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According to the USA today article, vaccine shortages have more to do with low profit margins, the unpredictability of demand and the small number of producers, than the regulatory environment.
The remedies suggested in the article are mostly various public subsidies for the producers.
Sure, if similar is explained.Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
OK, I think at one point a few years ago, we only had one USA supplier.Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
This is unclear. Please explain.Quote:
Originally Posted by WC
LOL...Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
You serious?
Similar to what?
I don't understand what you're juxtaposing, WC.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
How is someone even expected to look something up from years back if it's not a pressing case to them?Quote:
Sure, if similar is explained.Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
the thing is also that they are indicating this could be a younger person disease and then they define the parameters of young as 65 and under. also, we know that the flu is better spread under indoor conditions and that the flu's primary targets have been schools and colleges. the migratory pattern would be to eventually get to homes and then the "older" demographic. there have been other countries who also had the trend of ealier age groups being affected and then also noticed an eventual increase in the older age groups.
another thing is that they are reporting that 90% of the fatalities are amongst the younger ages as well. but of that 65% are in the 20-45 age domain and this is the group that tends to avoid doctors visits and takes less care of itself when it comes to being sick. also, if it is true that pregnant women are also more vulnerable this eliminates the 65 and over group as well. another supposed group that is more inclined to suffer more serious cases is the obese.
numbers worth looking at but certainly that demand more scrutinization.
An inconvenience waiver?Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Cobra
Wimpy! :lol
LOL...Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
Call it what you want. This topic isn't that important to me. Hell, I'll concede on that just to make it go away. That's how important it is to me.
Now if someone insists on their facts being right, then I reserve the right to insist on evidence.
A good man knows when he's been thumped. :lolQuote:
Originally Posted by WC
And I'll reserve my right to claim it's inconvenient to do so. I'll even link this thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by WC
It's not that at all. Just more important topics and household things to do. If it makes you feel better though, go ahead and believe as you wish.Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
You know, you think the worse in people, so I actually did find a supporting link from 2004.
La Grippe of the Trial Lawyers
Some excerpts:
When the above happened, we only had one supplier.Quote:
Two weeks ago, British regulators suspended the license of Chiron Corp., the world's second-leading flu vaccine supplier, for three months. Officials cited manufacturing problems at the factory in Liverpool, England, where Chiron makes its leading product, Fluvirin. Chiron was scheduled to supply 46 million of the 100 million doses to be administered in the United States this year. The other 54 million will come from Aventis Pasteur, a French company with headquarters in Strasbourg.
When Wyeth still made the flu vaccine, we only has one US supplier.Quote:
In 1967 there were 26 companies making vaccines in the United States. Today there are only four that make any type of vaccine and none making flu vaccine. Wyeth was the last to fall, dropping flu shots
after 2002.
This is where the profitability stopped for makers. Outside suppliers are not liable in our courts, and US suppliers couldn't sell for enough to make a profit under the constant threat of huge lawsuits.Quote:
In theory, prices might have been jacked up enough to make vaccine production profitable even with the lawsuit risk, but federal intervention made vaccines a low-margin business. Before 1993, manufacturers sold vaccines to doctors, doctors prescribed them to patients, and there was some markup. Then Congress adopted the Vaccine for Children Act, which made the government a monopsony buyer. The feds now purchase over half of all vaccines at a low fixed price and distribute them to doctors. This has essentially finished off the private market.
What prompted my anger some years back was when a vaccine lot was contaminated. None could be distributed. Only one supplier.Quote:
As recently as 1980, 18 American companies made eight different vaccines for various childhood diseases. Today, four companies--GlaxoSmithKline, Aventis, Merck, and Wyeth--make 12 vaccines. Of the 12, seven are made by only one company and only one is made by more than two. "There are constant shortages," says Dr. Paul Offit, head of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "With only one supplier for so many vaccines, the whole system is fragile. When even the smallest thing goes wrong, children miss their vaccinations."
Quote:
"It was a turning point," says Dr. Offit, whose book The Cutter Incident will be published next year. "Because of the Cutter decision, vaccines became one of the first medical products to
be eliminated by lawsuits."
