Knowing there is a demand for 1 billion widgets and fierce competition to fill that order is not the same as someone handing you a purchase order for 1 billion widgets on the condition they are not defective

The most interesting thing about this conversation is how hard people are taking a side and what is motivating that

I take the 'side' that a $2B contract is extremely important for drug development. Drug companies are obsessed with risk

My point is not that the $2b conditional purchase order is useless, it is clearly not useless.
My point is that:
*arguing that the purchase order has any correlation to the results of the vaccine news today, is bull ****.
*arguing that the purchase order will result in a massive positive outcome for the USA, is bull ****.

Any argument where the Trump administration takes any credit for this news, is just a stupid take. Nothing out of the ordinary happened here, exactly like you said: governments are doing this all over the world. The reason why we are producing unapproved vaccines is for maximum volume of deployment in the interest of the world, not because pharma companies need to do that to profit on the development of a vaccine.

How can you even say that after 4 years of Trump? Trump doesn't know or care what legally binding means.

Have we even seen the contract? If you've worked with government contracts before, you should know that there is a 0% probability that it comes down to "If there's a vaccine and it's safe and effective, we purchase $2 billion. ". That's not how any of that works.

I find it interesting that in your mind having a discussion necessitates taking a side.

Another exaggerated vaccine claim. The 90% figure is from the first 7 days only.

super naive question: could you not take a vaccine every 7 days for renewed invincibility?

You'd need to pump billions of vaccines a week.
You'd need a supply chain that is incredibly expensive (apparantly the vaccine transport will be incredibly challenging).
You'd need to have no LT health effects for taking so many vaccines.
And if you have 1 or 2 days of side effects from the vaccine, you got a significant impact on quality of life.

I think a good vaccine that works for 6 months is the realistic minimum, and that will already be incredibly costly.

Obviously a good vaccine that works 3 months would still be awesome, but it will be incredibly expensive and most likely wont solve everything.

I have tgiggity on ignore, so thanks for the lulz-inducing quote.

Shuffle McDoomPorn, weighing in right on schedule with his usual trenchant observation.

I dont know the details but this is stunningly unlikely to be the case. The placebo in these sorts of trials is chosen (it's usually another vaccine) to produce, as near as possible, the same symptom response in the volunteer.

Otherwise the trial is more or less pointless (and unethical) and I can't believe it wouldn't have been called out by the many experts who follow such trials.

If deaths track confirmed cases (given the positivity rate soaring and dynamics of spread to the old, they likely outrun it), then Europe is set to 5x from here and the US is set to double. The walking dead in Europe now 4x outnumber the first wave peak:



Glad they all wore their masks though and had great leaders!

Another data point for the "experts are losers and morons who should be ignored" argument:

The CDC experts botched this horribly, UK experts botched this horribly, WHO botched this horribly, many European countries botched this horribly. Why did they all get it so wrong?

Trump however NAILED it

I'm a participant in the Pfizer trial. The informed consent states:

"In this study the placebo will be salt-water, also known as normal saline".

If anything I would suspect people who have a reaction to the vaccine would be more likely to assume they got it, and may in fact tend to be less careful. If you get the placebo and have no side effects, you may be more likely to doubt you got the vaccine, and would therefore continue to be more careful.

Yes, but here's the thing. Money isnt free. It doesnt grow on trees. If you print a zillion dollars to pay all these poor people to survive that are out of work because of covid, what happens when you have hyperinflation down the line because your printing more money and no one is producing any extra goods?

I do. It's relatively easy for governments to negative binding contracts vis-a-vis dealings between two commercial entities. Having said that, I don't think Pfizer will have difficulty moving product if it works, or having the terms of that contract honored.

Looks like tooth was right. You guys arguing against tooth, i get that he can be a bit insulting sometimes, but if you dont argue with logic and facts you just end up looking stupid.

Trouble is Shuflle's point is now a very obvious question as people who feel ill may socialise less and may become more aware/careful for a period of time. You're correct that they may be less careful but then again they may be more careful and we dont know.

I'll still be stunned if this hasn't been considered and isn't in fact an unresolved issue but I'd really like to hear an expert answering this question about the study design now.

For comparison this is from the oxford vaccine site where MenACWY is used as the Placebo

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-05-22...i-human-trials

fyp. virtually whole western world is on a parabolic upward trajectory. good luck trying to approximate how much worse it ends up being in europe to score your odd troll political points

As soon as Tooth starting saying the US was set to sail thru covid wave in great shape due to 'burn through' i predicted and said to others to 'mark my words' that his backpedal position later would be to resort to 'comparative'. So not the the US was doing great and soaring through unscathed but compared to other geo's was doing great.

It is not even difficult to predict Tooths BS and where it will go. He is transparent and wrong and relies on his backpedaling and caveats to pretend he was not.

Even if the vaccine isn't that great and even if a lot of people won't take it, the news is still awfully good for people and maybe the stock market. Because:

1. We can now officially say that there is such a thing as a medicine that will make it much less likely that you will catch covid. It may not wind up, for various reasons, being the one we use. But at least we now know that a vaccine actually exists in real life, not just in theory. That first step is easily the biggest.

2. It is not that important that a large enough proportion of the population take the vaccine as to eradicate the disease. It is only important that the old and vulnerable take it Especially if it works well. If others feel like the risks of side effects is larger than the risks of being unvacinated that's pretty much their problem and things like lockdowns would be silly to continue to consider.

What are you saying here?

That Europe will settle at 2k deaths per million, and USA at 1400?

It would be amazing for you to make an actual objective claim like that for once.

The claim is of course stupid under current assumptions, Europe has a plan in place to bring down death (deaths per million across EU or Europe will likely reach its peak this week, next week very latest), in USA in there is no plan as long as Trump is ignoring the new increase of the first wave.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...not-washington

All along, Pfizer’s top executives have attempted to quell notions that it has been influenced by political players.

Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla has repeatedly said that the drug giant has avoided taking taxpayer dollars for research and development purposes.

“I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy,” Bourla said in an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sept. 16. “When you get money from someone, that always comes with strings. They want to see how we are growing to progress, what types of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn’t want to have any of that.”

“Basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else. And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way,” Bourla added.