A Fifth of Coronavirus

[LadyCrimson]

I will never understand serious anti-vaxxors.  Smallpox, polio, tetanus ... y'know?  I have two vaccine scars (young kid ones), shoulder and top of foot.  I don't know what what they were for, I assume smallpox was the shoulder one. Didn't grow a 3rd eye.

As an old-fart-chicken I understand being nervous and wanting to be cautious about new ones, but actually anti-vaccine... pffft.

If covid continues to be a thing, eventually it'll just become the norm to younger/not yet born gen's to get vaccines for it, whether at schools or the annual checkup.  It won't seem weird/scary to them because it'll just be part of life.  And to travelers it's just one more that they have to have. Sure there may be some as adults who become lazy about keeping it up but that's always a possible factor. 

[Malcador]

8 minutes ago, LadyCrimson said:

I will never understand serious anti-vaxxors.

Some people like being contrarian.  Some people are also just stupid.

[Gfted1]

That makes me wonder...do flat-Earthers think all celestial bodies are flat, or just Earth?

[LadyCrimson]

1 minute ago, Gfted1 said:

That makes me wonder...do flat-Earthers think all celestial bodies are flat, or just Earth?

I don't think they have a consensus and/or don't care - they just focus on Earth, because Earth is obviously super special. 

Also, according to one such believer asked in a Newsweek article, our sun is "special" because it doesn't "twinkle" like other stars.
https://www.newsweek.com/we-asked-two-flat-earthers-what-about-other-planets-728959

 

[Malcador]

"He says he never meant to become a Flat Earther, he just found that when he thought over the evidence for a round planet, he wasn't convinced."

Edited May 4, 2021 by Malcador

[rjshae]

5 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I will never understand serious anti-vaxxors.  Smallpox, polio, tetanus ... y'know?

I think it's just another type of superstitious thinking, like horoscopes or lucky clothes. Many people just aren't good at risk analysis, so they turn to superstition. They get away with it because most of the serious diseases are now rare.

[Zoraptor]

The diseases are rare because the vaccine rates are high, so herd immunity is in play. When vaccine rates drop enough they'll come back, especially something ludicrously infectious like measles which will happily infect 20 new people per infection if it can.

(The 'funny' thing is that when we had a measles outbreak here a couple of years ago lots of supposedly 'educated' antivaxxers were first in line to get their children vaccinated- their refusal wasn't based on anything other than it not being 'necessary' for little Jonny to get the jab because everyone else was immunised, and their immunisation was protecting li'l Jonny. Pure selfishness, both in terms of putting their children at risk and wanting everyone else to protect them from their stupidity. I've got a lot of sympathy for the people who didn't get it done because they fell through the cracks (mostly the poor and ill informed) but those others were just awful awful people)

[ComradeYellow]

1 hour ago, rjshae said:

I think it's just another type of superstitious thinking, like horoscopes or lucky clothes. Many people just aren't good at risk analysis, so they turn to superstition. They get away with it because most of the serious diseases are now rare.

Paranoia, mostly, and distrust of people who are very different than them injecting them with something they know nothing about.

[Skarpen]

12 hours ago, Gfted1 said:

That makes me wonder...do flat-Earthers think all celestial bodies are flat, or just Earth?

I think experts opinion vary

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/we-asked-two-flat-earthers-what-about-other-planets-728959%3famp=1

[Hurlshort]

6 hours ago, Skarpen said:

I think experts opinion vary

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newsweek.com/we-asked-two-flat-earthers-what-about-other-planets-728959%3famp=1

I am not sure the use of the word expert is warranted.

[BruceVC]

Guys I warned everyone this would happen, now the WHO and Biden want the vaccine IP so they can create their own vaccines. Its not very well thought out and seems desperate and what is the point of giving out the vaccines IP if you cannot produce anything...we have limited manufacturing but one factory in SA 

https://www.voanews.com/covid-19-pandemic/biden-agrees-waive-covid-19-vaccine-patents-its-still-complicated

[Zoraptor]

Won't someone think of the poor pharmaceutical companies and their bottom lines? Poor old Pfizer, having had their research paid for by the German government, their vaccine indemnified against side effects and selling their vaccine at a bargain basement 50 75USD per person to most of the rich world when without the pandemic they'd have still been trying to rely on their triangular grow it big pill for sales. How will their CEO afford his 3rd private Caribbean Island of the year if Biden and the WHO get their way?

