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Comment by Arnt | Hacker News Reader

You're making a couple of unwarranted assumptions here. Or more. First, you're assuming that the next-generation vaccines aren't going to improve. Second, that contracting corona while vaccinated doesn't give you good and long-lasting protection (even if you don't even notice the infection). Third, that booster shots are a problem at all.

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Moral hazard: an improved vaccine will reduce future business (more booster shots). There is absolutely no incentive for big pharma to make better vaccines.

Long-lasting protection from antibodies is irrelevant because political authorities are already ignoring natural immunity.

The booster shot isn't the problem per se, its that anyone who doesn't take them will be segregated from society due to vaccine mandates.

Is finetuning vaccine protection duration even possible (in this case or generally)?

> Moral hazard: an improved vaccine will reduce future business (more booster shots). There is absolutely no incentive for big pharma to make better vaccines.

You assume the pharmaceutical industry always acts like a cartel and its members aren't in competition with each other: if one of them created a more long-lasting vaccine, it would capture a larger share of the market.

There's your incentive.

And indeer, Curevac (the mRNA startup that lost against Biontech and Moderna) has published this: https://www.curevac.com/en/2021/10/12/curevac-to-shift-focus...

All three of those companies know that the two with the best vaccines made billions, the third made a loss.

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