Biden Administration To Buy 500 Million Pfizer Coronavirus Vaccine Doses To Donate To the World (washingtonpost.com) 227
The Biden administration is buying 500 million doses of Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine to donate to the world, as the United States dramatically increases its efforts to help vaccinate the global population, the Washington Post reported Wednesday, citing three people familiar with the plans. From the report: President Biden is slated to announce the plan at the G-7 meeting in Britain this week amid growing calls for the United States and other rich countries to play a more substantial role in boosting the global supply of vaccines. Biden told reporters Wednesday as he boarded Air Force One to Europe he would be announcing his global vaccine strategy. The Biden administration previously announced it would share at least 80 million vaccine doses with the world by the end of June. Last week, the White House detailed plans for how it would allocate 25 million doses, with about 19 million of them being shared with Covax, the World Health Organization-backed initiative to distribute vaccine doses around the globe. Roughly 6 million doses would be shared directly with countries experiencing severe coronavirus outbreaks, including India.
Makes up for invalidated patents (Score:2)
Now that Biden is making Pfizer give away their vaccine patents, he needs to line their pockets with lucre or they'll lobby his entire administration into the ground.
Re:Makes up for invalidated patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Ebola doesn't spread anywhere close to as easily as any respiratory virus, and you know it. You can't catch Ebola by simply being in the same room as someone, and there is no asymptomatic transmission of Ebola. Anyone who has Ebola and is capable of transmitting it is already showing symptoms and probably on the way to the hospital, and not the airport.
Those are two VERY important - dare I say massive - distinctions.
Restricting travel (Score:2)
It's been tried. The economic damage is high but might be worthwhile it if worked better.
Australia has had plenty of cases leak out of quarantine. It hasn't gone exponential because they have good contact tracing and testing and wastewater surveillance. The US doesn't.
If you restrict travel from any place that has community transmission, that's most of the world.
Release the Patent (Score:2)
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Not for Pfizer or Moderna. India can, and is, making Astrazeneca's, but they've got one of the biggest pharma manufacturing industries in the world.
Every plant that can make a COVID vaccine is, patents or no.
Re: Release the Patent (Score:3)
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You pay them out so that they recoup their R&D plus a respectable profit. It can also just be a temporary seizure of the patent until the worst of the crisis is over.
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Yeah, because I'm sure that everyone in every country globally will pinky-swear to forget what they learned about mRNA synthesis techniques from the patents after the pandemic ends.
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Patents are not secrets. Quite the opposite. Everyone is free to read patents, you just can't do what they say without permission.
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... and absolutely everyone would agree to not continue to use the techniques covered by the patent after the grace period ends, especially considering usage outside of countries that give two shits about the US Patent and Trademark Office. My point still stands, even though I used the wrong terminology.
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If you do that without just compensation good luck the next time such a virus comes around. Nobody is going to sink the amount of money into it to develop a vaccine if they know you're just going to invalidate their patents and give it away for free.
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Re:Release the Patent (Score:5, Insightful)
But it is not necessarily a good political move. Buying and giving away doses of an US vaccine is very good for the US:
-it maintains the production in the US which means a local economical activity and expertise on mRNA vaccine production
-it does not give an edge for an international competitor
-it helps vaccinating the world quicker, which means other economies reopen quicker. If you pick and chose the US biggest trading partners first, that's good for the US economy
-it helps paints the US as altruistic
-the US already funds foreign aid so there may already be a budget for it, so you may be able to do it without a tax increase
Sure, one can look at it as "my tax dollars going offshore". But the US may get more back this way. (And maybe it doesn't I can't even think of how you would run the numbers on this; but I am sure they ran the numbers.)
Re:Release the Patent (Score:5, Insightful)
You missed a huge one - China.
China is giving away millions of doses of vaccine, and selling those countries more millions of doses at highly discounted rates.
Why? It's soft power politics - vaccine diplomacy. Countries that got vaccines are friendly to China and China's interests, while those who didn't aren't (e.g., they support Free Hong Kong, or Independent Taiwan, or ... democracy and freedoms).