(Wanting to waive patents is nice, but it's no loss for US companies. Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines are fundamentally too expensive and the control on them is being able to buy the lipids and nucleotide base ingredients; and Pfizer in particular already has deals with everyone they can reasonably expect to sell to given their high price and exotic storage requirements. The only US vaccine effected would be J&J- or Janssen, in Eurospeak)

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Won't someone think of the poor pharmaceutical companies and their bottom lines? Poor old Pfizer, having had their research paid for by the German government, their vaccine indemnified against side effects and selling their vaccine at a bargain basement 50 75USD per person to most of the rich world when without the pandemic they'd have still been trying to rely on their triangular grow it big pill for sales. How will their CEO afford his 3rd private Caribbean Island of the year if Biden and the WHO get their way?

(Wanting to waive patents is nice, but it's no loss for US companies. Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines are fundamentally too expensive and the control on them is being able to buy the lipids and nucleotide base ingredients; and Pfizer in particular already has deals with everyone they can reasonably expect to sell to given their high price and exotic storage requirements. The only US vaccine effected would be J&J- or Janssen, in Eurospeak)

Zora please can we have a serious discussion about this, you cannot start doing this because of what could potentially happen. What if Biden can somehow force this through or even this happens in other countries, like SA where private sector companies will fight this every step of the way

This could easily lead to numerous more deadly viruses also getting their vaccine IP made available and this could absolutely hugely impact the ability of a pharmaceutical to be profitable and stay in business

We have never seen something like this being raised in a such a serious forum, its very irresponsible for someone like the US president to raise because it does carry credibility

And I hope we are all going to be honest and candid when we recognize that its very important to all our societies that the positive impact of profitability  is recognized and protected. And I know its may seem I am making a big deal about this but this could be a very slippery slope

And finally its the fact that their are global production problems and slowness that is creating this request, thats the real problem. Their is no point providing Corona vaccine IP to Africa when  we have only 1 company capable of producing vaccines and that is in SA ....Aspen Pharmaceuticals, thats it in the whole continent !!!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_Pharmacare

 

[Gorth]

6 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Won't someone think of the poor pharmaceutical companies and their bottom lines? Poor old Pfizer, having had their research paid for by the German government, their vaccine indemnified against side effects and selling their vaccine at a bargain basement 50 75USD per person to most of the rich world when without the pandemic they'd have still been trying to rely on their triangular grow it big pill for sales. How will their CEO afford his 3rd private Caribbean Island of the year if Biden and the WHO get their way?

I'll need to double check this, but I somehow thought the IP belonged to BioNTech and Pfizer is really only part of the equation because they had a substantial existing supply chain and distribution/manufacturing capability?

Just as a bit if interesting trivia, the BioNTech vaccine was actually developed over decades for something completely different, cancer treatment. But it was apparently not too complicated to re-tool it to be a specific vaccine. This part funded by Merkel, who may have a say in what happens to the vaccine in the future, like not only Made in Germany, but also (C) Germany 

[BruceVC]

6 minutes ago, Gorth said:

I'll need to double check this, but I somehow thought the IP belonged to BioNTech and Pfizer is really only part of the equation because they had a substantial existing supply chain and distribution/manufacturing capability?

Just as a bit if interesting trivia, the BioNTech vaccine was actually developed over decades for something completely different, cancer treatment. But it was apparently not too complicated to re-tool it to be a specific vaccine. This part funded by Merkel, who may have a say in what happens to the vaccine in the future, like not only Made in Germany, but also (C) Germany 

Gorthfuscious I was hoping you would comment on the proposed IP vaccines discussion that the likes of SA, India and Biden proposed . I imagine your initial well meaning view is that it is a good idea as it will lead to more people getting the vaccines which is always a worthy objective

But that view is an unintentional false narrative because the issue is lack of production facilities globally and how would you now compensate the actual global pharmaceutical companies as they lose huge amounts of sales revenue 

So we should  criticize this idea not because we are greedy and dont care about impoverished countries getting the vaccine but because its not what is going to lead to more vaccines being created and in fact will harm the actual owners and creators of the vaccines which hurts our global endeavors to eradicate the virus

[Gorth]

33 minutes ago, BruceVC said:

Gorthfuscious I was hoping you would comment on the proposed IP vaccines discussion that the likes of SA, India and Biden proposed . I imagine your initial well meaning view is that it is a good idea as it will lead to more people getting the vaccines which is always a worthy objective

But that view is an unintentional false narrative because the issue is lack of production facilities globally and how would you now compensate the actual global pharmaceutical companies as they lose huge amounts of sales revenue 

So we should  criticize this idea not because we are greedy and dont care about impoverished countries getting the vaccine but because its not what is going to lead to more vaccines being created and in fact will harm the actual owners and creators of the vaccines which hurts our global endeavors to eradicate the virus

So not sure what my initial view was?

