1. Salaries can’t add much, especially if you’re looking at mass producing. If you’re creating 500 vaccines then maybe it takes a couple of hours? Say $20/hour (looking at local job listings for this kind of role) we get 8c/dose on salary. As you scale this is only going to go down.
2. It seems like vaccine trials can be done for a few hundred million although there is a big variation and I’m not completely sure whether the numbers given there include some manufacturing build up. If a large pharma company is going to be making lots of vaccine it seems like they should be able to achieve that for less than $1/dose.
3a. Taxes may add a decent few percent but can’t be a main driver of cost
3b. Shipping costs for refrigerated goods are maybe 5c per 1000 miles per kg. That data is from a while back (1988!) and costs might be a bit higher for colder temperatures but I can’t see this being a large fraction of the cost.
4a. For liability I note that at least AstraZeneca have struck deals in most countries to be exempt from such liabilities. It seems that in the US all COVID vaccines will benefit from this.
4b. Some companies (at least AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson) have said that they will be selling their COVID vaccines at cost. Even lacking this, I wouldn’t expect corporate profits to be huge, even just from a PR point of view.
Additionally:
5. Risk of failed vaccine trials. If you only expect to have a 1 in 3 chance of successful stage 3 trial then the $1/dose from 2 becomes $3/dose to expect to break even. I’m not sure whether this risk is covered by governments—I think it was to some extent but am not confident.
Given Dentin’s comment that the material cost if something like 10c/dose (which makes sense given how little it cost to double John’s peptides order) then I think most of the cost looks like it is in the trials and risk of failure thereof but this isn’t enough to explain why companies aren’t doing this. Its probably too late now anyway as vaccines already approved should have the pandemic under control before any new trials would be complete.
Trying to quantify these effects:
1. Salaries can’t add much, especially if you’re looking at mass producing. If you’re creating 500 vaccines then maybe it takes a couple of hours? Say $20/hour (looking at local job listings for this kind of role) we get 8c/dose on salary. As you scale this is only going to go down.
2. It seems like vaccine trials can be done for a few hundred million although there is a big variation and I’m not completely sure whether the numbers given there include some manufacturing build up. If a large pharma company is going to be making lots of vaccine it seems like they should be able to achieve that for less than $1/dose.
3a. Taxes may add a decent few percent but can’t be a main driver of cost
3b. Shipping costs for refrigerated goods are maybe 5c per 1000 miles per kg. That data is from a while back (1988!) and costs might be a bit higher for colder temperatures but I can’t see this being a large fraction of the cost.
4a. For liability I note that at least AstraZeneca have struck deals in most countries to be exempt from such liabilities. It seems that in the US all COVID vaccines will benefit from this.
4b. Some companies (at least AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson) have said that they will be selling their COVID vaccines at cost. Even lacking this, I wouldn’t expect corporate profits to be huge, even just from a PR point of view.
Additionally:
5. Risk of failed vaccine trials. If you only expect to have a 1 in 3 chance of successful stage 3 trial then the $1/dose from 2 becomes $3/dose to expect to break even. I’m not sure whether this risk is covered by governments—I think it was to some extent but am not confident.
Given Dentin’s comment that the material cost if something like 10c/dose (which makes sense given how little it cost to double John’s peptides order) then I think most of the cost looks like it is in the trials and risk of failure thereof but this isn’t enough to explain why companies aren’t doing this. Its probably too late now anyway as vaccines already approved should have the pandemic under control before any new trials would be complete.