Pfizer says 2021 Covid-19 vaccine sales to top $33.5 bln, sees need for boosters | Hacker News Reader

Pfizer says 2021 Covid-19 vaccine sales to top $33.5 bln, sees need for boosters

reuters.com

In summary: A.) Pfizer is raking in over $33 billion from vaccine sales. B.) Due to the PREP Act, they are completely immune from lawsuits arising from any form of complications arising from those vaccines. C.) If you don't take this vaccine, you may lose your job[0]. D.) If you don't take this vaccine, you may be barred from normal everyday social activities[1][2].

I can't be the only one who is incredibly uncomfortable about society going down this path.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27986160 [1]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-widens-green-pass... [2]: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/San-Fra...

Given that:

A. Pfizer isn’t the only vaccine option.

B. If one doesn’t take the vaccine, one’s chances of dying or being disabled for years or permanently are much higher.

C. If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.

I think it’s the best option out of all non-great options to mandate vaccines in order to participate in crowded settings. It’s a matter of civic responsibility in order to partake in civic life. Sure it would be better if there was no Covid so no one would need an extra vaccine, but that world no longer exists. I don’t like the current situation either but it is what it is.

Civic responsibility isn’t brought up much these days. Liability shield for vaccine makers isn’t fair, but unvaccinated allowed to romp around spreading the virus without liability is also not fair.

Pfizer and Moderna have similar risk profiles, everything else seems to be much worse. Argument B is highly subjective and I would argue that "the data isn't there" for the young and healthy parts of the population. Despite being "safe and effective" by the standards of medicine, a Sars-COV2 vaccination also carries a non-zero risk of disability and death. Argument C doesn't really cut it, because "someone else" should've gotten the vaccine themselves, if they're at risk.

It's now becoming obvious that vaccinated individuals can still be infected and can spread the infection as well. At the same time, mortality is greatly diminished. At that point, we have a vague and unspecific reduction of an already modest risk. This is insufficient to make a "civic responsibility" argument. By the same token, I could argue people should not drive cars as a matter of civic responsibility, because that carries a non-zero risk of killing a pedestrian.

Risk of car death was actually similar where I live to death from covid for my age.

Elsewhere in the replies to my comment there are plenty of responses to your first paragraph, please browse them if you’re interested in why those criticisms of ABC are not good and miss some crucial aspects of it.

But the analogy to cars is flawed. A more equitable one would be to obey traffic laws and not do things like speed or lane jump. I.e driving in a responsible manner that is considerate of others safety. It doesn’t reduce traffic accidents to zero, it minimizes them. Your analogy would be like continuing the lockdown for vaccinated people because even vaccinated people can in rare cases spread the disease. That is as wacky as forbidden people to drive. Having people vaccinated to partake in large gatherings is like requiring people to obey speed limits or face a penalty. Sure some people will get around it.

The “rare” cases of vaccinated individuals infecting others are neither enumerated or fully understood. In fact, until this week the CDC seemed to downplay the idea that vaccinated individuals _could_ spread the virus. Now they seem to be so concerned about it that one of the banner benefits of being vaccinated - not having to wear a mask in public settings - has been rescinded.

At the same time employers now seemingly want to be on the hook for any communicable diseases spread on company property or function. People are being coerced into disclosing medical information or risk being treated like pariahs. It cannot be understated that people are being pressured into getting an unapproved (EUA is not approval) gene therapy (FDAs classification, not mine) that has never been widely tested in humans and has non-trivial side effects. This is unprecedented, at least in the US.

This is on top of being constantly mislead by media and government officials. NPR recently gave a stat, something to the effect of “young people under 40 make up half the positive COVID cases”. Sounds alarming, except that demographic makes up half the population _and_ that demographic had disproportionately mild symptoms from the disease.

If you want to be vaccinated, please go right ahead. But then stop. Allow others that you are not the guardian of to make their own health choices based on their personal research or decision making process.

Show people mortality rates for various things around the world. I wonder how the ones banging the "civil responsibility" drum would react.

The way I understand it is; you can't compare to mortality rates for other various things because these other various are spread out over a 12 month period. When there is a spike in Covid cases they all happen at the same time, which floods the health system and people die needlessly (e.g. not enough ventilators). People can get very ill (and die) from the flu as well but they don't tend to do this all at the same time (i.e. no spike) but get sick spread out over a longer period of time.

I'm all for the approach of not overwhelming healthcare. After the initial surge health care was not overwhelmed regardless of approaches to restrictions. Look at Florida vs California: They had same outcome with opposite approaches.

> one’s chances of dying or being disabled for years or permanently are much higher.

What is "much higher" in a number?

> If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.

"Significant" would depend on their lifestyle, would it not? Are the rural unvaccinated as "significant" as the urban unvacinnated?

> Civic responsibility isn’t brought up much these days.

Not everyone has the same idea of what civic responsibility should be, which is probably why we have to write and then enforce laws.

> What is "much higher" in a number?

I'm not sure about the booster dose, Delta or any other variants, but the Pfizer Vaccine has been consistently shown in several studies to reduce COVID mortality by 99%, so that number is currently ~100

> What is "much higher" in a number?

The Pfizer vaccine as I believe 94% effective against severe disease, so around 20x higher.

>> one’s chances of dying or being disabled for years or permanently are much higher.

> What is "much higher" in a number?

The analysis revealed that vaccination efficacy in terms of protection against deaths was equal to 72%, with a lower reduction of number of deaths for B.1.1.7 versus non-B.1.1.7 variants (70% and 78%, respectively). Other factors significantly related to mortality were arrivals at airports, mobility change from the pre-pandemic level and temperature.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.26.21257844v...

An estimated 10,400 deaths have been averted [in the UK] as a result of the COVID-19 vaccination programme up to the end of March 2021.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

>> If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.

> "Significant" would depend on their lifestyle, would it not? Are the rural unvaccinated as "significant" as the urban unvacinnated?

Living in a rural environment does not mean that the virus doesn't spread, otherwise the "Cases/Deaths per 100,000" maps at https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/09/01/8167071... would have wide divergence per state, but they all are around 11K deaths per 100,000.

A common thing I heard from some early in the pandemic was that places with lower density would fare better, but that never made much sense to me: even if you have only 10K people in a 50 mile diameter circle, they all still shop and socialize in a handful of places.

I heard they would just experience the same infection rates but at a later date than urban which seems to have played out for the rural community I'm in.

