Coronavirus Pandemic

[Little stoned kiwi]

So Pfizer maximising their profits now (instead of maximising good) will maximize the good they do for mankind in the future (instead of maximising profits)?

[gilesgoat]

You fail to understand the sheer cost of research of any new medicine.

You fail to understand what the word "profit" means.

Profit is revenue minus costs.

So bringing up costs is an irrelevancy here, as no-one is asking anyone to do this out-of-pocket.

Profit from one drug supports the future research costs of failed enterprises

NOT defenfing Big Pharma here .. but I suspect "what the government is supplying" ( in terms of money ) is still probably "peanuts" for what is needed.

Certainly once the thing is found "production costs" should not be "that big" but before to get there ( and to get after there ) the amount of money is probably huge.

Said that there are "some big problems here" .. once "the amout of money genereally the government invests in research" is still probably "a glimpse of nothing" compared to what it invests in "defence" ( and else ) .. secondly "knowing quite a bit of research goes" where/and how much ( wasted ) that money goes it's all another story .. ( or in what pockets it really ends up to ).

It's a "system" that is broken in many ways, too many ways, where nothing works as you'd expect to or wish to ( in your dreams ) and where too much politics than what should ever be is in.

And it's not "consipracy theories" I know quite a few people working there and there I am sure "they could confirm many things" .. if they'd have any real interest to expose "things are still well known to be" but would not do much good.

At least we got some vaccines in a reasonable amount of time, that's a BIG success, certainly probably "overpaid" and who knows "how much more" it still will cost .. but at least "you got something that works in a useful amount of time", which is already "a miracle".

"Would have been for governments alone" you probably would have got "absolutely nothing" ...

[KlaxonCow]

Profit from one drug supports the future research costs of failed enterprises

Yes, but does it actually do that in reality?

Because, if it did, then surely giles would not be talking about this as being a problem:

There's also another "big pharma problem" that is someway worse than vaccines .. there are illnesses really rare which there's no cure yet .. because they are so rare that despite maybe hitting some 10,000 people "they are too small to justify research/development of a cure for those" .. so that stuff is NOT "primary concern" .. "too small" in the sense "even if we cure all those 10,000 people we are NEVER going to see our investement back"..

So, you know, you can say that the immense profits from one successful drug is subsidising future research on less profitable / failed enterprises.

You can say that. But I'd like actual proof that this actually ever occurs in reality.

Because, like, I do know the neo-liberal ideological theory here. I'm quite aware of "the hype" that's used to justify this. But I do not believe that the reality ever actually tracks the theory, as given.

For example, neo-liberal theory tells us that "the trickle down effect" is sufficient to balance and restore economic equality.

But the reality is that the gap between the rich and the poor is ever-widening, and is doing so at an ever-increasing rate. Inequality worsens.

So, you can preach from the neo-liberal pulpit that all this shit works. But, from the evidence, it clearly fucking doesn't.

And, indeed, this is not capitalism. Not as defined by Adam Smith. In "the Wealth of Nations", he never says "greed is good" and never advocates for "the trickle down effect" - these are a post-Smith revisions from those who did not like what he actually advocated for. Which was for philanthropy to create "a rising tide" that "raises all ships".

Adam Smith's actual formulation was that the rich industrialist philanthropically donates to his local community - to his local workforce - and, indeed, all around the UK, you can find foundations stones on public libraries and public parks that bear the names of the local industrialist who donated these facilities to their local community. Like, read "the Wealth of Nations" and see that this is what he actually advocated for, then look at actual reality - the historical record - and see that this is the example that the better early industrialists actually followed. For real. In reality. Not just some "theory" in a book somewhere.

