Moderna Curbing Investments in Vaccine Trials Due To US Backlash, CEO Says (reuters.com) 194
An anonymous reader shares a report: Moderna does not plan to invest in new late-stage vaccine trials because of growing opposition to immunizations from U.S. officials, CEO Stephane Bancel said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. "You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market," Bancel told Bloomberg TV on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Bancel said regulatory delays and little support from the authorities make the market size "much smaller."
The Dark Ages (Score:3, Insightful)
America is hellbent on seeing people die, aren't they?
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
They can both make their investment back and save lives. This is basic capitalism in fact.
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Because America's privatized, for-profit healthcare system allows for way bigger price markups than the rest of the world's responsibly managed public healthcare systems.
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Because America's privatized, for-profit healthcare system allows for way bigger price markups than the rest of the world's responsibly managed public healthcare systems.
I wish I had mod points to raise this up. It's probably the most important part of this whole situation and should have honestly been included in some way in the summary above.
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Because America's privatized, for-profit healthcare system allows for way bigger price markups than the rest of the world's responsibly managed public healthcare systems.
Without getting into the whole UK NHS and Canadian health systems' "waiting times" and all that... what the sentiment in TFA and in this comment thread so far is that the rest of the world's drug development has been underwritten by the United States for decades.
What the article is saying is that because the US (rightly or wrongly) doesn't want to pay for this class of drugs... then they won't be developed.
Is that what you want across all drugs ?
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Re: The Dark Ages (Score:2)
Personally I'm questioning the idea that vaccine makers sell their product at a loss in any market. Why would they even bother selling it at all if they know they will lose money on every sale? What's the upside that makes that worthwhile?
Are vaccines a loss leader that drives sales of something else? If so, what?
Are vaccines a marketing expense?
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Because America's privatized, for-profit healthcare system allows for way bigger price markups than the rest of the world's responsibly managed public healthcare systems.
Yep, not to mention the lax FDA meaning they can release lower quality products or things with major side effects and advertise them with a fast speaking voice at the end that it might cause anal bleeding, heart arrhythmia, stomach ulcers, delusions, support for the GOP, severe retardation, blindness, baldness and diabetes. TALK TO YOUR GP ABOUT KILLOVEX TODAY (smiling face).
Besides, most of the work is done at public institutions to begin with, private companies swoop in when it's 99% complete and buy t
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I doubt they can't turn a profit outside of the US, it's just that they can turn a larger one here, I imagine.
Can't say for certain, really. It's not like they're super revealing about why they do what, where.
Put into perspective though- a full one half of all drugs in the Pharmaceutical market are developed here int he United States.
While the whole of Europe might have 4 times the head count, we've got a larger GDP than all of Eu
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:2)
Wrong numbers (Score:2)
The problem with turning a profit in Europe is due to nationalized health systems. France's system chose Biontech's COVID vaccine. As a result, Moderna's COVID vaccine isn't available in the country. Further, these systems limit the ability of the company to set prices. In the US, companies have the freedom to set whatever price the free market will support.
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however they make that profit through saving lives.
LOL! +5 Funny!
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:5, Interesting)
What did Fox talk about this morning that makes you think the USA is suddenly getting screwed on international trade?
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What did Fox talk about this morning that makes you think the USA is suddenly getting screwed on international trade?
The US is... the reason is big, orange and wears a nappy.
Elect a clown, become a laughing stock.
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Vaccines (and 90% of drugs) are cheap in the rest of the world.
A different perspective is that the high prices being paid by US consumers is effectively subsidizing sales overseas where governments negotiate aggressively. If the US began to seriously negotiate as these foreign governments did, then we'd probably see the overall vaccine prices across the rest of the globe rise.
Probably, yes. But only because the pharma companies have decided they need an ever-increasing number of yachts-per-year above and beyond break-even. The US isn't required to make profit. It's required to make stupid profit. Pharma is not - with perhaps exceptional rare cases - selling to other countries at a a loss.
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The US doesn't recognize trials conducted for foreign health agencies. If that were to change, the "pay for everyone else" might change, too.
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Interesting. If "respect" means "accept", then for a long time they didn't. I remember reading, over the years, several stories about drugs that were accepted in Europe, but not in the US.
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to spend $1 billion making and trialing a vaccine, why wouldn't you want a return on that investment? Do you think they should do this for free? Where would they get the money to make and trial the next vaccine or drug?
That the anti-vaxxer Kennedy has brought this on is not unexpected. No matter how much the facts show vaccines are safe and effective, he would rather see people die or be mangled for life.
