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- Hacker News
- Something I have never understood about the "big pharma makes fake/unnecessary/harmful vaccines" narrative is how folks who believe in it (including those in this comment section) understand these companies' incentives.
In the United States, pharma companies make money when insurance companies (and the government, but less so than in many other nations) buy their product to give to patients. In practice, very few people are paying for vaccines out of pocket.
Insurance companies in particular hate, hate, hate giving anybody money for any reason. They will not pay for something unless you beat them over the head with how well it works. And if they don't believe you, they'll do their own analyses. Better to blow a few million on a study than spend a few billion on unnecessary treatments. (This is the same reason that there's a car-insurance funded highway safety institute crash-testing cars.)
And yet, every year, they insist on making the flu and COVID vaccines free and pushing it on as many people as possible! I guarantee you if you call your insurance company and ask if they think you should get a flu or COVID vaccine, or any vaccine, really, they'll say, yes please.
Why would they do that if these vaccines were going to cost them money by a) being useless or b) being harmful? There is simply no incentive!
The reason everybody wants you to get the damn shot is that the shots work, and the downside risks of them are smaller and cheaper than the downside risks of the things they prevent. Capitalism would make it very difficult to repeatedly sell vaccines that don't work, or hurt you; you might get away with it once, but after that, the reward's just not there.
I don't know how one responds to that, if one distrusts vaccines, other than to suggest a much larger and more complex evil conspiracy than is plausible to most people.
by ivraatiems - So we need CDC approval for the vaccine to be provided to everyone at no cost. But it sounds like if only the FDA approves, the vaccine will be available to anyone willing to pay. Is that correct?by DennisP
- This would be a much more useful headline if it said "vote to approve Moderna's mRNA flu vaccine".by arjie
- I thought mRNA vaccine was approved by FDA as an emergency measure for Covid. Doesn't it usually take around 10 years of assessment long term effects to approve a vaccine for general use? Especially for a new family of vaccines like mRNA?
- For context, it’s a seasonal flu vaccine, the title is a bit unclear.by andy99
- > Prasad was also behind the rejection of a closely watched gene therapy for Huntington’s disease made by UniQure
This guy is a disaster. But really it's not just him. It's the entire organizational structure that puts him, or any other one person, in the position that they have the power to do this. There is simply no one qualified.
We need to have expert scientists to set up trials and review the design of the trials and conduct the analysis of the data. This is something that is generally objective and not able to be done without skills and experience. But then you have to make a decision based on those results. And the decision is some sort of risk reward trade off. While science can quantify what that tradeoff is, which path to take is fundamentally outside of the scope of science.
Trade offs are not objective determinations at all because they are based on subjective preferences. And therefore it makes no sense to force it into a one size fits all approval or denial by some centralized body. The only rational approach to such a trade off is to allow each individual to choose for themselves. The only person's opinion on whether the risk justifies the reward for the experimental Huntington's disease treatment is the patient's. The best we can do with science is to use it for its intended purpose to produce good data for him to make his choice.
by consensus1 - Is this good because flu vaccines are an educated guess as to what will be circulating because it takes so long to culture them all and this will shorten the manufacturing time so the educated guess can take place later in the process (and be more accurate)?by 2OEH8eoCRo0
- The subversion of scientific expertise to replace it with podcasters and political sycophants is one of the biggest disasters of the current years.
The very concept of merit has been destroyed and replaced with judgement calls on celebrity (necessary for leadership role) and subservience to the political whims of the last 15 minutes (and you had better switch in the next 15 minutes or you're out).
by epistasis - (i must preface that this block was 100% trying to extract payment, like it was documented some coubtries did even during covid, but)
even the lead researcher of mrna vaccines before covid said she would not consider mrna vaccines safes outside of the covid emergency. and this study focus on effectiveness, not side effects.
so while turning away from science for politics is as bad as pushing it irresponsible for commercialization.
by iririririr - “Scientific expertise” was already sold out to politics as we saw during covid. The further degradation to podcast bros is the cherry on top.
