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Comment by anonuser123456 | Hacker News Reader

I don't know why this is downvoted... the question legitimately opens the door to a fundamental phenomena in markets...

The answer is, corporations seek long term profits. Short term gouging tends to make customers angry and seek alternatives, and the same is true for large buyers/government agents.

If this were a single transaction, it would make sense to extract as much revenue as possible. But Pfizer/BioNTech have to balance that against their long term relationships and how to maximize profit over long time scales.

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As someone who watched people from afar try to scale the mRNA vaccine process, the limiting factor was not manufacture of the RNA (BioNTech), but incorporation into lipid nanoparticles. That is not BioNTech's business (they are a subsidiary manufacturer for Pfizer)... it also is not Moderna's business since they outsource, but at least they are a direct source of funding rather than a cost center.

Money was not an object to scaling the manufacture of the vaccines. It was people, knowledge, and equipment that had to be designed, built and tested. That all happened in parallel with statistical evaluation and approval processes.

Nine people can't make a baby in 1 month no matter how much you pay them.

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Here is a documentary about BioNTechs facility in Mainz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWedf3mhLwQ

The lipid process at shown at 3:00m

Excellent point to clarify. It is the materials (and equipment) for the encapsulation process that are the limiting step. Those are provided by Croda in the UK (in the case of Pfizer/BioNTech) not by BioNTech in Mainz as implied. BioNTech has very sophisticated manufacturing and packaging equipment there for sure, just not the limiting step. Or to be still more clear many labs have the ability to manufacture small quantities for initial studies, but not the volumes necessary to scale to 100M/mo capacity.

https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-suppl...

Interesting blog article, but it seems to represent the supply chain before the Mainz facility went into operation?

I read somewhere* that original materials and the process that is being used by Croda is from a small Austrian company:

https://www.polymun.com/liposomes/reference-projects/

Maybe they have also licensed their process elsewhere?

*found it: https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-one-leading-coronavirus-vacc...

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