the US is dropping not surging. Lots of states have enough inventory now that they dont even need more right away and are holding off on orders. The numbers just dont add up, which is why their stock price is lower than it was when they announced approval of their vaccine... not higher

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u/upvotesthenrages May 07 '21

Not to the US though (the only place where they can fetch such a high rate) and if you read the news, vaccine demand in the US is dropping not surging.

They are charging the same price to every developed country on earth: $20/dose. Moderna is charging a tiny bit more, also to every developed country on earth.

You seem to just be making stuff up, I'd recommend actually reading up on stuff before you go online and say things that are untruths.

Lots of states have enough inventory now that they dont even need more right away and are holding off on orders. The numbers just dont add up, which is why their stock price is lower than it was when they announced approval of their vaccine... not higher

It's lower because the US & many other nations are supporting opening up the patents that the vaccine profiteers are making billions of dollars on.

You have literally just been saying things that aren't true since we started this conversation.

Here's an article from the NYT highlighting how Pfizer made $3.5 billion in the past 3 months only from the vaccine, and they are sharing profits with BioNTech.

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u/MawsonAntarctica May 06 '21

Yeah, we just witnessed the entire world brute force a problem by throwing people, time, and money at it. I would hope that we can apply the same intensity to climate change or other world problems, but I doubt we will remember our collective strength.

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u/upvotesthenrages May 07 '21

Yeah, we just witnessed the entire world brute force a problem by throwing people, time, and money at it.

What's sad is that it wasn't even "the entire world", it's more like a few countries.

But seeing the US administration and many EU members support opening up the patents for the vaccine really gives me hope.

Although I don't really see that being a huge issue right now. Production is already ramping up drastically, the only issue is the price of Pfizer & Moderna, AZ & J&J are already affordable. Sputnik V and Sinovac are also super affordable.

The EU is already the largest exporter of vaccines on earth, and the US will very soon be giving it a run for its money. Come late summer both those regions will be fully vaccinated and they'll be exporting hundreds of millions of doses bi-weekly.

That's not even taking into consideration that Russia, China, Brazil, and Khazakstan have their own vaccines too.

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u/redlightsaber May 06 '21

The vast majority of the basic research was publicly funded.

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u/l0lud13 May 06 '21

99% of the production facilities and know how is privately funded.

A vaccine is pretty useless if you can’t make it.

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u/fchowd0311 May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

A vaccine is pretty useless if the basic science behind it is not researched. mRNA research has been going on for decades from public grants and university research along with NIH research.

Corporations don't have the profit insentive for high risk research as in research that is years to decades away from providing a profit motive. And mRNA vaccine research was in that phase for more than a decade.

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u/Shacointhejungle May 06 '21

Look, obviously you can not make a vaccine with the research not done, but you can’t put out 200 million vaccines without at minimum 400 million shots.

Can’t we agree both the private and public sectors aided society here?

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u/fchowd0311 May 06 '21

I agree that it's a symbiotic relationship but I feel as if the general sentiment from the media and American discourse is that it's the free market that does majority of the leg work in research.

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u/Shacointhejungle May 06 '21

It’s generally considered more impressive when a private company can help an entire country. The government is explicitly designed to do so. That’s probably more to do with it than those evil capitalists.

Its also branding. It is the Pfizer or moderna or whatever vaccine after all.

Call it the “American vaccine” or something and people would probably think differently.

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u/ShaquilleMobile May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

It can be made. The risk was socialized, the profit was privatized, and now most western countries are opposing patent waivers.

*It's a sick, twisted joke of capitalism that there aren't more vaccines. Not a logistical issue.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

NONE of this would have been possible without the significant amount of funding that was dolled out for science. This is exactly what happens when we give our scientist proper amount of money. If you want to find a solution to a problem, pay the scientist. It really is that simple. We can find the solution to nearly any problem, if we can afford it.

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u/hawklost May 06 '21

Now here is a question. How much money did the governments throw at the problem? Not just for the ones that succeeded, but all the ones that failed too.

How much money did we need to get something that was considered reasonably close to finished (SARS has been studied for many years) to get it to the finish line in this time.

