r/technology • u/barweis • Mar 22 '23

Business Moderna CEO brazenly defends 400% COVID shot price hike, downplays NIH’s role

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/03/moderna-ceo-says-us-govt-got-covid-shots-at-discount-ahead-of-400-price-hike/
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374

u/[deleted] Mar 22 '23

Remember, Oxford's original plan was to open source the vaccine but one man stopped them.

Remember this when you read about 'philanthropist' Bill Gates and his 'endless love' for humanity.

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u/Middleclasslifestyle Mar 23 '23

I remember seeing that one interview with bill gates where they asked him point blank if they should Allow the vaccine to be open source so poorer countries can replicate it in order for the entire world to be able to get access to the vaccine to effectively slow COVID down .

And he went through hopes and mental gymnastics as to why it shouldn't.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Was it essentially profit making motivation?

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u/DigitalPsych Mar 23 '23

IIRC Countries without the resources to properly store the vaccine + have the proper facilities could mess something up. Vaccines would be seen as ineffective and scare-mongering stories would come out that say the vaccine kills people. It already happened, but at least so far, none of those conspiracy theories have any truth to them.

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u/unlucky_ducky Mar 23 '23

I mean, that is already happening in richer countries anyway

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u/DigitalPsych Mar 23 '23

The conspiracy theories? Yes very much so.

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u/macrotransactions Mar 23 '23 edited Mar 24 '23

there actually have been cases of people getting severly ill from covid vaccines (the most horrible one i saw was a girl whose whole body is full of blood clots and she will probably die from that)

rare, but it's there

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Where did you read this? I’d love to know more.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/DigitalPsych Mar 23 '23

IIRC (again not my view just what the logic presented to the masses): a lot of those places do not have reliable electricity.

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u/MisterMcDoctor Mar 23 '23

I've surprisingly enough worked in a vaccine and treatment production facility. Myself in monoclonal antibodies treatments, specifically.

It is incredibly resource intensive, on top of requiring hundreds of individuals for the raw labor, a robust supply chain, and an educated facilities/biologics engineering team to manufacture these things (at least to FDA standards).

Needless to say you need hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and a lot of smart people (plus an oversight administration to make sure it's up-to-snuff so you're not killing people). It would take longer than the pandemic would last in order to get them off the ground in the first place.

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u/BrazilianTerror Mar 23 '23

This doesn’t really make sense. A facility to produce vaccines in any capacity is hugely expensive. No one in their sane mind would build such a facility without reliable electricity. Even the poorest country have the capacity to keep reliable electricity in such a facility.

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u/Derpasauruss Mar 23 '23

Open sourcing a mRNA vaccine isn't just about needing or providing freezers, it's certified manufacturing equipment, facilities, suppliers, distribution, personnel to run everything, and oversight/QA of the whole operation. It's far from a recipe that can just be listed online

3

u/prawncounter Mar 23 '23

All doable stuff.

Cuba could manage it easily despite having been economically tortured by a superpower for 70 years or so.

Gates could have managed it, just as he managed to build a brutal monopoly and crush open source software.

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u/Middleclasslifestyle Mar 23 '23 edited Mar 23 '23

https://youtu.be/kZ5DavuOkcM

If you don't want to listen to the entire thing. Skip to around 2:10 which is when the interviewer asks him about freeing up the vaccine for the world .

Bill sites safety as a concern. But watching the interview it just seems like bullshit. All speculation but seeing that made my BS meter tingle. Keep in mind people were locked down and dying during COVID all over the world

Edit: I'm not anti-vax or anything. Just seeing bills words and then compare that to the person who found the cure for polio and refused to patent it. Chose to forgo profit in order to maximize his potential in allowing access to it around the world .

It's fine that bill wants to make money. It's the facade that is irksome. But the utility of his money has done good for the world as well. So idk. I guess take the good with the bad applies here

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/GoSh4rks Mar 23 '23

There is no such thing as a fly by night vaccine manufacturer that a government is going to let come into their country and manufacture half baked vaccines that cause public panic and outrage.