Right, that's what experts were warning, while I saw multiple people in the relevant locales holding the idea I mentioned. Was this something you didn't see in your immediate area? It would be interesting to see if there was wide regional variation on whether people felt "it won't be as bad here".

I think generally there was an expectation that you'll be safer in the sticks. But I talked to a respected epidemiologist early on and they said they had high confidence that rural rates per 100k people would reach the same as urban, just weeks later. This did in fact play out that way when I look back at the published rates for where I live and compare it with the city two hours away. Was about a five or six week lag until we reached similar case rates per 100k.

> B. If one doesn’t take the vaccine, one’s chances of dying or being disabled for years or permanently are much higher.

But for a young person with no co-morbidities, that chance is still basically 0%.

> C. If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.

Even if others have taken the vaccine themselves? Either that particular risk is negligible if the vaccine works, or the vaccine doesn't work.

>> B. If one doesn’t take the vaccine, one’s chances of dying or being disabled for years or permanently are much higher.

>But for a young person with no co-morbidities, that chance is still basically 0%.

According to table "COVID-19 Fatality Rate by AGE:" at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-se..., the mortality rate for everyone under 40 years of age is 0.2%. That "is basically 0", but means that for every 1000 people infected, 2 will die. Roughly half of the US is under 40 years old (https://www.statista.com/statistics/241488/population-of-the...). If no-one had gotten vaccinated, you would expect to see 320,000 deaths in that age group. According to https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#Se..., we've had 286,000 deaths so far in that age group.

>> C. If one doesn’t take the vaccine there is a significant chance they give the virus to someone else, killing them.

> Even if others have taken the vaccine themselves? Either that particular risk is negligible if the vaccine works, or the vaccine doesn't work.

You're forgetting the number 1 law of large numbers. Things that have a very low chance of probability happen all the time at scale. The vaccine reduces the likelihood of individuals dying by orders of magnitude, and as a group it is a great tool to reduce the R0 under 1, but contagion and transmition is still possible, and every new infection we are rolling the dice on getting "lucky" with a new vaccine resistant variant.

From your cdc link, it looks like less than 10k people have died in the under 40 age bracket. Am I looking at the right data?

Also, are you aware you can be exposed to the virus and not be infected?

> From your cdc link, it looks like less than 10k people have died in the under 40 age bracket. Am I looking at the right data?

I added every age group between 0 and 39, but took the incorrect column (Deaths from all causes, which is obviously incorrect), which puts me off by an order of magnitude.

> Also, are you aware you can be exposed to the virus and not be infected?

That is true, like with any virus it is a statistics game. It is also true that the Delta variant is 1000x more virulent/transmissible, so likelihood of infection is much higher today than a year ago.

And since being vaccinated would have saved most of those 10k people and like a small handful have died from all of the vaccines across all age groups, and a small handful is orders of magnitude smaller than 10k. It does seem like a vaccine mandate even for under 40s is the smart thing to do.

That doesn’t even get into the benefit of preventing long Covid and being able to open the economy faster with fewer restrictions

And since we all know cholesterol and saturated fats are killers, we should ban butter and institute that everyone should have at least a tablespoon each of canola and sunflower oil a day. Except the science has now reversed to the point that polyunsaturated fats are being implicated as likely causes of obesity and metabolic disease.

You statement sounds far more confident than what the science would currently permit.

> You're forgetting the number 1 law of large numbers. Things that have a very low chance of probability happen all the time at scale.

Severe reactions to experimental vaccines for example?

On the last point:

1) The vaccine isn't perfect, and herd immunity nonlinearly reduces the risk of everyone including the vaccinated from getting it.

2) Unvaccinated people, who make up the vast majority of the cases, create an environment for the virus to evolve within, possibly mutating into a form that is more dangerous to everyone, including the vaccinated

> The vaccine isn't perfect, and herd immunity nonlinearly reduces the risk of everyone including the vaccinated from getting it.

I would argue that the data now shows that herd immunity is not achievable with any vaccination rate. The vaccines just don't work that way, breakthrough infections are rampant.

> Unvaccinated people, who make up the vast majority of the cases, create an environment for the virus to evolve within, possibly mutating into a form that is more dangerous to everyone, including the vaccinated.

This is speculative. Vaccination-induced immunity is clearly not perfect, at the same it puts selection pressure on the virus. Natural immunity, going by reinfection rates, appears to be much stronger. I would speculate that in a population where 70% are vaccinated, where the amount of infections among the vaccinated is roughly the same, the virus is much more likely to mutate in the vaccinated individuals.

Only for you. The argument above was from civic responsibility, by being in crowded environments while unvaccinated you risk the lives of others.

Also, the chance of being disabled for a long while if you are young without comorbidity is far from 0%. It is quite significant, certainly above 0.5%.

What is the risk for people who are vaccinated? There should be some level of personal responsibility at this point. Everyone has had a chance to get the vaccine.

Not everyone can take the vaccine. Which is why everyone that can, should, for everyone's sake.

What's the percentage of the population in the United States that can't get vaccinated for health reasons?

People with allergies and pregnant can get the vaccine for the most part, but because I can't find relevant numbers, lets say (incorrectly) that anyone with a food allergy can't get the vaccines: that'd be 32 million people (https://www.aafa.org/allergy-facts/).

~60 million are <12 years of age, which means that they aren't eligible for the vaccine at this time, and I've seen reports that it is unlikely we'll have vaccines for the youngest among us. So 82% of the population is the absolute most we can vaccinate.

With the demographic numbers and the (admittedly terrible proxy of) allergy numbers, 86 million people wouldn't be vaccinated (~25%). With a 0.2% percent fatality rate, we are talking about 170,000 deaths if all of them get infected.

As I understand it, pretty much the only people who aren't eligible for vaccination in the US are those who've had an allergic reaction to a previous dose of the vaccine or one of its ingredients specifically and under-12s, though there are some additional observation requirements for people with a history of certain other allergic reactions. The former is quite a small group and children are at really low risk: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-only-0-005-of-covid-infe...

Ah yes, as soon as the world stops cultivating peanuts to accommodate my lethal (and heritable) peanut allergy. It should be a no brainer after all, with the nearly infinite other foods we have available as substitutes.

Do you feel like prevalent labeling and stringent segregation policies in food handling to accommodate you aren't equivalent? And if someone's dish sends you into anaphylaxis at a dinner party, the host won't be going "Shouldn't have come then! I refuse to live in peanut-fear!".

