Fauci expects COVID-19 vaccine by end of the year, 100 million doses to be ready in the US

Moo.

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And what if (say) a German, Chinese or Israeli company develops a promising vaccine. Will the MAGAland go for “Made in USA”, as they did with the tests?

Turns out that the population wouldn’t take it anyway

I’ll just point out that this is one of the more obvious cases were the free market will NOT work. It makes little sense for a company to gear up and produce a large number of doses before it is approved in the HOPE that their vaccine will work. The costs of doing so would be borne by them, but the costs of delay are borne by the population at large. Markets do not deal well with emergencies. You really want the government to step in and fund the production of several possible vaccines, even though they will have to be on the lookout for pharma-douches getting paid to produce vaccines that will, in the end be thrown out.

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Come on now, start up the chute. You won’t feel a thing.

Not really. Pharma companies usually set up production lines to prepare to scale (since they have to get approval for every line and capacity before selling anything produced by it), but don’t actually start producing at scale until approval. The reason is, if FDA comes back with even minor tweaks to process or packaging, everything produced has to be tossed. $$$$

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They are both right. Last year’s cold virus mutated into a new strain that makes last year’s antibodies less effective. Last year’s influenza virus mutated into a new strain, making last year’s vaccine less effective. You could also correctly call the new strain a new virus, even though it mutated from the previous one. And while antibodies are less effective against a new strain, most of the time the strains are similar enough to allow some effectiveness by old antibodies against the new strain.

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Oh, well, then they are gold. Look who’s running the FDA.

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Unfortunately, you’re probably right. On anything related to coronavirus, right now FDA is in matador mode.

image

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And I should say, I don’t mean to belittle the importance of vaccines - more just the political appointees almost certainly interfering in the approval, testing and production process.

If the vaccine is actually rigorously tested, then yes, the most vulnerable should recieve it first.
But I don’t think that is a reasonable expectation at this point. The pressure, both economically and politically, is just too much. I think it will be rushed. So if it’s a rushed vaccine, the vulnerable should not be first.
I’m personally hoping someone else, a county without a compromised CDC equivalent makes and tests it first.

As I understand it, the American taxpayer would pay for this, the risk for the company is zero. Just like with the swine flu vaccine in Germany a couple of years ago.

WAIT WAIT I SAW THIS MOVIE, this is the first five minutes of I Am Legend

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Yeah a saw a rundown on how these vaccine makers are operating and a lot of it looks like very clever coding. Its not simple stuff like the first vaccines.

As I understand it the concept of a vaccine is that the most vulnerable are people who, for numerous reasons, cannot be vaccinated, so that the people around them who are in regular contact should be vaccinated first to protect the most vulnerable (this will often be the carers/healthcare/support workers) and then extended to other occupations that face regular prolonged contacts with multiple people, before going on to cover the general public.

As for testing, that is only ever going to be incomplete, because there can be no guarantee that it will provide defence for a length of time.

But a lot of #BunkerBaby supporters don’t need no stinkin’ vaccine, so that will leave some for the rest of us.

Yes, that is my understanding as well. I’m almost pleasantly surprised that despite the GOPs love of "market based solutions, there has been a recognition that relying solely on market forces to speed vaccine production would get many people killed.

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