Let the ultra-rich and influential skip the line for Covid-19 vaccines?

American's love celebrities, so if celebrities pay for access, the common American will want what is temporarily denied from them.

There is a historical precedent, Antoine Parmentier tricked the French people into adopting the potato in 1786, by placing armed guards around potato fields: https://www.damninteresting.com/cry-havoc-and-let-slip-the-s...

It’s not even clear to me that this is such a terrible way to allocate this scarce resources - if the NBA wants to spend a billion dollars on some of the first doses so they can go to work (and subsidize 50m other doses in the process) that doesn’t seem so wrong? For every 100 doses auction off 1 to pay for the other 99 (maybe even more!).

Secondly "this isn't political! It's either a free-market solution or a tax". No. It's not a free-market solution, it's the governemnt setting an arbitrary price for a product they have a legal monopoly on, it's also not a tax since it's entirely optional for people to pay it.

Thirdly, the comparison to Delaney is massively off - Delaney's plan would save nearly $100Bn compared to the current solution of selling the vaccine and congress being forced to hand out $2000 stimulus checks. Becuase the checks weren't really about getting people to take the vaccine, it was about providing the stimulus checks that are already going to happen, but tying them to something.

Finally, if you're rich enough to give $100k for a vaccine you're probably rich enough to find a way of getting it somewhere else, so really what we're saying is that you're asking them to make a massive donation for something that they don't need fron you.

edit: I don't mean it will happen in the way the article describes, rather it will happen because the ultra rich tend to be friends with powerful people who have access to these types of things.

There might be a market scheme for allocating the virus that does align with society's incentives, but I would bet dollars to pennies that that solution is basically just democratically elected government.

Besides I'm not sure supply constraint would be a big problem, i think there are quite lot of people that understand the actual risk of getting seriously sick from covid and wouldn't be that eager to get a vaccine.

Use the vaccine to protect the people who are actually in danger. If a billionaire gets covid they can get the super special sci-fi insta-cure that every other person in power gets.

The solution to a public health communications issue is not 'get influencers on board' it's to amplify the science communicators who are already doing it, and public policy.

After all, it's the strategy that allowed us to feed and shelter a planet of 8 billion.

But in reality the vaccine distribution is made through policy and politics. Because this strategy worked so well back in March, with the PPE. If this doesn't prove that we live under socialism, I don't know what will.

So check if you have a friend in high places, if you are one of the chosen ones. Because in socialism resources are allocated through the good old power networks. Relations, bureaucracy and so on. Who you know becomes more important than what you know, who you do more important than what you do. It's a brave new world and I hope your dossier is perfect.

But don't worry: you'll easily buy a dose on the black market.

When will the manufacturers backorder obligations be filled so they sell the vaccine on the open market? Do they have any contractual requirements to sell through government determined channels?

Look at how Stanford Medicine allocated its allocation of the vaccine. It allocated it to administrators first then apologized when it was exposed. What is left unsaid is that they never gave up their power to decide who gets the vaccine.

Have you heard of anyone giving up their place in line for the vaccine?

There are five more manufacturers which were funded by operation warp seed and are various stages of development.

There is also the Chinese vaccine SinoVac, which has stated there will be capacity to manufacture 600 million doses a year by the end of 2020, with another 350 million doses/yr in Indonesia and Brazil.

I would expect the even moderately wealthy to be able to cut in line and acquire it whether or not they admit to it publicly.

For $100 mil you can buy a small biotech lab and create your own mRNA vaccine. They are not that complicated compared to classical vaccines, and the testing was basically done already by Pfizer/Moderna.

And for much less, surely there will be ways to "source" doses. It's ridiculous to think that many rich people will pay $100 mil for a dose.

Publicize how desperate the rich are to get the vaccine and that 60% willingness to get vaccinated will go up (which is a large part of what the article said). I think charging money to skip, just causes a whole raft of other problems. Let the elites think they are pulling strings and just give it to them.

But no, this is someone suggesting celebrities and billionaires should be the first people we protect.

In a healthy functioning society, we'd protect the most vulnerable first -- elderly, front line workers, grocery store workers, etc. And we'd find the funding to make that happen either by taxing the ultra wealthy or just printing money because it's a pandemic and they are relatively rare events and the cost to vaccinate everyone is relatively fixed.

We have plenty of elderly celebrities who could still be at the front of the line cheering on the vaccine.

The approach the author suggests seems like government with extra steps to me.