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Comment by f6v | Hacker News Reader

That is such a fertile ground for anti-vaxxers. Number one argument I hear is “If vaccines are so safe, why does nobody take responsibility for the side-effects?”. And to some extent, they’re right, you know. I bet pharma execs are walking away with six-seven figure bonuses no matter what.

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Pfizer now sees $33.5 billion in 2021 vaccine sales, up from $26 billion, and says a third dose of its #COVID19 shot "strongly" boosts protection against the Delta variant.

> “If vaccines are so safe, why does nobody take responsibility for the side-effects?”

Well in the case of the current one, it's because we really, really want them and the governments of the countries buying them are happy to waive liability in this case to combat a pandemic that's killed about 4 million people round the world.

Pharma companies that have managed to create something so useful in such a short time and at such a huge scale pretty much deserve to do well. I don't begrudge them a bit of a bonus off the back of this.

Pharma does deserve to do well in case they accept responsibility. But if they say “hey, if we screw up you’re paying for it”, that’s just having all the good stuff without any risk.

There was still the risk of doing the research without having an outcome, or an issue in manufacturing causing them to not meet demand.

Wasn’t Moderna funded by the government? And they also got government contracts before they had a final product.

But in this case we're begging them to have it early. We're giving them a pass because we need what they've developed so badly.

The risk was development. Look at all the pharma companies that didn't make it to market.

> Number one argument I hear is “If vaccines are so safe, why does nobody take responsibility for the side-effects?”. And to some extent, they’re right, you know.

Aren't people saying the government does compensate people who experience side effects? https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html

I clicked on "Covered Vaccines". The COVID-19 vaccines aren't on the list.

Was the comment about COVID-19 vaccines specifically or about vaccines in general? I thought the latter.

It's under a separate program for products used during pandemics (versus just routine vaccines).

https://www.hrsa.gov/cicp

The government might compensate, but people don’t trust a vaccine if the manufacturer isn’t willing to accept the responsibility.

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