It's a bunch of "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine". China wants the world to adopt its political position of dictatorship, communism and happiness through ignorance (censorship). While we debate ignorance on our own shores, at least ours is mostly voluntary - the idiots (covidiots, anti-vaxxers, flat earthers, etc) are ignorant because they are willfully choosing to be, not that the information they seek is being withheld from them. We know this because they are always demanding information and get twisted in knots when it's actually given to them (see Trump and birther movement that didn't die when Obama released his birth certificate).
It's a political play yes, but ti's one that needs to be done purely to counter China and their corrupting world influence.
It's also stunningly brilliant - "Oh, you got the Chinese vaccine that doesn't work after 3 doses? Here's some that provides excellent protection with just a single dose even though you really should get 2".
China took over because under Trump, the US stopped leading the world and we all know nature abhors a vacuum. China just happened to be in the right place
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China took over because under Trump...
What rock have you been living under? China took over decades ago when Clinton was in office.
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Many countries have laws where in case of a major event, they will be allowed to steal such patents and go on their own.
However there is a huge different from having the Patent and able to manufacture it. Manufacturing is a much harder process than people understand, and to be able to get a plant to make vaccines may take over a year to build.
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Is there really spare manufacturing capacity for mRNA vaccines? I've read about complicated supply chains with many bottlenecks, but that could of course have been self-serving Big Pharma talk.
It's noteworthy that China is not producing an mRNA vaccine. Possible explanations:
1. Not-invented-here syndrome, insisting on making their own out of national pride.
2. mRNA manufacturing is super-difficult.
3. Reverence for US Big Pharma intellectual property.
Two of those are believable.
Re: Release the Patent (Score:2)
I am guessing that most, if not all previously existing drug companies, everywhere in the world, were not prepared to start manufacturing mRNA vaccines. Sure, releasing the patents would allow them to copy Pfizer-BioNTech and or Moderna mRNA
Refrigeration (Score:2)
Re:Refrigeration (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently that isn't such a big deal as it once was. https://www.fda.gov/news-event... [fda.gov]
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Europe can do cold chain logistics. They can still use the doses even now, and can use them to replace AstraZeneca doses which they might forward to places where cold chains are not as good.
Something I have only seen in deep Google dives is that mRNA vaccines can be freeze-dried and be shelf stable for months at room temperature. (Search "lyophilized"). There's an approval cycle and it won't be fast, but I hope the work is going forward to make it happen.
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The world is not running short on fridges, it's a trivial matter and always was.
not when the thing you want to freeze needs -80C
those freezers are a little bit more "special"
More if you facto in the fact that in many developing countries, electricity is less reliable than in a texas winter
President Pharma... (Score:2, Interesting)
Delightfully altruistic... (Score:2, Insightful)
...and while I understand that 'soft power' is a thing of some value geopolitically, but do people understand that:
1) we are essentially borrowing the cost of that from our children and grandchildren who will have to pay it back with interest while we service the debt for the rest of OUR lives? We are the richest society ever in human history, with the highest standard of living ever, and we still cannot afford to pay for the crap we want, much less for the stuff /other people want/ on top of it?
2) the peo
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On the other issue, people could try to educate their kids, but I can see how killing the competition like some
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In fairness to Reagan . . . left to his own agenda, that wouldn't have happened. I don't have the reference on hand, but had the change been limited to his military program, tax cuts, and everything else growing at inflation, the deficit would have dropped (and, iirc, all the way down to zero a term or two later).
But he didn't have the votes for that. *Congress* passed the spending and taxing, and the price that Reagan had to pay for that was funding the largest increase in social spending in US history
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You seem to be forgetting:
3) the people that this helps across the world will continue to be alive, and customers able and willing to purchase goods and services from people in the United States of America, representing return on investment and increased taxable economic activity.
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2) Yeah, let's let the die, then, because one day my grandchild might not ge
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we still cannot afford to pay for the crap we want, much less for the stuff /other people want/ on top of it?
Oh, we can afford to pay for it. CONgress, esp. the far right and now the far left, HATE to be responsible with $ and actually run a balanced budget. Dumb fucks.
I bet this will go viral (Score:2)
DUM-DUMs! Buy J&J (Score:2)
One dose only and less strict cooling requirements!
