Thread: Corona Virus

It all starts to fall into place now. It is a bit late to Nuke the joint though.


Coronavirus: Why China’s leader is to blame for the outbreak

The biggest killer of scientists at bio-safety labs is "Casual Friday"!

Like many companies, we here at Blackbox Solutions are already suffering parts supply shortages from our China based suppliers, from electronic parts, through the leads we include and right down to the cardboard Boxes we put our products in, because the Chinese government initially imposed restictions on all businesses in an effort to try and contain the spread of this Virus that has certainly now dramatically affected and led to dramatic stock exchange ripples, But non the less the Virus has enivitably now moved beyond countries / borders

The world is of course full of huge concern and opinion on the Corona Virus, But I would like to share my tuppence worth of thoughts via this thread and of course elicit any feedback.

It seems to me that for a very long time now the entire Pharmacutical industry has profited quite handsomely on the back of the very highly priced cost of medication that is often so life or death and requisite to maintaining quality of life, that many have no choice but to pay. Their wealth is so great that they have likely enticed all the best and greatest minds from under funded research facilities.

Even if and when a Vaccine is / may be developed for the Corona Virus, this will still be a profit making opportunity for these Pharamacutical industries / companies that I am fairlty sure they will leverage.

I just think that somehow, these pharmacutical companies should somehow be made to contribute significantly to finding a vaccine / solution ASAP.

Like I said, Just my tuppence worth of thoughts on this subject

They already do contribute.

It costs them somewhere between $1 billion and $5 billion to develop a new vaccine. The cost varies enormously, but those are typical figures.

There are plenty of articles explaining how costly it is to develop new drugs and how little of drug companies' profits come from vaccines.

Too many people focus on the profits drug companies make, but are quite unaware of just how great their costs are.

Some good news. Statistics indicate children are not getting the worse effects of the virus, but they don't know why.

Who is vulnerable to coronavirus? So far children appear safe

The costs to pharmaceutical companies come from three sources.

Money spent on developing drugs that simply fail to work out. This could be because the idea or concept of the drug was wrong, but a lot of work needed to be done before this became obvious, or it could be because someone (either in the same company or elsewhere) came up with something better, or it could be because it failed trials, perhaps because of unacceptable side effects, perhaps because it proved to have too short a shelf life, and so could not be distributed. Regardless of the cause, the company is still left with a lot of expenditure that is never going to be recouped except by profits from drugs that do work out.

The cost of carrying out the trials required before any drug can be marketed. These are very expensive, and probably also in this category are the vast volumes of red tape required by authorities round the world before the drug can be marketed. It should be pointed out that this red tape has invariably been implemented for reasons of public safety, and informed by those previous occasions when problems arose. But that it is justified does not make it any cheaper.

The need to make sufficient profit across the whole range of products to pay the defence costs and any amounts awarded for damages from the company's products. Remembering that damages can be awarded even though the company meets all legal and scientific criteria for safety of their products - and even the best intentions don't always lead to perfect decisions, even in developing pharmaceuticals.

One of the unwanted results of these costs is that companies inevitably prefer to develop remedies that are closely related to, but slightly better than existing remedies, and ones that have a large market, usually because they involve long term medication. If you have something that only requires using a medication for a short time, and especially if it is rare, this medication is never going to recover costs, and if it is even marketed it will have to be at a very high price.

Despite this, most pharmaceutical companies do market some of their products with very low profit margins, and this includes widely used vaccines.

Western Australia has had our first 'COVID-19 related death, a senior (78) gentleman of oriental extraction who was on an infected cruise ship. His Wife (79) has also been admitted to hospital.

Australian dies from coronavirus COVID-19 in Perth after infection on Diamond Princess ship - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Very sad for the families.



My Wife was shopping in a relatively wealthy suburb yesterday...and reports the well-known supermarket had already been stripped of ALL....
Toilet paper.

Picked up a script at the same time, and the chemist had almost sold out (of yet another shipment) of 1 litre hand sanitiser.

Tried to buy common-or-garden cheap surgical facemasks ? Or pay for them ??

My dentist - friend tells me they've had to scrabble hard to get two months supply of them.

Why don't we panic about 'Flu ?

Flu deaths 2019 Australia: Three influenza strains causing
deadly flu season | 7NEWS.com.au

And overseas.... note the date of report.
With 8,000-Plus Deaths in U.S. Alone, Flu Far More Deadly Than Coronavirus | The Weather Channel

I had an interesting chat with mu GP on Friday. He was incredulous about the panic around this thing. He said the stats were that Covoid-19 was less infectious than SARS, there were at that time only 7 cases in Victoria out of a population of what, 5 million? Four of those were off that ship. You have a greater chance of being hit by a truck, he said.

Sure, he's 'only' a GP, but he knows more than most of us. He says "for the record, we survived SARS". I'll add, we survived bird flu, swine fever.......... etc.

Corona virus is a strain of flu. It will kill people who are susceptible, like all flus. So, if you are old, have respiratory trouble, heart disease, are a smoker or have diabetes maybe take more care than usual. I believe Bob posted a few weeks back for us to get our flu jabs. He was likely correct. I didn't though, so if I die from Covoid-19 you can all say 'I told you so'.

In the mean time I'm not going to worry, and I suggest you all do the same.