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Medicine

Gates Foundation Teams Up With Vaccine Maker To Produce $3 Covid-19 Shots (wsj.com) 102

Posted by msmash from the good-guy,-Bill dept.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it is backing the world's largest vaccine maker, Serum Institute of India, to churn out 100 million doses of coronavirus vaccine for poorer countries and price them at less than $3. From a report: The move comes as governments around the world, including the U.S. and U.K., strike vaccine production deals with the manufacturers of a handful of promising, late-stage vaccine development projects. The Gates Foundation as well as Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance -- an organization which helps negotiate and finance vaccines for poor countries -- said they would back privately held Serum Institute, or SII, to speed up the manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccine doses for the developing countries once any are proven effective. SII is one of several contracted manufacturers already tapped by AstraZeneca to make a vaccine in development at the University of Oxford.

The Pune, India-based SII is the go-to vaccine supplier for the World Health Organization and others and produces 1.5 billion doses of other vaccines every year, making it the largest in the world by volume. The three organizations said the collaboration will help ensure that lower and middle-income countries won't be forgotten if a coronavirus vaccine is found. "Researchers are making good progress on developing safe and effective vaccines for Covid-19," said Bill Gates in a statement. "But making sure everyone has access to them, as soon as possible, will require tremendous manufacturing capacity and a global distribution network."
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Gates Foundation Teams Up With Vaccine Maker To Produce $3 Covid-19 Shots More

Gates Foundation Teams Up With Vaccine Maker To Produce $3 Covid-19 Shots

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  • Well, of course he can sell them cheaply (Score:3, Funny)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday August 07, 2020 @01:47PM (#60377771) Homepage

    He can subsidize them with the profits from his embedable tracking chips! #QAnon #5G #FakeMoonLandingCausedCoronavirus

    • He can subsidize them with the profits from his embedable tracking chips! #QAnon #5G #FakeMoonLandingCausedCoronavirus

      Like RFID? I thought it was an infrared activated barcode tattoo.

    • Yeah, was going to post similar. I can't wait for the fucking nutball kooks to come out of the woodwork on this one. Seems Gates has joined Soros as the target of these fucking low-IQ conspiratard dingbats.

      I'm a gun nut and when you hang out with gun-nuts you'll find that unfortunately 60% of them are raving idiots who think Biden, Tom Hanks, Gates, and pretty much anyone you can name are baby eating pedophiles who want to enslave humanity. It's real fucking depressing.

      Real shame the Democrats are so obsess

      • The latest conspiracy I heard from a boomer co-worker (not even bullshitting) was that Gates and Fauci went to school together and are in bed financially and Gates is working to get rid of black people in Africa. Because he hates them or something. Also the states want people in "bread lines" for some unknown reason. What the end goal is for that they can't explain.

        • Re:Well, of course he can sell them cheaply (Score:5, Informative)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Friday August 07, 2020 @02:04PM (#60377855)

          The problem with this one comes from out of context speech by Gates a long time ago, when he discussed population explosion in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that population control techniques may be needed for humanitarian reasons.

          If you cut the context out, it comes off as if he's saying that he wants to cull Africans. And so, video was cut out of context and widely circulated. It's the same thing as the people who still believe that Trump called nazis fine people. When you're ideologically invested, you don't want to hear what was actually said in context. You just want to confirm your biases. And just address any claims opposing it with "but I saw a video of him saying it!"

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by gflash ( 6321000 )

            The problem with this one comes from out of context speech by Gates a long time ago, when he discussed population explosion in Sub-Saharan Africa, and that population control techniques may be needed for humanitarian reasons.

            If you cut the context out, it comes off as if he's saying that he wants to cull Africans. And so, video was cut out of context and widely circulated. It's the same thing as the people who still believe that Trump called nazis fine people. When you're ideologically invested, you don't want to hear what was actually said in context. You just want to confirm your biases. And just address any claims opposing it with "but I saw a video of him saying it!"

            False equivalence. Trump did call Nazis fine people. Attempts by PragerU to debunk this have been shown to be nonsense: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              You're proving my point with your behaviour here. To the point of pretending that punditry is more relevant than simply looking at the full transcript, which provides context:

              https://i.imgur.com/Rm61n3g.pn... [imgur.com]

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by gflash ( 6321000 )

                You're proving my point with your behaviour here. To the point of pretending that punditry is more relevant than simply looking at the full transcript, which provides context:

                https://i.imgur.com/Rm61n3g.pn... [imgur.com]

                Seems like you didn't watch the video, did you? Do you actually know what happened or are you going off what right wing apologists have told you?