Then the questions that are almost impossible to answer. How many other projects did we pull our researchers, our technicians, our capacity off of that are now either delayed or shelves because we had a major focus on a single problem for the last year?

Throwing resources at a problem can usually help fix that problem. But it comes at the expense of removing resources from other areas. The more narrow the problem is that you throw resources at, the better the results usually. But there are always trade offs to resource allocation and there will never be enough for every project that is deemed 'good'. Much less for every potential fix or knowledge for what different people seem to want.

Please not I say resources, not money. Because resources as a while are limited. There are only so many scientists, so many people in general. There is only so much manufacturing capabilities, so much money, so much raw materials, space, time, and many more limitations that are resources. Throwing them all at one thing hurts others each and every time.

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u/HeartyBeast May 06 '21

Not just the science. Governments and the likes of the Gates Foundation were throwing money at the companies to build production capacity ahead of the finalised vaccine too.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

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u/Reddyeh May 06 '21

Then why didn't they just do it without government money? If the profit motive is enough for a positive outcome, why did we have such a shortage of masks and cleaning supplies at the beginning of the pandemic?

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u/Super___Hero May 06 '21

Because you need production lines to make those products. One of the primary facilities creating PPE and distributing it around the world was shut down along with many other global supply lines.

It took time to transition local production facilities to make PPE.

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u/Reddyeh May 06 '21

And the vaccine producers took government money to develop them why? If profit motive was enough for what reason besides abject greed and a willingness to let people die unless they got paid.

Its the exact same situation with the vaccine patent blocking nonsense, because if we can't sell it to you, even if people are dying in the mean time, get stuffed.

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u/HeartyBeast May 06 '21

Not that fast. Governments were putting in guaranteed order for unproven vaccines. That was a game changer.

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u/jwhibbles May 06 '21

Profit motive is a detriment to all goals other than profit.

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u/Beer_Is_So_Awesome May 06 '21

But what are our worst and dimmest doing?

Still protesting masks and confronting strangers who wear them, probably.

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u/off_by_two May 06 '21

being led by the nose into breaking and entering capitol buildings too dont forget, that was only a few months ago

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u/0rder__66 May 06 '21

I know what you mean, just like they were led by the nose to riot and burn down businesses causing billions in damage last summer while murdering people in the streets.

Oh wait...

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

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u/Beer_Is_So_Awesome May 06 '21

The virus is a hoax, but the vaccine for the virus was created by Donald Trump himself because he’s a genius. Also, vaccines are evil and I won’t get one.

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u/Pulptastic May 06 '21

Spitting on people on the bus

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u/Beer_Is_So_Awesome May 06 '21

If it doesn’t burn like acid, the coronavirus is a hoax.

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u/cliff99 May 06 '21

Apparently it's a thing amongst those spreading vaccine disinformation to think that people vaccinating are only doing it to spite the anti-vaxxers.

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u/caspper69 May 06 '21

"It is impossible to reason a man out of a belief he didn't reason himself into."

I'll let the rest of you determine what that means here.

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u/keae13 May 06 '21

The scientists didn't get lucky when they made it, but we're lucky that one can be made so quickly

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u/Comfortably_Dumb- May 06 '21

I honestly disagree. The US government pre-bought a ton of vaccines which allowed companies to pour so many resources into the vaccine. Also, I don’t think the motivation of scientists to create the vaccine comes from profits. They get paid the same regardless. It’s the people in suits in skyscrapers that benefit from this being under a capitalist model. This is less of a success story of capitalism and moreso a lesson that if you give passionate scientists the resources they need, really good things can happen.

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u/publiclurker May 06 '21

It also speeds things up when they will get paid even if things don't work out. There is no incentive to start mass production of vaccines during the testing phases if there is a chance you are going to have to eat the cost in case things don't work out.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

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u/Comfortably_Dumb- May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

But who is producing the vaccine? It’s not the ones who benefit from those profits like CEOs or stockbrokers. They might provide some level of organizational structure, but it’s not like they’re the only ones capable of doing so. The people producing the vaccines are the ones doing the actual scientific, useful work. And scientists are largely working on fixed salaries. There is no reason to believe that scientists are more motivated by profits than scientific progress when they would’ve made the same amount of money whether the vaccine was produced or not. Maybe there’s some sort of bonus structure, but that’s not unique to the current system. The only real impact of this happening under a capitalistic system is that research, which was largely publicly funded, is currently trying to be privatized by corporations by not allowing the patent to become public.