I forgot how much of this was from trial lawyers sueing the pants off of pharmaceutical companies.Quote:
Adding to the problem are the predictable panics about vaccines that spread among parents and are abetted by trial lawyers. In 1974, a British researcher published a paper claiming that the vaccine for pertussis (whooping cough) had caused seizures in 36 children, leading to 22 cases of epilepsy or mental retardation. Subsequent studies proved the claim to be false, but in the meantime Japan canceled inoculations, resulting in 113 preventable whooping cough deaths. In the United States, 800 pertussis vaccine lawsuits asking $21 million in damages were filed over the next decade. The cost of a vaccination went from 21 cents to $11.
Every American drug company dropped pertussis vaccine except Lederle Laboratories. In 1980, Lederle lost a liability suit for the paralysis of a three-month-old infant--even though there was almost no evidence implicating the vaccine. Lederle's damages were $1.1 million, more than half its gross revenues from sale of the vaccine for that entire year.
Quote:
In 1998, the FDA approved a vaccine for Lyme disease, which strikes 15,000 people a year. GlaxoSmithKline manufactured it for three years but quit when rumors began circulating that the vaccine caused arthritis.
All this has made the flu an epidemic waiting to happen. Each year flu viruses circle the globe, moving into Asia in the spring and summer and back to North America in the winter. Surface proteins change along the way so that the previous year's vaccine doesn't work against the following year's variation.
Each year in February, the Centers for Disease Control meets with the vaccine-makers--all two of them--and decides which strain of the virus to anticipate for next year. Then they both make the same vaccine. Last year the committee bet on the Panama strain, but a rogue "Fujian" strain suddenly emerged as a surprise invader. A mini-epidemic resulted and 93 children died, only two of them properly vaccinated.
Appreciate the link WC. :tu
So, how did WC determine that the makers of vaccines are friends of Obama?
Intuition?
Huh?Quote:
Originally Posted by Winehole23
Precisely.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wild Cobra
Half the kids at texas a&M, including me got it. It was ridiculously bad, I was actually stupid not to goto a doctor and that was NOT smart lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by balli
For about a week i went into medical shock somehow. I would come home from class, so tired and mentally exhausted i couldn't even think at all, no sense of where i was or anything. Made studying even harder. At night I would have intense cold sweats, only a high fever for like 2 days, but I would sweat so profusely and wouldn't even be hot. Its when I was having tachycardia one day that I finally went to the doctor, he told me I was crazy dehydrated and since I wasn't eating at all (no appetite when sick) it pretty much made everything worse combined with all the stress of college life. I actually just like recovered 2 weeks ago.
I was calling this shit a myth like all the other bullshit the gov has fed to us and didn't take precautions, its their own fault, the boy who cried wolf isn't believed when the wolf is actually there
I really wish I knew what to believe when it came to this shit.
Its going to be bad as far as flu goes but don't expect scenes out of Outbreak. The problem here is the expectations people have of what a pandemic means and what it actually is. Thats all.
"what to believe"
You can KNOW there's no proof that this vaccine works against this particular virus.
Internet has created a Tower of Babble where KNOWING rationally, scientifically, verifiably is replaced by the irrational, magical-thinking, intentionally confusing claims (esp religious and political claims).
Knowing the truth has always been extremely difficult, but now there are movements like the Repugs, conservatives, neo-conservatives, "Christian" supremacists, and hate media that have as their primary objective the sowing of falsehoods and confusions (a well-KNOWN effective demagogic strategy) that they intend to exploit for their own power and enrichment.
You can be sure that BigPharma and their captured FDA are going to hype this some-worse-than-average flu into the 1918 flu.
Next year when the flu deaths are tallied vs non-swine-flu years, we'll know whether the hype justified. 10s of 1000s people die from the flu every year in USA, and it's the same ones (with co-morbidities and general weak/ill health) that die.
"Every year in the United States, on average:
- 5% to 20% of the population gets the flu;
- more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from flu-related complications; and
- about 36,000 people die from flu-related causes."
http://www.cdc.gov/flu/keyfacts.htm
Get your ass to Cedar Creek if you need proof!Quote:
Originally Posted by Cant_Be_Faded
We are at what, about 2.8% of that so far?Quote:
Originally Posted by boutons_deux
I'll make this wild ass prediction that this years numbers will be lower in hospitalization and deaths, because the H1N1 isn't as strong as the annual flu, is preceding it, and will help peoples system prepare for the annual flu!