There Isn't Really a "Vaccine Market" on the Patient Side

Headline:

This Is What Destroying the Vaccine Market Looks Like

It's about the US Food and Drug Administration's "refuse to file" action on Moderna's mRNA flu shot product.

Essentially, the FDA is refusing to consider Moderna's application for approval of the shot based on its claim that Moderna's testing of the vaccine is based on insufficient or not strictly enough constructed trials.

The complaints about the decision seem to fall into two categories:

1. That the "refuse to file" action is "unusual;" and
2. That Moderna consulted with FDA when designing its trial process and therefore should be held to the standards the consultations implied were FDA-approved, rather than to some other standards.

Either of which may be true, I guess, but the part I find interesting is the idea that there's a real "market" in vaccines.

To me, the idea of a "market" implies willing individual buyers making informed decisions to purchase or not purchase a product (and to have that product injected, or otherwise introduced, into their bodies).

To the article's author, the "market" seemingly extends only to how the poor, impoverished, well-meaning pharmaceutical companies' stock values are affected by their ability or inability to ensure that government regulators, once bought, stay bought. Cry me a river, break out the world's smallest violin, etc.

The "market" for vaccines is mostly a bunch of large institutional buyers (including government entities) deciding not only which vaccines we may choose, but which vaccines some of us (children for the most part, but they tried to extend it to a whole lot of adults with COVID) must accept on the customer side, and on the seller side a bunch of large pharmaceutical companies which mostly regulate themselves through "revolving door" staffing between themselves and government agencies, and which are insulated from risk by laws shielding them from liability for damages their products inflict on patients.

The individual patient really isn't part of that "market." Even if the patient isn't a child whose parents are being told that vaccination is the law, it's just the doctor saying "time for your flu shot" and asking you to pretend with him or her that you have read, and understand, the stack of "informed consent" paperwork.

I would personally prefer to see the FDA de-funded and dis-banded, and for insurers to test medications the same way they do home appliances through Underwriters Laboratories -- with the manufacturers bearing full liability for damages caused by defective products instead of shifting those costs back onto patients via government taxation.

But if they're going to keep their rigged system, I'm not going to empathize with them when their bottom lines take hits within the context of that system.