- One thing that's particularly frustrating about all this is that any conversation with the growing contingency of distrustful people has been made very difficult by what I would call poor, avoidable, and illiberal decisions made by the federal government during COVID. (TBF, decisions during a crisis are always hard.)
Lab leak theory was dismissed and actively suppressed. Inflated claims were made a priori about absolute vaccine efficacy that any responsible researcher who have not made.
Moreover, the trouble with trying to shut down real disinformation, eg claims that vaccines were more dangerous than the virus, is that many people will view any sort of paternalistic behavior by the government, especially around speech, with suspicion. ("Why do they care so much about what I say? They must be hiding something")
In the age of social media, I think the study of public health needs to consider more seriously the effects of viral psychology. The irrationality and stubbornness of people needs to be expected when planning public policy.
by nfw2 - > The subversion of scientific expertise to replace it with podcasters and political sycophants
> The very concept of merit has been destroyed ...
It's the subversion of truth. I think that way of saying it is more accurate, addresses the consequences, and is less occluded by jargon: People care about truth; 'scientific expertise' may seem esoteric to most people.
I think HN is frequently part of that process: Merit - expertise, actual trials and evidence - is replaced both by sensational too-clever hot takes / takedowns, and by political/social advocacy.
Most threads begin with a takedown, a 2 minute drive-by from an amatuer, often of years of research by someone spending their life studying the matter. For some issues, we all know what side many will take before you know any facts or evidence.
These comments are normalized and given greater credibility than the OP and than valuable comments. How is that any different than the things we criticize (other than the FDA's subversion of truth [EDIT:] is far more consequential [sorry, I didn't finish that sentence!])
There are valuable comments to be found; maybe that's one difference, but I'm wonder how the signal-to-noise compares with other forums.
by mmooss - Really reminds me of the Russia leadership portrayals in Chernobyl.by SecretDreams
- It is not a disaster. It is a part of carefully orchestrated attack on Western democracies by enemy states.by deepspace
- Sounds like at least one step toward putting science back in charge.
- > While unanimous support from the advisors is a positive sign for the vaccine’s fate, the FDA ultimately decides whether to grant approval. The agency has set a deadline for a decision by August 5.
They'll just ban it again. Science got a temporary victory but I predict it won't matter.
by baggachipz - So in at least two fields in which the US still leads (biomedical research, AI), government action is actively harming their ability to compete because of ideological or political reasons.by pu_pe
- They seem to be doing some interesting things to their reputation as military superpower peace keeper too.by tim333
- Is this the one that's a flu/Covid combo? I live in Europe and have been looking forward to it - especially since the flu part covers way more variants than traditionally - no longer a need to depend on flawed predictions as to what variants will be predominant. Also no longer a need for two sore arms.by comrade1234
- Interesting. I wonder if the variant limits us now capped by how much you can pack in the vaccine, or how good a on the body does priming for a bunch of stuff at once.by shusaku
- No, this one is just flu.by duskwuff
- How much death and suffering does this guy have on his conscience?
I’m so curious how someone goes from being a professor to a science denier? I simply can’t imagine that journey.
by JSR_FDED - How much death and suffering does this guy have on his conscience?
His what now?
by jfengel - Death and suffering are “natural.”
These people are all delusional ideologues. If reality does not match the ideology, reality must be wrong.
by api - I can definitely imagine it. It becomes so much easier to not worry about it when you have a comfortable pillow made out of lots and lots of money to rest your head on.by idiotsecant
- The suffering is the point.by pwarner
- Results are fuzzy. He has a nice Malibu compound to go to after this lived experienceby bickfordb
- Also interesting that there can be a giant asshole running a federal agency into the ground and I've never heard of him until now. Gives some scale to the problem. I also wonder what else is going on in government that falls below the widely reportable threshold.by dboreham