The logic is actually fairly simple. The industrialist gets rich from their business. So they invest a fraction of their profits in the local community - public libraries, public parks, a community centre, improved infrastructure, etc. - and then this makes the lot of their local workforce better. Being better educated, they innovate new products and improve manufacturing processes. Being healthy and in good mental health, they don't take so many sick days. People work to take care of themselves and their families, but if their families are healthy, in good mental health, living in a better environment that caters to their needs, then your employee has less distractions, as the family is all doing just fine, thank you for asking.

Basically, the philanthropy is essentially investment in their local workforce to improve their productivity. And with improved productivity, the business makes more money - the industrialist gets richer - and can afford to invest yet more in their workforce. To further improve productivity, to invest yet more. To further improve productivity, to invest yet more.

This was actually Adam Smith's notion of how self-interest could serve the common good. That it can create a rising tide that raises all ships, if those at the top of the pyramid actively pump capital down at the bottom of the pyramid, to raise the entire pyramid on the rising tide they've created.

But, somewhere along the way, Smith's actual formulation was butchered. The notion of "trickle down economics" appeared as a new revised theory. You don't have to actually pump money in at the bottom anymore - the philanthropic requirement has been severed - because, so the theory goes, when a billionaire buys a big mansion to live in then, hey, they're implicitly giving money to the builders of their mansion. When they buy a Porsche for themselves, then they're "investing" money in Porsche, who will pay their workers. You don't have to be explicitly philanthropic, the new theory says, because, as the rich spend their wealth, it'll "trickle down" the pyramid to the bottom eventually.

And, you know what, I don't doubt this occurs. But it's not good enough.

As I say, if we take the direct metric of its success - the gap between rich and poor, as the purpose of "trickle down economics" is to provide economic equality - then it's failing on its arse to match the theory in the most horridly insufficient way. The gap between rich and poor widens, and does so at an ever-increasing rate. The reality is that, with "trickle down" as the predominant ideology, we're going backwards on what the theory says should happen.

It's simply not good enough, as it is factually failing to do the job that the theory "hypes" it to be doing.

So, like, you can regurgitate the ideological theories all you like. I know them already. I simply do not believe they're actually correct, as the reality does not track what the theory promises.

I know what the neo-liberal pseudo-religion says. I've read some of its "holy books". But I see absolutely no evidence that Moloch answers our prayers any more effectively than Yahweh does.

In fact, I see, in the evidence around me, the gradual disembowelment of civilisation. Things are getting worse.

There are less hospitals. There are less police. My bins are collected less often. My local high street - as is the case all over the UK - is full of boarded up shops, and those that aren't closed are all transforming into charity or fast food or gambling shops (they are going downmarket to match the growing inequality). Folks with full-time paying jobs are claiming benefits. There are food banks everywhere - in one of the richest nations on Earth.

I fully understand what the plan is. I just feel that the plan simply isn't working. Blatantly so.

By the way, I'm not a socialist. I don't want the government to control all this shit either. I'd rather that the NHS actually matched the "Miners' hospitals" that it was originally modelled on - where the miners collectively owned their own private "not for profit" hospitals. Because I'm all for decentralisation, as this is, engineering-wise, a much better infrastructure, that avoids the "single point of failure" - and included in that is the "single point of failure" of having a shit government and PM, like Boris, incompetently in charge of it all.

I don't want state monopoly, as it's quite irrelevant who the tyrant is, when you live under tyranny. The state owning everything? Rupert Murdoch or Jeff Bezos owning everything? Who gives a fuck? The problem is a single entity - be that government or a corporation or a private individual - owning everything. That's what needs to be addressed, and that's basically why - regardless of whether you vote left or right at the election - shit just keeps getting worse either way.

I want a system that actually works. I don't want or need the latest propaganda from whoever the next would-be tyrant is going to be.

Because, look around you, it's a big fat fucking lie. It doesn't actually work.

[Barney]

A relative of mine owns (or rather, owned as he's retired now) a pharmaceutical company. Not huge, but not small. They developed a cure for lung cancer. It was phenomenal. Cured it in mice, nearly 100%. Went to primates, amazing results. Passed ethics and got approval for human trials.