                Summary of Shaun's video:

                - Your quote isn't from the first press conference (this was the third one on Aug 15th). In the first press conference (shortly after the rally - Aug 12th) he said "We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregarious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides" without mentioning that this was a neo-Nazi

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  You are continuing to prove my point, because it's utterly irrelevant what your preferred spin doctors is going to spin the narrative as.

                  What actually matters is what was said in the event being referenced. This is accessible via reading the transcript I posted. Everything else is spin-doctoring.

                  And you just wrote multiple paragraphs explaining why your preferred spin-doctoring is better than what was actually said in understanding what was actually said.

                  Which is exactly the same argument that people who cl

                  • Re: (Score:1)

                    by gflash ( 6321000 )

                    You are continuing to prove my point, because it's utterly irrelevant what your preferred spin doctors is going to spin the narrative as.

                    What actually matters is what was said in the event being referenced. This is accessible via reading the transcript I posted. Everything else is spin-doctoring.

                    And you just wrote multiple paragraphs explaining why your preferred spin-doctoring is better than what was actually said in understanding what was actually said.

                    Which is exactly the same argument that people who claim that Gates wants to cull a large amount of population do. To a tee. "Yes, that was what he said, but here's my favourite spin doctor that explains what Gates said better than listening to Gates speaking in context does".

                    You are projecting here. Just like the people that quoted Gates out of context, you are the one trying to reframe what happened at Charlottesville without providing the full context (which I helpfully provided).

                    Can you actually refute any of the points I made? I don't think so. Unfortunately as with so many people now you appear to be immune to facts which are inconvenient to your worldview.

            • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

              by Maxo-Texas ( 864189 )

              Yup. Good people on both sides... one of which is wearing nazi regalia and has literally said "Heil Trump" while tossing nazi salutes in talks at universities such as the one at A&M.

        • Re:Well, of course he can sell them cheaply (Score:5, Insightful)

          by RightSaidFred99 ( 874576 ) on Friday August 07, 2020 @02:08PM (#60377865)

          I hang out at ar15.com (read-only, don't want my name associated with those dipshits, well about 60% of them anyway) because they have entertaining threads sometimes, and good technical gun forums. I have read every manner of retarded conspiracy theory you can imagine, exactly the shit you're talking about. And of course the "maskers" are really all about control, because somehow step 1 is put a mask on, step two is ??? step three is "enslave humanity" somehow.

          It's weird how they simultaneously love Trump, but immediately turned on the guy he picked to help run things originally, Fauci. I've really fucking had it with people. Prior to twitter, forums, the Internet in general people's absolute fucking stupidity was hidden by the fact that they were alone in their thoughts thinking this stupid shit, or found a small group of fellow morons to sub-cogitate with. Now it's all up in your face that a large swath of humanity is real, real fucking stupid and they all find each-other. And it's not just kooks on the right-wing, as Twitter will demonstrate.

          • I wouldn't judge all of humanity just on the basis of the people you've found on the interwebs; probably mostly Americans. The rest of us are mostly sane, peaceful, & pleasant.
            • Agreed. The problem is the Internet disproportionately drives politics and culture. You can have 100k people around the whole world who think diets don't work, being fat is great and natural, and if they're loud enough they start to get fat models in swimsuit ads and banning ads pointing out that getting fat increases your chances of cancer because (shrill, hysterical voice) "fatphobia!!".

          • Hopefully those "good technical gun forums" are about guns used for hunting and sport, right?

            Otherwise, as far as I'm concerned, you end up in this territory:

            "Now it's all up in your face that a large swath of humanity is real, real fucking stupid and they all find each-other. And it's not just kooks on the right-wing, as Twitter will demonstrate."

            Anyone using and collecting guns that are purely used for the killing of other humans, falls right into that category.

            But that's just my opinion - no problem wit

            • I don't hunt, the closest I come is shooting pigeons with a pellet gun that shit in my pool. But I have a whole shitload of guns, and the main reason is because fuck you, I want them. In addition to that reason, I often point out my other reason which I've thought about a lot because it's a complicated issue which is "fuck you".

