because believe it or not some people live in countries where the government manages to do just that.
Same thing happened with tests a few months ago in Palo Alto. Billionaires with boxes of them at their homes while public stocks ran low.
PS: They were no COVID vaccine in October but clinical trials.
Boxes of the test kits. I was giving precedence. Frankly surprised this is news to so many people. It’s well known in e.g. D.C. circles.
Maybe you knew someone participating in a study but that's not queue skipping.
Don't get me wrong I hate billionaires but this just seems like it can't factually be correct.
It's easily conceivable that billionaires have been pushing to be 'in the loop' on the meds from the start, and will have gained access long ago to whatever was used in the most promising trials. They can take it as soon as the insider doctors flag that it's ok, likely many weeks before any public announcement, and certainly before any governmental validation.
The value of said vaccines are considerable, there's massive money involved, I wonder if the R&D institutions themselves may have been able to find a loophole to allow for it.
With the sheer number of doctors and patients involved in the trial, and vials worth possibly $100-500K on the black market ... it's bound to get out.
And frankly, who cares? A couple thousand early vaccines is basically meaningless from a public health standpoint. It might even be moral to have publicly auctioned off the first mini batch and put the money into production. It's rational because the 'willingness to pay' of some billionaires for the almost arbitrary early access to a vaccine which will soon be cheap and plentiful ... works well as a 'win win' both for the buyer, and society.
What you're talking about is literally a black market. The people you are hanging out with are literally criminals, who are at best injecting themselves with an unknown substance provided by criminal doctors. Most of us probably wish to see such people prosecuted.
Which creates a force field around the warehouses in which it sits? Come on.
I guess I’ll revise to I know of people with substantial resources, hundreds of millions and billions at their disposal, who have been injected with something they believe to be the Pfizer vaccine.
https://www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(20)30027-1
and has had good results in trials from March.
Also, I'm guessing that JumpCrissCross doesn't know specifically that it is the Pfizer vaccine. It could be the Moderna one.
> A more promising vaccine was developed in January 2020 and requires only -4C
Which vaccine is this? The link you just posted talks about Moderna, which started trials in August.
Designed by Jan 13, manufactured and first trial by mid-Feb.
Also quote ..
>as early as July the MIT Technology Review reported that a group of 70 scientists in the orbit of Harvard and MIT, including “celebrity geneticist” George Church, were taking a totally DIY nasal-spray vaccine,
This is a global pandemic, trials with 30 000 patients x 5, each one of those vials worth an absolute fortune, there's a 100% chance quite a bit of it has fled into the black market and a sophisticated one at that.
And to wit - there are a lot of people being 'officially' vaccinated right now behind the scenes they're not going to tell us about.
It might be dangerous for politicians to get it early, because if asked by reporters either they have to lie, or say 'yes' and then public outcry.
Special Forces, the Secret Service and some other security personal - just a some examples are going to get it long before we plebes. Among others.
There are easier ways for people in power to get vaccines. In China, the government has granted exceptional permissions to vaccinate a number of people with a vaccine that has not yet completed phase 3 trials. The list of people who qualify for that vaccine is said to be several million people long. It's much easier to get on said list in China than it is anywhere else. A number of other governments have also made exceptions for political leaders and such, treating them with non-approved medication or vaccines. For example, the sheikh of Dubai has been vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine before approval (in a very public display of faith in said vaccine, in order to promote vaccination to the population). Some countries are saying they won't bother waiting for phase 3 trials to end on some products and will make vaccines generally available based on current data. This is the case for Russia (with Sputnik-V) and Morocco (with the Sinopharm vaccine). I consider it highly likely that their heads of state are vaccinated under an exceptional authorization.
This is likely complete misinformation. Why is there so much misinformation on HN today?
That was frankly my line of questioning. But at least in the German case, the vials and packaging looked legitimate. And it was a reputable doctor administering it at their home who claimed to have directly procured it, though I’m sure that meant warehouse workers or something in the middle, so who knows.
Agree. From how prevalently I watched tests get mis-allocated a few months ago, however, I’m not optimistic about enforcement. Particularly given the political implications it would have for the leaders in power, who are supposed to be doing a better job at this.
Yup. It’s sitting in warehouses ready for distribution. No idea how. And no idea how they trusted it to be legitimate.