• Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    6 days ago

    Theoretically, this could approved in Europe, which is fine for me. But I doubt the pharmaceutical industry will let a working, permanent immunisation against the common cold happen. That would mean billions and trillions of lost business.

    • Supervisor194@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      I never understand it when this argument is made. It assumes that there aren’t entities out there making $0 on the common cold that would refuse to take the absolute fucking windfall that would be generated if such an immunization were to be brought to the market.

      Like “oh, you know, we’d like to make this immunization and make billions of dollars ourselves but these OTHER guys are already making billions of dollars and we sure wouldn’t want to step on their toes.”

      • turtle [he/him]@lemm.ee
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        6 days ago

        Well, consider all the money that pharmaceutical companies make every year on over the counter medicines for cold symptoms. I’m sure it’s not a perfect example of malfeasance like “hey, we have this perfect cure for the cold in our pockets but we make more profits from our over the counter cold medicines so let’s just bury the cure”, but through a complicated process they often end up at a similar result.

        Recent example: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits

        • HubertManne@piefed.social
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          6 days ago

          I sorta don’t understand this. A TB vaccine has definately been around for awhile and the article does not seem to say what would make this one special. Is it the same vaccine with the thing they says makes vaccines more potent added and they are just not adding it???

          • turtle [he/him]@lemm.ee
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            6 days ago

            It sounds like this new vaccine would be 50% effective (including adults?), according to the ProPublica article. The old vaccine, BCG, appears to only be 37% effective on children, not adults (based on a web search - edit: on a second look, different articles are claiming wildly different effectiveness rates for BCG). The disease kills 1.6 million people annually. In other words, it sounds like this new vaccine would save tons of lives compared to the old one.

          • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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            6 days ago

            i think only the USa DOESNT routinely vaccinate it against it, because they havnt found much efficacy, TB endemic areas do vaccinate against it, but it has limited efficacy. on the plus side, it is used with cancer therapy as a indirect effect to stimulate the immune system.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        6 days ago

        The point is that some businesses react rather violently on the loss of billions.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      its pretty hard to vaccinate against the common cold, since coronavirus only represents like 15ish percent, the majority are all rhinoviruses there arnt any vaccines for those because theres too many strains(like 200+) to deal with, and also its so self-limiting its not worht it to produce anyway, in addition to trying to figure out which virus is causing the cold and which strain. also there a bunch of other viruses that causes colds, like entero,adeno, parainfluenza, RSV,etc.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        5 days ago

        I’m well aware of that, but taking only 15% out of a multi-billion-a-year market is still money. And there has been research into dealing with rhinoviruses in general, too, so that would take an even larger chunk.