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:2)
No biggie. Tech is out of the box (it was made in EU btw, paid for with public money -- just to answer your quedtion; BioNTech has it, too). If Moderna won't do it, somebody else will.
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$1 billion for a vaccine is peanuts at national government level, and would probably save far more in the long run. It's crazy that we don't just fund this stuff out of taxation.
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:5, Informative)
A socialist pharma lab could work quite well while paying the scientists who do the actual work good money, it would just have sane pay for executive management and a nonexistent marketing budget. That's what pharma companies spend most of their money on, marketing and executive pay:
https://marylandmatters.org/20... [marylandmatters.org]
But the proof is in the pudding:
https://www.theguardian.com/wo... [theguardian.com]
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Nor is there anything wrong with that. I'd wager saving lives isn't your purpose either.
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For a private company, making a profit is necessary for continued existence. Companies that don't make a profit get bought out and liquidated for the value of their assets.
The alternative would be to nationalize drug development -- socialized medical research. Or there's just waiting and hoping for the best, which is what we're headed toward.
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Yes, they're ultimately a private corporation that relies upon investors to survive. What's your point here?
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Greetings fellow polio enthusiast!
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
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But ... but ... I was told that government is bad. Are you really saying that the invisible hand of the free market couldn't produce effective and affordable vaccines without public subsidies and other incentives? That billion-dollar corporations would put profits over people? Say it isn't so!
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But ... but ... I was told that government is bad. Are you really saying that the invisible hand of the free market couldn't produce effective and affordable vaccines without public subsidies and other incentives? That billion-dollar corporations would put profits over people? Say it isn't so!
Let me clarify a bit. The point I was trying to make isn't that they can't make be profitable without grants. Presumably they could be profitable by raising the prices, assuming the value of the vaccine to the healthcare system over the duration of the patent still exceeds the cost.
My point was that if government grants for vaccine research are in danger of drying up, it makes a lot of economic sense for companies to focus on areas of research that are better supported, rather than take on a much larger p
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Actually, the costs of the trials are high enough that I'm not sure they CAN make a profit without US Govt support. And the FDA was never willing to really recognize trials done by foreign health agencies. (Sometimes reasonably. Other times, not.)
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't blame all Americans for the choices of American leadership. Trump is off doing a bunch of stuff no one wanted and which he didn't campaign on.
That was only a somewhat valid excuse during Trump's first term. It was also not entirely unreasonable to believe that a vote for Trump was just a protest vote against Hillary, since pollsters were claiming she had it in the bag.
This time around though, people who voted for him knew exactly what they'd be getting and absolutely do own it. Every awful, stupid thing this administration is doing is precisely the kind of America they voted for.
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It was also not entirely unreasonable to believe that a vote for Trump was just a protest vote against Hillary, since pollsters were claiming she had it in the bag.
Most polls before the primary said that Sanders could beat Trump and Clinton couldn't. Most polls during the run-up were mixed. People chose the one poll they liked and believed it. Whoops.
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Don't blame all Americans for the choices of American leadership. Trump is off doing a bunch of stuff no one wanted and which he didn't campaign on.
That was only a somewhat valid excuse during Trump's first term. It was also not entirely unreasonable to believe that a vote for Trump was just a protest vote against Hillary, since pollsters were claiming she had it in the bag.
This time around though, people who voted for him knew exactly what they'd be getting and absolutely do own it. Every awful, stupid thing this administration is doing is precisely the kind of America they voted for.
This... everyone who didn't vote against Trump is responsible.
You were told exactly what would happen.
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Unfortunately we can't get away from the fact that the vast majority of Americans either supported Trump or felt the choice between fascism and more of the same was so trivial that they could sit out the election, not caring who won. 2/3 of Americans were totally OK with Trump winning the 2024 election. And they knew when they voted for him or sat out the election that he was a fraud, he was crazy (the speeches were widely televised), and that he fit the characteristics of a fascist, including an attempt at
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In every sane country Kamala is considered a moderate conservative.
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In every sane country Kamala is considered a moderate conservative.
Even that is unwarranted assignation of wokeness. Kamala infamously told asylum seekers "don't come here" despite our being signatory to a treaty which says they can do so. She's just another authoritarian wannabe war criminal. But since Trump is more of all those things, I voted for her anyway. It's truly distressing to see all the idiots that still argue that they were right not to vote for her because she's those things when they enabled the worst president America has ever had, and don't plan to vote in
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We live in a functioning democracy. Overall, the system is working as intended. "We the people" voted this guy into power. In the US, we get the leaders we deserve. As a grou
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We live in a functioning democracy.
AHahAHHAHaHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Bush v Gore legal recount stopped
Trump v Harris russian election interference on behalf of a russian stooge
Democrats' response: We can't do anything about this
You call that functioning democracy?
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We're very high functioning compared to all the places where there's "democracy" but one party has managed to neutralize all the other parties. There are quite a few of those. If there's only on
Re: The Dark Ages (Score:2)
The whole Trump phenomenon, or rather the power he wields has been in the making for at least 45 years with Unitary Executive Theory and the Heritage Foundation's 1981 publication Mandate for Leadership and 2023 publication Project 2025.
Perhaps some people don't want to blame the average American for their leadership, for example much of this stuff started while I was a minor and not able to vote.
But regardless if I could have stopped it, I still must bare the responsibility for my government as at the end
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They still are, but they were, too.
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This. If you only want to think about politics once every four years and take no responsibility for what happens in between, Trump is what you get - before it gets worse.
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You pretty much just have to drive in traffic to experience that most Americans are selfish assholes who'd happily run you off the road if they could do so without damaging their own vehicle. It's no surprise many of them also vote the same way they drive.
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:4, Informative)
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I find it really funny that even traditional right wing loonies can't quite bring themselves can't bring themselves to praise the president they voted for.
All you can ever do is fling excuses about the opposition. No one who think they voted for the right guy ever does that.
If you know you made the wrong choice, be a man not a whiny little boy and admit it. Or of you genuinely believe that the totally not senile, insurrectionist, corrupt, warmongering president of peace was the better choice, then just uncr
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America is hellbent on seeing people die, aren't they?
The owner class has decided that they don't really need a large population. They'll replace the need for "workers" with their AI and robots. I'm sure they'll keep a few folks around just for fun. I mean, they'll need some sex workers and the like until they can perfect robotic replacements. Perhaps some gladiatorial types for entertainment. But for the most part, they need a population decrease once they fully realize their AI ambitions, having AIs do everything, feeding other AIs, and automating the web in
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America is hellbent on seeing people die, aren't they?
No, America is not. Trump and RFKjr are and will be be for the next three years. After that, we'll see if the Trump influence continues in the Republican Party.
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It's because they know that poor health is something that affects the poor and minorities more than it affects them. In their meritocracy, survival is something for successful people who can afford it, and the others dying is just improving the gene pool.
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Re: The Dark Ages (Score:3)
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Thank heaven the dysentery took my wife before the plague had a chance.
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Vastly? No. I mean, vaccines have been around for less time than municipal water and sewer systems, so maybe, but that's mostly a factor of timing. If you calculate the ongoing impact, it's almost a wash.
Sanitation probably saves several million people from dying every year in first-world countries. That's a guess based on scaling the number who die today in the third world up to the number of people in the world, which is to say the number could be 3 million or 30 million, but it's anybody's guess whe
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Well, you're correct that sanitation is more important than vaccines. That doesn't make vaccines unimportant.
Re:The Dark Ages (Score:4, Insightful)
Smallpox alone killed around 400,000 Europeans every year in the 18th Century, so... no, a lack of vaccines was definitely a problem back then.
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Smallpox alone killed around 400,000 Europeans every year in the 18th Century, so... no, a lack of vaccines was definitely a problem back then.
Only the people directly affected care. Here it is, several hundred years later, and nobody is crying about the deaths. See? No problem. Time heals all wounds ...
???
Left unsaid ... (Score:2)
"You cannot make a return on investment if you don't have access to the U.S. market, ..."
'Cause that's where we over-charge the most.
Also, I imagine a ROI is still possible if look for it over a longer period of time.
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I'd be curious what their investment looks like. Did they forget to subtract the grants, etc., that they were given?
I read an article a while ago that said companies compare ROI to develop, market and sell a drug (before the patent expires) to what they'd get by just investing the money in the markets over that time and if they think the markets will provide a greater / faster return then it doesn't make financial sense to develop something. Don't know if that's actually true, but makes sense from a financial / shareholder standpoint because - bottom line - the company is there to make money.
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That's pretty much what all (well managed) companies do. It's certainly what the shareholders do.
Make Measles Great Again! (Score:5, Informative)
A top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been condemned for his remarks that rampant measles outbreaks in the U.S., and increasing concern that America could lose its longstanding elimination status, were the “cost of doing business” in a global economy.
https://www.the-independent.co... [the-independent.com]
I'm really not sure what easily preventable deaths have to do with the economy.
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FWIW, measles rarely killed people of European ancestry. Mutilated them, perhaps. But if your ancestors weren't winnowed by it...