A reasonable court would put duty on the guest to inform the host of known allergies.

There are some people for whom the vaccine will not be effective (those who are already immunocompromised for example, or people with certain allergies to vaccine ingredients).

> But for a young person with no co-morbidities, that chance is still basically 0%.

Having long term side effects doesn't round to zero, even for young healthy people. And vaccine side effects do.

Historically speaking, countries have refrained from forcing even medical workers and people caring for the elderly to get flu vaccines, even though this argument - that there are some people for whom the vaccine will not be effective - is even more true of that (in fact, as I understand it some studies suggest the flu vaccine might be basically ineffective at preventing serious complications and death in those at risk of them, leaving its ability to stop people from being infected and spreading it as the only way to reduce risk). As far as I can tell, the only reason to treat Covid differently basically boils down to partisan politics...

Of course not. Most countries have mandated vaccines for HCW.

The reason the flu vaccine isn't one of them is because it's not that effective to begin with and you have to take it every year. It's not effective enough to really stop an epidemic, so instead vaccinating patients is the main thrust instead of HCW, because the overall impact will be fairly low.

> As far as I can tell, the only reason to treat Covid differently basically boils down to partisan politics...

A difference is that COVID is much deadlier, no?

People can essentially get "long-covid" from the vaccine. Unfortunately, people are afraid to talk about it for fear of being labeled an antivax-er.

You'll, of course, cite a source?

There aren't actually any virus particles in the mRNA vaccines, so there's no biological mechanism for that to happen.

I can get a source in a bit. IIRC it was the spike protein that causes some (still unknown) response from the human body. The mRNA vaccine elicit a response from the immune system to reproduce the spike protein.

We have no idea that the spike protein causes long covid. It's much more likely that damage from the viral infection and immune response is at least an equal cause.

Beyond that, the virus causes orders of magnitude more spike protein response, so even if that was true, which it probably isn't, then it is still very unlikely that the vaccine could cause long-covid.

Also, all vaccines introduce spike proteins in the body, not just mRNA vaccines.

Source for above:

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201217154046.h...

Relevant part "The spike proteins alone can cause brain fog". And vaccines do produce viral proteins as intended.

That claim isn't made or supported by the cited nature article (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-020-00771-8).

It appears to come from a researcher contacted by the site for the article. And it's probably true.

However, there's a few reasons to believe that "long" covid like symptoms wouldn't come from the spike protein alone:

1. As a parent mentioned, you generate a lot fewer proteins w/ the vaccine than the virus

2. IIUC, those proteins are more localized. The soreness with an initial injection is inflammation due to spike protein creation, and that's usually localized to the injection site. The proteins themselves are less likely to travel as widely as the virus.

3. The proteins don't last very long. They're gone after a few days. So long term symptoms wouldn't be due to a continued immune response. They might be due to inflammation that hasn't gone down, I guess, but that seems unlikely to last months.

And again, all of these will be worse with the virus than the vaccine. You'll have more spike proteins, for longer, over a larger part of your body, and also have a virus attacking you in addition to the immune response.

Another thing is that spike protein from the vaccine in the arm has a much tougher time getting to the brain than viruses in the nose/olfactory bulb. That's on top of less spike to begin with.

> Having long term side effects doesn't round to zero, even for young healthy people. And vaccine side effects do.

I'm hesitant to just accept this as a fact. Vaccinations can cause very strong immune reactions in young adults that would otherwise likely suffer mild or asymptomatic infections. There are many surveys that query for a basket of sometimes unspecific symptoms such as "fatigue" or "brain fog" as a follow-up of a COVID infection. I'm missing that volume of surveys in the follow-up for vaccinations.

> B.) Due to the PREP Act, they are completely immune from lawsuits arising from any form of complications arising from those vaccines.

I feel like (B) is true, but framed in such a way to get a specific [negative] reaction.

People hurt by any COVID-19 vaccine are still entitled to compensation for that injury. Essentially the US Government provides a liability shield, wherein the damages/liability is transferred to a specific government fund, because it is considered in the greater public good to have companies make vaccines at all.

This is done via the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program[0] which is easier/cheaper to win than normal civil court and pays attorneys fees on a win. This is funded via a specific tax on all vaccine sales that is earmarked for only this purpose.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Vaccine_Injury_Compen...

I guess the negative part is that the people developing the vaccine can be a little bit less conservative with their design, since they have no incentive to be extra careful to avoid expensive lawsuits.

...and I believe that's part of the point of the Act itself: free up reluctances from those in better position to be able to come up with a solution. This is the same reason why everywhere in the world the vaccines have been approved for use under Emergency Use rules.

I was surprised to learn they took covid vaccine injuries out of the typical and long-standing compensation program.

It apparently is using an odd countermeasure payment program, which is not approving any claims. https://yourworlddaily.blogspot.com/2021/07/covid-19-vaccine...

I find your lack of faith in our corporate-federal oligarchs disturbing. Perhaps your name should be added to a list...

> "I can't be the only one who is incredibly uncomfortable about society going down this path."

it's dystopian. this is power that won't be reliquished by either major party, just like 9/11 surveillance and security theater. unlike some of currently fashionable political impetuses, this one is worth actively resisting, to keep federal powers in check.

lol. vaccination is the law. you guys can't spread measles anymore and thank god for that.

The measles vaccine has been around for decades. There are plenty of long term studies on the efficacy and saftey. How many long term studies have there been on any of the covid vaccines?

Has there ever been serious long-term side effects caused by vaccines? Yes, a tiny number of people have had serious short-term complications from them, but I'll take five deaths over 3,000 deaths a day.

mRNA vaccines have been well studied - from a scientific standpoint it's hard to imagine how it even could cause problems.

You will take 5 deaths, meaning you will choose for others whether to risk that. Do you not realize the implication here?

No worse than you choosing that the people around you may die from your not vaccinating.

Studied or researched is not that reassuring given the replication crisis. There's a big difference between academia and real world use.

A few people have died from covid vaccines which sure seems long term to me.

Here is an example of a long term problem caused by a (traditional, non-mrna) vaccine

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/history/narcoleps...

As far as I know there hasn't been much research into the long term effects of many vaccines. After decades of availability if they were causing issues I hope somebody would have found a connection if they were causing issues. I would very much like to see research into this though.

I do agree mrna vaccines are unlikely to cause long term issues.

