Regarding vaccines and altruism I suggest you read up on Jonas Salk, who developed one of the first successful polio vaccines[1]

Money quote from linked article:

"News of the vaccine's success was first made public on April 12, 1955.[7] Salk was immediately hailed as a "miracle worker", and chose to not patent the vaccine or seek any profit from it in order to maximize its global distribution."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk

I do not dispute that altruistic people exist, and often do great things.

But I also know that my grandmother suffered terribly from rheumatoid arthritis, and it destroyed her life. Long after she died, enbrel was developed for profit which was the first really successful treatment for it.

    No profits => no treatment => misery.

You can sit around waiting for and hoping for someone to step up and sacrifice their time and money for your benefit, but I prefer the much more reliable method of paying them.

Not to take anything away from his contribution, but it's a bit more complicated with Salk.

The organizations who funded the research looked into the viability of a patent and concluded it wouldn't have succeeded.

"the idea of patenting the vaccine had been directly analyzed and the decision was made not to apply for a patent mainly because it would not result in one."[1]

The distinction should also be made that a patent doesn't necessarily affect global distribution. It just gives the rights to license the technology. They could have patented it and then licensed it for free.

[1]https://www.bio.org/blogs/real-reason-why-salk-refused-paten...

Interesting read. Thank you.

It doesn't really scratch at his integrity though, since it was the institution he worked for that raised the issue.

If he was just a brilliant salesman (apart from a brilliant scientist) we never know.

What is beyond dispute is that his discovery saved (arguably) millions of people from a life in misery.

You don't even need altruism. Vaccine researchers want the pandemic to end like everyone else plus they're interested in vaccine research anyway.

Here comes my old publicly traded corporation rant: a company with a well defined owner, even with a well defined group of owners, would, given the opportunity, profit handsomely. But not overdo it. They'd rather be seen as a global saviour, not as a global ransomer.

Enter public trading: the opportunity alone for global ransoming will inevitably become the projection that defines the street price for shares and once valuation is up there ransom-level profits would suddenly appear not excessive but appropriate, given the level of paper investments of the latest, valuation-defining round of buyers.

I don’t think this is a very good rant. Private companies have investors too, and board leadership varies from company to company.

Private (as in: not publicly traded) is indeed pretty much equivalent to publicly traded if it's a private ownership structure consisting of VC funds. But that's a startup bubble peculiarity, elsewhere private ownership either means being a subsidiary where the parent ownership structure transitively applies (strictly speaking, the VC funded startup falls into this category as well) or a much more conventional setup where the role of outside investors is taken by old-fashioned banks whose possible returns are strictly limited to what the credit contract says.

So true! Anonymous masses vs private fiefdoms. Almost everything commercially successful is run by tyrants.

I wish regulating anti-social behaviour out of industry was more popular.

> Almost everything commercially successful is run by tyrants.

Sounds like you're simply defining a tyrant as someone who runs a profitable company.

The main issue is identifying what anti-social behavior is. It's easy to say "coal is anti-social! don't you care about the environment!", but it's just as anti-social to just shut down an industry and say "best of luck, I heard you can move to California and build websites in JavaScript". Often times there just aren't easy answers.

I also want to push back on "everything commercially successful is run by tyrants" kind of narrative. I get the frustration, but these blanket, ideological statements do not help anyone, anywhere. Do you make money? I guess you're a tyrant!

Let's not forget, the countries that we put up on a pedestal as the shining examples of how a country should be run (Norway or whatever) are very much capitalistic countries with free markets, IPOs, and commercial companies. I hardly see businesses there characterized as tyrannical.

I do really get the frustration, but it needs to be directed at the failures of our elected representatives. Not, commercial entities.

The tyrannical boss is a classic trope due to the necessities of competition.

Companies are unlikely to stay profitable if they’re overly generous. They need to profit handsomely to survive.

> The tyrannical boss is a classic trope due to the necessities of competition.

Eh, I think that’s kind of old-school thinking.

> Companies are unlikely to stay profitable if they’re overly generous. They need to profit handsomely to survive.

Yep. That’s fine. (Also ignores low-margin industries that rely on volume, but whatever).

If you want a modern society, people have to be able to take risks with their money in order to make more money. Otherwise we can go back to subsistence farming. Do you work? You’re charging a profit. How evil of you! Being a few steps removed from the transaction doesn’t make you any less guilty of profiteering. You’re just as bad as these tyrannical CEOs, the difference is you’re a sucker for building their product while they make money hand over fist.

(I don’t actually believe the last part, but w/e).

Today. Just 1 year ago the next pandemic was vaporware. In hindsight we know that covid happened, but there was no more reason to think it would have than any other unlikely event.

I doubt if vaccine research can be done just by a group of interested people. It's not a paper-and-pencil affair like pure maths. You need a lot of computers, drug manufacturing machinery; then you have to run big, well-organized RCTs. If you've got an example of volunteer-driven health research at scale, I'd like to hear about it.

Volunteer-driven health research has solved all zero major pandemics of the last century.

Biontech didnt do vaccine. They pivoted because they saw a big opportunity using their approach might lead to a vaccine for Covid. So to justifies this pivot (and get the investments into the company) there need to be a possibility of big profit at the horizon.