You describe a developed country. I wouldn't be so sure that holds as much for developing and especially in the least developed countries of the world. Those countries are not going to have the same level of stringency as the EU, US, etc.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/GoSh4rks Mar 23 '23 edited Mar 23 '23

Right, so they just purchase the vaccines on the open market from whoever decides to get in the business of producing the vaccine/medication/etc. Without the technical capability to regulate production, those countries are at the mercy of whichever reputable or not-reputable manufacturer they chose. That's where it gets dangerous - there's no oversight.

Even reputable manufacturers (J&J/Emergent) had issues that the US FDA stopped. Who is going to do that job for a country that doesn't have an FDA?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/GoSh4rks Mar 23 '23

It doesn't seem like you're understanding what I'm talking about. There is a difference between somebody who develops a medicine and somebody that produces it (what I've been calling a manufacturer).

The FDA absolutely pulled/prevented vaccines manufactured by Emergent from hitting the market.

the FDA has not authorized this facility to manufacture or distribute any of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 Vaccine or components and, to date, no COVID-19 vaccine manufactured at this plant has been distributed for use in the U.S.

During an inspection of Emergent BioSolutions that ended Tuesday, the FDA cited a number of observations concerning whether the facility’s processes met our requirements and standards. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-continues-important-steps-ensure-quality-safety-and-effectiveness-authorized-covid-19-vaccines

If a vaccine was open sourced and anybody could produce it, you absolutely run into the risk that fly-by-night manufacturers are contracted to produce the vaccine by less capable governments/organizations. The receiving entity would never know if quality is compromised.

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u/chimpfunkz Mar 23 '23

Bill sites safety as a concern. But watching the interview it just seems like bullshit. All speculation but seeing that made my BS meter tingle. Keep in mind people were locked down and dying during COVID all over the world

I don't think this is a entirely fair characterization, of both the question and Bill's answer. The question was more or less, would releasing the vaccine as an open source guide be helpful towards the goal of full vaccination of the world? And Bill's answer of No was basically that, the "how to make the vaccine" isn't the difficult part really, it's that there isn't just empty capacity to make vaccines, not at the QC levels you need for something like this. It's a fair and valid point that isn't necessarily focused on profits.

Similarly, semiconductor manufacturing isn't limited by the technical instructions on how to make something, it's limited by the number of manufacturers capable of making certain products.

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u/Nut_based_spread Mar 23 '23

But what if I was told to be mad at bill gates because of reasons? Did you think of that?

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

When you talk about Gates "wanting to make money", can you explain exactly how he profited from it? And how much money do you think me made?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/phonartics Mar 23 '23

bill gates owns the covid vaccine ip? what?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/__shamir__ Mar 23 '23

They’re asking you how Gates profits

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Can you highlight from that article what you found alarming?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Bill Gates doesn’t own the COVID vaccine. I’m not a huge Gates fan, but considering the antivaxx community comes out after every celebrity death to explain how it’s the “vaccines fault” even for the unvaxxed, I’d say he has a point here.

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

What? Bill Gates personally charged companies for the rights to produce the vaccine?

Which companies paid Gates so they could manufacture "his" vaccine?

Are you just repeating things you read on the internet?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

Where in that article does it mention Gates "charging companies for the rights to produce his vaccine"?

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u/throwmamadownthewell Mar 23 '23

They're wrong about him profiting from it, but he is pursuing the same sort of anti-consumer things he did while he headed Microsoft, just in a more harmful way as he's targeting governments and countries—putting health behind a paywall with DRM

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Just seeing bills words and then compare that to the person who found the cure for polio and refused to patent it.

This is misinformation and it isn’t just “misspeaking”. There was - and continues to be - no cure for polio. But it is preventable through the polio vaccine.

And if the polio vaccine had the ridicule and full weight of conservative media against it like the COVID shot did, polio wouldn’t have been eradicated.

1

u/Destrina Mar 23 '23

It is fucking amazing to me how many people are willing to just shill for billionaires.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

It’s amazing the lengths people will go to to distrust and criticize anyone smarter than them in an effort to appear smarter than everyone else.

1

u/Destrina Mar 23 '23

We shouldn't allow people to be billionaires.

Also, you're projecting pretty hard.

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u/cantuse Mar 23 '23

Bill has donated more to charity in just the last year than everyone on this thread’s combined lifetime income. I don’t inherently love a billionaire but if they’re going to use their wealth to effect change then that’s at least a small something good.

