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• #17502
Are you giving laissez-faire capitalism credit for the vaccine? Am I being a fool and missing something obvious?
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• #17503
I think he is, but like rain on your wedding dayly.
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• #17504
Kind of. The whole world* wants one, we can hardly be surprised that someone delivers one, early. Unlike the vaccine for the common cold(s) that nobody gives a shit about.
* a good chunk of it, anyway.
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• #17505
Ah - I saw Pence bigging up the research as being a public-private thing, and then a tweet from someone at Pfizer saying they took no money from the Trump administration and therefore they can get no credit for the vaccine, and I think that which must have put me in a particular type of headspace.
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• #17506
took no money from Trump administration / have a $2b contract to supply 100m doses
seems a little like semantics
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• #17507
Kind of.
I know you said "Kind of", so not really meaning to start something here, but I'm triggered.
I think it's safe to say that any vaccine is going to be the result of unquantifiable amounts of money and effort which Pfizer (or whoever) is not responsible for. Be it the "free" labour provided by researchers and academics in outside institutions, state funding for private/public bodies doing that research, or the public money which made it possible for researcher's to get the specialist education that allows this type of stuff to happen. As well as, as @DethBeard mentions, direct state funding in one form or another and innumerable other little things which make society function the way it does allowing for these things to happen.
If this was up to the invisible hand we'd be fucked.
As a side note, even Smith felt somethings in society shouldn't be left to the "invisible hand." This would be one of them (I'll try to pull of the quote from Wealth of Nations that shows this).
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• #17508
Literally... People sat in traffic complaining about the traffic. You are the traffic too, lad.
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• #17509
Rep :)
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• #17510
The cold is usually a rhinovirus and those viruses mutate reasonably fast... there are over a 100 already.
It would be like making a flu vaccine every year but for not just 2-3 strains but dozens (or more?) so really really hard.
Or perhaps it is is Big Tissue stopping it (tongue firmly in cheek!) :)
Some colds are coronaviruses those ones won't be too happy with this news if the vaccine offers cross immunity ;)
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• #17511
As a side note, even Smith felt somethings in society shouldn't be left to the "invisible hand."
Indeed. IIRC he was well aware of externalities and public goods which needed state intervention in the market or which the free market was ill-equipped or unable to provide.
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• #17512
I think it was always fairly inevitable that there'd be an early announcement from one or more of the drug giants. It's such a possible bonanza for them that it's about stealing a march, too. Whether anything actually comes of it we'll have to see in due course. I'd say let's be cautious at this stage. I'm sure there'll be more announcements like this, e.g. about the 'Oxford vaccine'.
I mean, I'm as hopeful as anyone that a vaccine will be developed, but let's wait and see.
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• #17513
Cummings not so invisible hand involved. FFS.
Also a push for fast tests that are unlikely to be reliable.
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• #17514
So, has this been resolved yet?
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• #17515
ignore. Not @jellybaby, me
feck, made a right mess of that
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• #17516
Goes to show some of the reasons only 11% of people self isolate correctly
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• #17517
Johnson in slur on London:
it was not a ‘slum dunk’ to defeat the virus
(Obviously just a Standard typo.)
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• #17518
Re: vaccines... China made one and started rolling it out in April (!), about half a million people have had it already. It's being trialed in Brazil at the moment and they've just halted the trial after a serious adverse event. Nothing in the news here about that or the pfizer vaccine, obvs.
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• #17519
^ is it tested to better standard than Russian one?
Still strange though there's nothing in news.
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• #17520
German Govt. gave crucial Pfizer partner nearly half a billion USD to help develop the vaccine.
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• #17521
Totally forgot, yesterday Shanghai had our first locally transmitted case since March/April, or first official one anyway. So far it's not been blamed on foreigners or salmon, and only people in that part of the city (which is basically a village within the city borders) are being tested. Lots of provinces are requiring tests from anyone coming from Shanghai now.
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• #17522
^ is it tested to better standard than Russian one?
Do you mean in China or in Brazil? I've no idea what the testing standards are in Russia. But China does not have a great track record with vaccines, to put it very mildly.
Still strange though there's nothing in news.
Not that strange that state-controlled news doesn't cover stories that don't paint the party/state in a good light!
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• #17523
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-54883383
Found this but nothing detailed.
With Russia vaccine criticism they skipped testing processes right away hit UK news.
Hah yeah Chinese news would not be critical 😁
In what sense is track record not great? Simply don't work?
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• #17524
Massive fake vaccine scandal a few years ago, pharma industry in China generally is renowned for terrible corruption.
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• #17525
Useful tool for following the intricate web of Government corruption, with an excellent name.
At the estimated rate of 1.3b doses made in 2021, it would take roughly 12 years to make enough for everyone on Earth.