[mioelnir]

BioNTech developed the vaccine now mass-produced by Pfizer. For that, they received $445m from the German government. So, as a tax-paying German citizen I can say, not only will I do that, but even better, I already did.

It also feels deeply wrong to pull the "but all the research efforts that did not lead anywhere" argument, when Pfizer did not do the research in the first place. They should get compensation for organizing the huge trial, of course; that expertise was why they were on-boarded in the first place. And nobody expects them to manufacture that stuff at loss or cost. But we should not accept public money buying them goose laying golden eggs either.

[Tinyyy]

Nobody’s getting a goose laying golden eggs from a covid vaccine. It’s a one time, relatively low-cost vaccine that is going to go out of demand once the population is immunized.

Oh, and now there are multiple competitors in the market.

[Scandiravian]

Only if the vaccine gives permanent immunity, which I haven't found any research suggesting that it will. In all likelihood, it will be necessary to give yearly booster shots, so the companies developing the vaccines will be able to sell vaccines every year

The quantity of vaccines needed will make even a $0.50 markup worth billions of dollars every year

[Exmoor]

You can't measure long-term immunity on a virus that's only been in the wild for ~11 months. That said, all the recent studies I've seen show no signs that immunity is going to drop significantly after a year.

I hate to link to a Youtube video, but this doctor walking through the research in the first part of the video is honestly better than any news article I've seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFeJ2BqCFY0

[Scandiravian]

Thank you for the link. The study definitely suggest a best-case scenario is viable. I do however think that the sample population of 183 subjects is too small to support the conclusion in the paper. The study only got a single sample from the majority of the participants andI couldn't find any indication of how many subjects from each location participated (or which locations were included outside of California), which makes me think it might not be a representative population used

I also noted that 40 of the participants were excluded because they had no PCR test done to confirm covid and no antibodies were found in the assay. This is in my opinion a major flaw, as the subjects could have been infected, but had no antibodies left, when the blood sample was taken

Finally seven of the 18 authors declare competing interests, which might have affected the research

Getting back to your post itself, I agree that you can't measure immunity for a longer period than the virus has been around, but that also means you can't say that there will only be a need for one round of vaccines, which was what I was disagreeing with

It might very well turn out, that you gain permanent immunity for a specific strain off the virus, but unfortunately that immunity also introduces selective pressure. Whether the virus is able to mutate in a way that bypass existing antibodies in a subject is obviously still an unknown, but we have seen that it's able to jump to other species like mink, which caused the emergence of the Cluster-5 variant

Since the virus is able to use other species as a reservoir and selective pressure is being introduced, I think it's reasonable to prepare for a scenario, where a vaccine won't be a permanent fix

[ghaff]

Vaccines are not a great business in general. (Which is not the same as saying they're unprofitable.) But one reason vaccine makers are generally indemnified against lawsuits in the US, it that at least some companies would probably pull out of making vaccines if they weren't.