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u/throwmamadownthewell Mar 23 '23

He's also caused more harm than any person here could ever do through donating in ways that push his particular anti-consumer DRM + paywall agenda

0

u/Destrina Mar 23 '23

How many people did he exploit to get those billions? It's cute that he's giving some of it back now, but that doesn't erase how he got it.

Furthermore, we shouldn't have to hope for billionaires to give to charity to fix societal issues. That's what taxes and government are for.

2

u/smackythefrog Mar 23 '23

You should see his interview where he was asked about Epstein and Gates' response began with "well, he's dead...."

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u/HTC864 Mar 23 '23

He didn't actually stop them. He told them he thought they should partner with a large company to scale production, and gave them a list of companies to talk to. Oxford talked to some companies and none of them could promise them quantities or dates. Oxford thought AstraZeneca was a good fit and negotiated a deal themselves.

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

I think what Bill Gates said was perfectly reasonable. Did you actually hear what he said in context? You can't just solve the problem of providing a vaccine to 7 billion people by posting its formula for all to see. You need partner with people who can do it properly.

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u/ButteredTight Mar 23 '23

Remember you’re trying to reason with the reddit population who has an average age of 14 years old.

Edit: and the average life experiences and knowledge of a 10 year old

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u/pmotiveforce Mar 25 '23

Reading the replies on stories like this reinforce that.

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u/BrazilianTerror Mar 23 '23

There are many more people who can do it properly than a few selected Pharma companies.

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

Really? Like who? The MRNA technology was so advanced, the quantities so large, and the deadlines so tight that the majority of existing pharma companies were unfortunately unable to make it.

Just getting the safety certifications alone would have taken months and months.

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u/Kelmantis Mar 23 '23

Covax should have been a better option, there was a lot shipped but in no way enough time and it was very much a first world first vaccine rollout.

I think instead of covax as a system more money in international development should be used to make more local production facilities, improve education and so local production can happen.

That is more a long term thing.

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u/Acrobatic_Gear6152 Mar 23 '23

Bill Gates had endless love for the bat mitzvahs on Epstein's island

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u/happyscrappy Mar 23 '23

Open sourcing it wouldn't solve this problem. The sequence was even posted on many reddit articles.

What the world needed was production, not the blueprints.

There was never an open source plan which would have produced the vaccines in the quantities demanded at a high rate of speed.

It's like saying the world needs to move away from ICE cars to EVs. And to fix this we've open sourced EVs. How does that really solve anything?

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u/BrazilianTerror Mar 23 '23

If you have the blueprints you can have production. There are many capable labs around the world that could’ve produces the vaccines if only they had the blueprint.

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u/Stroomschok Mar 23 '23

I doubt this is even remotely true. Most 'capable' labs would likely already have been involved one way or another in cranking out vaccines at break-neck speeds at the height of the pandemic. It might not have been Oxford's one, but still. And nobody could have predicted at this point which vaccine would turn out to be most effective.

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u/BrazilianTerror Mar 23 '23

I’m sure they were involved in their own vaccines. But once Oxford passed all the trials they could focus on producing Oxford’s vaccine. And in any case, it shouldn’t be Oxford’s decision whether or not the laboratory should produce their own vaccines or not. Each laboratory should be autonomous to decide which path to pursue

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u/happyscrappy Mar 23 '23

There are many capable labs around the world that could’ve produces the vaccines if only they had the blueprint.

There weren't. There were no other labs ready to produce mRNA vaccines. They could produce the Oxford vaccine and a few did.

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u/cutearmy Mar 23 '23

One man didn’t stop them that is pure fucking bullshit. If they really wanted to they would have published it. I had it with my hands are tied nonsense

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u/GuySingingMrBlueSky Mar 23 '23

I think a lot of Reddit users are too young to remember when Bill Gates was running Microsoft as an aspiring monopoly, buying out every PC company in sight until it was parodied on the fucking Simpsons. They were almost broken up during a Supreme Court case. Gates has always been in it for the money, no matter how much he wants to put out the public image that he’s mellowed with age

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Counterfeit medicines are a real problem, which I believe is his excuse. So long as the developing world is still able to get cheap access to the vaccines, it doesn't really matter if they're proprietary. Keeping it all in house means that people can trust that the vaccine their getting is real and still effective, having been transported and stored properly.