Anyway, my current view, It's a tricky one, because in this specific case, patent waivers are pointless (for obvious reasons because the whole supply chain structure is missing that could enable a production of any significant scale up). The most likely outcome would be first world competitors saying "sucker!" and napping a part of the profit for themselves too, at the expense of the companies that did the investments in R&D. People tend to forget that for every successful product, there could be 20 failed lines of (expensive) research behind it, that needs to be paid too. That being said, the reason I find it tricky is, some pharmaceutical companies are little more than extortion machines when they sit on monopolies and patents, using them to drive up prices way beyond anything reasonable, simply because "they can". Ideally they pricing would reflect the region it got sold to? But that leaves the problem with parallel imports (**** you region encoding on DVD's and Blu-Ray's!)

 

[BruceVC]

7 minutes ago, Gorth said:

So not sure what my initial view was?

Anyway, my current view, It's a tricky one, because in this specific case, patent waivers are pointless (for obvious reasons because the whole supply chain structure is missing that could enable a production of any significant scale up). The most likely outcome would be first world competitors saying "sucker!" and napping a part of the profit for themselves too, at the expense of the companies that did the investments in R&D. People tend to forget that for every successful product, there could be 20 failed lines of (expensive) research behind it, that needs to be paid too. That being said, the reason I find it tricky is, some pharmaceutical companies are little more than extortion machines when they sit on monopolies and patents, using them to drive up prices way beyond anything reasonable, simply because "they can". Ideally they pricing would reflect the region it got sold to? But that leaves the problem with parallel imports (**** you region encoding on DVD's and Blu-Ray's!)

 

This is a very relevant answer and you have gone into detail I didn't think you had researched or cared about, I have  learnt something new about this discussion so thanks 

You have raised a real outcome of this I didnt think about, the change  Biden wants is "  release the IP of the vaccines so more people can use them to create life savings vaccines  " but only countries that can produce vaccines will benefit and only because they made huge investments. So a country like India will continue to correctly benefit and they will only increase their production capacity which is always a  good thing ....however India understandably and contractually sells their vaccines to countries that have paid for them in a queue like system. So as you mentioned it can literally just mean the same countries just get more vaccines and then only poorer countries ...which is still a better way to expediate the eradication of the virus globally ?

 

 

[Gorth]

1 minute ago, BruceVC said:

This is a very relevant answer and you have gone into detail I didn't think you had researched or cared about, I have  learnt something new about this discussion so thanks 

You have raised a real outcome of this I didnt think about, the change  Biden wants is "  release the IP of the vaccines so more people can use them to create life savings vaccines  " but only countries that can produce vaccines will benefit and only because they made huge investments. So a country like India will continue to correctly benefit and they will only increase their production capacity which is always a  good thing ....however India understandably and contractually sells their vaccines to countries that have paid for them in a queue like system. So as you mentioned it can literally just mean the same countries just get more vaccines and then only poorer countries ...which is still a better way to expediate the eradication of the virus globally ?

Ideally, wealthy countries would just load cargo planes and trucks with pallets of vaccine (the easy to transport ones) and simply give it away, because it's in their own self interest. No good vaccinating your own population if less developed countries become "reservoirs" of virus, that not only are ready to jump on the next plane back to developed countries (who would then either get new waves of infection or need to start a scheme of vaccinations in perpetuity).

It also has the inherent (as far as I see it) risk of the virus mutating further and further away from something the current vaccines protect against. It's such an infectious agent, it simply needs to die, all over the world, for anyone to feel the threat has passed, put the masks aside and start rubbing more than elbows again.

[BruceVC]

12 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Ideally, wealthy countries would just load cargo planes and trucks with pallets of vaccine (the easy to transport ones) and simply give it away, because it's in their own self interest. No good vaccinating your own population if less developed countries become "reservoirs" of virus, that not only are ready to jump on the next plane back to developed countries (who would then either get new waves of infection or need to start a scheme of vaccinations in perpetuity).

