What I'm getting from this is that the NHS has been shafted so much that they can't even give these out for free or even at a heavily discounted rate. They even raised the lower age limit from 50 to 65 so there's even less people able to get it for free.
this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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I'd be fine with paying for a booster, but £100 seems a bit steep for tiny bit of liquid in a tube. What does it think it is? Printer ink?
The flu jab's normally less than £15, depending on where you get it (and £0 if you're old or vulnerable enough).
That’s the price for the US I think. It doesn’t give a price for the UK. Google tells me that flu jabs in the US cost around $70 without insurance. Like you said, flu jabs here are £10-15 for those not eligible for free ones. If the covid jabs follow the same pattern they shouldn’t be more than £20. At least I really hope that’s the case, £100 a shot will surely out-price 50%+ of people that pay for flu jabs.
You are right - I clearly missed the "in the US" bit of the paragraph!
[Edit] or I read the TLDR bot version, which omitted this information
Tbf, even the full version is slightly unclear unless you read it carefully.
Edit: I’m the same person you replied to, I just forgot to switch from mod account to normal account.
NHS pays Pfizer $22-27 per dose (and that is claimed to be "most expensive" price) so can't imagine it being more than £30
@fakeman_pretendname @merridew
None of them are £0
We buy them in bulk, and pay for most through general taxation, efficiently.
The COVID vaccines are made by actually more expensive and difficult techniques/ologies, which are available in new facilities of more limited extent.
Expect the products of those techs to become more plentiful and cheaper, and the difference may get below the order of magnitude. Not to parity.
For sale?
What better way to decide who lives and who dies than the invisible hand of the free market? \s
How's this any different to flu at this point? I'll admit, vulnerable people should get them for free like flu jabs, but everyone doesn't need a free booster anymore.
Are flu shots not offered for free to the elderly in the UK? Do they have to actually buy them?
Yes, they are offered for free. If you are elderly, pregnant, immunosuppressed, live/care for vulnerable people, or have a variety of other health conditions including asthma, you get offered a free flu jab every autumn on the NHS .
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/vaccinations/flu-influenza-vaccine/
Yes, they are free. Same as COVID for that age range.
Free for elderly, vulnerable and primary school
Yes, you know, like flu jabs are for sale...
I didn't know.
So those who have the cash can protect themselves and their families, those without just have to take the risk. And of course it's those who travelling on public transport more often and work in big offices/hospitality/retail that won't be able to afford, and those who work till they are older.
I pay £8 to have a supermarket flu jab each year....is (almost) cheaper than buying a pack of sudafed. Why get ill and treat symptom if can prevent
They're talking about charging £100 for the covid booster jabs.
Those without have to take the same risk regardless of whether or not it's offered for sale at Boots.
The current criteria for qualifying for an NHS winter COVID vaccine are far stricter than the criteria for the NHS flu vaccine.
If you are asthmatic, you can easily be considered vulnerable enough to need the flu vaccine, but still not qualify for the COVID vaccine.
@merridew You might find it helpful to see this as lining up the whole population, of the world, in ranks, ordered by how useful or urgent it is to immunise them.
You have enough doses for fewer ranks than are there. You have more doses of flu vaccine than of COVID.
In what order have you put your ranks?
Are the ranks identical for the 2 (and several other) vaccines?
You may care to imagine being in rank n+1
Why should you be swapped with someone in rank n?
No, I don't see that as particularly helpful.
Global annual influenza vaccine manufacturing capacity is around 1.68 billion doses. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10309624/
Pfizer alone can churn out 4 billion COVID doses annually. https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/manufacturing-and-distribution
I eat more than the minimum required to live despite others living in poverty, and I use more energy than the minimum despite others living in poverty, and I bet you do too. I'm not going to pretend that refusing to get privately vaccinated against COVID is going to change anything except my risk of serious adverse outcomes from exposure to COVID.
@merridew Interesting paper. On COVID I didn't see the 4 billion in there, but I didn't do adding up, either.
I've ignored all the vaccines that are not mRNA for assorted reasons, but they must be potentially useful still.
On Influenza, I think the capacity is greatly more than that, but much of it is potential and/or used for other purposes. Given a 1919-like strain we could ramp it up rapidly.
@merridew
...There are many things we could do, many of which are good or at least not bad, and deciding how much of each we do is a strange business.
I think resource allocation and deployment could be done better, but I don't have ambitions as planetary overlord or whatever.
A while after I was born there were 4 billion of us*, and soon there will be 9 billion. Some things we should be able to do much more of and better, some we do, and some things we may need to share more widely.
* ish
It's under this heading:
How is the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine being distributed?
Pfizer has activated its extensive U.S. and European manufacturing network, including thousands of highly skilled U.S. workers in multiple states and localities, to prepare to produce the COVID-19 vaccine. We currently have the capacity to produce 4 billion doses annually, pending demand.
Influenza they reckon could be scaled up to between 6-8 billion annually, if needed.
@merridew sounds fair. Potential, easily available.
Someone might chip in at this point, noting the suggested rate, to ask if we can think of anything else to spend G£400 on that might be more useful.
And most of us would point to some sort of crossover, applying some resources to this and some to (those) other things.
And then there are the loonies, quacks, and horrors with their views, but enough of them.
I suspect ...
@merridew
... suspect we are under-immjnising; boosting here, and our interests would be better served by assisting more distant neighbours more.
Well you are free to suspect that.
But I'm not going to put the health of my family on hold pending the (impossible) total eradication of global health inequity.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Covid booster vaccines are expected to become available for the UK public to buy for the first time after health officials supported the proposal.
Pharmacists and private clinics will be allowed to offer jabs for sale on the high street, as they do with the flu vaccine.
The declaration by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) that it supports the concept comes after scientists backed the move amid concerns over a new wave of the virus, which could worsen in autumn and winter.
A UKHSA spokesperson told the Times: “We have spoken to manufacturers we’re in contract with and made it clear we won’t prevent them initiating a private market for Covid-19 vaccines, rather we’d welcome such an innovation in the UK.
In March Moderna told Reuters that it expected to price its Covid vaccine at about $130 (£102), while Pfizer last year suggested $110 to $130 a dose.
Prof Adam Finn, of the University of Bristol and a member of the UK’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said Covid jabs should be available commercially.
I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Didn't various countries massively fund these vaccine programs? I'm hoping the vaccine price is marginally above the actual cost of making them but something tells me probably not...