[burkaman]

I understand that's not how they decide what to research, but I'm asking today, this second, why are they not factoring lives into the question "should I tell the world how to make my vaccine". I don't even know how to phrase this without sounding absurd. It's like a superhero letting the villain blow up a stadium because if the city is too safe then they might get bored and not be around when the next villain shows up in 20 years.

[mhb]

Do you know Peter Singer's parable of the shallow pond? Why is what you are puzzled about any different than asking yourself why you haven't donated everything you have right now to save lives in undeveloped parts of the world?

[burkaman]

Because of the magnitude and rarity of the problem, the proven effectiveness of their solution, and the ease of releasing it. I am not arguing that every second of every person's life should be devoted to maximum lifesaving utility. I do donate a lot of my income, but I save a lot for myself because I'm a normal self-interested person. I'm not asking anyone at Moderna to make some enormous sacrifice, I'm asking them to maybe risk some potential future business opportunities. Relative to the problem I don't even consider it a sacrifice at all.

In my mind it's like an off-duty firefighter standing next to someone unconscious in a burning building and being able to easily drag them to safety, but deciding not to because it might give them back problems in a few years. It's an emergency, they know how to fix it and can do so easily, and the sacrifice is minimal compared to the danger.

[MillenialMan]

Malaria vaccines are more effective than covid vaccines. Malaria kills a lot more people than covid. Why do you buy sushi instead of malaria vaccines? Relative to the problem I wouldn't consider that a sacrifice. Doesn't matter, I'm still going to buy sushi.

I get where you're coming from but people are just selfish with money, it is how it is.

[burkaman]

I truly believe that what I'm asking Moderna to do is not much bigger than the minor sacrifices I make in my own life, mostly donating money and volunteering time. Tiny sacrifices! I have an incredibly comfortable life. If the people running Moderna did what I wanted, they would continue to have incredibly comfortable lives.

Most of the threads I've started have now devolved into people accusing me of being a hypocrite who's never sacrificed anything in my life, so I guess that's the end of the road. I still don't understand why anyone needs to be convinced that this obvious moral choice is a good thing to do, and I guess I never will.

[MillenialMan]

For what it's worth, I don't think you're a hypocrite and I do sympathize with you, I wish they wouldn't pull this shit too. But they're a drug company, you have to expect them to act like a drug company. The number one thing they care about is profit.

[mhb]

Well you should rethink that. The people who invest in Moderna are just like you and that appeals to you because they're other people with their own money that you want to direct.

Pretty much your whole justification is that they've happened to invest in medicine and intentionally positioned themselves outside the burning building. You're investing in what? Yourself? Thin soup.

[burkaman]

I guess the argument here is that only people as successful and powerful as the founders of Moderna are capable of judging them. You're right - despite my best efforts, I'm not there yet and probably never will be. If that's the bar, there's nothing more for me to say.

[seabird]

The superhero analogy is akin to saying "football is a game where you run a ball to the end of a field". It completely trivializes the realities of developing highly experimental technologies. Moderna doesn't get to fly in like an invincible superhero and defeat the villain with no real concern for whether or not they're going to be able to do it again.

[burkaman]

But they already have the vaccine! There's no immediate risk, and the long term risk is not that serious. I guess the core thing I don't understand is why anyone would assume that releasing their process is equivalent to going bankrupt. Is this process all they have? Would releasing it eliminate all barriers of entry? Would the US government no longer be willing to give them grants if they become too philanthropic and save too many lives? Why couldn't they continue to be a wildly successful company?

[seabird]

It is a serious risk. Their manufacturing process and their tribal knowledge of it is all they have, save maybe political clout. Through this they prop up everything else. On top of all of this, they might not be able to convey the process to the extent needed for others to recreate it, even if they wanted to.

I work at a company that faces this as an existential threat; you might be able to knock off our products in single quantities, but because of decades of process knowledge that no single person (or even a committee of people) could tell you, you won't be able to beat us on price. Once you do that, it's over for us, and any beneficial technology that we planned on developing is going to need to be provided by our competitors, who don't actually have a culture of making improvements, only leeching them.

There are countless industries with high but tenable barriers to entry, and completely dealbreaking process knowledge that actually determines the viability of a company in that industry.

[burkaman]

Alright, you've convinced me that it would be a real sacrifice, but it's still so obviously worth it. There's very little I wouldn't sacrifice to do what Moderna could do right now. The worst case scenario seems to be that Moderna employees with "helped develop the most effective Covid vaccine on the planet" on their resumes have to get new jobs, and new treatments based on their technology are developed more quickly now that the whole world can experiment with it.

If they can't communicate their process quickly enough because of the tribal knowledge, then no harm done, and at least they tried.

[mhb]

> There's very little I wouldn't sacrifice

Ha. Maybe there's little you wouldn't sacrifice that isn't yours, but there's very little you would sacrifice yourself to save someone. For $500 right now you can save someone's life for a year. What seems to be confusing you is that you're not thinking of Moderna as real people.

[burkaman]

I donate lots of my own money directly to people who need it. No, not all of it, because as I've said I'm a normal self-interested person like the people who run Moderna. That's why I'm not asking them to sacrifice everything they have, or anything close to that. They would continue to lead incredibly privileged and comfortable lives, just like I do.

I guess you already don't believe me, but I do make sacrifices in my own life, and if I were in the position of running Moderna, I still cannot imagine being unwilling to make another one. Doesn't seem like I can convince anyone here, but that's the source of my confusion - why does anyone need to be convinced? How is this not normal? When I say "I would sacrifice my job to save millions of lives", why is everyone like "sure buddy, you like money as much as the rest of us, we know you're lying".