Libertarianism has led to rich countries vying for vaccines. Collaboration, not competition, is the only the way forward
The solution?
There has to be an international effort, marshalled by the World Health Organization, of state-led vaccine production and distribution on a scale never seen before and done over the next 12 months.
That capitalist and market system has just produced a vaccine faster than anyone has ever done such a thing before.
From their Britain-only approach to vaccine production and mockery of the EU
We’re using a vaccine developed by an American company in Germany and manufactured in Belgium. And this is Britain only? We’re also weeks if not months ahead of that collaborative EU system in doing so.
This must all be stopped and we use the EU/WHO system instead?
Will Hutton might actually be as thick as he looks hard though that might be to believe.
Yes, I doubt if I will take the “vaccine” , but if it is effective, then it is as you say a private sector achievement.
Libertarianism has led to rich countries vying for vaccines.
And this is bad because …? Is it wrong that the people who developed this vaccine should benefit from a bidding war for the rights? Explain to me why it is better that they should be paid next to nothing?
Collaboration, not competition, is the only the way forward
Because people in the Third World deserve all the benefits of White technology and science without paying for it? Admittedly this is perhaps the first vaccine which a more-or-less-not-quite White contributed – two Turks in Germany. But they had to do it in Germany.
For some reason science remains relentlessly racist. Only First World people make significant contributions – even then almost always males, almost always from a very small number of First World countries. I do not know why that is, but it is.
Why does anyone else deserve anything? Even the crumbs from our table? Why should we save the lives of people who hate us?
He writes what his sheep want to read. I doubt he believes a word of it.
It takes some chutzpah, after the shambles the WHO has been demonstrated to be, to call for it to lead the vaccination response. Fucking lunatic.
If the WHO had been in charge we’d still all be debating if vaccines were racist.
We really do need competition amongst countries and the more the better. Does he think that Merkle and Macron would have shifted gear if their press hadn’t been holding up UK as an example? If it been the other way round he and the rest of the dimwits who think like that would be all over Boris.
And what’s this about sending it to Africa? This is White Man’s science, the science that been rejected by them.
SMFS,
Pharma R&D relies on high concentrations of people with specific skills. Outside of certain few first world countries (in order of dominance, US, Switzerland, UK, Japan, Germany, France, to a lesser extent Canada, Spain, Italy), you can get training in and exposure to those skills in, perhaps, India and China. Hence those are the only non first-world countries to which a noticeable amount of that work is moving.
Rob, the WHO needs shills constantly plugging its fantastic achievements.
To be completely fair to the WHO, they did eventualy say the costs of lockdowns out weighed the benefits. That’s why you don’t hear from them any more, they went off message. Off our telescreens and down the memory hole.
” Collaboration, not competition, is the only the way forward.”
IoW, a conspiracy against the people by the elites. He really hates the British, doesn’t he?
Bloke in North Dorset January 10, 2021 at 11:21 am – “And what’s this about sending it to Africa? This is White Man’s science, the science that been rejected by them.”
This is a perfect time for Africa to demonstrate “African ways of knowing”. if they have rejected Western science as racist and Imperialist – and let’s face it, it is – then now is a great time for them to demonstrate the alternative.
Bloke in Germany January 10, 2021 at 11:21 am – “Pharma R&D relies on high concentrations of people with specific skills. Outside of certain few first world countries (in order of dominance, US, Switzerland, UK, Japan, Germany, France, to a lesser extent Canada, Spain, Italy), you can get training in and exposure to those skills in, perhaps, India and China.”
Penicillin was spotted by few guys in a make shift lab with some cheap equipment. R&D needs billions because of regulation and because that is how we do it now. It doesn’t need billions because of some universal law of drug development.
India and China have huge pharmaceutical industries. I wouldn’t be surprise if they produce more medicine than the West these days. But R&D is not something they do. It ain’t the lack of money stopping them.
So is drug research done in the West because it has always been done in the West – sunk costs into facilities – or is it done in the West because there is something unique about the West?
Mr Hutton really does a grand job – of making mince appear wet-and-watery.
What? There’s already a huge amount of collaboration in Pharma, to the extent that in other industries it would be condemned as collusion.
So WTF is he on about?
SMFS
Lister mentions using penicillium in one of his operations, in 1874 or thereabouts.
But doctors are notoriously slow on the uptake.
