> There is profit to be made in vaccines, sure. But it's hardly the same as in patented drugs.
But there is also good chance to convince government to buy huge quantities.
Flu kills and becomes pandemic nearly every year. Bird/pig flu was just a bad year.
There are more effective measures to fight flu. For example closing schools for couple of weeks. Also employers should allow tele-commuting during flu seasons.
>It infected 500 million people across the world, including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and killed 50 to 100 million of them—3 to 5 percent of the world's population at the time—making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.
Nah, that's a poor argument. The medical industry would make more money if they let the people get sick so they need to be hospitalized for weeks or even, in the case of some polio victims, need to be in an iron lung for the rest of their lives.
I can turn the argument around: companies don't want people to get vaccinated so they can sell more expensive palliative care. Why would a hospital want to get less business if more people are vaccinated and so don't need their services?
If a given argument predicts X and it predicts not-X, then it's a poor argument. This appeal to the profit motive is a poor argument.
In theory maybe. The data suggests that the same companies are providing vaccines and drugs.
Competition in the US Health System certainly doesn't do a good enough job at driving costs down...
I don't like to use these strong words, but I do find it dangerous and reckless when people with nearly no medical knowledge want to reason against proven methods on the basis of costs and the hatred of "evil, profit seeking companies".
If mistakes were made it's up to the medical establishment to judge about and avoid them in the future. Anticapitalists should not play a role in that.
I don't believe what I'm reading here: You suggest that the medical industry is more or less a monopoly / oligopoly with lack of competition and at he same time barf at people dependent on that system to keep out of the discussion? Maybe you (or I) missed a sarcasm tag ... Otherwise it might be the place to remind you that the medical industry does not operate on a free market because sick people mostly don't have much to choose from. I cannot imagine why the profit seeking aspect of that industry should not be questuined and/or observed?
Your retort is baseless since I didn't say anything of the nonsense you are trying to make me say.
There is an economic aspect to health care. I am accusing those who want to make recommendations on (extremely weak) economic grounds without any medical and scientific reasoning.
Baseless anticapitalist conspiracy theories should not play a role in healthcare.
The DOD mandates flu vaccination every year for their servicemembers (who can't simply "take a couple of weeks off"). It does indeed usually significantly decrease the incidence of flu infection.
If it didn't the DOD would probably find some better way to spend that money, like buying a missile or something. :P
Actually last year, most people who thought the NSA was spying on everyone, were in fact highly vulnerable to all sorts of conspiracy theories. There just was no evidence.
Today, with all the data we have on incompetence and failure in most intelligence agencies, we can still have some hope...
Echolon is widely known since 1980ies, "spying on everyone" is just question how filters were set. And "all the data on incompetence and failure" you have now are just a few PowerPoint slides and speculations. I would say NSA is actually very competent.
But there is also good chance to convince government to buy huge quantities.
Flu kills and becomes pandemic nearly every year. Bird/pig flu was just a bad year.
There are more effective measures to fight flu. For example closing schools for couple of weeks. Also employers should allow tele-commuting during flu seasons.