Maybe the lack of deaths is what raises this anti-vaccine ideology.
Where I come from, whenever 2 old women meet, I noticed they always ask how many children they had. And the response is always a variation of: 6 children, 4 alive, 2 dead.
Child mortality is still present in their minds. This is inconceivable to me but my generation still listens to the stories. The future generations are not gonna listen to these stories, the US is probably already in such a future.
It's amazing that within a single person's lifetime we can completely as a society forget how horrible these diseases were, and why vaccination was so popular and transformative around the world. Truly a victim of their own success.
So slightly more money for 2 years? Do you even know how much money cholesterol medicines or Ozempic make and for how long? You don't even know how to spell Pfizer.
Doubled revenue at significantly lower cost for three years followed by continued recommendation from government for an untested and evidence free booster is not "slightly more money".
Plus... I thought on HN we liked when innovative companies made money from those innovations :P
I would prefer if pharmaceutical companies made lifesaving drugs out of the good of their hearts vs. out of their love of profit, but if "love of profit" is the only option right now then shit, I'll take it.
I hear from people who in the same breath then tell me the benefits of the natural chemical-free supplements they're taking, as if the supplement industry doesn't exist.
Not only "exists", but has managed to fight off almost any form of regulation whatsoever. There are no regulations requiring they disclose everything that is in the supplement (so a vitamin C supplement can contain Vitamin E, at any concentration, with no mention of it on the label), or that the label have correct concentration information, or be free from substances known to be toxic to humans. I think the only thing they're required to do is meet manufacturing facility standards.
Labdoor and others have found high levels of Arsenic and other poisonous materials in protein powder. Protein powder! Which apparently gets to skip all FDA regulation by being called a "supplement."
Nit: when anyone dies in a hospital the money-makers are the health providers, not the drug-makers. Health providers (think “non-profit” hospitals and medical centers, as well as clinics) have the biggest operating profit margin and return on equity in this business: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/insurance-companies-arent-the-...
Thank you. And there is a WSJ article linked that talks about nonprofit hospitals having high executive comp and funding new projects. It does also say:
> To be sure, some nonprofit hospitals, particularly ones in inner cities that handle large numbers of uninsured patients, remain under financial strain and are struggling to keep their doors open.
And it is also worth mentioning that in some (many?) systems, 'providers' refers to physicians who aren't part of the hospital system in which they work. So the doctors can be doing just fine while the hospital is barely scraping by.
