[poof131]

That’s a straw man argument. They’ve made billions and will make billions more. Nothing is being given away for free. But currently, it is in their financial interests for this pandemic to go on indefinitely with continued mutations and a never-ending need for boosters. And our free market always seems to tilt in favor of monopolies. Shut down small businesses but don’t put any pressure on big pharma. Similar to 2008, let average people suffer but prop up the banks. I believe in free markets, but there is a reason people are turning against capitalism. No markets are truly free and we need consistent values applied to players big and small. Helping the world get vaccinated is the morally right thing to do, not optimizing pharma profits for the next decade under the guise of “incentives.”

[bawolff]

Please forgive my personal pet peeve, but nothing BurningFrog said was a straw man as far as i can tell. I don't see any way they misrepresented your argument.

[poof131]

“Giving away their vaccine” is the straw man. There is a huge range between free and maximum profits. I’m not arguing that they shouldn’t be incentivized with a profit, the question is how much and what's in the best interest of the American people, not just Pfizer and Moderna.

[BurningFrog]

I was responding to this, written by someone else:

> force the drug manufactures to share the capability with the rest of the world

[creato]

Do you think the ~$20/dose Pfizer and Moderna are charging is unreasonable?

[BurningFrog]

At $20/dose you can vaccinate all of humanity twice for $300B. An incredible bargain.

The US government has spent $5300B in pandemic relief packages. Vaccinating the planet could have been a cheap PR win barely noticed among that.

Except there just isn't production capacity for that on the planet.

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/heres-everything-congress-...

[Marsymars]

> Except there just isn't production capacity for that on the planet.

But it's not like we're fully utilizing the available production capacity.

https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/do...

[geoduck14]

For poor people in India or Africa - yes.

[creato]

This reads like a copy/paste of the usual comments on HN about big tech, but almost none of it actually applies to most vaccine manufacturers.