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Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by G79 on Thursday October 21, 2021 @10:07AM (#28944593)
Excellent business strategy. This'll get repeat business and make sure the bottom line is strong.
Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by cromka on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:09AM (#28945553)
It’s only excellent if you don’t have competition. And they do. Anyone offering a significantly longer-lasting protection would effectively put them out of COVID business.
Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by mattkrause on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:24AM (#28945778)
And there's a fair bit of competition: Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson and Johnson, plus the 88 other ones in various stages of development: https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/...

If there were an easy route to a durable vaccine, I can't imagine that someone wouldn't have tried to take over that entire market instead of settling for a drip here and there. You could charge a lot more (see also: SMA and Hepatitis C treatments) and the value to the brand ("From the people who ended the pandemic...") would be amazing.

Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by touisteur on Thursday October 21, 2021 @12:39PM (#28947107)
You're doing the Lord's work here and I'm here to say I regret I can't upvote you more. For all the permanent talk about Hanlon's Razor in here, it seems to all have gone out the window.

As if there wouldn't be dozens of pharma researchers whistleblowing 'we have the cure but our lab won't sell it'.

An annual vaccine is what mostly works for the flu, and nobody but cranks was talking about labs not really wanting to cure the flu. It's just so damn hard. Now everything is easy? they just decided not to save us?

Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by cromka on Saturday October 23, 2021 @07:55AM (#28967577)
> As if there wouldn't be dozens of pharma researchers whistleblowing 'we have the cure but our lab won't sell it'.

Precisely: lack of information is also an information. Such a simple, even beautiful way to look at things, yet so commonly ignored.

Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by isolli on Friday October 22, 2021 @09:00AM (#28956690)
Yet for some reason, people seem to prefer the Pfizer vaccines. Governments too; I'm not following closely but it looks like governments are dragging their feet authorizing and buying available alternatives such as Novavax (spike protein) and Valneva (de-activated virus). Which is a shame, because it could convince those unsure about mRNA technology to get vaccinated.
Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by mStreamTeam on Thursday October 21, 2021 @10:36AM (#28945078)
Phizer bringing planned obsolescence to the Healthcare industry
Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by mattkrause on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:17AM (#28945675)
If you have a better solution, there are literally billions of dollars up for grabs.

While parts of the pharma industry have definitely done shady things, the real reason we don't have a durable "cure" for many conditions is actually because the underlying biology is absurdly complex.

Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by mStreamTeam on Thursday October 21, 2021 @12:52PM (#28947325)
https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/covid-vaccines-creat...

It's a little late for that. Phizer has already taken all those billions of dollars.

Not sure the government can afford to hand out a few more billion without making inflation even worse

Re:Pfizer-BioNTech Booster Shot Restores Full Covid Protecti... by brandon272 on Thursday October 21, 2021 @04:51PM (#28950680)
A few billion isn't going to have any impact on inflation that is worth worrying about if there is real headway made on COVID. It's the trillions that are probably worth worrying about.