Just to be clear. I am very much in favor of vaccines. I just don't like being required to take it so soon after it was created.

mRNA vaccines have been researched for decades, and the only really novel part of the covid vaccine is the particular protein, which will also be present in a natural infection.

So if you trust the decades of mRNA vaccine research, you should consider the vaccine strictly safer than covid, as getting the disease will expose you to everything the vaccine exposes you to.

Do you believe there doesn't need to be long term studies of traditional vaccines? There have been decades of research into them as well.

I believe both mrna and traditional vaccines are safer than covid. I just don't like to take vaccines or medication without longer results than a year. I also agree mRNA vaccines shouldn't have any long term negative effects, but I tend to take the position when in doubt don't take an action.

If in 5 years there hasn't been any widespread negative effects I will probably take it.

I'm not an expert, but my understanding is that the amount of customization in an mRNA vaccine is much less than in more traditional vaccines, so the room for unexpected problems is essentially just the protein.

This is similar to how flu vaccines vary from year to year, but the mechanisms and changes are well understood so the approval process can be streamlined, but we don't expect issues from this year's flu vaccine that we didn't see last year, even though they are different.

> it's dystopian

It's already the law, and has been for like half a century (edit: more like 80 years, actually). If you aren't vaccinated you can't attend school. You can't serve in the military. You can't work in many health care fields. We requires our citizenry to be vaccinated against major preventable diseases. We always have.

And this policy is, objectively, the second[1] biggest success story in the last few centuries of public health policy. Period.

Why did no one care about "keeping federal powers in check" in 2019? Why do you only care now? You don't think maybe that there's something polluting your priors?

[1] The invention of antibiotics gets #1.

> If you aren't vaccinated you can't attend school.

Unless you get an exemption, which can be requested and are often granted on a variety of grounds.

> We requires our citizenry to be vaccinated against major preventable diseases. We always have.

We clearly don't, though. As a citizen you can be entirely unvaccinated and live a completely normal life.

To counter your first point about school vaccination, I live in the US and the state I live in has very few exemptions which also apply to the COVID-19 vaccine. There are religious and medical exemptions, and the religious exemptions are hard to get and basically are not available for 99.9% of people.

So yeah sure, if you have a specific medical problem, or very very limited religious reason, you can be exempted from vaccination, which is the same for the COVID vaccine.

Literally nothing has changed, the COVID vaccine is now just part of the list of required vaccines (and as of right now COVID vaccination is actually not required at most universities as they are waiting for final FDA approval which will likely be here sometime in late August).

> We clearly don't, though. As a citizen you can be entirely unvaccinated and live a completely normal life.

This is only because the majority of the populace is vaccinated against polio, measles. If the majority of the population was also unvaccinated, these viruses would make life not fun. Most of us live a very sheltered life and have never directly experienced living with measles or polio.

> We clearly don't, though. As a citizen you can be entirely unvaccinated and live a completely normal life.

You seem to be arguing technicalities without addressing my point. We have lots and lots of vaccine regulation that ensures that virtually all citizens are immune to diseases like measles, hep, diphtheria, etc... No, it's not absolute, and I don't believe I claimed it was. All policy requires careful tuning.

So let's include covid in the same regime. You agree with that part, right?

Many states don’t have non-medical exemptions for vaccine requirements.

The vaccine passport seems to be a whole other level of show us your papers though. It would have to be backed by a central database with scanning to really work. By definition you could be turned off or geo fenced with it.

You can attend school, just not public schools. Private schools are free to not require vaccines.

Biggest success story? Have you heard about the delta variant and the surge in cases among both unvaccinated AND vaccinated?

1.) The "success story" they're speaking about is the broader vaccination requirements that have been around for far longer than COVID.

2.) You mean the surge in cases that are seeing vaccinated people faring statistically far better than the un-vaccinated? I don't think that it was ever a secret that the vaccine wasn't going to be bulletproof or capable of complete success against all variants, especially variants that didn't exist at the time of development.

I have not heard of a surge in cases among the unvaccinated, actually. Do you have a cite? All data I've seen points to a 90%+ effectiveness of Pfizer vs. Delta for infection, and it looks like more than 99% vs. death. It's MUCH MUCH MUCH safer to face potential infection with the vaccine than without.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/27/health/cdc-mask-guidance-vacc...

There are many more breakthrough cases with the delta variant. That said, the vaccines are still very good at combatting serious illness:

    We continue to estimate that the risk of a breakthrough 
    infection with symptom upon exposure to the Delta variant 
    is reduced by seven-fold. The reduction of 20-fold for 
    hospitalizations, and deaths," Walensky said during 
    Tuesday's briefing.

If you look at the numbers, you're significantly less likely to be infected if you've been vaccinated, and hospitalization rates are 95% lower. The fact that we're seeing a good number of people infected after vaccination is classic Bayes theorem.

If we could get 70% of the population vaccinated we could be done with this and move on with our lives.

How many people are you one degree of separation from that died on w/ a tube stuck down their throat? I've got 3. I'm cool with A-D and esp. C. If you aren't vaxxed, GTFO of my office. If your kid isn't vaxxed, get them as far away from my kid as possible

They died because of the tube, not because of some PCR test with a CT of 40 said positive.

I get the discomfort but what is the alternative?

NOT approve emergency measures (such as PREP Act) that hopes to push risk down and face much slow development for vaccines?

Emminent domain pharmaceutical supply chain?

Nationalize vaccine research efforts to "force" the creation of a new vaccine?

Stop "forcing" people to take vaccine to reduce demand to penalize private enterprise?

These are genuine questions. All vaccines makers/suppliers are poised to rake in profits, be it in capital or some other geopolitical favours.

Ivermectin is a solid alternative. It saved my ass and there are enough RCT studies still standing to give it serious consideration given its long billions of doses safety history.

C and D seem fine to me. It's necessary to protect everyone else. A and B are the problem. The US government should have limited Pfizer's profit margin, and they should be using the money saved to cover people's medical costs for complications arising from the vaccine (removing the need to sue).

I could not disagree more. Pfizer should be able to profit from the vaccine. If the govt steps in and takes away their ability to benefit from the vaccine what incentive is there for bio firms to respond like Pfizer did in the future? Why work on risky and expensive vaccine technologies if, in the unlikely event it is ever needed, you won't have a chance of recouping your costs?

I didn't say they shouldn't be able to profit. Just that the profit should be limited.