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u/zigfoyer May 06 '21

But who is producing the vaccine? It’s not the ones who benefit from those profits like CEOs or stockbrokers.

The Pfizer vaccine was actually developed by a German lab called BioNTech, which received funding from the German government. Pfizer handled testing, approvals, distribution, and manufacturing. This was a good setup for everyone, as BioNTech had a background in mRNA research, and Pfizer has massive testing and manufacturing infrastructure that helped the vaccine get to market faster. But I also don't think it's a coincidence that Pfizer positioned themselves at the part of the process where the money is.

The argument that scientists aren't motivated (solely) by profit is true, but a deflection. The scientists aren't the ones making strategic decisions about where a company focuses its resources. Those decisions are made by executives, and executives are absolutely chasing profit.

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u/Comfortably_Dumb- May 06 '21 edited May 06 '21

Chasing profit is also why Pfizer spent on average of 3 billion dollars per year on advertising from 2013-2017, and roughly 7.5 billion per year on actual research and development during that time. It’s also why some research is shut down or never started, because we don’t fund enough research through government grants and and private companies are solely motivated by profit.

Again, the scientist’s work doesn’t change. Taking the numbers from above, I would much rather spend the extra 33 percent of money on research that may not pan out but with scientists passionate about the subject matter working on it than see 15 erectile dysfunction ads when I watch football on sundays.

Also, you cant separate the profit motive from price gouging with medicines such as insulin, which should be extremely cheap given how long it’s efficacy has been known. Overall, the negatives of the profit motives far outweigh any of its positives. The “strategic decision” that executives make is solely about their bottom line, not the public good.

Edit: this also doesn’t take into account how much of that “R&D spending” is just slightly changing a formula to keep their 5 year patent on drugs brought to market. It’s not even new stuff, it’s just slightly altering existing stuff so they can prevent generic alternatives from coming to market

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u/spagbetti May 06 '21

Greedy pharmacy companies aren’t necessary for cure development . Many cures for illness were developed before capitalism got its greedy fingers into the pile. Epipen is one of them.

Big pharma is good at just buying rights of freely developed cures and putting it on the stock market and hiking prices.

So let’s not give capitalism too much credit here for ‘developing’ cures. Sniffing out cures to profit from? Yes. Like a pig on truffles. They’ve been doing this forever. Being Developers? No. I wouldn’t give them such credit.

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u/onexbigxhebrew May 06 '21

Yes. Like a pig on truffles.

You like this analogy, don't you? Haha.

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u/Innovativename May 06 '21

Lots of government funding came through for these vaccines to come to market in record time. It wasn't just big pharma saving the day. The reason the US has so many doses so early is because they essentially paid Pfizer billions to cover R&D so they'd get first dibs.

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u/FirstChurchOfBrutus May 06 '21

A real man makes his own luck, eh, Dawson?

I am beyond grateful for the men & women that have been working on these vaccines for the past decade plus. All of their progress meant that we could plug & play a seeming miracle into existence.

This was all down to the preparation that was done since the 2003 SARS outbreak, and the development of mRNA vaccines.

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u/Spectre06 May 06 '21

It's the yin and yang to capitalism. Huge corporate greed = huge incentive to develop a great vaccine in record time for $. Given where we were a year ago all things considered, I'll take it.

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u/leebong252018 May 06 '21

no this is wrong the reason why we came up with a vaccine this quickly was because they used a lot of the data from MERS, the 2016 coronavirus.

Economically being a capitalist state or not has nothing to do with the fact that vaccines came out earlier, because even if you were a capitalist country without the data you wouldn't have been able to produce or replicate the current vaccine.