(OTOH, I could be wrong. The song "The Irish Rover" indicates that measles was a sever killer.) (The statistics I found talked about deaths in a global context...and it damn well WAS deadly among those with non-European ancestry. There's probably more details involved, but I don't know them.)
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I'm really not sure what easily preventable deaths have to do with the economy.
Maybe they're trying to boost the economy through increased mortuary services.
He's not wrong (Score:5, Interesting)
It's hard to work up any enthusiasm for defending big pharma, but he's not wrong. The current administration is hell bent on turning back the clock on medical advances of the past century. This will be difficult to undo and many people will suffer in the meantime.
Re:He's not wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's hard to work up any enthusiasm for defending big pharma, but he's not wrong.
This situation reminds me of what happened in Florida when DeSantis started attacking Disney. If you're a big corporation worried about your future profits, maybe flex a little bit of that Citizens United muscle and support the candidates who aren't going to be so bad for your business (and that means taking a long hard look at where they stand on issues beyond just "lower taxes/less regulation"). Another absolutely brilliant self-own was Musk's support of Trump. If one of your largest businesses builds
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Musk gets away with a ton of fraud. He would have done far worse under a D administration.
Remember that study saying burning up satellites in the atmosphere damages the ozone layer? As head of DOGE he killed it and prevented any further research or policy relating to it. If not, D's would be on a path now to ban privately owned, mega satellite constellations. His Starlink company would be dying and facing a bunch of fraud lawsuits for not providing services they were paid for. Instead we have more cons
Republicans have no ideas (Score:2, Troll)
This is what happens when a political party has policy that only does bad things to the people that vote for it.
Trump said it himself the Democrats are better for the economy.
Not that any Republicans will read this. The Republicans retreated into their safe spaces that's why this shit is getting so out of hand. They go out of their way to avoid consuming any content that contradicts their worldview or beliefs. They're th
Painful and direct impact of this (Score:5, Interesting)
I participated in a Moderna study last winter for an mRNA flu vaccine. The benefit of this would have been that they can turn around mRNA vaccines so much faster than conventional vaccines, so they'd have far better accuracy in targeting the vaccine to the current variant of the flu. (Unlike this year, when the vaccine has only a 30% or so match to what's actually circulating, as I understand it).
So now, thanks to the antivax morons in the current administration, we won't get this vaccine for a long time, if ever. Think about that next time you get the flu.
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Typically the objections are voiced in a dialog where antivax (your word) folks change the argument/subject with every back and forth. They have very little hard science to back up their claims in the face of overwhelming hard science to the contrary.
Another key omission to the antivax (your word) argument is that mRNA vaccines have been given to hundreds of millions of people with side effect mortality commensurate or less than other vaccines.
But yeah, I'll bite: why?
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Late-stage vaccine trials .. (Score:2)
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Vaccines were except from late stage trials only because they were classified "Experimental." They are no longer classified that way. What's happening here is, "experimental" classification should never be used for any sort of long term approval. Arguably it should not have been used for any sort of large scale deployment at all, but...
Now as to whether the burden of U.S. FDA approval is too high or not, I think there can be genuine discussion about that. I suspect it is in most cases, but that is not w
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You understand absolutely nothing. Covid vaccines had Phase 3 trials that were *twenty times larger* than standard Phase 3 trials. 40,000 participants as opposed to the normal 2,000.
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Robert, it’s time for beddy-bies. You need your beauty sleep so you can be a clever boy tomorrow, too! Now I know you don’t believe in germs because you can’t see them, so don’t you worry about cleaning your teeth, you just get straight into bed and dream of being cleverer than all the doctors, just like you do every night.
I am fine with BioNTech making the profits (Score:2)
Their work is a lot more interesting anyways.
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Moderna is doing truly fantastic work with its vaccines. For example, this:
https://www.clinicaltrialsaren... [clinicaltrialsarena.com]
A near halving of melanoma recurrence and death.
The world has other people too (Score:2)
So the world has around 8.2 Bn people according to a quick search, and the US population is around 340 million. It turns out most people are not US citizens! More than 95% of us, actually. And some of us even have money! Usually not the f*** you money kind of money, but enough to shoulder the cost of vaccine and medicines, either directly or indirectly through public health care or insurance.
The loss is much greater than just infections (Score:2)
mRNA vaccines have incredible potential in so many areas, including for example, melanoma. And Moderna was at the forefront. We are giving up a future of so much promise through capitulating to a demented fool, his malignant health secretary, and an enormous bunch of bastard evil grifters.
https://www.clinicaltrialsaren... [clinicaltrialsarena.com]
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There's no market because we have a government full of anti vaccine morons.
