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by breck
2320 days ago
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> I wonder if Apple itself couldn't justify investing into research for treatments and vaccines as a hedge against supply line damage. Makes sense purely in terms of business, doesn't it? I would say they already do by building the best laptops, tablets and smartphones in the world, increasing the productivity of the biomedical researchers who use their products. In addition, their investments in Apple Watch and Apple Health long term I think are the future of healthcare. In 30 years I'd expect everyone will have the equivalent of their own doctor's office/diagnostic lab in their home. There won't be counterproductive mass-runs on hospitals because most things will be diagnosed at home. I think you can draw a pretty direct line from where Apple Watch is today to that future. > Drug companies were burned by Ebola investments are not interesting in working on COVID-19. I'd guess there are hundreds of companies working on COVID-19 vaccines. Here's an interesting one that was sent to me last week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22313320 |
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Yes, the BBC articles mentions they are mostly smaller companies funded by things like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This feels like a coordination problem given the size of the economic damage from stuff like this.
Ideally it would be governments picking up the slack, but if we are so inefficiently allocating money to vaccines that have such big impacts on Apple's supply lines, there's a business case for them hedging with investments of their own.