[jballanc]

The trouble is not making the vaccine. As soon as you have the virus you can make the vaccine. The trouble is that we currently lack the capacity to rapidly produce large quantities of the vaccine.

Why do we lack the capacity? Because there's no profit in making flu vaccines! Gotta love capitalism, eh?

[shin_lao]

no profit in making flu vaccines? please do some research.

[jballanc]

Here is some of the evidence I'm going off of: http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2004-10-19-flu-leinwand-...

Edit: I did find this article which mentions new vaccines being more profitable (http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2009/tc200...), so perhaps the market is not as bleak as I had thought. Still, I worry about things as vital as vaccine and antibiotic manufacture being left to the whims of the market (new antibiotics are, last I checked, still not profitable).

[billswift]

As opposed to the whims of a government bureaucracy? Large amounts of the "antibiotics" and other drugs available in the Soviet Union were saline solution, sterile saline if you were lucky. Do you really think any other dictatorial (ie, government run) system wouldn't sink to that state eventually?

[jballanc]

I don't recall saying anything about government run... On the contrary, I find it equally sad that given all the creativity that people exercise in designing ways for me to talk about what I had for lunch, all we can think of for motivating production is market economics or government bureaucracy. There is obvious demand but it is too volatile for the market to capture efficiently and often those with greatest demand are also those with the least means. Perhaps there needs to be some sort of population amortized vaccine/antibiotic futures market?