In summary:
A.) Pfizer is raking in over $33 billion from vaccine sales.
B.) Due to the PREP Act, they are <i>completely</i> immune from lawsuits arising from any form of complications arising from those vaccines.
C.) If you don't take this vaccine, you may lose your job[0].
D.) If you don't take this vaccine, you may be barred from normal everyday social activities[1][2].<p>I can't be the only one who is incredibly uncomfortable about society going down this path.<p>[0]: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27986160" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27986160</a>
[1]: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-widens-green-pass-restrictions-curb-covid-19-surge-2021-07-22/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/italy-widens-green-pass...</a>
[2]: <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/San-Francisco-mulls-requiring-proof-of-vaccine-at-16330935.php" rel="nofollow">https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/restaurants/article/San-Fra...</a>
It's obvious we need booster vaccinations. But not another intramuscular that only seeps in serum IgG antibodies into the lower lungs. The levels of antibodies in the upper respiratory mucosa are never very high and drop rapidly. Viral infection of the mucosa and shedding still occurs.<p>We need operation warp speed type money for funding the two good intranasal sars-cov-2 vaccine trials going on right now and to start more. Intranasal vaccination after intramuscular will recruit and specialize B and T cells to the upper respiratory mucosa and establish IgA antibodies resident for long periods there. Being intranasally vaccinated after intramuscular could actually stop the spread and end the pandemic.<p><i>edit</i>: btw, all this has been known about aerosol spread respiratory viruses and human physiology since the 1960s.
I'm having serious problem with this sort of reporting and Reuters should do better.<p>Focusing on sales data is not helpful for vaccine and it would be better to look at doses / patients treated to measure impact.<p>Sales without looking at expenses are meaningless. Whatever one believes there is a huge cost to this ramp-up. Everything was expedited, expenses secondary.<p>The cost structure and the risk / reward discussion is required as this is anything but free market. Almost all contracts were involving governments and unusual terms. Typical expenses for drugs like marketing and trials were only to a small part paid by the company.<p>The rollout of the primary vaccine is still ongoing. If a booster is found to be desirable then it will require similar production capabilities as the vaccine. The sooner this is know the better and the more cost effective this capacity can be ramped up.<p>Without sufficient planning we may see a conflict of third world vaccines competing with first world booster for production capacity.
Anti-vaxxers are setting the stage for enormous profits for big pharma by creating the conditions for breeding new variants that will require more big pharma to combat them.<p>I feel my grandkids will grow up in a world quite different from mine, where travel and experiences will be gated and limited by fear of contagious disease. That sucks and didn't need to happen.<p>Thought experiment for anti-vaxxers - what if there was technology that could scan the virus particles coming into your body, and the ones coming out, and identify whether you - yes YOU - were the person responsible for creating a new variant?<p>What if more technology could then detect that the dangerous variant that you incubated had wafted out of your nostrils and into the body of your elderly neighbor, killing her?<p>With your alleged focus on self responsibility, would you take your punishment if you personally were responsible for thousands of deaths?
Man, I was really born just in time to see the U.S. outright dig it's grave from pure unadulterated anti-intellectualism.<p>The CCP may do a lot of fucked up shit, but this century is just going to be completely and utterly dominated by China. I've said quite a lot of bad things about the Chinese government in the past, and may continue to do so until I die... But the U.S. is just fucked, and I very much do want to see humanity succeed and have a chance at exploring our universe to a degree thought impossible throughout our lifetimes. I only see China's method of governing getting us anywhere close to that in the long-term. Maybe they'll show mercy to the research engineers and scientists of the U.S.<p>As for the rest of our inhabitants... it's near impossible to care at this point.
A very interesting observation [1] was made by Dr John Campbell who noticed a difference between vaccine efficacy in Israel vs UK. In Israel, the doses were spaced 2-3 weeks apart, and the protection against transmissibility has dropped off significantly more than in the UK, where doses were spaced further apart, sometimes over 10 weeks between the first and second dose. His hypothesis was that a longer duration between doses may actually improve long term efficacy.<p>[1] <a href="https://youtu.be/wNbs4LCgrcY?t=464" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/wNbs4LCgrcY?t=464</a>
Would they be able to tweak this potential booster shot to better target current variants and their descendants? Is there any need to do so?<p>How much about the current vaccine can possibly be changed without major regulatory hurdles or manufacturing blockers?
Yes sales... sales from insanely binding contracts which of course say Pfizer is in no way shape or form responsible for anything that goes wrong with highly experimental, largely untested and rushed through drugs with completely unknown long-term side effects... that states companies are not allowed to return or take partial shipments of their vaccines...which PFIZER ITSELF dictates how many units the labs and medical facilities are going to buy. So 33b from using a global pandemic to rig and rip the entire supply chain, medical industry, and taxpayers of countries around the world off to insane levels of profit, all in the name of greed.. And yet here they are, demanding MORE money...<p>And yet people still sit around trying to click two brain cells together wondering why people refuse to get vaccinated, are sick of having this crap shoved down their throats, and further distrust big pharma and the medical industry at large.<p>Can't wait for the big pharma shills here on HN to come crawling out defending these scumbags and big industries and institutional corruption and greed.