Living in a developing country (Venezuela), and having friends in other parts of the world, I can tell you for sure that in vast swates of LatAm, Africa, ad SE Asia, a vaccine that nly requires one dose and can be held on common household refrigerators simplifies logistics dramatically in countries with unreliable electricit, transport (to transport the people) and record keeipng (to keep track of the two doses)
Of course, living in DC is hard to imagine the
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However, Pfizer can now be stored in regular freezer for up to 2 weeks, while Moderna is still until expiration (typically 6-12 months, but not sure about this one). [cdc.gov]
And finally, J
Re: DUM-DUMs! Buy J&J (Score:2)
why pfizer? Why not maderna? (Score:2)
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Re:James Madison - (Score:5, Insightful)
Eradicating a disease isn't benevolence.
It's self-interest.
Re:James Madison - (Score:5, Insightful)
over population is a world wide problem. here's a way to start fixing it.
How about instead we just kill all of the idiots who say stupid shit like this?
Re:James Madison - (Score:5, Insightful)
Until there's an impenetrable dome around the United States, we will still have diseases that come over the borders. And the same time, the economy greatly depends upon trade with other countries. So it is in America's best medical and economic interests to eradicate the pandemic.
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Re: James Madison - (Score:2)
Re: James Madison - (Score:5, Insightful)
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And it's something we already do, many of these vaccines are available, many charities and government grants go to getting these existing vaccines out to third world countries. Covid-19 vaccine is just one more of these.
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This is how smallpox has been eradicated. The Soviets suggested it, the USA surprisingly agreed and both enemies worked together for the common good vaccinating the whole world.
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It's also a national security issue. It doesn't make much sense to cry about immigration, and then cause conditions that make people want to break the law to get here, because if they don't, they fucking die of preventable disease that wealthy nations are choosing not to prevent.
As it turns out, if you don't live in a poor hellhole, you usually don't pack up your shit and risk your life to move somewhere better.
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No, you make it such that they don't feel the need to uproot themselves and come to America. You turn their hellholes into better places to live, one step of which might include trying to eliminate the pandemic.
Borders (Score:2)
To amplify that, not even North Korea could seal a border enough to keep COVID out.
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Even though James Madison was a god damn genius, the part he didn't say out loud was "I also cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which forbids Congress to expend, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
The Constitution is a framework, not an absolute 100% coverage of all possible things.
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There isn't anything in the Constitution which restricted the right to Congress of expending, on object of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
There is the elastic clause in the constitution in which a particular law could be expanding from an existing one.
For example, this could be declaring war on COVID-19 thus using the Congressional Power to buy Vaccines as weapons to help fight said war.
But Congress has been spending tax payers money on more frivolous things in the past, often to help a non-Am
Re:James Madison - (Score:4, Interesting)
The place Madison's finger was looking for was the Necessary and Proper Clause [wikipedia.org].
Now you might object that interpreting that clause so expansively would allow the government to operate in ways that the framers never envisioned. And the answer to that is yes; yes it has. So has creative interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause. The process of stretching the Constitution to do things it literally was not designed to do started right in the very first session of Congress when it quickly became apparent that putting treasury functions in the House just wasn't going to work. You better believe there was a debate on the constitutionality of creating the Treasury Department, and Madison was chief objector. But Madison wasn't the only framer in this debate. The main proponent of the idea was Alexander Hamilton, who as author 60% of the Federalist Papers had a few things to say about the meaning of the Constitution.
Today we look at the delegation of Congressional delegation of treasury function to the Executive Branch as perfectly constitutional because it's obviously (in hindsight) necessary and proper. The same goes with foreign aid. The ability of Congress to allocate foreign aid is necessary and proper to the Executive Branch's foreign policy functions. If anyone seriously thinks it isn't, they could argue that foreign aid is unconstitutional; but the Supreme Court is unlikely to agree with them. These are traditions sanctioned by hundreds of years of legal precedent.
The US has the oldest continually operating democratic constitution in the world, which is a great achievement for the framers, but the system does not work precisely they way they envisioned it working. The text of the Constitution has been twisted and stretched to fit need, in many cases by the framers themselves, who didn't always agree with each other. But the principle of enumerated powers remains important; it means that even though the system might not work the way it was originally supposed to, nobody -- say a rogue president -- can come along and make it do whatever he pleases. He's bound by the text of the Constitution, as held together by centuries of fossilized semantic duct tape.
Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Insightful)
Democrats howled at "America First," but when it came time to divvy up the vaccine doses, they exclaimed, "Me first!" while Republicans largely let their doses go to other people.
That implies that Republican's opted not to get the vaccine out of altruism. I'm not going to claim that isn't true in some cases. However, most republicans I've interacted with opted not to get the vaccine because they don't believe they need to.. for whatever reason they had.
I don't directly affiliate, but democrat is close enough. I got the vaccine primarily for other people. We want herd immunity and getting vaccinated is the way to go about it.
Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know if you will read this, but I have an autoimmune disease that potentially might affect the efficacy of the vaccines for me. I had a notable immune reaction after the vaccine so I suspect that I'm ok, but I just wanted to say that on behalf of folks in my position and worse off, I would humbly appreciate it if you did get the vaccine at this point. Doses are plentiful in the US now. You won't be taking the vaccine away from someone else. Instead you'll help prevent the spread and limit the potential for new variants that might kill someone like me. Thanks
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The EU has ordered over a billion doses of vaccines for COVAX several months ago and several EU members have donated a shitload of vaccine doses too, separately from the EU efforts. Unlike the USA that banned vaccine exports.
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Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Insightful)
And as a taxpayer in the upper brackets I'm okay with that. We need to beat this shit back before a variant comes along that can break through the vaccine protection, and as we've already learned over the last 18 months, viruses don't give a fuck about wealthy nations versus poor nations, and don't give a fuck about arbitrary lines drawn on maps.
This is a global problem, and that requires global solutions. And you know who pays for global solutions? Wealthy countries. Why? It's the price we pay for being wealthy and alive at the same time.
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Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that I'm not a billionaire, so me buying 10 doses to donate to Upper Elbonia does fuck-all. However, if the United States Government decides collectively in the interests of international standing, national security, and it's own economic interests to combine resources and vaccinate an entire continent of people, that does far more good.
Think of someone besides yourself for once. Jesus fucking christ. And if you're really worried about paying for it, let's cancel some sacred cow missile system we don't need that costs more and does far less to secure the nation.
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Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Insightful)
Adding absurd arguments that are plainly illegal under the rule of established law doesn't support your position and rather just makes you look silly. And while you seem to think that quote from James Madison justifies spending a total of $0 on foreign aid, James Madison can equally not point to any clause in the Constitution that prevents the Congress from spending money on foreign aid, so that's just not really relevant.
The Constitution is, and always has been, a framework from which all other legislative action stems. More to the point, unless there is something that specifically forbids the Congress from taking an action, the Congress is allowed to take that action. And because we have three co-equal branches of government, if the Congress strays from their lane, the executive can veto or the judiciary can shitcan the whole thing as unconstitutional.
If you don't like the foreign aid, feel free to sue the government and see if the Federal Judiciary sees it the same way - spoiler alert: they will not. And the system that James Madison helped to author keeps on rolling.
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Maybe that's fairly-well established now, but it remains controversial. And until 1942 [wikipedia.org] the powers and responsibilities were enumerated [wikipedia.org] and it was illegal (rather explicitly so [wikipedia.org]) for them to do things outside of those powers. It's just that we reinterpreted one of those powers [wikipedia.org] as basically meaning "anything imaginable, unless otherwise specifically prohibited.
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The Constitution is, and always has been, a framework from which all other legislative action stems. More to the point, unless there is something that specifically forbids the Congress from taking an action, the Congress is allowed to take that action.
The Tenth Amendment simply states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"
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Feel free to move to some failed state and set up Mi's Gulch if you think taxes are theft.
Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:5, Insightful)
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The US does not 'donate'. It relies on sticks and carrots, and mostly sticks. Anyone who wants this vaccine will have to do something in return. On the other hand Pfizer has small window to make money on this vaccine before the wealthy countries are fully served and before it gets priced out of the market by cheaper and easier vaccines. Possibly the US bought up production for markets where Pfizer has no chance anyway.