              I like guns because they're cool and I rarely get out to shoot them at paper targets and I have no need to placate you because, again, fuck you. Just like if you enjoy drinking beer

        • In some people it's just Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt, fueled by a combination of a lack of information, a lack of understanding of what information they have, and (sadly) a lack of a three-digit IQ.
      • Don't forget that there are some people who just really do want to watch the world burn to the ground because they think it's funny, and there are some people who would like to see specific parts of the world burn to the ground.
        If you look through the history of civilization, you'll see that it's inevitable that rich, prosperous countries acquire enemies just because they're rich and prosperous, and those enemies would love nothing better than to tear that rich prosperous country down and rape, loot, and p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Cederic ( 9623 )

        Biden, Tom Hanks, Gates, and pretty much anyone you can name are baby eating pedophiles

        I never did like Hanks.

    • They're powered by sunspots!

    • Re:Well, of course he can sell them cheaply (Score:4, Funny)

      by darkain ( 749283 ) on Friday August 07, 2020 @02:00PM (#60377831) Homepage

      They'll never plant a tracking chip inside of ME!!!!!!!

      - Facebook post from Samsung phone in Chicago

    • I'd mod that as funny except there are too many wingnuts out there who actually believe bullshit like that is real, therefore I must chastise you for posting it.
    • Some clueless fuck-wit is going to mention embedded microchips & Bill Gates. Then we'll get some, also genuinely clueless fuck-wit anti-vaxer, declaiming vaccination. 5G is causing Covid-virus, let's burn down the masts. Then to cap it all someone will say "Let's make America great again"

      Then the NRA... FFS!
    • $3 ?!!!
      Bill Gates better give me free wifi if he wants to inject me with a 5G corona chip!


      /s because we live in a Sick, Sad World
    • 5g = penta [wikipedia.org] gram [wikipedia.org]
    • You people here are sickening liberals every time I read something that has nothing to do with Trump, Republicans, conspiracy theories, yet you're so triggered and full of hate like your friendly non violent Antifa scum, you have to shout at the roof tops some of your rediculous bullshit! Now go ahead and reply and yell at me and get your TDS out of your system.

  • poor price $3 canada price $15 Us price $300

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I wonder if it will be available in the US. I guess it depends who comes up with it, they get to decide if they will enforce patents in countries that recognize them.

    • The arrangements the Trump administration have made for different vaccines are $4-$20 per dose. Basically the price has come down over time as more companies have developed likely vaccines (supply and demand at work).

      The Pfizer deal is 100 million doses manufactured and delivered nationwide for $1.95 billion. That's $19.50 per dose. The Johnson & Johnson deal is $1 billion for 100 million doses, which is $10/dose.

      You can go back to writing fiction now.

  • I'd rather have a bottle in front of me.

  • All these things seem to be concentrated wishful thinking. There still is no assurance at this time that there will be a vaccine that is worth using in the foreseeable future. Sure, there could be one but nobody knows when or what its characteristics will be.

    • This is like pre-ordering a video game before it's finished. You've got a place in line, but you don't know if the game is going to be any good, or even anything like the promotional videos. Except here, it's less about entertainment and more about, oh, you know, STAYING ALIVE.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        This is like pre-ordering a video game before it's finished. You've got a place in line, but you don't know if the game is going to be any good, or even anything like the promotional videos. Except here, it's less about entertainment and more about, oh, you know, STAYING ALIVE.

        And staying alive justifies gambling with the funds more?

        • Well let's see. Let's compare the two.

          Option 1
          Don't participate:. Nothing happens
          Win: Get a good game earlier
          Lose: Get a crappy game

          Option 2
          Don't participate: Die
          Win: Stay alive
          Lose: Die

          For option 1, the video game pre-order, I'm probably not going to participate. The chance to get a game earlier isn't that grrat of a reward.

          For option 2, the vaccine, if we don't do it we all die. If we do it, there is a 98% chance* we get a good vaccine and we live. "Stay alive" is a pretty good reward. I think I'll d

          • You help nobody by spreading your vicious lie. COVID-19 does not have a 100% fatality rate; it has a fatality rate well below 3% (wikipedia).

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by gweihir ( 88907 )

              Indeed. More like 0.6% with good medical treatment and 5% with the medical system overwhelmed.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            So in order to con you, the con-man just has to suggest you will die if you do not take the offer? You are an _easy_ mark!

      • This is like pre-ordering a video game before it's finished.

