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by denimnerd42 2009 days ago
Yeah seems like vaccine development only started after the high profit objectives suffered failure. That doesn't mean we can't go back to working on those objectives in the future but they needed SOMETHING that would work to show mrna promise. Vaccines you only have to take once or twice so the side effects of immune response aren't too bad and you have an immune response to a vaccine anyways.
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Even for the staunchest capitalist, covid has clearly outlined that we need medical research that is separated from market forces. After sars 1 was controlled, research in this area was all but dropped - despite virologists warning that it was just a matter of time before... well, this.

Medical research needs to be driven by what can help people, not by what can make the most money.

PPE too. We still don't have N95s for the public or in some areas even the medical professionals.

If we had a different administration in the USA we may have been able to conquer that quickly with sheer cash and coordination since the knowledge how to build melt blown N95 machines is there. For whatever reason we just didn't.