> Pfizer should be able to profit from the vaccine

Government-mandated vaccine from a private supplier. What could possibly go wrong.

So would you rather have your taxes increased so that it is from the government?

Would you not be making the same statement if it was a federally funded, just with a word replaced?

> So would you rather have your taxes increased so that it is from the government?

It will increase my taxes anyway; who do you think is paying for all this?

The difference is, that in this way, my taxes pay for privately-held know-how. I want my taxes to pay for public know-how.

> The US government should have limited Pfizer's profit margin, and they should be using the money saved to cover people's medical costs for complications arising from the vaccine (removing the need to sue).

They didn't have to limit Pfizer's or other suppliers profit margin to cover people's costs for recommended to diagnose, treat, or prevent COVID (or used in conjunction to enhance effectiveness of or mitigate risks or complications of such a diagnostic, treatment, or prevention measure); that's covered by the same law which shields the makers of those things from liability. [0]

[0] https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp/faq#covid

C and D... are you aware of Nuremberg Code, a set of principles created after Nuremberg trials?

If you are fine with C and D, you might find yourself in a company that most people would not like to be.

Fact check: Nuremberg Code Addresses Experimentation, Not Vaccines

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/06/nuremberg-code-addresses-e...

This vaccine is still unapproved, meaning it's being used experimentally at this point. It has not been approved nor completed normal testing trials. Otherwise it wouldn't have had to receive emergency use authorization.

> An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) is a mechanism to facilitate the availability and use of medical countermeasures, including vaccines, during public health emergencies, such as the current COVID-19 pandemic. Under an EUA, FDA may allow the use of unapproved medical products, or unapproved uses of approved medical products in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions when certain statutory criteria have been met, including that there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.

https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/vaccines/emerge...

> It has not been approved nor completed normal testing trials. Otherwise it wouldn't have had to receive emergency use authorization.

That's false. The mere fact that a vaccine is EUA does not mean that it hasn't been tested. The vaccines available under EUA today have gone through exactly the same testing phases as fully FDA-approved ones. The only difference is that the phases were overlapping instead of performed serially. The link you reference already explains this.

I did not say it had no testing at all. It has gone through short term testing. But it has insufficient testing to pass the standard hurdles and thus could only be used with the Emergency Use Authorization. Which carries with it the risks of consequences being unknown. As in this case, the long term consequences. And that’s where the category of experimental unknown results lays and how the Geneva Convention on human rights applies: not being allowed to force this vaccine on people through force or coercion.

The vaccine has now been administered to more people than any other medication in the history of humanity, with more data points collected than any other medication. There's no way that your claim that it hasn't been sufficiently tested stands up here, at all. It's a transparent lie.

And on the topic of ethics, we have more than enough data on the rate of bodily damage and death caused by the covid virus to make vaccines available to the public as soon as practically possible. Any public policy of holding back vaccines for years of small-scale testing in the face of such mass death would be tantamount to genocidal negligence.

They didn't go exactly the same testing phases; the serialization doesn't work like that, you cannot replace time with parallelism (the 9 pregnant women is a suitable analogy).

So, the timeline is:

- Corminaty; currently doing phases 3 and 4; assumed end is december 2023;

- Spikewax: currently doing phases 3 and 4; assumed end is december 2022;

- Vaxzevria: currently doing phases 3 and 4; assumed end is second quarter 2022;

- Janssen: still doing phases 1/2a, 2a, 3; assumed end december 2023;

You're genuinely more uncomfortable with the idea of unfair liability protection than you are with the persistence of a pandemic that has already taken millions of lives? I mean, I think it's possible to agree that maybe the liability waiver is too broad (or that Pfizer's net revenue is too high) and... still view this as the most important single medicine released over the past few decades.

I mean, come on. Literally billions of people have taken this drug. What "complicationss" are you expecting that we wouldn't already have data for? It's... a vaccine. We've all had dozens of them. Did you freak out about your measles jab?

Imagine if this pandemic was actually Smallpox? Pretty sure there'd be none of the anti-vaxxing stuff etc. Visible, horrible symptoms.

I rather suspect there still would be. Perhaps less. But a lot of the conspiracy theorists actually believe that governments (or their authority of choice) have manufactured the disease. There are also reports of people not believing the disease is real while they're dying in hospital.

Yeah. I've made this point to friends too. In some sense covid sits at exactly the pessimal spot. Any less severe, and we'd have just let it roll over us without the societal breakdown. Any more severe and the mitigation strategy couldn't have become a political issue.

Maybe there's a side-channel attack where we can convince the conspiracy folks that this actually is a Chinese bioweapon designed to destroy the political cohesion of the west, so they should get on board and get their shots. Think it'd work?

Ironically, many of them already believe that. Conspiracy-theory beliefs (i.e., evidence-free conclusions) are a symptom of underlying mental illness, which inhibits critical thinking skills. As such, they have no problem holding completely contradictory viewpoints.

Also, liability protection doesn't mean that citizens cannot receive compensation for treatment-related harms. The federal government has opted to take on the liability, and has created a compensation fund which will pay your legal feels if you win, and is easier to win than a civil suit.

Persistence of this pandemic is FUD. If you get vaccinated it's over. Covid was never going to be eradicated, at best it will fade into the endemic background as a weird cold/flu. In countries with on demand access to the vaccines, the pandemic is over.

If I'm forced to work in an office, and some of my colleagues don't want to get vaccinated or tested regularly, I WANT them to get fired. It is a workplace safety issue for everyone forced to work in an enclosed area.

> If I'm forced

I agree with your sentiment, but it is not your coworkers who decided that now it's time to force everyone back into the office.

I totally agree. It's supremely messed up that companies are trying to force workers back into the office.

The safest approach, beyond even vaccination, is to physically distance by simply not being around each other. It is not possible to spread this virus when people aren't around each other!

"It is not possible to spread this virus when people aren't around each other!"

Except that it is in the cat populations worldwide. We dont have to like this fact, but ignoring it leads to safetyism that doesn't work. Maybe when we get the cat population to 70% vaccination rate we will be safe.

Well then, since we know that not only cats but also vaccinated people get ill and spread the disease, and some people can't be vaccinated not just because of personal fears but for valid health reasons, forcing everybody back to the office seems like an irresponsible cruelty.

If you are vaccinated you can still get and spread it. This was said by Fauci yesterday and prompted the renewed indoor mask guidance. And unvaccinated can to of course. With likely more severe symptoms they may be at home though.

