David White, professor of socio-legal studies at the University of Liverpool, claims that what made the rapid development possible was the government subsidy that reduced risk, as well as the fact that the epidemic hit the economy that forced the companies to act * In addition, all the basic knowledge with which the vaccines were developed was created in academia, at the expense of the public
By: David White, Professor of Socio-Legal Studies, University of Liverpool
Boris Johnson, the British Prime Minister, attributed the success of the COVID-19 vaccines to "capitalism" and "greed". But he is wrong - the idea that private ingenuity and simple competition made the development of vaccines possible is complete fantasy.
Before COVID-19, the vaccine market was excruciatingly slow, and developing viable vaccines took between five and 15 years. It is for this reason that the current effort seems so remarkable.
Drug companies had bad incentives. In April 2018, long before the emergence of the coronavirus, a report by analysts from Goldman Sachs suggested that providing a "one-shot" cure for diseases could never be a "sustainable business model."
This is because, as Johnson rightly pointed out, drug companies follow the money. In 2019, the size of the global vaccine market was 47 billion dollars. Meanwhile sales of only four treatment drugs matched this sales volume (Humira, used to treat rheumatoid arthritis; Keytruda, the cancer treatment; Revlimid, used to treat multiple myeloma; Imbruvica, also a cancer drug).
Earlier diseases of the corona virus, SARS and MERS, did not have a vaccine. Both had candidates that were initially tested on animals and did not make it to human trials. The Ebola vaccine was finally approved in 2019, 16 years after the first patent and six full years after the epidemic began in West Africa.
In another aspect, there can be no doubt that capitalism and the global economy have shaped our response to this virus. Previous viruses did not threaten the economy of developed countries to the same extent. The costs of Ebola to West African countries are estimated at more than 50 billion dollars. . The cost of SARS was significant for the Asian economy and amounted to between 0.5-2.0% of GDP.
Most of the advanced economies are losing at least 4.5% of their GDP as a result of the covid 19 pandemic. Thus we would need the covid-19 vaccines to save these economies. Does this count as success for greed and capitalism?
An achievement due to public funds
The reason why COVID-19 vaccines were developed so quickly is that the risk model changed overnight and the usual risks associated with vaccine development were almost completely removed from investors. Before this pandemic, capitalism wasn't very good at developing vaccines for infectious diseases.
Research and development, combined with direct subsidies have been massively mobilized for this epidemic. Governments used public funds to place huge orders for vaccines that removed all market risk from future sales.
The two things are what caused an unprecedented single-purpose investment in the sector. This investment will, of course, be accompanied by unprecedented profits.
The development of the COVID-19 vaccines is, therefore, part of a vast system of public subsidies that can deceive people into thinking that it is private capital that is saving us from the virus, thanks to its ability to "innovate". However, there is another subsidy for those companies that remains hidden - universities.
Academic research - a hidden subsidy factor of the industry
The universities provide skilled scientists and a base of knowledge that has been formed over centuries. Universities develop the rules for clinical research and it is university researchers who publish results in academic journals that provide this knowledge base.
Universities make the greatest social contribution to verifying and disseminating scientific breakthroughs.. From an economic point of view, the production of this knowledge is considered an "external effect" in the business model: an invisible subsidy that never appears on the balance sheet of companies, because the corporations never have to pay for them.
The infrastructure that produced the COVID-19 vaccines was fostered in publicly funded universities, public institutes and heavily subsidized private laboratories. A process that appears to be driven by private ingenuity and simple competition is in reality driven by scientific knowledge that is part of the "general" and for that reason should be owned by everyone on Earth.
For an article in The Conversation
More of the topic in Hayadan:
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Dorit
One in every 600 Americans has died from Corona, and I estimate that one in 100 Americans will be irreversibly damaged by the disease (doctors I work with say the number is even higher).
US mortality increased by more than 20% in 2020, so what you said is a lie.
No one is forcing you to get vaccinated. Unfortunately - you have the right to cause death in agony of the helpless.
I just have one question. How do you sleep at night knowing all these things?
What do you have at this point that do not stem from greed and capitalism. Many days will pass before we will have the full picture of the motives behind the inexplicable urge (at the cost of violating human rights, the most basic of which) to vaccinate the entire world population, against picture data that have not changed since before the epidemic and during and after the vaccine (it is precisely after the vaccine that there seems to be an increase in mortality ). It is not clear why (it seems) governments choose to see only one side of the epidemic that would justify giving vaccines, including to children. there is plenty to discover. Really still not a victory for public research. You jumped to conclusions.
Although publicly funded research (not only governmental) is the source of basic scientific research, the "miracle" of developing vaccines within a year for a new disease was caused by the capitalist "greed" of industrial companies to see the opportunity to make "big money" in record time. When the manufacturers do not have a similar motivation, one can wait decades until a vaccine is created for one of the dozens of "orphan" diseases that have no cure. Ask Bill Gates, how many millions he has already invested in stimulating the development of vaccines for some of these diseases - which kill more children in the developing world every year than all the spaces of Europe that the social democratic governments have been saving for generations. But this is an academic researcher whose depth of economic thinking is as deep as his success in developing an effective solution to common rhinitis.
A professor neither of economics, nor of pharmacology, nor of immunology, explains to us where the vaccine did not come from.
I was not impressed.
The state/the public and the private companies are two pillars that each have advantages and disadvantages and need the balance
The right one between the two will give the best use of the mental and material resources that humanity has,
When the public government system takes the long-term solution and the private one for the short-term,
It is clear that we all rely on accumulated knowledge of thousands of human years and in the case of the corona vaccine if we reduce it
For a little less than the scope of the invention of the wheel and the direct field of Moderna and Pfizer's vaccine, this is about 40 years of research, a significant part of which is also academic, in which they managed to bypass the various obstacles with an emphasis on a vaccine for cancer (and other diseases). ,
But as for a private company, it likes to be profitable, otherwise it will not exist so that it researches something and invests in it, it needs protection for the knowledge developed there at a certain level that will allow it to profit from the investment,
If she does not have the right to protect the knowledge, she will not develop the product because she will not profit from it very simply,
It is in the public interest that these two netuvah posts work well,
If we take the Corona virus, we will see that the government systems are the ones that enabled the research in the past
long term, but they failed to accelerate and invest appropriately over the past decade,
This is also true for the development of anti-cancer drugs, which was one of the catalysts for the development of Moderna and Pfizer.
Before the corona virus came to visit, the question arises whether there was a massive government public intervention and investment as in the corona virus in the last 10 years in the field of cancer, is it perhaps elsewhere?