In this comment on the parent question, David Manheim makes the case for building new vaccine production facilities before we have a vaccine ready to produce, and for this to be subsidized. I find this question interesting in its own right, but it’s also an opportunity to dig into the nitty-gritty of producing something, which I wish happened more on LessWrong. I don’t expect this to lead directly to a vaccine facility coming into existence- presumably the people who have the power to do that already have access to the knowledge as well- but I think it’s a useful exercise in how things actually get done.
To recap, David’s argument as I understand it is:
The world is under-capacity for vaccines as it is
Building a vaccine production facility takes a lot of time and money, so we need to start funding and building them now to have them ready when we have candidates ready.
We’re likely to want to mass-produce multiple vaccines until we know which ones work the best, increasing the amount of capacity needed.
There’s already a great discussion of this in the replies to his thread, and I encourage you to read it before commenting here. Some questions that came up in that discussion:
Is there such a thing as a generic vaccine production facility, or do different vaccines require different facilities?
What raw materials (e.g. sterile eggs) are we also likely to need large quantities of, and should perhaps start sourcing now?
Some additional questions I have are:
Are there costs besides the obvious financial ones to building these facilities ahead of time? Are they competing for a resource we need more elsewhere?
Who does have the power and knowledge to make these facilities?
[Question] What are the costs, benefits, and logistics of opening up new vaccine facilities?
In this comment on the parent question, David Manheim makes the case for building new vaccine production facilities before we have a vaccine ready to produce, and for this to be subsidized. I find this question interesting in its own right, but it’s also an opportunity to dig into the nitty-gritty of producing something, which I wish happened more on LessWrong. I don’t expect this to lead directly to a vaccine facility coming into existence- presumably the people who have the power to do that already have access to the knowledge as well- but I think it’s a useful exercise in how things actually get done.
To recap, David’s argument as I understand it is:
The world is under-capacity for vaccines as it is
Building a vaccine production facility takes a lot of time and money, so we need to start funding and building them now to have them ready when we have candidates ready.
We’re likely to want to mass-produce multiple vaccines until we know which ones work the best, increasing the amount of capacity needed.
There’s already a great discussion of this in the replies to his thread, and I encourage you to read it before commenting here. Some questions that came up in that discussion:
Is there such a thing as a generic vaccine production facility, or do different vaccines require different facilities?
What raw materials (e.g. sterile eggs) are we also likely to need large quantities of, and should perhaps start sourcing now?
Some additional questions I have are:
Are there costs besides the obvious financial ones to building these facilities ahead of time? Are they competing for a resource we need more elsewhere?
Who does have the power and knowledge to make these facilities?
What are some historical equivalents?