this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2023
1420 points (95.9% liked)
Technology
58303 readers
15 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's because most of the groundwork in developing mrna vaccines had already been done for years and years. This wasn't "how do we invent a vaccine for covid?", this was "how do we adapt this proven, well-understood vaccine tech so that it works for covid just like it does for the ebola virus that we originally developed it for?"
There was also a large amount of money thrown at developing the vaccine because of the virus' significant economic impacts.
it's wild because it was a whole bunch of our money but somehow the vaccine developed with all of our money is still privately owned
Imagine if we had national bodies developing drugs to treat health problems rather than private companies developing drugs to make as much money as possible.
instead we have this amazing worst of both worlds where the public bears all the expense but one guy trying to make as much money as possible gets to make all the decisions and own the final product.
Thats the answer to the bit where they said "how do we adapt this proven, well understood vaccine tech..."