I would be more confident in AstraZeneca prioritizing the project if they would look forward to making billions of dollars of profit with the project instead of them seeing it as being about PR.
It also sets very bad incentives for people who invest in pandemic preparedness when they can’t make profits on their work. The fact that the big pharma companies didn’t predict in advance that being well-prepared to provide a working vaccine for a pandemic like this is a reason why had too little investment into pandemic preparedness in the last years besides.
You incentive people to build products that are useful in potential pandemics by allowing them to make profits when the pandemic happens and the products turn out to be useful.
I would much rather hear AstraZeneca say: “We will invest all profits made into building up factories to provide vaccines for the future and do research on parademic preparedness because we didn’t invest enough resources into the area in the last years.”
Basing this response just on this exchange and information provide here.
I’m not sure one can say AZ is not setting up with profits in mind nor is it clear to me their expectations on total profit would be lower they way they are versus the suggestion made about reinvesting profits. How do we go about making that assessment and comparison since I don’t think one can simply pick a side and claim victory.
One way of looking at the current, temporary “non-profit” approach could be seen as an investment in a customer base that will be there when the factories are build and provide a good demand volume to support the factory output at levels that provide greater profits. If they seek profits now, but promise to invest in the factories (which they are going to do anyhow) they are both competing for customers today and tomorrow. Trying to establish a loyal customer base now at the start of things doesn’t seem like a profit minimizing strategy to me.
I would be more confident in AstraZeneca prioritizing the project if they would look forward to making billions of dollars of profit with the project instead of them seeing it as being about PR.
It also sets very bad incentives for people who invest in pandemic preparedness when they can’t make profits on their work. The fact that the big pharma companies didn’t predict in advance that being well-prepared to provide a working vaccine for a pandemic like this is a reason why had too little investment into pandemic preparedness in the last years besides.
You incentive people to build products that are useful in potential pandemics by allowing them to make profits when the pandemic happens and the products turn out to be useful.
I would much rather hear AstraZeneca say: “We will invest all profits made into building up factories to provide vaccines for the future and do research on parademic preparedness because we didn’t invest enough resources into the area in the last years.”
Basing this response just on this exchange and information provide here.
I’m not sure one can say AZ is not setting up with profits in mind nor is it clear to me their expectations on total profit would be lower they way they are versus the suggestion made about reinvesting profits. How do we go about making that assessment and comparison since I don’t think one can simply pick a side and claim victory.
One way of looking at the current, temporary “non-profit” approach could be seen as an investment in a customer base that will be there when the factories are build and provide a good demand volume to support the factory output at levels that provide greater profits. If they seek profits now, but promise to invest in the factories (which they are going to do anyhow) they are both competing for customers today and tomorrow. Trying to establish a loyal customer base now at the start of things doesn’t seem like a profit minimizing strategy to me.