Nada. Not a sausage. Didn't work at all. Literally zero change in any of their patients. Millions of pounds down the drain. Fortunately there were other avenues of research that they secured funding for, but it nearly broke them.

[merman]

Boris in 2019: we’re going to build 40 new hospitals.

Small print: that’s SIX refurbished hospitals and 36 community hospitals to reopen after the Tories closed them.

Boris in 2020: the Nightingale hospitals are there to take the strain off the NHS

Reality: only a few hundred patients treated as there weren’t sufficient staff (and the same problem applies to 2021’s Nightingale “hubs” - which are just large tents in hospital car parks, and still lacking staff to run them).

Boris in 2021: we are incomparably better placed than last year - we met our target of offering everyone eligible a booster dose of the vaccine.

Fact check: if more than 9% of eligible people over 12 have yet to have a FIRST DOSE, you haven’t met any target. Changing the target from “everyone will get (the chance of) a booster by the end of January” to “everyone will get a booster by the end of December” was never workable.

It’s only down to the NHS that the vaccine rollout has been so successful - volunteers and nurses working long hours to make it happen. But the lack of resources, such as the shocking lack of LFT rapid tests when the Prime Minister told everyone to “test before they celebrate”, is purely a failure of the Government and the privately-run Test & Trace service.

[gilesgoat]

Profit from one drug supports the future research costs of failed enterprises

Yes, but does it actually do that in reality?

Because, if it did, then surely giles would not be talking about this as being a problem:

There's also another "big pharma problem" that is someway worse than vaccines .. there are illnesses really rare which there's no cure yet .. because they are so rare that despite maybe hitting some 10,000 people "they are too small to justify research/development of a cure for those" .. so that stuff is NOT "primary concern" .. "too small" in the sense "even if we cure all those 10,000 people we are NEVER going to see our investement back"..

So, you know, you can say that the immense profits from one successful drug is subsidising future research on less profitable / failed enterprises.

You can say that. But I'd like actual proof that this actually ever occurs in reality.

I can't give you any proof you could/can put as "proof" anywhere, but in this case I could only say "I talked with someone that talked with the people involved in that kind of research".

I can't precisely rememeber what illess they were targetting and they thought to be "real close" to find a cure for but the funds then stopped.

My understanding is "yes they are subsiding up to a point" but when they finally get somewhere they must get somewhere "that grants a certain level of profit" my understanding is "they can't just make a thing that would cure 1000 patients and that's it" if that "return" would still be "too small".

That's what I heard but I am "no big expert" in how the Pharma gets fundings specifically from who and why and how much, but I am quite convinced that when it comes into the "governments" part that's probably not a big part.

[gilesgoat]

Meanwhile ... Italy ...

https://www.triestecafe.it/it/news/cron ... idita.html

Someone in Emila Romagna "convinced No Vax" had to get a vaccine to work but "did not want the vaccine to enter his body" so he put and kept "above and below the injection site in the arm" some of those medical "rubber bands to stop blood" ...

Now he's risking to loose his whole arm because he kept it for over 24 hours !

He went to the ER with a totally black arm and "occlusions in the veins", he's nearly risking amputation now ...

[Little stoned kiwi]

I wonder if Pfizer's maximization of profits includes stifling the greater good, as reducing or eradicating covid would hurt sales.

[Rhythm]

I wonder if Pfizer's maximization of profits includes stifling the greater good, as reducing or eradicating covid would hurt sales.

Brought to you by the same train of thought that says opticians aren't interested in fixing eyes or that dentists are motivated to never actually help you prevent teeth damage

[Little stoned kiwi]

I suppose. When you put it like that, it's as daft as thinking glaziers would go around smashing windows.