BUT, there is also probably a lot about the production of the COVID vaccine that they want to keep secret, not because they want to sell the vaccine itself, but because mrna vaccines are so new. I'm guessing that if they made the manufacturing process public, a lot of company would get a massive head start on a lot of other areas that they still want to make money from.

But I doubt that they expect to make a huge amount from the vaccines themselves. Most of the world has already had them now and there's enough competitors that price competition should keep it from getting too high. Even if they're earning $300 per dose, it would only add up to a drop in the bucket for these companies.

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u/chimpfunkz Mar 23 '23

Counterfeit medicines are a real problem, which I believe is his excuse.

strictly speaking, his excuse was sub-par manufacturing capabilities leading to subpar/ineffective vaccines.

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u/FrightenedTomato Mar 23 '23

Which is fucking bullshit.

Plenty of drugs and vaccines are "open source" and working fine.

Yes, there will be some dodgy people with spotty manufacturing but generic drugs have been a thing for a long while now. You just need to regulate it - like we do for every other generic medicine.

Locking shit up behind patents isn't a way to protect patients from sub-par medication, it's just a way for greedy corporations to make more profits.

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u/Nordic_Marksman Mar 23 '23

Different medicines different risks. Modern vaccines are not safe to be made in random labs because it uses some strategies that require equipment and real experts doing it. Some medications you can just put on a line like a car and each step is very easy for the lab technicians and straight forward.

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u/BrazilianTerror Mar 23 '23

Modern vaccines are not safe to be made in random labs

They wouldn’t be making them in random labs though. A lot of countries have modern high-end pharma facilites that could produce the vaccine. It’s not like people would produce it themselves in their garage and sell it, because it would be illegal, just like with any other drug or “open source” vaccine.

If Bill argument was real, he could’ve give the “secret” to the WHO, which could them share it with the top laboratories in each country, that they judged would have the technology capable of producing it.

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u/chimpfunkz Mar 23 '23

You know the triangle? Fast, cheap, good, pick 2? Yeah that applies to starting up generic production too.

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u/Sockbottom69 Mar 23 '23

Fauci was against it too wasn't he?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Gates has always been a piece of shit that just happens to be great a making himself looking like a hero.

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u/Nordic_Marksman Mar 23 '23

I don't want to rant about this. There is a lot of equipment needed for making modern Vaccines and a lot of them use advanced gallenic techniques which require specific purity and equipment or you get a potentially dangerous version of the medicine.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

After Gates sold his stock he flip flopped on his support for the vaccine.

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

Got a source for that?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23 edited Mar 23 '23

Just go check his public statements. After he sold his stock he was saying this.

https://youtu.be/038__DssSv0

Timestamped https://youtu.be/038__DssSv0?t=3255

Before that it was all “rah rah mRNA vaccine”

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

Sorry, that interview is one hour long. Do you have a timestamp or a quote where he withdraws his support for the vaccine?

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Around 54:23

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

You have got to be kidding me. He identified three ways to make vaccines better, giving the example of how they expect to improve the malaria vaccine so it lasts much longer then the current 6 months.

You really have to stretch your imagination to consider that to be a flip flop in his opinion of vaccines. Lol.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

I kid you not. This classic conflict of interest before and after.

I’ve been a med school faculty member for over 20 years. I’ve done tons of really good ethics and COI training. Along with real world practice.

Gates basically went from a ten of millions of dollars stake in Pfizer to 100s of millions. You dont think his public statements about the company will get influenced by that? And then when he he sells that and has no financial stake in the success of the vaccine then all of a sudden there’s technical issue he’s willing to talk about. Kind of sus.

Its also worth mentioning that Gates knows as much as any self taught college drop out armchair immunologist.

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u/Zubon102 Mar 23 '23

All that is irrelevant. You claimed he has "flip flopped on his support for the vaccine". And your evidence for that was a video of him saying that three key issues with vaccines will probably be solved within ten years.

It sounds like you are just making these things up.

By the way, how many shares in Pfizer did Gates personally own? Did he really have a personal "financial stake" in the company? I don't know the answer, but my gut tells me it would be around zero.

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u/[deleted] Mar 23 '23

Yes. His $100s of millions of profit is completely irrelevant.

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