[roody15]

Hmm super expensive hard to transport Pfizer vaccine ... first to be approved.

Next Moderna ... also super expensive second to be approved.

After six months to a year ... and after making huge profits....

Then the AstraZeneca/Russian vaccine variants will be “found” to be also effective.

We must first wait and let Pfizer make a few billion !!!

[stu2b50]

Ah yes, it's definitely a conspiracy, not the fact that the Biontech/Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are RNA based, which are far faster to make, but which also are known to break down at high temperatures while AstraZeneca is a traditional vaccine.

Yep, it's definitely not the logical reason but Big Pharma and the US government and Germany at it again.

[stjohnswarts]

I wouldn't say far faster. Russia and China have both come up with vaccines in a similar amount of time. We haven't seen any details on how effective they are compared. J&J is making a more traditional vaccine and it should be finishing up the Stage 3 study in a month or two and be ready for approval. They're hoping it will be a single dose vaccine

[danhor]

I mean, two days in january: https://www.businessinsider.com/moderna-designed-coronavirus.... According to wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gam-COVID-Vac), the Russian vaccine was completed in May and it's Phase 3 trial is expected to be concluded in May 202021. It's far faster & the timelines of the trials roughly match.

[maxerickson]

It's $40, not super expensive.

600 million doses would cost $25 billion, a trifle compared to how much the pandemic is costing.

[shoo]

> Belgium’s budget state secretary, Eva De Bleeker, posted the price list on Twitter, with the amounts of each vaccine that her country intends to buy from the EU. The tweet was quickly deleted, but not soon enough to prevent interested parties taking screenshots, which have now made it public knowledge.

  This is the list of what the EU is paying:

  Oxford/AstraZeneca: €1.78 (£1.61)
  Johnson & Johnson: $8.50 (£6.30)
  Sanofi/GSK: €7.56
  Pfizer/BioNTech: €12
  CureVac: €10
  Moderna: $18

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/18/belgian-minist...

[stjohnswarts]

I mean does anyone even care if it's under $100? Given what it has cost economies all over the world it is a drop in the ocean.

[blibble]

developing economies certainily do

[bawolff]

Developing economies are probably not going to be paying the same prices.

[bzb6]

Developing economies are by definition irrelevant.

[refurb]

Well that's not good. Pharmaceutical companies are typically willing to negotiate on price if the agreed price is confidential.

(I have no idea if that was the case here or not)

[rocqua]

Notably, these are prices for the EU members

[djsumdog]

Well hundreds of millions have already flowed into every major pharma company for development costs, so the price for tax payers in every contributing country is substantially higher than $40/person. That's just the price an individual may see.

[stjohnswarts]

You're kidding right? The whole operation "Warp Speed" was a bit over $10 billion, that is a pittance compared to the trillions spent to keep the economy from collapsing.

[tyre]

It’s fun to shit on Big Pharma but this isn’t true.

Pfizer specifically rejected government funding. It did so because it didn’t want to be dragged into bureaucracy.

[morsch]

Biontech, Pfizer's research partner, received 375 million Euro from the German government.

https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/themenseite-fo...

[Slartie]

That is true, and likely one of the reasons for that favorable EU deal.

But what's also correct is: neither Pfizer nor BioNTech did accept money from the Trump government (except as payment for the finished product once it was approved of course), which is what the OP probably meant. There's a huge difference regarding the potential for politicization between this particular government and any other sane government on this planet, and especially the German one that's currently being led by a trained physicist.

[maxerickson]

No, that's (roughly) the per dose price the US is paying for the vaccine (there's no individual fee here for the vaccine, I guess there can be an administrative fee, but that won't go to the manufacturer, it will go to the health provider doing the vaccination).

[graeme]

Did you mean hundreds of billions? Hundreds of millions is a tiny amount relative to the billions of doses under production.

Hundreds of billions is not accurate either though.

[stjohnswarts]

This is why I was so angry to find out that the Trump administration passed on 100 million doses. Are you kidding me? And they didn't have to pay for them if it wasn't proven to be effective. There was literally no downside! This has just been a terrible Presidency from all angles.

[zaroth]

If Trump had stockpiled even more doses he would just be called a mass murderer for hoarding the initial supply. America has enough of the first round of production locked up.

[maxerickson]

Their purchase targets across all the vaccine candidates should have been in the billions, with the idea of distributing any excess (FDA approved) vaccines around the world.

[tathougies]

The US has 100 million doses of Pfizer and 50 million of Moderna, enough to cover a bit under half the country. Then, it has 500 million of the Oxford vaccine. Altogether, this is more than enough to cover the country. And then it has the option to purchase more..

[CydeWeys]

It's two doses per person, so the first 150M only cover 75M people, not half of the country.

[tathougies]

No, I read that the doses reported by the government are the full two doses, so if there are 100 million doses, then the government has 200 million shots.

[roody15]

Astrazeneca believes their vaccine may soon be less than 1$ per dose.

If we are serious about vaccination worldwide and quickly ... then this should already be approved IMO

[aphextron]

What exactly is wrong with allowing a company to profit from performing a literal miracle?

[stjohnswarts]

No one has a problem with it save maybe 1-5% who want a communist type economic system. At least in the USA. Someone is going to pay for it.

[morsch]

A literal miracle that was performed three to five times in less than a year! Truly we live in wondrous times.

[mssundaram]

I don't think you'll ever see the answer to your question if that's how you're framing it

[systemvoltage]

I think Gov should buy the vaccine and provide it for free. Private companies should rightfully charge a premium to the governments as they took: 1) Enormous risk 2) Expediency 3) Investment of talent 4) Demand is through the roof; all this even if the governments were involved in hedging the risk for spinning up manufacturing lines.

[handmodel]

In the US that is what is happening - no one is paying for the vaccine.

It is intellectually vapid to get worked about the fact companies are making a $15 marginal unit profit on a vaccine that has 10x the utility of the average annual physical but costs 1/10th as much.

[systemvoltage]

I wasn't aware it is free in the US. That's great.

[petre]

If it isn't free then it isn't effective because it would drastically reduce the number of recipients.

[stjohnswarts]

For what it's worth both Trump and Biden stated as much regardless of who won the election.

[throwaway201103]

The vaccine itself is free. Insurance or patient or Medicaid will be billed for an office visit to administer the injection.

[waiseristy]

Safeway and others have already been getting ready to administer the vaccine at no-cost to the patient. This isn't really an issue