Quote Originally Posted by reexre View Post
Bill Gates says the whole world will be vaccinated

( YOU DON'T HAVE A CHOICE )
Yeah, speaking of not having a choice:

1) You have to come up with a vaccine.

2) It has to work.

3) You have to produce it in large quantities.

The first and second will be solved pretty quickly, the third may not be solved at all without government assistance. There are few companies that produce vaccines because the profit margin is minute, and subject to vacillating demand. For example, government made big orders for a SARS vaccine, then backed out of all of them once SARS simply vanished. The left the companies holding the bag to the tune of hundreds of millions.

One company suggested that they might be able to put out around 100-600 million doses per year, depending on how difficult it is to produce a dose. The range is based on a reasonable expectation of the difficulty considering similar vaccines. So, if you only have a few companies, and each can produce only around a quarter of a billion doses in a year...you MIGHT get a vaccine, but it could also take a few years.

You might think that companies are going to ramp up production, and they might, but before they shell out the money to increase production facilities, which have a large up-front capital outlay, they need some expectation that they'll make back their investment. In this case, that seems kind of unlikely, unless they can change a premium for a dose. After all, if the vaccine provided immunity, then every buyer would only ever buy once.