You should benefit from less severity of illness. Why does others status matter to you given both can spread?

(I am very comfortable with a few million deaths, and maybe the variant turning more deadly in the process)

yeah, I'm very far from being right-wing or anti-vaccine or anything like that, but I've been unsettled by this whole thing. I don't think there are microchips in the vaccine, and it's probably a good idea to get the vaccine, but this level of control + lack of responsibility is a perfect recipe for negligence-caused disaster. Or even intentional disaster. Plus it seems quite a bit like it could be one of those slippery-slope situations.

Ideally, companies would create a vaccine as fast as possible(but safely, without being immune from lawsuits - especially if negligence or malice can be 'proven', why make someone immune from consequence then?) because that's always going to a profitable endeavor anyway. And people would be smart enough to get the vaccine and take precautions about spreading dangerous diseases. I don't know what the right solution is, given that we don't live in such a reasonable world

The censorship and limiting of discussion in the public square is the most troubling aspect of this to me.

You're not.

One upshot to this situation is that we are able to see the people who are willing to become hyperventilating statists with a bit more clarity.

It's obvious we need booster vaccinations. But not another intramuscular that only seeps in serum IgG antibodies into the lower lungs. The levels of antibodies in the upper respiratory mucosa are never very high and drop rapidly. Viral infection of the mucosa and shedding still occurs.

We need operation warp speed type money for funding the two good intranasal sars-cov-2 vaccine trials going on right now and to start more. Intranasal vaccination after intramuscular will recruit and specialize B and T cells to the upper respiratory mucosa and establish IgA antibodies resident for long periods there. Being intranasally vaccinated after intramuscular could actually stop the spread and end the pandemic.

edit: btw, all this has been known about aerosol spread respiratory viruses and human physiology since the 1960s.

It is not obvious we need booster vaccinations. There's simply not enough data yet to call this "obvious". Even "likely" is a stretch. Time will tell how long effective immunity lasts, but we absolutely do not know that number yet.

EDIT: To be fair, it is at least likely that high-risk individuals may need boosters. Israel is already distributing them. But the idea that we will need an annual COVID shot, or that most people will need any additional shots at all, is entirely speculative. The annual shot idea is especially dubious because I think people infer this from the flu, which mutates far more rapidly than this coronavirus.

That's correct, so far. It appears that humans who have been vaccinated with an mRNA vaccine still have a strong immune response to Delta variant. In fact, far better of an immune response than people who were infected with a previous variant.

Source is MedCram, easily the best source of medical information on YouTube, specifically at 7:05: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RWGh19yTXw

I am not in any way saying the intramuscular do not protect the internal body tissues against variants. I am saying that it's important to protect against mucosa infection too to prevent spread and that requires intranasal vaccination.

Big pharma is pushing for boosters before the science.

I’m happy that even Congress was skeptical of the claim in the last covid congressional committee discussion.

>It is not obvious we need booster vaccinations.

Of course, but to be fair, I don't expect any EU government to publicly acknowledge that we need a third dose when many EU countries are still struggling to get two doses to everyone, let alone a third.

Like how at the beginning of the pandemic in early 2020 the governments said that masks are not useful at protecting against the virus in order to prevent the general population from scalping and hoarding masks that were needed for medical personnel instead, and later did a 180 on that decision, making masks mandatory when mask production supplies caught up with the demand.

Such decisions are not 100% driven purely by medicine/science but also economics/politics.

You only responded to my first sentence. To be clear, what the two sentences mean together is, "It is obvious we need intranasal booster vaccinations."

The Israeli data is showing that the Pfizer's vaccine effectiveness against infection is waning over time among the fully vaccinated.

* Vaccinated in January: 16% protection

* Vaccinated in February: 44% protection

* Vaccinated in March: 67% protection

* Vaccinated in April: 75% protection

https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-uk-data-offer-mixed-si...

See also video from John Campbell about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNbs4LCgrcY

The protection against hospitalisation is about 88% and seems stable over time.

Effective immunity against current variants isn't too likely to be an issue, but new variants that circumvent that immunity seem pretty likely to me seeing as we're already seeing this to some extent with the Delta variant and we're nowhere near suppressing case levels to the point that we'd slow new variants from emerging.

You seem to have a bunch of knowledge on the subject.

Can you explain where you have this knowledge from and maybe explain a little bit more?

For example I wasn't even aware that actual method of vaccination makes any difference and I don't understand how or why exactly.

I just thought we inject into muscle purely because it is convenient and maybe because it would not survive trip through digestive tract.

I'm having serious problem with this sort of reporting and Reuters should do better.

Focusing on sales data is not helpful for vaccine and it would be better to look at doses / patients treated to measure impact.

Sales without looking at expenses are meaningless. Whatever one believes there is a huge cost to this ramp-up. Everything was expedited, expenses secondary.

The cost structure and the risk / reward discussion is required as this is anything but free market. Almost all contracts were involving governments and unusual terms. Typical expenses for drugs like marketing and trials were only to a small part paid by the company.

The rollout of the primary vaccine is still ongoing. If a booster is found to be desirable then it will require similar production capabilities as the vaccine. The sooner this is know the better and the more cost effective this capacity can be ramped up.

Without sufficient planning we may see a conflict of third world vaccines competing with first world booster for production capacity.

Anti-vaxxers are setting the stage for enormous profits for big pharma by creating the conditions for breeding new variants that will require more big pharma to combat them.

I feel my grandkids will grow up in a world quite different from mine, where travel and experiences will be gated and limited by fear of contagious disease. That sucks and didn't need to happen.

Thought experiment for anti-vaxxers - what if there was technology that could scan the virus particles coming into your body, and the ones coming out, and identify whether you - yes YOU - were the person responsible for creating a new variant?

What if more technology could then detect that the dangerous variant that you incubated had wafted out of your nostrils and into the body of your elderly neighbor, killing her?

With your alleged focus on self responsibility, would you take your punishment if you personally were responsible for thousands of deaths?

If the vaccines prevent symptoms but not transmission, that sounds like a much better breeding ground for continued spread and mutation than folks that know they are sick and stay home because they are coughing or have a runny nose.

The world isn't nearly as black and white as your 'punish the anti vaxxers' fanfic.

>...that sounds like a much better breeding ground for continued spread and mutation...

Actually, that's already been studied. The virus mutates far less in breakthrough infections among vaccinated individuals than in infected individuals.

