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More Lies and Betrayals
Remember when the mainstream media kept track of all of Pres. Trump’s “lies”? Every day the list grew longer, eventually to monumental proportions. It’s too bad the media isn’t interested in the really juicy stuff, such as the lies that the Biden Administration is telling about the COVID vaccines and its betrayal of Big Pharma.
It turns out that the Biden administration and 100 other countries are prepared to rip off the COVID vaccine producers based on a list of lies. After the incredible efforts that Pfizer and Moderna made to produce the vaccines, through Operation Warp Speed, they are now being told they need to give up their intellectual property and patents to save the world.
So what is the government’s “reasoning” for these demands? Here are some of their explanations and the supporting lies that they are espousing:
“Waiving” the patents will allow low-income countries to produce the vaccine more quickly. This is untrue for multiple reasons. First, just “negotiating” the arrangements for producing the vaccine in third-world countries could take months or years. In addition, “waiving” is a misnomer; since they plan on the waiver lasting several years, the patents might as well be eliminated. Many of these countries don’t have the expertise to create labs to develop the vaccines, nor do they have access to raw materials; they might need years to come up to speed. Finally, US Trade Ambassador Katherine Tai made the following statement:
‘This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,’ she wrote in a statement. ‘The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines.’
She said the US would participate in negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO), but that this could take some time to resolve. (Italics are mine.)
Again, waiving the patents will do nothing to speed up production. Dozens of licensing agreements to produce the vaccine have already been negotiated with other manufacturers in low-income countries.
The true reasons for stealing Pharma intellectual property have become patently obvious. First, the vaccines were developed under President Trump, and although Biden has made several efforts to take credit for them, he has been unsuccessful; this is one more effort to marginalize Pres. Trump. Second, the vaccine production has created some positive press for the pharmaceutical industry; after years of being characterized as greedy and lacking compassion, this improvement in their reputations would be a step “backward” to their critics.
The intentions of the waiver advocates are obvious. Betrayal of Big Pharma will be seen as a victory for the little people. As the WSJ said:
The Administration’s WTO waiver will break patents and legal protections for vaccine makers. Investors will be less likely to fund new drug research if they think their own government will betray them under political pressure. Chalk up another damaging victory for the Congressional left.
To be sure, the vaccine producers made a great deal of money. And of course, making a profit on the “backs of millions of people” is probably considered criminal by some critics:
‘It is absolutely wrong for drug companies like Pfizer and Moderna to profiteer, and for their executives to make egregious personal fortunes, off of Covid-19 vaccines that have been so heavily subsidized and supported by American taxpayers,’ said Eli Zupnick, a spokesman for Accountable.US, a progressive watchdog and patient advocacy group.
Pfizer responded to these comments:
In a statement last month, Pfizer said its Covid-19 vaccine development and manufacturing costs ‘have been entirely self-funded, with billions of dollars already invested at risk.’
‘The company will continue bearing all the costs of development and manufacturing in an effort to help find a solution to this pandemic as fast as possible,’ Pfizer said at the time.
No good deed goes unpunished.
Published in Healthcare
That’s not true at all.
There’s never complete agreement on what is meant by “fully” tested. Many drugs are approved in Europe after less rigorous testing than is required in the U.S. That has been a common complaint among conservative commentators in the U.S., who say that the U.S. goes overboard with it, which ends up making drugs too expensive in the U.S. The point is that somebody makes the judgment call on what is meant by “fully,” and that judgment call is not the same in all jurisdictions. And even after the most rigorous testing possible in the most stringent jurisdiction, there is still more testing that can be done.
If somebody said, “Nope, we can’t do any more testing. That drug/treatment has already been fully tested,” that person would be weird.
So when did you first go to work for the FDA? That is their hyper risk averse thinking that has deprived dying people of experimental drugs for decades. not fully (by your standards) tested = untested? That defies the English language let alone logic. UNtested seems to imply not tested at all……the vaccines were absolutely tested, just not to the unending extent that typifies the snails pace of the government cause, ya know that dying and all.
Sure it is. Improper testing does not constitute testing. Just as performing half-way maintenance on a plane is not maintaining the plane. If anything it’s endangering lives.
As I’ve said, I got the shots. But that doesn’t mean anyone knows what untoward events it might cause in a year or three. Because it’s never been properly tested.
Added: Remember, this is not an old technology. It’s brand new. And it’s been rushed into use prematurely without the usual testing.
There’s a difference between “improper testing” and “not fully tested.
Maintenance on an airplane is performed up to some level that is deemed adequate and appropriate; it does not include repainting every part and polishing every rivet. The result of maintenance is not a like-new airplane, but rather a safe airplane in good working order. More maintenance can always be done, just as more testing can always be done: neither is ever complete.
But both may be, at some level of incompleteness, deemed adequate to achieve safety.
