So what the US does is effectively making it harder to develop vaccines by creating additional trial burden without supporting said trials, and also I guess removing insurance coverage for non-at-risk groups.
In the meantime, the EU invested 3 billion EUR as part of Horizon 2020 into specifically COVID research, is both working to increase vaccination rates both domestically and abroad around the world, is funding almost 500 trial sites to accelerate the development of new vaccines against COVID. It has created a new agency, HERA to boost pandemic preparedness in the future. Finally, it invested significant money and resources into specifically researching and treating long COVID.
As this moves forward, it might be EU aid groups become a better source of COVID treatment and prevention in the US than anything domestic there. Of course that won’t happen, Trump and co won’t want to lose face over this, so people will just die.
I am desperately trying to be positive in a really bleak situation. But……
Maybe this is the 5D Master class Chinese Checkers move by the administration? Make the EU the primary regulatory source for medical trials and set the bar here in the USA by saying its FDA approved if it is already EU approved? Then boom cheaper drug prices for Americans and more expensive drug prices for the EU?
Again, most likely not the case but I really need some optimism at this point.
I’m saying this as someone who did work for a mid sized company manufacturing medical equipment.
US drug prices are not higher because of R&D costs or whatever. They are higher because when we sold stuff in Europe, the big deal was whether we can sell one treatment for 3 or 4 EUR in a particular country as we were negotiating with the government, when we sold to the US, the megacorp buying it (the only entity we could sell to realistically, as they own 75% of the relevant US market segment) said they will not buy it under 100 USD, and then they also acquired the company I was working at and 3 others like it in a single year.
This was under Biden BTW.
Also, FDA approvals are anecdotally very different from EU approvals. Here, you do the relevant trials, fill the requisite forms, the standards are high, but objective. With the FDA, it’s all up to an expert panel, and it can be often hard to understand their subjective requirements.
An optimistic take would be that the US oligarchy will eventually collapse under this chaos and something better might emerge. The pessimistic take is that something worse might also emerge. Or the elite might just carry on despite the collapse, like in 1990 Russia.
The WHO only recommends vaccines for older people, immunocompromised people, pregnant people, and those in healthcare. This lines up with their flu vaccine recommendations.
The US is usually more aggressive with pushing vaccines: flu, COVID were recommended to everyone. The chickenpox vaccine is also recommended for kids, but that’s not the case in lots of Europe (apparently).
chickenpox is a wierd one, because of the potential of adult chickenpox being severe, and shingle sin younger adults is also on the rise. i think the at-risk groups like health workers in the uk gets Chickenpox vaccine quickly. the vaccine also doesnt give 100% protection, it just makes it so you dont get symptomatic most of the time.
Curious what the European Union guidance says.
So what the US does is effectively making it harder to develop vaccines by creating additional trial burden without supporting said trials, and also I guess removing insurance coverage for non-at-risk groups.
In the meantime, the EU invested 3 billion EUR as part of Horizon 2020 into specifically COVID research, is both working to increase vaccination rates both domestically and abroad around the world, is funding almost 500 trial sites to accelerate the development of new vaccines against COVID. It has created a new agency, HERA to boost pandemic preparedness in the future. Finally, it invested significant money and resources into specifically researching and treating long COVID.
As this moves forward, it might be EU aid groups become a better source of COVID treatment and prevention in the US than anything domestic there. Of course that won’t happen, Trump and co won’t want to lose face over this, so people will just die.
I am desperately trying to be positive in a really bleak situation. But……
Maybe this is the 5D Master class Chinese Checkers move by the administration? Make the EU the primary regulatory source for medical trials and set the bar here in the USA by saying its FDA approved if it is already EU approved? Then boom cheaper drug prices for Americans and more expensive drug prices for the EU?
Again, most likely not the case but I really need some optimism at this point.
I’m saying this as someone who did work for a mid sized company manufacturing medical equipment.
US drug prices are not higher because of R&D costs or whatever. They are higher because when we sold stuff in Europe, the big deal was whether we can sell one treatment for 3 or 4 EUR in a particular country as we were negotiating with the government, when we sold to the US, the megacorp buying it (the only entity we could sell to realistically, as they own 75% of the relevant US market segment) said they will not buy it under 100 USD, and then they also acquired the company I was working at and 3 others like it in a single year.
This was under Biden BTW.
Also, FDA approvals are anecdotally very different from EU approvals. Here, you do the relevant trials, fill the requisite forms, the standards are high, but objective. With the FDA, it’s all up to an expert panel, and it can be often hard to understand their subjective requirements.
An optimistic take would be that the US oligarchy will eventually collapse under this chaos and something better might emerge. The pessimistic take is that something worse might also emerge. Or the elite might just carry on despite the collapse, like in 1990 Russia.
The WHO only recommends vaccines for older people, immunocompromised people, pregnant people, and those in healthcare. This lines up with their flu vaccine recommendations.
The US is usually more aggressive with pushing vaccines: flu, COVID were recommended to everyone. The chickenpox vaccine is also recommended for kids, but that’s not the case in lots of Europe (apparently).
chickenpox is a wierd one, because of the potential of adult chickenpox being severe, and shingle sin younger adults is also on the rise. i think the at-risk groups like health workers in the uk gets Chickenpox vaccine quickly. the vaccine also doesnt give 100% protection, it just makes it so you dont get symptomatic most of the time.