Bill Gates says Covid-19 drugs should go where needed, not ‘the highest bidder’ | Hacker News Reader

Bill Gates says Covid-19 drugs should go where needed, not ‘the highest bidder’

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13 pointsjedimind8 comments

I wish it were possible. Enough so that I embarrassingly started a change.org petition along the same lines. It has garnered few signatures, even among friends. This either speaks to my incompetence as a promoter or people's reasonable cinicism towards the value of change.org petitions.

https://www.change.org/CovidRemedyForAll

Has there been a single case of change.org petition achieving anything?

That's a great question. I would not be surprised if the answer was no. But I suppose you could say the same of prayer and in some of my more desperate moments I have certainly said one.

Allocating resources that way is only feasible if a superior authority has the power to handle it, e.g. the central government within a country.

There is no such authority internationally and no country and no government will accept to miss out and let needed drugs/equipments go somewhere else.

Those served first will be the one with the production capability and money.

While there is no international organization and means to distribute the vaccine to the most needy, in the US, we have troves of census data that can pinpoint neighborhoods that are the most at risk - based on age, access to health care, and income.

With a government that actually cares about its people, the HHS can set up pilot sites to vaccinate in those most needy areas. Moreover, the US military has experience in setting up field hospitals for these purposes in Liberia against Ebola. So bottomline is that it is a matter of political will on how we distribute the COVID drugs.

This sounds like a good idea on paper, but allow me to frame this differently. The first vaccine will likely be slightly experimental because it was done rather quickly. This means you are effectively asking the government to set up shop in likely minority and poorer neighborhoods to administer a vaccine that might have unknown side-effects that don't appear until being used by a larger population of people. It seems like you are supporting experimenting on the poor.

I think you need to make it available, but in this case, maybe allowing people to choose is the right decision. Make sure it's available equally, yes, make sure poorer people have access, but don't rush to make sure that only the poor get it.

I agree. My point is that in general that when there is a high demand for very scarce resources, it is usually the rich or powerful who gets it. All I am saying is that don't forget about the poor people.

Most needed, and highest bidder is the same is it not?

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