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I don't support the anti-vax bullshit, and you're certainly right to call that out, but... I've been saying for years that we are subsidizing the rest of the world when it comes to pharma because the profit taking is happening in the US. I don't object to subsidizing e.g. sub-Saharan Africa, southern Asia, etc, but I do object to subsidizing first world nations. This article appears to prove that this is, in fact, the case--if approval chances being hazy in the US means there is no point to pharma develop
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I don't support the anti-vax bullshit, and you're certainly right to call that out, but...
But you voted for the people who do, making you complicit.
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I don't support the anti-vax bullshit, and you're certainly right to call that out, but...
But you voted for the people who do, making you complicit.
Bold assumption of you, and absolutely incorrect. It also suggests you didn't bother to read my comment, since I'm reasonably certain that someone who voted for Darth Cheeto and his ilk would not refer to him as "possibly the worst president in American history."
That's one of the problems with "your side" of the political divide. People like me can't even fucking agree with you without you telling us off.
Re: There's the tell (Score:5, Informative)
we are subsidizing the rest of the world when it comes to pharma
You're subsidizing jack shit. Well educated academics fell all over themselves to work and love in the US - after having been through a publicly funded university elsewhere. That's where your excellence (used to) come from. Sure as hell not from domestic investments in the education system.
Even when it came to rockets 70 years ago, you actually had to let the nazis do it, because apparently even after stealing their tech and even having them teach you how to do it you still couldn't build a rocket that wouldn't explolde - until you actually put a former nazi in charge of the project.
The Covid mRNA vaccine market was pioneered by BioNTech, technologically (it's known as "the Pfizer vaccine" im the US, but Pfizer is just the sales & paperwork partner). BioNTech was an European company, BTW.
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You also appear to have a reading comprehension problem. I didn't say a thing about who was doing research or financing it directly. My point was about what individuals are paying for medication. But, sure, set that strawman up and knock it over--look how strong you are, you're a big boy now!
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That stops people from getting vaccines because?
It forces them to pay for it out-of-pocket. Combine that with the idiots up top that will say dumb shit like the HPV vaccine promotes risky behavior in our youth and you've got a recipe for bad things happening.
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That stops people from getting vaccines because?
Because if the FDA doesn't approve the vaccine for use you can't get it. I've been getting Moderna since the start of Covid, but this year I was not able to -- because the Moderna vaccine was not approved for people under 65. Yes, I was too young, as a grown adult, to get the vaccine I wanted. Also, Pfizer approval for under 65 was tied to being in a high-risk health group. If you did not have risks from respiratory illnesses and other types of chronic health conditions you could not get one. This actually
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diabetes, hypertension, obesity, mental health conditions
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/a... [nih.gov]
It's not the vaccines. People are not dying from the 90 or so inoculations or the diseases they inoculate against.
We're addicted to cheap and plentiful food. Our favorite foods are butter, cheese, refined wheat, cured meats.
High calorie, high fat, high sugar, low nutrition. And alcohol. Don't forget to have 3 beers with that 10,000 calorie pizza.
People drink 10 cans of beer a day. That's 2000+ calories on beer alone.
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People drink 10 cans of beer a day.
Yeah, and you know what we call those people? Amateurs. /s I spent some time in Wisconsin, those guys drink like it's their job.
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BTW, your 'almost 90' note, besides sounding like a made-up number, isn't really relevant:
"One hundred years ago, children received exactly one vaccine: smallpox. That single shot contained approximately 200 different antigens. Today's entire pediatric schedule exposes a child to about 165 - a fraction of the more than 3,200 in a single 1980s pertussis shot."
https://www.statnews.com/2025/... [statnews.com]
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Without the US government telling the public they need a vaccine there is no market?
In the wonderful "healthcare" system we have here the drugs and vaccines that our insurance companies will cover are indirectly dictated by the government. More specifically to the point, if a vaccine isn't on the "recommended" list insurance won't cover it. Of course people can still get the vaccine but it will be paid out of pocket, and convincing someone they need to pay for something that protects them from a long-shot risk is a tough sell.
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Without the US government telling the public they need a vaccine there is no market?
It is hugely more profitable for a pharmaceutical company to treat a disease than to prevent it. Let's take a simple example, COVID. The vaccine, even at full out-of-pocket prices, is something like $75. Pfizer's profit, after paying the manufacture, distribution, allowing for profit for the place that administered it, probably around $20 (let's say, but probably less).
If you get COVID, Paxlovid, the treatment medicine, is something like $1,500, and Pfizer's profit is probably closer to $800-$900. And you
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Greetings fellow ivermectin enthusiast!