        In other words, likely to disappoint, not just because of the high hopes?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          This is like pre-ordering a video game before it's finished.

          In other words, likely to disappoint, not just because of the high hopes?

          Pretty likely, yes. Also, making a good vaccine is far harder and has far more unknowns than making a video game. Eventually that may change, but at this time, the medical field is very far behind because it is mostly driven by money, not by utility. Experts have been warning of what we see now for a long time, and we already had one close call with SARS. You would think that research grants into making vaccines fast would have flown and we would have been prepared. Not so. Not so at all.

    • About 99% chance (Score:4, Informative)

      by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Friday August 07, 2020 @03:04PM (#60378093) Journal

      Most vaccine candidates never make it out of the lab and into phase 1 human studies. Of those that make it to phase 2, 48% go on to phase 3. Of those that make it to phase 3, 59% are successful and approved.

      Here is where something interesting about probability kicks in. There aee currently 10 different vaccines in phase 2 or 3. That doesn't even include monoclonal's and other non-vaccine preventatives. The important question is what are the odds that EITHER:

      Vaccine A works OR
      Vaccine B works OR
      Vaccine C works OR ...
      Vaccine J works

      Each has a 65% chance of working. Assuming that they are sufficiently different from each other, we can calculate that the odds one of them works is 99.99999157%

      Let's be more careful by taking away the assumption that the different vaccines are sufficiently different to allow us to calculate independent probability. Let's look at only the four totally different kinds of vaccines. Assume each type has a 35% chance of failing. The chances that all four different types fail is: 0.35^4. That's 0.015, or a 1.5% chance that all four different groups of vaccines fail.

      When you get to try ten times or four times, with a reasonable chance of success each time, the math is such that you'll almost surely succeed with ONE of them.

      Even if all the vaccines fail, within the 1.5% chance, we still have monoclonals and other approaches.

      • Yeah, people always seem to be Students of History. They really think their knowledge of history makes them oracles, hence the important and lofty capitalization of Student of History.

        Unfortunately for Students of History, the conditions surrounding any large historical event are always vastly different. For example, "but muh vaccines take years!!" "But.. still not HIV vaccine, no guarantee!".

        Fucking bullshit. There has never been a concentrated attack on a virus by mankind like this - ever. Not even close.

        • History says that for every ten vaccines that make it to phase 3, six get approved, on average. So if a person were truly a student of history, they'd anticipate several covid vaccines being approved over the next six to nine months.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            History says that for every ten vaccines that make it to phase 3, six get approved, on average. So if a person were truly a student of history, they'd anticipate several covid vaccines being approved over the next six to nine months.

            Nope. A real student of history would assume that that if a small number of vaccines were in development (your first mistake) in the usual process, i.e. taking about 10 years (your second mistake), these numbers would likely hold, but may still turn out to not be accurate. You cannot just scale this up by just doing more tries in parallel. A lot of the difficulty comes from the virus. It is not like you throw the dice every time and get a new, pristine chance. Some viruses are harder to find vaccines for, s

            • > Some viruses are harder to find vaccines for, some we have failed for a long time now, and for some it was pretty easy.

              Yep, for some viruses, they can't find a vaccine that even works in the lab, so there is nothing to even test in people. That's the "most don't make it phase 1 trials" part.

              In phase 1, it's tested in about 30 people.

              Phase 2, about 600. If in those 600 people, the rate of infection is cut in half compared to the control, it's ready for phase 2, so it's sent over to the committee that

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by gweihir ( 88907 )

                You are kidding yourself. I recommend looking up "statistical independence". Your "argument" is a quite common beginner's mistake.

                • If you think independent probabilities have anything to do with time, you might want to look up what the term means. If you think it has anything whatsoever to do with your claim that testing an mRNA vaccine at one institution will somehow magically change how protein subparticles act at a different institution, again, you're a little confused. Independence has nothing to do with whether things are tested (separately) during the same month of different months.

                  If you're just confused about independent proba

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        So you assume that they are using the same level of care from one step to the next, _despite_ this being done in a desperate hurry, both because it is needed and the companies that do this are hoping to get really rich of this thing?

        Well, bullshit in, bullshit out. Your approach is ok, but your base numbers are hot air in the present situation.

  • The last person on Earth I'd trust to properly handle a virus is Gates.
  • Promoted by Clippy

  • My annual influenza shot, that I hit myself with, costs 12 bucks in the pharmacy, but there there is syringe and needle included plus packaging and instructions.