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Pfizers $1.95Billion USD contract from Warpspeed was for suppling 100million doses [npr.org] - not for developing the vaccine.
The contract was for the US government to buy the doses to use - Pfizer was getting paid to deliver goods, and they were getting paid $19.50 a dose by the look of it.
The US government had no investment at all in the Pfizer vaccine - they just bought doses of it.
Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:4)
Or, compare it to the trillions lost in economic disruption, or divide it by the number of lives saved to get a cost per life.
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Well if that were somehow a reasonable solution we could use one of the 11 we already have.
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Re: Wow that's a lot of doses (Score:4, Insightful)
"Pain and discomfort"? Lol. In terms of my level of discomfort from my Pfizer shot, I'd put it below paper cut, stubbed toe, and splinter... maybe somewhere around "grabby infant tugging on your hair" or "single mosquito bite".
Anyone worried about side effects (Score:2)
I'd put my second Moderna dose on a par with a good workout, and with far greater results.
So you got a vaccine in Iceland? Yay!
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No thanks to Iceland; the US went and vaccinated my whole department with Pfizer. More here [slashdot.org].
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>"Pain and discomfort"? Lol. In terms of my level of discomfort from my Pfizer shot, I'd put it below paper cut, stubbed toe, and splinter... maybe somewhere around "grabby infant tugging on your hair" or "single mosquito bite".
But it isn't all about you. I had significant pain from both doses, and the second dose had me sick with a fever for 20+ hours. And I am far from alone, I personally know many who would rate it far above a paper cut, stubbed toe, or mosquito bit. Would I do it again? Absolutel
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Is it really? If you send me a few thousand dollars, I'm prepared to test that theory for you.
Re:USA fixing what China f'ked up... (Score:5, Interesting)
I slag off the US a lot, particularly its healthcare system, so it's been a big slice of humble pie when the US went and vaccinated my whole department with Pfizer after my country's disaster of a vaccination programme (both the US and Iceland consider my job critical, and it matters far more to Iceland (I'm not legally allowed to strike), yet only the US did anything, while Iceland put me on the same priority level as "people literally randomly selected from a jar" and at lower priority than "16-18 year olds who will be watching children over the summer"...).
It's humbling. And deeply appreciated.
(It's also entirely unconnected to this announcement)
Re:USA fixing what China f'ked up... (Score:5, Interesting)
To give an idea of what the Icelandic system has been like... they vaccinated police, firemen, and prison guards in January, but didn't even start on, say, people with severe lung cancer until mid April. There's far too many "greatest hits" to name, but just to give the most recent: they bought a bunch of Johnson and Johnson that nobody wants, and their solution to this problem is to randomly assign half the remaining population to it, and announce that they're shutting down vaccination in July, so if you refuse to accept your J&J, you're going to be unvaccinated until the fall.
It turns out I would have been assigned J&J, BTW. I wouldn't have accepted it (not due to side effects, but due to its poor efficacy against new strains, given that our government hasn't committed itself to offering booster shots), and thus been unvaccinated until this fall.
Again... thanks America. That's not a phrase I'm used to saying, but thanks.
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I wouldn't have accepted it (not due to side effects, but due to its poor efficacy against new strains, given that our government hasn't committed itself to offering booster shots), and thus been unvaccinated until this fall.
That's kind of a bad way to think about it. Even if the J&J recipients got sick, very very few (it was actually none last I looked, but that was a month ago) of the ones who got covid despite the vaccine got it bad enough to be hospitalized. Having something is better than having nothing, if for nothing else but to keep a hospital bed free for somebody else.
Re:USA fixing what China f'ked up... (Score:4, Insightful)
Something is better than nothing, but waiting a little bit more time to have better protection for some unknown-but-long period of time in the future is even better. IMHO.
Also, it's not meaningful to compare J&J efficacy numbers against old strains. The question is against new strains. Remember that AZ proved so useless against Beta (South Africa) that they cancelled their purchase order. J&J did better against Beta than AZ but not great. J&J has never been studied against Delta, which is the one in exponential growth in the UK right now. And then there's the new Nepal variant which combines Delta with the mutation from Beta that helps evade vaccines and past immunity. Gamma also has vaccine evasion potential. This sort of thing is just going to keep progressing. I don't want something that's already minimal if I don't know when I'm going to be able to get a booster.