We forget that medicine as a science is barely a century old.
Libertarianism? What libertarianism can he see that I cannot? Or is his definition of libertarianism that suspicion that any action may be taken by companies or individuals outside of collective control?
philip
Pushing it some to call medicine a science, even now.
A body of knowledge. An art. A routine. Perhaps. But a science? No
SMFS, we’ve had a research-based pharma industry for <100 years, and the current regulatory environment was embryonic prior to contergan. Penicillin was low-hanging fruit, all of which is now gone. In fact most to all industrial drug discovery was done pretty much the same way until ~25 years ago (find chemicals, throw chemicals at bugs/cells in petri dishes, see if anything happens).
You're right that regulation drives costs but it also drives quality, though that breaks down when there is political pressure (coronavirus, anyone?) I'm sure I've said before that the FDA has dramatically lowered the bar for anything oncology. We can thank Mr Biden's cancer moonshot for that, now massively misdirecting investment into stuff that is easier to sell than it should be because the "big C" is involved.
This is now pretty much a universal law of drug development. Not only the "low hanging fruit" being already taken, but that there is a limit to demand for new, marketable drugs, growth for that is not linear with population, like bitcoin every new drug discovered increases the difficulty of finding the next one, and the niche is already filled with companies that are very good at it. Going up against them is a fool's errand, that occasionally succeeds.
The western focus is also because we have the luxury of spending cash and time on niche problems – we've solved most of the biggies. Hiring doctors and scientists in a country that still has cholera outbreaks to work on a treatment for stage II endometriosis would be as huge a misdirection of resources as is currently going into some cancer therapeutics.
There may be a regulatory competition aspect as well. Having actually done a Phase 3 trial and marketing authorisation in China, I can assure no one in their right mind would do one there unless they really have to, because the bureaucracy is truly onerous, and approval times very slow. They make the FDA look lean and fast. China pretty much insists you do a trial there if you want to sell your product there. Politics? Investment harvesting? Creation of espionage opportunities? For sure, yes. But bear in mind trial data in China only would also be an impossible sell to the FDA or EMA.
“Sorry Mr Hutton I’m afraid your appointment for the vaccine has been cancelled – we’ve sent your vaccine and all the vaccines for staff of the Guardian to some jihadis in shitholiestan.” This is what you wanted isn’t it ?
At least the Guardian has diversified – there was me thinking it only hated white people in the Uk and Donald trump – it’s now diversified to hate everyone in the West including all the brown people living in the west. At least if he stands on his doorstep clapping whilst shouting “envy of the world” that should protect him , right?
“state-led vaccine production”
presumably the first thing is to ban any others from making the vaccine.
Libertarianism has led to rich countries vying for vaccines.
As Wikipedia says, ‘citation needed’.
BBC article today: How world’s scientists collaborated to fight virus
When the coronavirus emerged a year ago, two scientists – Prof Yong-Zhen Zhang in China and Prof Eddie Holmes in Australia – decided to publish the virus’s entire genetic code online for anyone to download.
This set off 12 months of break-neck scientific endeavour.
So Hutton couldn’t even get that right. There was collaboration. Then everyone started competing.
Moqifen – plus you have to wear a mask while clapping. I think the gloves are still optional
@diogenes – if you wear a mask then no one can hear your veneration of the NHS. I forgot you need to be taking the knee
“Libertarianism has led to rich countries vying for vaccines”
Well, they’re certainly ‘vying for’. The EU, for example seems to have entered the race to acquire vaccine without noticing that they’re using a bike with a flat tire to get them to the finishing post, while everybody else booked first-class seats on a decent private jet.
But “libertarianism” as the cause? Seems rather unlikely.
And under what even roughly plausibly real-world could there *not* be vying?
Well, let’s remove the plausible bit: perhaps if the vaccine manufacturers sold – well, obviously, gave if we were transgendered, female (Hmm, how could that work out?), a person of color (people of pallor don’t count) – each of us an internet-connected virus-making box which would construct your dose using only organically grown dead virus (or whatever, these days) so *everybody* got their own dose at the same time….Obviously, oral, because you can’t afford to have dangerous weapons like syringes around. And, obviously, such a box must not be offered by vaccine manufcaturers – they’d extort us all.
It’d have to be a People’s Box.
But don’t hold your breath on that sort of development (though such a box – not limited to viruses – would be neat. And probably eventually manufacturable at scale..)
