[fighterpilot]

I got the spirit of the comment. At the beginning of the pandemic, there should've been overwhelming support for therapeutics and vaccines.

Multiple countries should've been preparing manufacturing facilities well in advance, and those that couldn't should've been scrambling to order from every vendor just in case. A "war effort" if you will. Instead we got a very inward and reactionary response (lockdowns etc) but lacked that longer term visionary response which required foresight of only six months.

The following is my speculation, but - it's probably a consequence of having mostly lawyers in charge, and having elected representatives rather far removed from a direct democratic vote as in the case of the EU (although non-EU countries mostly responded in the same way by ignoring therapeutics and vaccines too)

[rvieira]

> we got a very inward and reactionary response (lockdowns etc) [...] it's probably a consequence of having mostly lawyers in charge

I disagree. Lockdowns were not proposed by lawyers or politicians, but rather the scientific community. In fact, in countries were the scientific advice was ignored, you had the fewest restrictions.

Also, "At the beginning of the pandemic, there should've been overwhelming support for therapeutics and vaccines." shows what the problem really is.

This is the politicians POV, in my opinion. A kind of mythical man-month for science. Long-term investment must be made in fundamental science so we can have nice things like mRNA vaccines. The politicians mentality of "pour millions in research" and they'll come up with something in two weeks is a real problem. Pure and fundamental research must be supported continuously, which is something politicians typically don't.

[fighterpilot]

Look, I'm not trying to argue that lockdowns were a bad idea or what have you. Just that they were the easiest cognitively for non-technical politicians.

The hard, longer-term work of building out local vaccine manufacturing and distribution wasn't done because it required way more foresight, executive planning ability and basic scientific/medical knowledge.

The other contributing factor is that politicians don't want to be embarrassed if they create some expensive manufacturing facility which ends up being unused. Better to just not make it at all and you'll be safe - after all, that's what everyone else did.

Lack of spending on science research is one thing, but couldn't they have at least imported a little talent to create redundant vaccine manufacturing facilities to deal with just this one acute crisis? It seems like the only person thinking about that was Bill Gates? Why can't our elected leaders show the same leadership? The only country that I'd expect to have this kind of technocratic vision and execution would be China.

[rvieira]

Lockdowns _did_ have a non-technical interpretation. The main purpose was to avoid everyone getting sick at the same time so that hospitals wouldn't run out of beds.

I think the main problem with politicians was that they hesitated because they wanted to have two contradictory things: lockdowns to slow down the pandemic (until vaccines were ready) and keeping the economy going "as normal". IMO you can't square that circle.

[rsynnott]

> Multiple countries should've been preparing manufacturing facilities well in advance

They _did_. The only reason that production has gone as well as it has (particularly with Pfizer and Biontec) is massive public and private investment in facilities.