It is an issue of money. We’ve spent trillions (the most per capita? I don’t know if I’ve seen a comparison of per capita government spend during the pandemic) and yet we’re among the worst outcomes in the world, along with the countries that have done almost nothing at all.
Money/ resources spent is one of the inputs for assessing the extent of failure and process improvement, so we can try to avoid the same mistakes with the next pandemic or (alternately) bioweapon attack.
Addressing errors and correcting them as we move forward is not an issue of “sides”.
Well Warp Speed specifically funding / subsidizing vaccine research plus the costs of the vaccines purchased are going to be in the low $10B’s range.
We’ve spent a huge amount, many $T’s on loans, subsidies, and pumping up / propping up the economy and the markets. I’m not sure spending per capita is easily comparable given we’re a quarter of global GDP or something so you’d expect a lot of support given the size of the economy.
If nothing else, the big difference in the magnitude of this spending shows that furthering vaccines or other measures to return to a more normal life and economic activity are all very well worth it given the opportunity costs of continued delay.
You are right, it is about money. The question was, how many people would take issue with us using our wealth to hoard all the vaccine being produced, to the detriment of other countries? The same old " having money unfairly buys access to better treatments" argument. I’ve aluded to it as well - even if we had pre-ordered Pfizer’s entire production capacity for the first 6 months (or however much to ensure doses for every American), I’m pretty certain there’d be a very vocal contingent expecting us to donate a significant portion of those doses to less fortunate countries.
But I’m contending that was never a possible outcome. If we ever had “extra” effective vaccine, we could do just that hand it out like candy to developing countries to regain some of the soft influence we had pre-2016. Giving vaccines to poorer countries would enhance our national security.
The pfizer with tougher storage requirements is also harder to point at and say “hoarding”, it’s ideal for countries like USA which should have no problem with the logistics.
Instead Russia and China are the ones doing that now (distributing vaccine to poor countries), which is to the detriment of our national security.
Or it’s because the funds were wasted, not used to support efficient mitigation efforts (which Trump publicly campaigned against people following).
Look up the other big spenders in the chart xerty posted. Only the uk squandered nearly as much for similar poor outcome. For example, Germany is at about 1/4 the per capita deaths so far, even with all that being in EU entails.
Obviously they don’t need more than 2 doses per person, and with some vaccines only 1. Canada bought a bunch extra to give away to poor countries.. If I recall correctly, their deliveries aren’t super early timewise, however, so they may not be getting to most of their population until mid 2021 at the soonest.
technically a vaccine is anything, like bleach, you inject hoping that it kills a virus . But yeah, not a lot of approved vaccines yet.
In other news, the negotiations are continuing as I suspected with PFE over additional US orders and whether those will be delivered in Q2 vs Q3. That would be for another 100M doses, on top of the 100M already for Q1. We’ll see how much they get paid for diverting some of their earlier production to domestic contracts…
Does anyone know how to find Quest / Labcorp’s amplification rate for pcr testing? My wife has to take a test since she was in contact with someone who tested positive. That person did a lab test at CVS, which is probably where my wife will also go.
I looked over the CVS and Quest websites, but found a lot more marketing/sales info that details. If anyone has a suggestion for where to look, I would appreciate it.
. But yeah, not a lot of approved vaccines yet.