Also, I think the focus on only-deaths or even only-hospitalizations to be misplaced. COVID has a significant rate of long-term side effects in even mild cases. How fun does "all food tasting like cardboard for some indefinite period of time" sound? A former roomate has that. Or chronic fatigue, or brain fog? I know people with those too. Tons of other things as well. I'll pass. And I find it worrying that some people seem to think that, if hospitalizations can be kept down, its okay to let COVID run rampant in partially-vaccinated countries. Letting a disease run rampant in a partially-vaccinated country is a perfect breeding ground for vaccine-evading mutations. For crying out loud, DON'T DO THIS, people...
Re:USA fixing what China f'ked up... (Score:4, Insightful)
>"I slag off the US a lot, particularly its healthcare system[...] It's humbling. And deeply appreciated."
Actually a whole lot of the world does. Mostly indirectly by innovation, research, education, medications, procedures, grants, and even private charities. But this is rarely acknowledged. ESPECIALLY on a place like Slashdot.
Thanks
Re:USA fixing what China f'ked up... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hope you all appreciate the USA doing it's part to save the world from the brink of destruction once again.
You know what? We actually will. The USA does go up in the eyes of the world if they do stuff like this.
Life on this planet should be a cooperation not a bunch of high school dramatics.
(and that's why Trump was a bad president - with all his wall building and saying "China virus" in every other sentence).
Re:Now the big question (Score:4, Insightful)
well, I feel better now that this dumbass has spoken, seeing how the rightwingnutjobs as a group are batting 0
fyi, rightwingmedia messaging checklist
1. Identify your target of hate
2. Lie BIG
3. Repeat the lie
4. Never back down from a position once that yo have lied your wat into it
5...
6 Profit! (if you can call reaping Koch network donations, while the country is gutted by your actions, a profit)
Re: Now the big question (Score:4, Interesting)
Target of hate: Any one left of extreme right. People who is is less than 3/4 of North Eastern European ancestry, people who may do things that are not considered normal. For this case you are Targeting Biden, who won the primaries over the more progressive candidates, and still gets some pressure from the party for being too middle of the road.
The Lie: That such group of people (left of extreme right) are so irrationally controlled by their hearts and feelings, that they will make stupid and unwise decisions. (Also any facts counter to that lie, will come up with some conspiracy theory. So said group is both very stupid and highly intelligent.)
And you know the post you are referring to said "if you can call reaping Koch network donations" didn't call it the Koch Brothers. But the Koch network.
However I would say that garyisabusyguy probably should had left that out. Because the the more left leaning groups also have their own powerful and wealthy fundraisers who too push an agenda to the other side.
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well said, thank you
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lol, rightwingshill is gonna shill
it is just so darned obvious at this point that you are just twisting words, that I have to wonder why you bother
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you lack any semblance of creativity
I have to ask, in art class did you take you classmates work, spear it with feces and call it your own?
I thought so
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oh... wow...
is down up in your world as well?
the machinations you go through are just ridiculous
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I don't think he's ever actually talked to a black person, especially not more than 1, because then he'd know they are highly conservative. Take for example church attendance [pewforum.org] is about a third higher among blacks than whites. No, they don't vote Republican. The Republicans have made a point of dicking them for half a century. Not that they're even conservative anymore. What thin veneer they had of those ideals dissolved when they became a personality cult.
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Plus, not asking for patent license fees would hardly increase the mRNA vaccine production by any significant factor in the short- to mid-range future.
Re: It's just become absolutely transparent . . . (Score:2)
Instead of modding me down, please provide me with any evidence to change my mind.
Believe me, I'd prefer to think that our idiotic reaction to a virus that has only affected the old and simultaneously unhealthy (by a factor of at least 20 to 1) has some other explanation.
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I don't think I could have passed discrete mathematics in college with proof by wordplay.
Re: It's just become absolutely transparent . . . (Score:2)
Ahh,
You're one of those.
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Congress wasn't skipped. Perhaps you read some news reports about $1t+ spending bills related to COVID-19?
So the question becomes: would you rather these doses of vaccine rot, or that we ship them to where they can be used?