[tufty]

That said, there's nothing to say that Pfizer's strategy includes the greater good at all. If it did, they could have unilaterally "handed over the keys" to third world countries. And while there's a lot of truth in in what Rhythm says, some pharmaceutical companies have knowingly continued to sell products that they knew were harmful, either in markets where they had not yet been banned by regulators, or simply by covering up their own research showing the potential harm.

[KlaxonCow]

There is a difference between a glazier who goes around smashing windows... and a glazier who provides a crap quality product that won't last - planned obsolescence - and which needs regular replacement.

Or a health service that will absolutely cure you of any ailment you have... but provides zero advice or preventative care whatsoever.


As the video says, this is why we can't have nice things:



There's no dispute that the lightbulb manufacturers are creating products that work - indeed, if they didn't work, then we wouldn't buy them - but it's known that they quite deliberately got together to produce purposefully inferior products, so that you'd replace your bulbs more often. Because, by natural improvement, lightbulbs were getting too good and lasting too long.

As the video later delves into, it's not about the specific instances of this kind of thing, per se, but rather that this is the "strange attractor" of the overall system. That capitalism can thrive on disaster... so why prevent it? Indeed, there can even be a touch of "disaster capitalism" going on, to keep things on the brink of disaster, to create artificial scarcity, to stranglehold and then choke supply, etc. in order to squeeze out more cash. Essentially from nowhere.

Because everyone - myself included - is all following the same basic rule - that is, "obtain more money" - then it creates a "flow" in the system towards an "attractor".

For example, with the Iraq war, many accused it of being "a war for oil". Others pointed to Bush wanting revenge for Saddam trying to assassinate his parents. Others talked about maintaining the petrodollar (because, just before the invasion, Saddam changed from US dollars to the Euro - and though this was entirely motivated, I'm sure, by just wanting to stick a middle finger up to America, he actually made a ton of money doing this, due to a coincidence of timing to switch currencies, just before the US dollar nose-dived. And some other countries followed suit and talked about "hedging their bets" with other currencies). Then there were those who pointed to Defense Department documents that strategised that America needed a base in the Middle East to fulfil its wider goals. In "the Australian" magazine, Rupert Murdoch gave an interview where, in fairness to him, he was very candid: He initially supported the Iraq war (and all his publications followed suit) because he envisioned cheaper oil. When this didn't materialise, Murdoch's propaganda machine turned against the war. Then there were the "reconstruction contracts" where companies were awarded vast amounts of taxpayer cash to "fix" Iraq.

So, you know, you might be thinking, well, which of these things was the true motivation for the invasion of Iraq? And the whole point here is to realise that any one of these, on its own, would not have resulted in war. It's because all of these things were pulling in the same direction at the same time. It's the strange attractor. The "flow" of the system is all heading in the same direction.

It's because, you know, the DoD wanted their strategic base. And Bush was happy to go with this, because he could get his "revenge". And the markets were not opposing it, as this could produce that "cheaper oil" that Murdoch said he wanted - and there were all those "reconstruction contracts" to bid for.

You get the gist. Any one of these things alone wouldn't have done it, but when everything is all pushing in the same direction - backing each other up - then the "flow" of the system all moves towards one inevitable conclusion.

It's like gravity. Everything inside Earth's gravity well is being pulled down to the ground. So, you know, though we can't exactly predict the physics precisely, we can make solid predictions about the end state of the system. Most things are on the ground. That which is not on the ground, is sat atop something else, and that stack of things is on the ground. Most things are at rest (that comes from Newton's laws - if a thing is at rest then it stays at rest. That's a stable configuration. But to be in motion is unstable, as there's friction, the atmosphere, gravity, etc. working against that object remaining in motion until, somewhat inevitability, it comes to rest. And the point is that, once at rest, it'll stay like that forever... unless some external force acts upon it).

Now, look out of the window. Most things are on the ground and at rest. That which isn't on the ground, is stacked on something else... which is on the ground. Sure, there's the odd thing defying this - a plane in the sky, a car driving past. But, largely, we've made a solid prediction of what we were going to see based on just the rules. No data, no specifics. Just the rules - physics - alone. And we knew what we'd see before we saw it.