COVID-19 vaccines dampen genomic diversity of SARS-CoV-2: Unvaccinated patients exhibit more antigenic mutational variance:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.01.21259833v...

>...The societal benefit of mass vaccination may consequently go far beyond the widely reported mitigation of SARS-CoV-2 infection risk and amelioration of community transmission, to include stemming of rampant viral evolution.

This is what is known as a leaky vaccine.

What if we built a device that could trace a particle from your car's exhaust and could tell you if that particle lodged itself in someone's lung at just the right moment to cause a stroke? Or how about a device that could trace the germs from when you skipped washing your hands for at least 20 seconds with a lather because you were late to your 1 on 1 with your boss, which then caused your elderly neighbor to catch an infection? Or what about sensors that could tell if your inadvertent non-intentional stink eye at someone with social anxiety was the trigger to push their mental distress beyond the point of no return? Or how about that coworker who you promised would be a hero for taking the vax, who then convinced their son to get it, who then contracted a heart issue soon after? Would you take responsibility for that?

Every one of your contrived examples has one thing in common - it's not anything to do with an infectious disease, which multiplies exponentially.

Your contrived example is by far the easiest one to tackle. Simply allow the people who are worried enough about this disease to keep topping up their vaccinations.

The people who live in projects next to the freeway don't have it as easy unfortunately. I hope you displace the dangers of the particles your car emits on your commute by donating some portion of your income to a charity that helps people find independent housing.

They’d probably pivot to say that’s the risk of a free life. Live free or die is the mantra of many of them. Of course it’s their life which is free, not the people they infect.

I loved your hypothetical device.

Everyone is free to get the vaccine and the risk reward profile varies between ages.

My body my choice but not for experimental vaccines?

Fauci admitted yesterday infection and transmission are still possible in vaccinated. CDC renewed their indoor mask guidance because this is now evident.

So if both groups can transmit, what does vax status matter personally to you? They aren't even a large enough size to overwhelm health care in most areas that have access to the vaccine.

Do you believe we should require the flu vaccine every year?

Leaky vaccines, like ones like the ones we have for COVID, also put evolutionary pressure on viruses. Anti-vaxxers are a convenient scapegoat, but the problem isn't that simple.

again, I got the vaccine and I'm not anti-vax, but why are people getting downvoted for making valid points just because they aren't following the popular narrative. Did this website become reddit?

You can acknowledge someone made a decent point and incorporate it into your own views while still getting & encouraging vaccines - engaging in honest discussion will do more to prevent creating more anti-vaxxers than ignoring any points that you don't want to deal with. Disregarding valid points only reinforces the narrative that everyone is brainwashed by big pharma and we can't trust vaccines or whatever the narrative is - almost starting to agree with them on the first point.

I imagine folks are taking issue with calling anti-vaxxers a scapegoat when in reality the anti-vaxx ideology is the main driver of hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 in the USA today.

Comorbidities?

Comorbidities aren't driving deaths/hospitalizations as much as vaccinated/unvaccinated are. Pre-vaccine availability they and age were the largest factors.

Reddit was just a bellwether. Honest and curious discussion no longer exists. You either repeat party lines or are labeled a deplorable and should be banned from society.

History shows us where this leads.

You’re right - this gated world didn’t need to happen. Sure would have been nice if American scenarists and eco health didn’t continue gain of function research after it was outlawed in the us.

So uh what about this?

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/27/10/21-1427_article

If it’s true the vax causes antibody dependent enhancement and that YOU, as the individual who took the experimental therapy, is producing higher viral loads would you take your punishment if you where responsible for thousands of deaths?

Also - what do we call people who are currently vaccinating their children yet refuse the experimental therapy? Clearly they’re not antivaxxers.

I know most reasonable people disagree with this persons views, but why are they getting downvoted? They made a reasonable point and provided a source from the CDC. I'd much rather see a rebuttal than downvotes and no response.

Definitely gave me something to think about - not about to become anti-vax or anything but not worth instantly writing off either. For me the bottom line is that the vaccine is proven to prevent a disease that's killing millions, and not getting it will literally translate to more deaths, but that doesn't mean I'm going to disregard opposing views - if I still disagree then it doesn't matter, and if I don't disagree then I'm glad I listened because it'd have to be something massively significant to make me change my mind. And I fully believe mocking or ignoring anyone who goes against the grain on vaccines is causing more 'real' anti-vaxxers and making the ones who are just wary about the Covid vaccine more extreme. I highly doubt anyone is being mocked into abandoning their beliefs on this.

I'm just happy we can post a plurality of ideas and get called out when they aren't valid here. Unfortunately this format is a dying one on many other platforms.

I don't think this study does or can claim ADE. It's too bad they didn't report on blood based viral loads from titer samples.

This observation is very interesting, albeit a small sample: "Attack rate was 0/6 among persons with a previous history of COVID-19"

Pfizer shouldn't be allowed to state publicly their opinion on this. Huge conflict of interests

It’s incredible that we even have to state that. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, full stop.

I got the vaccine, and am shocked that I may need to comply with another dose or “booster” shots.

I’m trying my hardest to be a team player but I’m incredibly concerned that one side would be OK with “Life-Saving-Vacinne-as-a-Service” for the low cost of x$ per month, for an unknown amount of time, and the other side is cool with ignoring it completely.

Who will ultimately be right is anyone’s guess, but with all the stories about bullshit “variants”and vaccinated people still getting fucked, I have a depleted confidence “in the science”. The same “science” that got us in here in the first place via “Gain of Function” research.

> It’s incredible that we even have to state that. This leaves a bad taste in my mouth, full stop.

How is that bad?

When you go to a car dealer, you know he has an incentive to sell to you.

Is it bad? No, it just is.

It doesn't mean you stop listening to him. You just filter the information to get what you need to make up your own decision.

If you distrust the dealer you can go to another dealer but you can also still work with him and maybe bring your own expert, which is popular practice.

In the end you need to buy a car and you can pretty much assume ALL dealers have the same incentive to sell to you.

You can distrust a car dealer and society will applaud you for doing what's right. If you say you're losing trust in something like an emergency use vaccination, then society will say you're a death cultist.

I wish anti-vaxxers stopped trying to insert themselves into every discussion. It is tiring.

We are talking about procurement of new vaccines and whether this additional shot is actually helping or whether this is due to the fact that Pfizer is going to benefit from this.