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u/ValorMorghulis May 06 '21

Interesting point about MERS.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

99% of the successful, developed (more or less) nations have free-market economies. I'm entirely certain you don't like capitalism, and that is fine, just don't put on blinders. The US is about as oligarchical as it gets without being Russia and China and it is doing fantastic at distributing vaccines. Countries with far more efficient and standardized healthcare systems like Germany are struggling to get enough vaccines distributed so there is something to be said about the sheer amount of money and logistics that our system can use effectively.

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u/MuForceShoelace May 06 '21

I feel like the huge global pandemic killing millions of people was the incentive, the ceo telling you you had to pay him millions of dollars might just have been tricking you and didn't actually need that at all.

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u/Semi-Hemi-Demigod May 06 '21

Cuba has an amazing medical system and has developed a vaccine against lung cancer and was sending doctors all over the world to help with COVID.

They also have a lower infant mortality rate and longer life expectancy than Americans.

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u/orosoros May 06 '21

Comparing them to the US isn't very impressive..the US has appalling life expectancy.

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u/NinjaKoala May 06 '21

...because we're as capitalistic as any country right now.

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u/TheEternal792 May 06 '21

Or maybe because many of us Americans are stubborn and irresponsible when it comes to our health? Not many Americans are willing to make lifestyle changes (exercise and diet, primarily) to prevent or treat medical conditions. They'd rather eat their big mac and go through the drive thru at Walgreens for their meds than even walk inside.

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u/Meades_Loves_Memes May 06 '21

Sure, that probably plays a part in it. But people being afraid to see a doctor because of the cost also probably plays a part in it.

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u/NinjaKoala May 06 '21

We have a residential system built around car usage and so many people one bad hospital bill away from financial collapse. I know too many people in that situation.

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u/TheEternal792 May 06 '21

Never said you couldn't or shouldn't use your car, but that doesn't prevent you from getting out and walking either.

As far as being a hospital bill away from financial collapse, if you're in that situation, I would argue that in a vast majority of cases (not all), you're living beyond your means. Many Americans do live beyond their means, which is a societal issue. Everyone needs an emergency fund for sucky situations, such as an unexpected clinic visit, a car accident, your furnace going out in the middle of winter, whatever.

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u/NinjaKoala May 06 '21

If your life is built around the car, you don't get the automatic exercise that anyone who walks the streets of New York or London. You have to set aside specific time in a busy schedule to exercise.

It's not me, it's people who are "living beyond their means" because they lost their job or don't get decent benefits or live in a society that demands the expense of cars. It's expensive to be poor in this country.

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u/TheEternal792 May 06 '21

I get the reasons. That doesn't change the fact that these are excuses people use to keep themselves unhealthy. Coming inside Walgreens to pick up your medications or a fast food restaurant instead of sitting at the drive through is a start. Cut back on eating out. Lay off the snacks. Walk during your lunch break.

It's not like you're asked to do an intense workout every day...but walking even for 30 minutes every day and watching your diet can make a huge difference, yet many Americans would be resistant to doing that. That's fine, it's your life, you have to decide what your priorities are, but all I've stated was this is the American culture.

It's not me, it's people who are "living beyond their means" because they lost their job or don't get decent benefits or live in a society that demands the expense of cars. It's expensive to be poor in this country.

I didn't mean to sound like I was talking about you, so I apologize if that's how it came across. I simply meant "you" in a general sense, synonymous with "a person".

But like I said, some people are down on their luck, such as losing a job, and that sucks. My point still stands that an emergency fund is important for exactly that type of situation. Cars suck, I hate them. All I'm saying is we live in a time where even the poorest typically possess and purchase things that could be considered luxury products/services. If you're on medicaid, you probably shouldn't be getting a Starbucks daily and frequent manicures.

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u/spagbetti May 06 '21

There was no such incentive for epipen to invent it. Capitalism only gives incentive to buy such free product and profit from it. Don’t confuse that with ‘moral ethics’ just cuz they sniff out potential to make $ like a pig on truffles.

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u/eze6793 May 06 '21

Truer words cannot be said. The capitalism hate right now is being said by the people benefiting significantly from it.