So what I'm getting at is this "systemic flow". The direction in which things travel in and, therefore, the somewhat inevitable results of that. Like, if everything inside a box is travelling East, then we don't have to follow every single tiny interaction within the system to make the prediction that, when we open the box, the things inside it will all be piled up on the Eastern side.

The desire to "maximise profits" creates a flow in the system. Akin to everything travelling Eastward. So we don't have to exactly follow every precise movement and interaction within the box, to have a rough idea of what we'll see when we open the box.

I don't believe in bogeymen. No-one wakes up of a morning and thinks "hmm, I wonder how I can be evil today?". No, it's just lots of little nudges. Making an extra buck fifty here, an extra two bucks there. You accidentally make a shit product but, hey, sales go up, as people are replacing them more often - hmm, I could fix the problem... or I could, you know, just leave it be.

It's always this death by a thousand cuts, which eventually, together, adds up to an actual evil being committed. To very sub-optimal solutions and situations. To actually just allowing things to sit on the brink of disaster forever, as there's always an extra buck fifty to be made from catering to the horrors of the world - you might not be actively creating the disaster (e.g. the glazier smashing windows), but you're glad that it's happening and aren't doing a single bloody thing to prevent it (you use more fragile glass, so the windows naturally break more often and it's not in your interests to ever fix this).




We do it to ourselves, we do. And that's what really hurts.

[Little stoned kiwi]

Pfizer could sell at a lower price point. Still making obscene profits while making their vaccine more accessible.
That wouldn't make them as much profit. And better control of covid by the increased accessibility will reduce future demand.
See also; the trashing of rivals.

[Ollie]

I have absolutely no doubt that Pfizer would have charged less for their vaccine if they thought it would result in sufficiently greater sales to increase their overall profit.

[KlaxonCow]

Pfizer could sell at a lower price point. [...] That wouldn't make them as much profit.

Actually, that's not necessarily true.

For example, I'm going to start a hypothetical business. Selling toilet roll. It's premium bog roll, so I'm charging $50 a roll.

My costs for manufacturing each roll is about 50 cents and let's say that the amortised costs of storage / transport / distribution is about 50 cents as well, so my "costs per roll" is about $1. Therefore, I'm making $49 per roll sold.

Big profits? Well, no. Because who the fuck is going to buy toilet roll at $50 per roll?

Like, when I do sell a roll to some idiot out there with more money than sense, I'm making a lovely $49 profit. Lovely jubbly.

But, like, who am I selling to? About 3 people. For a grand total of 3 x $49 = $147. Woo-hoo!

Whereas, if I drop these silly delusions of grandeur for a one second, and then charge a more reasonable $2 per roll. Then, sure, I'm only making $1 profit per roll now. But, now that my prices are reasonable and in line with other toilet roll manufacturers, I'm selling millions of these rolls.

Therefore, I'm now totalling up 1 million x $2 = $2 million. Now, that's an actual profit to write home about and I got it by... reducing prices.

(And this is bog roll. So, you know, in a few weeks, those million people will have used it all up and will go buy a new roll, so that's a recurring $2 million and I have a very healthy business there.)

It's not true that having a higher price will net you bigger profits. It's a balancing act. A lower price makes your product or service more accessible to customers and, thus, you can make your big profits on sheer brute force numbers instead.

And I'd prefer that, personally, because if folks are buying your products regularly in those quantities then you must be doing something right and are genuinely making things better for the most people. If that's how you're making your big profits then, good, you deserve it.

Because, to be clear, I'm not against profit. This is NOT "the politics of envy". As I said, I'm not a socialist and I don't want this to be horribly mismanaged by government either.

