Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by throwaway224466 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

throwaway224466

[flagged]

View on HN

The Pfizer vaccine was fully approved on August 23

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...

"Pfizer Comirnaty" and "Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine" are biologically and chemically the same thing.

Biologically and chemically but not liability-wise, which makes no sense, and is exactly the point the throwaway is making.

That's a false claim, too. They are identical from a liability standpoint.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/08/30/false-cla...

> Indeed, contrary to the claims of Malone and others, the Comirnaty vaccine has the same liability protection as the vaccine approved under the EUA. That’s because of a law known as the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP Act).

> In early 2020, after the coronavirus emerged, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar invoked the PREP Act to “provide liability immunity for activities related to medical countermeasures against covid-19.” So that covers all vaccines that might be produced to combat the coronavirus, whether fully authorized or not.

> “The liability protections afforded under the PREP Act are tied to the declared public health emergency and not whether the vaccine is sold under an EUA,” Castillo said. “Therefore, both Comirnaty and the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine receive the same liability protections as medical countermeasures against covid-19.”

i.e. there is no liability for either of them? The point of granting full approval was so the government could claim that it is no longer be considered 'experimental'. Normally that means the usual liability rules kick in. If not because the usual rules are overridden by other rules elsewhere it would appear the approval was pointless and changed nothing.

Whether it's covered under CICP or VICP, we made a national security decision in the 1980s that having companies willing to make vaccines was a net positive, and thus set up a no-fault system funded by a tax on every vaccine dose administered.

Approval was never going to change the liability status. That's not the point of FDA approval.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com