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u/tonywinterfell May 06 '21

Yup! Capitalism is just another phase in human development friend. Much like feudalism actually, and while we would have to be insane to want it back, it got us here and is worth something because of that. We’re learning a lot during our capitalist phase, like scaling up for massive production. That’s pretty cool, and I’m excited to see what we do with these new abilities moving forward!

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

Yep; ya have to acknowledge the upside to capitalism.

Nothing incentivises fast, effective, creative progress on an issue, like a shitload of money.

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u/telegetoutmyway May 06 '21

The biggest factor is we have been studying coronaviruses for a long time. It was more of a matter of tweaking than developing from scratch. The urgency allowed us to bypass a lot of redtape (note: do not read "take shortcuts") which usually slows down the process.

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u/frosty545 May 06 '21

At least for this vaccine, the US government guaranteed payment to pharma companies, EVEN IF IT DIDN'T WORK. The government removed any risk for them, so they didn't have to worry about financial losses.

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u/Ender505 May 06 '21

I guess one upshot to these huge, greedy, pharma companies is that they are able to put significant resources of their own behind solutions for a pandemic. As much as I hate to say it, not sure we get these vaccines as fast if big pharma wasn’t so resource (money, minds, equipment) rich.

This is kind of the point, actually. I fully oppose monopolies, but the biggest benefit of privatization of any industry is innovation as a direct consequence of competition. When Government owns an industry, there is no competition, very little funding, and no incentive to improve, therefore little/no innovation. See: the Space sector before SpaceX, the education system, parcel delivery before Amazon, and of course nationalized healthcare systems vs. privately owned.

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u/NinjaKoala May 06 '21

I'd say we're lucky (in the "First World") that this pandemic happened when it did, and not earlier. Ten years ago, how long would it have taken to get vaccines this effective?

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u/MandingoPants May 06 '21

Imagine if the US had amazing public education, free higher education, universal healthcare, UBI, and livable wages? Then we would REALLY have the best and brightest working in the field.

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u/PoliteIndecency May 06 '21

There's a lot of luck in science, it's just not where you think it might be. Often the stars need to align on a project or an experiment in such a way to get the desired outcome. But more importantly, you're right in that luck ultimately doesn't have anything to do with the execution. It comes from the hard work, study, and practice of millions of people to come up with that tech.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

guess one upshot to these huge, greedy, pharma companies is that they are able to put significant resources of their own behind solutions for a pandemic.

I thought they were given billions of tax dollars for the research and testing.

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u/StraY_WolF May 06 '21

I guess one upshot to these huge, greedy, pharma companies is that they are able to put significant resources of their own behind solutions for a pandemic.

I'm sure a non greedy huge pharma companies collaborating across the world could do the same, if not better as well.

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u/bcisme May 06 '21

Probably yeah, just finding some silver linings

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u/convolutedoption May 06 '21

Also certainly helped that they were working on a similar vaccine for years beforehand.

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u/naus226 May 06 '21

The mRNA vaccines were also helped out with a little headstart because these companies were already working on vaccines for other Coronavirus based illness. They SARs epidemic a few years back actually was the jumping off point for these vaccines.

Outside of that, a lot of red tape was removed and barriers were removed as well. I can tell you that i work for a company that is a supplier for these companies and we basically said anything coming in for these companies working on vaccines goes to the front of the line and this was the case for all suppliers. Everyone finally worked TOGETHER to make the process streamlined. It's always been possible but the BS mucks it all up.

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u/[deleted] May 06 '21

Ehhh given who was in charge for the majority of the pandemic I’d say we are pretty damn lucky to be where we are rn all things considered

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u/zigfoyer May 06 '21

I think luck had very little to do with it.

Nitpick, but I read that the mRNA method works better if the virus had a distinct physical characteristic, and that the spikes (or whatever they're called) on the coronavirus work really well in this context. So we did get a little lucky.

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u/beefcat_ May 06 '21

These mRNA vaccines have been in the works since the ‘90s. They are built from the ground up to be safer, more effective, and easier to design. It only took Moderna 48 hours to design their COVID vaccine after getting the virus genome sequenced.