If you become a billionaire selling a cure for cancer to the whole world at a reasonable price - and you save millions of lives, while always being thoroughly honest and reasonable and decent with your customers at all times - then, fuck yeah, you deserve to be rolling in that money. Have at it. You go, girl. Knock yourself out.

But it's all so full of cheating the system. Price cartels, planned obsolescence, greedy profiteering, lobbying and bribing politicians, scamsters, hard sells on vulnerable old ladies, shite upon shite upon shite.

But, yeah, it's not necessarily true that raising prices leads to greater profits. Indeed, you can easily price yourself out of the market, then end up with drastically less sales - and the fall-off of higher prices, such as that $50 per toilet roll example, tends to be non-linear. You're not just losing customers in proportion to how much you've raised prices - in a linear and balanced way - but rather there tends to be a cliff. A tipping point where everyone just says "fuck that" and you tend to lose those customers for good, as you destroyed all trust they had.

I do wonder, though, how much of this greedy profiteering is, in fact, self-perpetuating. That is, they're told in "business school" that higher prices is better. So they do that, lose half of their customers then, oh shit, we need to recover our profits. Quick, raise prices again! And - oh dear - the customer numbers collapse even further. Well, there's only one thing for it - raise prices even higher!

That because "business schools" don't seem to teach basic arithmetic anymore*, they're advocating people put their businesses into a death spiral of ever-increasing prices and ever-decreasing profits... which they then erroneously make worse by raising prices further, as they don't realise that they are the authors of their own doom here.


* I know that business schools don't teach this shit anymore because I was on YouTube and recommended to a guy selling DVDs of his life story at $50 a pop that, dude, that's way too pricey. And so I suggested that he lower his prices to make more sales and he'd make more money. Then, from the woodwork, a guy claiming to have done a business course - and he had a degree in it, he claimed - then told me this same false-wisdom that you make more money by raising prices, not lowering them. So, I explained it as simply as possible.

At $50 a DVD, how many copies is he likely to sell? Being very generous - assuming that he has "fans" on YouTube who have more money than sense - let's say he sells 100 of these DVDs. That's $5000. And I suggested - as this YouTuber does have a few million subscribers - that if it was $5 a DVD, then he'd probably sell way more copies. For $5, even some people who're not that interested might buy one out of curiosity. $5 is low enough to be a "why not?" impulse buy. He'd only have to sell 1000 copies to match the $5000 of his $50 price tag, and if he sold 2000, 5000 or 10000 copies, then he's making way more profit - $10K, $25K, 50K respectively. From double to five times more profit.

In response to this - which, like, is very basic arithmetic, so I have no idea how anyone could dispute this - the business school guy then said something real dumb. "But what about costs?". Okay, sure. So I redid the numbers with a presumed $2 cost per DVD and, of course, this does nothing to change the point. The principle still holds, it's just that you're making slightly less profit per DVD.

I don't know what the fuck they teach kids these days - or, perhaps more accurately, what they don't teach them - but this guy claimed a degree from "business school", yet couldn't do some very, very basic multiplication to realise that the "raise prices to maximise profit!!" commandment he was taught at business school? Not real. Not actually true. That's just not how maths works. And if you don't appreciate that - just accepting it, as he did, like a pseudo-religious ideological mantra - then you're so going to shoot yourself in the foot running your future businesses.

And I fear that the world is so poorly run and going to shit, exactly because all the people now in charge of things were all also instructed with these same lies. Which simply aren't true. You can do the maths with pencil and paper to confirm, for yourselves, that I'm not bullshitting anyone here - it's just a mathematical fact... that, apparently, no-one seems to know about anymore and it also apparently stuns a business school graduate that, somehow, no-one had ever taught him to, you know, do the sums. Work it out. Don't just blindly follow some random ideological "theory" people taught you - confirm, for yourself, that it is accurate and real. Because - newsflash! - I've done a little of this and it turns out that it's not accurate and it isn't real. Always has been.