What we are not talking about is whether to vaccinate. The case on this is closed and all governments are working towards getting their populations vaccinated because without this they know it would be an either apocalyptic event or forever-dragging crippling restrictions.

I'm not anti-vax. My entire family has all their vaccinations. I'm responding to OP of this thread. I think it's a valid observation.

You're "shocked" you might need a booster when people get a new flu shot every single year? Come on.

Weren’t we told, ‘this isn’t at all like the flu’?

We were told it is much worse than the flu, and it is.

I disagree that they shouldn’t be able to state their option, they should be able to.

But no one should believe them or take what they say at face value.

I fully disagree. This is important topic and they definitely have first hand expert knowledge.

It is up to us (meaning our governments) to require proper documentation for this and make our own minds based on it.

And is government currently competent in even knowing what proper documentation looks like?

Waiting for anyone competent to confirm or correct this person re: CDC's potentially wholly flawed math: https://roundingtheearth.substack.com/p/defining-away-vaccin...

If you are incompetent buyer that is kind of your problem. Governments don't have "buyer protection".

But, typically, governments have armies of people at their disposal and some of these people are experts that can read and understand documentation.

Demand your government to be accountable to find right people to do the right job of checking that documentation provided by Pfizer.

It would seem prudent to do this before you sign a contract for another couple billion dollars.

That's like saying Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to tell people they should update Windows.

Pfizer created the vaccine. Who would know better than them whether a booster is necessary?

As a public company, they face shareholder lawsuits for *not* disclosing something this "material" to the business.

How so?

There is a strong economic incentive to press for recurring boosters.

And unfortunately too many news outlets are reporting whatever Pfizer says as if it were the CDC or impartial scientists when that clearly is not the case.

Pfizer worked on boosters before the emergence of the Delta virus and already started pushing for the use of boosters when there was little evidence of significant benefits.

It would be great if the news stopped parroting the Pfizer press office.

If they were the ones making the decision I'd have a problem. Just stating their opinion without any attempt to claim it's objective seems... fine. I'd personally be pretty surprised if my government (UK) authorised a 3rd booster dose of the same formula (as opposed to one that adjusted the formula to better target new variants).

Man, I was really born just in time to see the U.S. outright dig it's grave from pure unadulterated anti-intellectualism.

The CCP may do a lot of fucked up shit, but this century is just going to be completely and utterly dominated by China. I've said quite a lot of bad things about the Chinese government in the past, and may continue to do so until I die... But the U.S. is just fucked, and I very much do want to see humanity succeed and have a chance at exploring our universe to a degree thought impossible throughout our lifetimes. I only see China's method of governing getting us anywhere close to that in the long-term. Maybe they'll show mercy to the research engineers and scientists of the U.S.

As for the rest of our inhabitants... it's near impossible to care at this point.

  it's not the right time to be sober
  now the idiots have taken over
  spreading like a social cancer, is there an answer?

  Mensa membership conceding
  tell me why and how are all the stupid people breeding
  Watson, it's really elementary
  the industrial revolution
  has flipped the bitch on evolution
  the benevolent and wise are being thwarted, ostracized, what a bummer
  the world keeps getting dumber
  insensitivity is standard and faith is being fancied over reason

  darwin's rollin over in his coffin
  the fittest are surviving much less often
  now everything seems to be reversing, and it's worsening
  someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool
  now angry mob mentality's no longer the exception, it's the rule
  and im startin to feel a lot like charlton heston
  stranded on a primate planet
  apes and orangutans that ran it to the ground
  with generals and the armies that obeyed them
  followers following fables
  philosophies that enable them to rule without regard

  there's no point for democracy when ignorance is celebrated
  political scientists get the same one vote as some Arkansas inbred
  majority rule, don't work in mental institutions
  sometimes the smallest softest voice carries the grand biggest solutions

  what are we left with?
  a nation of god-fearing pregnant nationalists
  who feel it's their duty to populate the homeland
  pass on traditions
  how to get ahead religions
  And prosperity via simpleton culture

  the idiots are takin over [x8]

  -- Idiots Are Taking Over, NOFX, 2003

A very interesting observation [1] was made by Dr John Campbell who noticed a difference between vaccine efficacy in Israel vs UK. In Israel, the doses were spaced 2-3 weeks apart, and the protection against transmissibility has dropped off significantly more than in the UK, where doses were spaced further apart, sometimes over 10 weeks between the first and second dose. His hypothesis was that a longer duration between doses may actually improve long term efficacy.

[1] https://youtu.be/wNbs4LCgrcY?t=464

Simpler explanation on the Israel data:

> You’ve probably seen reports from Israel on low vaccine effectiveness in this wave. Is it because of Delta? Waning immunity? We think the reason is mostly that we got the denominator wrong.

https://twitter.com/dvir_a/status/1420059124700700677

> This is what we got wrong. This “wave” started from cities with high vaccination rate and couldn’t “find” unvaccined adults at risk. The denominator we need to use until mid-July is >95% vaccination rate and not the country’s average.

https://twitter.com/dvir_a/status/1420059139435343876

Would they be able to tweak this potential booster shot to better target current variants and their descendants? Is there any need to do so?

How much about the current vaccine can possibly be changed without major regulatory hurdles or manufacturing blockers?

Yes, there are already clinical studies underway with altered vaccines and the turn-around on developing these is apparently pretty fast (at least with the mRNA vaccines). I have also read that yes, authorization can happen much faster for vaccines that are slightly altered versions of vaccines that are already granted authorization (but I don't know the details).

Here is a random article on the topic that happens to be ovr 2 months old! So this has been going on for a while now... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/05/tweaked-modern...

Yes sales... sales from insanely binding contracts which of course say Pfizer is in no way shape or form responsible for anything that goes wrong with highly experimental, largely untested and rushed through drugs with completely unknown long-term side effects... that states companies are not allowed to return or take partial shipments of their vaccines...which PFIZER ITSELF dictates how many units the labs and medical facilities are going to buy. So 33b from using a global pandemic to rig and rip the entire supply chain, medical industry, and taxpayers of countries around the world off to insane levels of profit, all in the name of greed.. And yet here they are, demanding MORE money...

And yet people still sit around trying to click two brain cells together wondering why people refuse to get vaccinated, are sick of having this crap shoved down their throats, and further distrust big pharma and the medical industry at large.

Can't wait for the big pharma shills here on HN to come crawling out defending these scumbags and big industries and institutional corruption and greed.

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