It also has the inherent (as far as I see it) risk of the virus mutating further and further away from something the current vaccines protect against. It's such an infectious agent, it simply needs to die, all over the world, for anyone to feel the threat has passed, put the masks aside and start rubbing more than elbows again.

Well the good news is most first world countries have already committed to giving away extra vaccines once their own citizens have been vaccinated. And that is only reasonable as you must ensure all your available and required citizens receive the vaccine before you  want to significantly help others by giving any vaccines away  

[Zoraptor]

3 hours ago, Gorth said:

I'll need to double check this, but I somehow thought the IP belonged to BioNTech and Pfizer is really only part of the equation because they had a substantial existing supply chain and distribution/manufacturing capability?

Yep, similar to the situation with the AstraZeneca/ Oxford vaccine where it was designed at Oxford but licensed to AstraZeneca to make, except BioNTech does have some production capacity of its own in Germany and there's no requirement for the vaccine to be sold as not-for-profit with their partner, which the AZO agreement has. So while AstraZeneca makes no money from it Pfizer manufactures something like 95% in their partnership, and it's almost entirely on a for profit basis. At cost is ~11USD per dose judging by what they charged Brazil, so they're marking up by 90%- at least- to others.

[rjshae]

4 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Well the good news is most first world countries have already committed to giving away extra vaccines once their own citizens have been vaccinated. And that is only reasonable as you must ensure all your available and required citizens receive the vaccine before you  want to significantly help others by giving any vaccines away  

I think though that we wanted to license manufacturing much earlier if we hoped to scale this out. Just giving away leftover doses doesn't really address the need.

[BruceVC]

6 minutes ago, rjshae said:

I think though that we wanted to license manufacturing much earlier if we hoped to scale this out. Just giving away leftover doses doesn't really address the need.

You right but I am just addressing this hyperbolic view that " countries like the USA are hoarding vaccines and causing the vaccine shortage for poorer countries" 

The USA still doesn't have enough vaccines to cover all their citizens so until then its not hoarding if the actual vaccines dont exist that are alleged to be hoarded 

 

[Gfted1]

Got my second shot today and so far, so good. No headache or fatigue. If I die, Ill see you all on the flipside. If I dont, I guess Ill be back later.

[Zoraptor]

6 hours ago, BruceVC said:

The USA still doesn't have enough vaccines to cover all their citizens so until then its not hoarding if the actual vaccines dont exist that are alleged to be hoarded

For anyone who doesn't think Bruce is spouting rubbish,

(1) the US still has an export ban*

(2) it has an export ban on vaccines it hasn't even approved, eg Astra Zeneca

(3) it has enough vaccines to vaccinate everyone eligible, already- the stockpile has only increased since January so has outstripped demand for 4 months even when demand was peak

*which at least they're waiving for expiring stocks of vaccine- and less credibly, to try and stop people using Russian or Chinese vaccines (ie the at cost Pfizer delivery to Brazil)

Which is eminently sensible in general, but it's also part of the reason why the US can support suspending patents, now. In contrast, the EU's home grown vaccines aren't online yet (except German BioNTech production, and labeling J&J as Janssen) so having their patents suspended would mean that they actively lose money on research etc.

For anyone terrified for the bottom lines of Pfizer et alia consider that the EU is looking to buy 1.9 billion doses from them. At the lowest charging rate that's ~20 billion in profit that Pfizer would not have had. At the rate they charged Israel it would be ~40 billion in profit. My heart bleeds for them at least as badly as it does for some anonymous indian peasant in Bihar hacking their lungs out.

[melkathi]

Got my first dose today.

Lady waiting in line after me was scared. Guy from the health center: "Are you scared of walking home because a flowerpot could fall off a balcony and kill you?"

"No..."

"The likelihood of that happening is higher than that of serious side effects from the vaccine. Young people may have headaches and a fever on the day."

 

(I had the headaches and am in bed with shivers. I don't do fever anymore. I hate the fever dreams I would get. Waiting to fall asleep and wake up fine.)

 

Friend was joking that I was going to give everyone fever since I probably develope a contagious fever side effect. Sadly another friend heard him who didn't understand it was just a joke. So he sat down and started calculating his chances of getting infected with the vaccine by hanging out with me, so he wouldn't need to get vaccinated himself.

We had to explain that vaccines aren't transmitted from host to host...

Edited May 8, 2021 by melkathi