I defer to your FDA experience. Mandating, or functionally mandating, a novel drug — while cutting short safety testing — is a bad thing. That’s all I’m saying.
You’re all splitting hairs. (And planes do go down due to poor maintenance.)
Corbin, I guess I just haven’t seen evidence of inadequate testing. There’s always a risk with new drugs and vaccines, but I’ve yet to see anything that makes me think we’ve been irresponsible with the Chinabug vaccines.
(Having said that, I think maybe it would be best if children didn’t get it any time soon. I suspect most kids are probably better off with natural immunity anyway, and the disease seems essentially harmless to children.)
Don’t be surprised if (after Biden is out of office) the testing does become less rigorous, because the FDA will have finally come to its senses. The amounts of time for testing are arbitrary; some of the requirements that have to be fulfilled are intended to create barriers to new drugs. Eventually the pressure on the FDA will be overwhelming to modify their requirements to be more practical. I doubt that those changes will come from the FDA bureaucracy. Besides, your arbitrary decision to claim the vaccines are untested when they have been tested looks like a poke in the eye to those who are commenting in good faith.
I think it is unwise to focus on the exceptions rather than the rule, don’t you?
Completely agree with this. But now there’s the push – at least here in my neck of the woods – to get those between 10 and 16 vaccinated. I would definitely not want my children that age to get it.
I didn’t say it was inadequate. But I certainly did imply it. From what I understand, new vaccine testing takes years, not months. And there certainly were some tests that were not carried out due to the rapid deployment. This is especially disconcerting to me given that it is an entirely new technology that has (as far as I have read) has never been used before on humans, and reportedly is a technology that has had bad results on animals.
I’m not saying not to take it. I just believe that it has not been tested — that there are significant tests that should normally have been run before FDA approval that haven’t been.
What? Arbitrary? I think you judge me unfairly. This was all a linguistic problem based on my not using a qualifier “fully” before the word “tested”. I don’t see any poke in the eye here.
And any claim that I made was that it was not approved and that some testing was not done. Another took this erroneously to mean that no testing was done at all. Of course some testing was done. But also some testing was not done.
And to my overall point, the FDA hasn’t approved its use yet because as far as I know it hasn’t been sufficiently tested.
You’re the first person I’ve heard claim it was improper testing. You perhaps have information available to noone else, and should report it to the authorities.
Also, half-way maintenance is a far different thing than improper maintenance. Performing half-way maintenance and calling it complete maintenance would be a different thing.
But half-way maintenance would imply that some of the maintenance was left out.
In the case of vaccines, it’s not a matter of failing to do necessary tests. It’s a matter of not yet letting the tests run for as long as is often done.
Regarding half-way, proper or improper, or full maintenance or testing, and the casual simplicity of general statements, take the example of visiting a neighbor and seeing that there is algae growing in his pool and a little dirt at the bottom. You’ve seen the pool boy coming every other week. Would it be right or wrong to say that the pool was not maintained? You apparently say it would not be proper to say it wasn’t maintained, and I would say that it was proper to say that it wasn’t maintained. I’m sorry for any confusion.
The argument about testing is moot at this point. Over 100 million people have gotten one or another of the vaccines. There have been a handful of adverse affects, and maybe two deaths, none of which have been conclusively tied to the vaccines. That’s pretty good evidence that the vaccines are safe.
It may also be evidence that the testing regime is unnecessarily protracted.
Hey, as long as there are no alligators in the pool, then I’m good. If it convinces people to jump back in, I’m happy. Time to end the masks, lock downs, and bad analogies.
As I said, I took it. But I just read today a commenter who suggested that one should avoid the vaccine if she’s of child bearing age. The lack of long term testing, even just a couple of years, is apparently a problem for some.
And it still hasn’t been given general approval by the FDA. You’d think they could and would do that in a day, if they were sure it’s safe.
Take heart. Alligators are never bad analogies.
Old bureaucratic habits are hard to break. They could take years just to decide how long the approval times should be.
I wouldn’t expect that. The FDA tends to take the route that requires the most FDA employees and the largest FDA budget.
Like any government agency, the first priority of the FDA is to ensure the continuing existence of the FDA. There was a lot of push back from bureaucrats against Operation Warp Speed, and not all because Orange Man Bad. The whole point of the program was overcoming bureaucratic roadblocks. Fortunately, the hysteria about the Wuhan Virus cancelled the apparatchik veto.
We do NOT have good medical therapy for COVID- mainly we have supportive therapy- which is clearly not enough. Most people survive despite the lack of medical therapy. The only drug really shown to help is decadron and that isn’t an antiviral medication. We need to develop antiviral meds, antibodies (perhaps nanobodies as I have mentioned more than once before) and we need to develop therapy for “cytokine storms”. Vaccines are a huge step forward (operation warp speed is worthy of the Noble prize) and mRNA technology holds great promise for other diseases but we need to keep working on the other therapies mentioned.