    • A box of 100 empty syringes used by diabetics goes for like $15 online .. which means the syring and needle are sold for 15 cents each, and that too is probably a rip off price. Syringes and needle shouldn't cost more than ten cents to manufacture. In fact, if you think about it, a five cent coin should be more expensive than a needle. Nickel is 10 to 20 times more expensive than surgical grade stainless steel.

      • If the selling price is 15 cents each, nobody is getting cheated even if the manufacturing cost is zero. Retailers and distributors have to eat. Just handling a syringe uses up most of a 15 cent labor expense.

  • There will be millions more people struggling financially in the U.S. and other 1st world countries by December.

    Don't make them for "poor countries". If you can make them without a profit for $3, then you can make them for $6 with a huge profit for 1st world countries too. There is a reason the poverty line is $13220 here. Keeping a roof over your head is 50 times the cost here, buying food is 10x the cost here, buying the labor of other human beings is 100x the cost here, and so on.

    A person living on

  • The vaccines that are being developed all over the world, have very different technologies.

    The idea of a vaccine is to expose the body to the proteins that are on the surface of a pathogen, so the adaptive immune system is coaxed into producing antibodies, and memory T-cells are trained to produce them again when the pathogen is encountered, hopefully for life (Mumps Measles and Rubella ), or for a long time with boosters (e.g. 10 years for tetanus).

    Vaccines can be created in many ways, for example a strain

    • The summary isnâ(TM)t saying theyâ(TM)re going to be making all the different approved vaccines and mandating they all be priced under $3. Theyâ(TM)ll probably be making one single vaccine once itâ(TM)s approved, one that has low costs for production (old technologies) that they can price under $3.

    • Development might be "expensive".
      5 Phd's with a yearly sallaray of $250,000, working 2 years on a vaccine: $2,500,000.
      All of them having a staff of 5, earning 50,000 - 100,000 per year: $500,000

      A study, another million, total: less than 5 million dollars.

      Vaccine deployed to 3 - 5 _billion_ ppl.

      How you can not earn a fortune with $3 per shot: is bejond me.

      • Do you think vaccines are delivered by tanker truck? Do you think they'll be at supermarkets in gallon jugs?

        This stuff has to be kept sanitary, possibly refrigerated, administrated by competent and hopefully well-trained technicians. It has to be divided into small doses. It has to be monitored for purity and concentration, routinely checked for contamination and effectiveness. $3 is a bargain.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Cederic ( 9623 )

          He also forgot the basic cost of raw materials and manufacturing costs.

        • Sorry, the vaccine itself: cost nothing. Literally: nothing.
          The actual stuff is created with polimeraze chain reactions.

          And no: usually it does not need cooling or any other special treatment.

          The most expensive part is indeed quality control and the packaging.

  • As if pretty much all the vaccine attempts donâ(TM)t seem to work that well.

    Oddly reminiscent of pretty much anything Microsoft has ever produced. Odd...

  • An "anti-virus" from the guy that invented Windows? What could possibly go wrong? That's a hard pass for me.

  • If we want to end this thing, we need to get populations all over the planet immunized. Even if that means rich countries have to pay for 100% of the cost in poor countries. Failure to address this globally will have us facing repeating spikes of this virus and possibly new mutations. Administering 7 billion doses is cheaper than shutting down our economy again.

  • There are several vaccines in human tests, and nobody yet knows which will be best or whether any of them will be disastrously bad. This is not the right time to commit to any one of them. And they require different production methods.

    So....what it's time to do, unless you're in the business of developing a vaccine, is to get advance licensing agreements that allow you to make whichever one comes out of phase 3 looking best. And set up supply line agreements. Etc. Various of the drug companies are maki

  • My dog has a tracker. About 25mm x 5mm. Obviously much, much too large to be injected. It's a (tiny) operation. But I can't actually track her. If she get's lost or stolen (French Bulldog, they get stolen a lot) I can only get her back if someone catches her, and takes her to a vet who has a scanner to read the code on the tracker.

    If anyone had a tracker that could be injected, and that could be tracked anywhere, you could make hundreds of millions from dog owners. And you would make life a lot harder fo
  • $278 freedom dollars
  • high income countries with lots of poor people in it don't aplly for not being black enough to matter ?

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