Comment by EricE | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EricE | Hacker News Reader

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Really? Have anything of substance to complain about rather than a blanket ad-hominem assertion?

mRNA technology has been under development since the late 80's. If it is so safe and effective why were all the big pharma players just sitting on it and not going through the trial process to bring it to market before they got emergency authorization that absolved them of all liability? Many if not all of the companies have had trials in the past - just curious as to why they didn't complete them since these vaccines are so safe and effective?

If they are so safe that NO ONE should be questioning them, then why the blanket - and SUSTAINED - need for immunity for the makers? I can see at the start when they unexpectedly had to ramp up production in a time of crises - but they have been distributing vaccinations for over a year now. Manufacturing these should be beyond stable and old hat at this time, yet they still need blanket immunity?

For that matter, why isn't the FDA approved vaccine widely available (or even available at all)? Why aren't the emergency use authorization terminated now that there is an approved vaccine - as required by law?

Why is it Moderna happened to turn a profit for the first time in their entire existence last year? I'm sure that's just another crazy coincidence.

Yup - nothing to see here. Anyone who has any questions is just a trash conspiracy theorist, right?

Going through this gish gallop point by point:

mRNA technology has been in development since the 80s because there were and are a lot of challenges with deploying it on a wide scale. This Nature article [1] goes into it, but a lot of the foundational elements of the vaccines were only developed in the last several years.

The need for immunity for the makers is because these vaccines were developed very quickly and administered through EUAs, since the low chance of long term side effects was deemed less harmful than the time constraints that would have been required for normal approval. This need was codified into law back in 2005's PREP act, invoked by the Trump administration in February of 2020, and the legal immunity only lasts until 2024 [2]. If everyone who got an mRNA shot develops myocarditis in 15 years, Moderna et al won't be immunized from those lawsuits.

Pfizer/BioNTech is currently the only fully approved vaccine, but they aren't going to pull EUAs for other vaccines when supply constraints are still an issue. Pfizer is widely available, but it isn't universally available and keeping other options (themselves going through the process for full approval) available is not unreasonable.

Moderna was founded with the idea of commercializing mRNA technology. This is the first significant commercial use of mRNA technology. It doesn't really seem like a big mystery to me.

[1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02483-w [2]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/16/covid-vaccine-side-effects-c...

From US Code Title 42 [1]:

"(1) No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings."

This is not new. This is not specific to mRNA vaccines. The simple math is that if you prepare a treatment and give it to 300 million people, 300 people with adverse reactions may make the entire endeavor unwise financially.

The National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program was established to partially resolve this [2]. They state:

"[The VICP] was created in the 1980s, after lawsuits against vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce U.S. vaccination rates, which could have caused a resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases."

If you're interested in looking into the reasons why things are done a certain way, I suggest reading the law and understanding how historical events have led us to the (imperfect) system we have today.

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/300aa-22

[2] https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html

>The simple math is that if you prepare a treatment and give it to 300 million people, 300 people with adverse reactions may make the entire endeavor unwise financially.

Yet other medicines taken by the majority manage fine without liability immunity, like aspirin and paracetamol. Why do vaccine manufacturers deserve a license to kill without liability?

Vaccine manufacturers have saved millions of lives. I support them not getting financially ruined for one-in-a-million adverse effects.

I believe that point is directly addressed by my quote from the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, namely that we do not have a national incentive to ensure that aspirin usage is at herd immunity levels.

I think aspirin usage at herd immunity levels would create vast new markets for organ medicines. That stock keeps going up up up!

"deserve a license to kill" is a crappy framing. Vaccines are different for a number of reasons; see the history of antivax (predating modern antivax).

all medicines come with risks, vaccines probably have a higher risk than aspirin, but still represent a massively overall good thing, and the public is very sensitive to hearing about extremely small numbers of adverse events.

As you may see elsewhere in the comments, people pointed out a number of things the author did to juice their case.

however, I'd say that the smart people who can read an article like this aren't under some sort of moral requirement to create a data-driven response. Some things are beneath us, like debating a flat-earther.

Further, you undermine your comment by going full conspiracy theory when all the questions you ask have far more banal answers than you think.

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