@SMFS regarding ,’African knowing ‘ It surprising how many indigenous groups across the world whose knowledge and traditional healing methods we are supposed to respect and acknowledge are quite happy to be prioritised for vaccination
“India and China have huge pharmaceutical industries. I wouldn’t be surprise if they produce more medicine than the West these days. But R&D is not something they do. It ain’t the lack of money stopping them.”
They do make (not invent) more medicines. India is a huge producer. They also do loads of R&D, actually. But it’s mostly focused on producing generic copies of other drugs. China nowadays does quite a lot of original drug research too. The development pipeline has been growing fast but it takes years and we don’t see the full impact yet. But the pharma companies there have big pipelines (relative to their current size).
“So is drug research done in the West because it has always been done in the West – sunk costs into facilities – or is it done in the West because there is something unique about the West?”
Whilst there are no doubt other things going on, don’t forget the West is the one that spends the money on innovative drugs. If you’re going to want to sell it to the US, you want to do it under the FDA or European regulators.
An increasing amount of the clinical testing for Western drugs is now done in developing countries in fact – places like China and Brazil. It’s often cheaper and simpler than doing it in developed countries (but doesn’t suit all types of trials)
@ BlokeinTejas
Libertarianism and the EU? That’s pairing red and indigo in a political rainbow.
@ Everybody
Will Hutton really isn’t stupid enough to have failed to notice that what has *really* happened is that the rich countries have facilitated the development of the vaccines by pre-ordering millions of doses, conditional on successful development to Approval by FDA/Committee on Safety of Medicines/ …, thereby legitimising the Directors’ approval of internal funding of a highly-risky vaccine testing and development programme with a nil or negligible prospective return on investment [without this they would be in breach of, or serious risk of breaching] company law. I find this particular piece of bullshit seriously annoying.
Bongo January 10, 2021 at 3:25 pm – “When the coronavirus emerged a year ago, two scientists – Prof Yong-Zhen Zhang in China and Prof Eddie Holmes in Australia – decided to publish the virus’s entire genetic code online for anyone to download.”
So I wonder what the White guy in Australia contributed? The Chinese guy is simple – he had the virus so he was going to get his name on the paper or no one else would get a culture.
Let me suggest that the Chinese side provided some virus cells, the Australian sequenced the DNA.
Oblong January 10, 2021 at 10:04 pm – “They do make (not invent) more medicines. India is a huge producer.”
Oddly China made a film a few years back about a man who smuggled illegal off-licence medicines from India into China for people who had cancer and the like. I have not seen it. I don’t think anyone has. But it is interesting that China seems to be enforcing some of these laws.
“They also do loads of R&D, actually. But it’s mostly focused on producing generic copies of other drugs.”
Not what I would call R&D.
“But the pharma companies there have big pipelines (relative to their current size).”
Do they now? So like Brazil they are the big manufacturers of the future? Odd that so much vapourware is promised tomorrow and so little delivered today.
“An increasing amount of the clinical testing for Western drugs is now done in developing countries in fact – places like China and Brazil.”
Sure. It is Western regulation that is killing pharma.
I’d always understood that it was accepted that Third World countries could reverse-engineer Western drugs etc as a humanitarian right. But since they’re in breach of Western patents they can’t sell them in the West.
There’s also the point that if they refuse to recognise Western patents, the West won’t recognise theirs, so anything they originate would just be copied by Western firms. Thus there’s not really a great deal of profit to incentivise research.
“Let me suggest that the Chinese side provided some virus cells, the Australian sequenced the DNA.”
Virus cells? Huh? What’s that?
Of course it was sequenced in China, you can confirm with a quick search. Sequencing is about as hard these days as Lister’s penicillin observation, in fact you can easily do it in a “make shift lab with some cheap equipment”.
Who knows what the white guy’s contribution was. Probably the Chinese guy’s upload was blocked by the Great Firewall.
And of course, the use of HCQ + Zinc + Vit D has been utterly cast aside.
No, plebs take this massively undertested first of its kind RNA vaccine.
Bollocks to that.
I understood that it is not yet clear WHAT the actual structure of so-called Covid 19 actually is. Numerous claims of genetic sequencing have been claimed but no structure is agreed upon generally.
Mu info may be wrong of course–but c19 is certainly in the midst of a blizzard of lies.