NPR is relentlessly stupid. They tussled mightily and very politely for three scripted minutes on the hypothetical question of who should get the nonexistent corona virus vaccine first? There's a strong likelihood that there will never be such a thing. After 40 years of Hollywood heartache and lavish government spending, there's no HIV vaccine. Why can't anyone tell the truth on NPR? "Corona" is a genus; this one is the Wuhan, named for place of origin. Because the Wuhan virus is similar in shell structure to HIV, it may be equally impossible to develop an effective vaccine, assuming that the virus doesn't mutate. Annual flu vaccine doesn't work very well, ineffective in many cases, because the damn flu bugs mutate frequently. Wuhan might modulate or mutate by the time there's a vaccine in a year or three.
Okay, let's play the NPR game. Who should get the vaccine first? Health care workers? Nope. Grocery store clerks? Uh-uh. Government officials, military, and cops? Wrong. Elderly and people with pre-existing morbidity? Bzzzt. NPR fails 4 for 4. Then it emerges that what they really care about is the world's poor, without mentioning how many people in the world are poor. It's 6 out of 7 billion. Where do you get 7 billion doses? NPR doesn't know and feels very distressed, according to the script they were reading. I hope you grasp that there's zero spontaneity in an NPR news broadcast. NPR talent specialize in faking improv while reading, asking each other scripted questions and expressing scripted concern for the poor. Even the "thank you" handoff is scripted. The only unscripted voices on NPR are Democrat politicians and former Obama officials who know in advance what the questions will be. NPR producers, writers, and directors run the whole news operation end to end, no different than CNN.
Be that as it may, the matter of creating 7 billion vaccine doses is simple. We auction them. The ultra rich will pay $20,000 a dose to be first in line, which capitalizes a bigger batch that sells for $1,000 to the much wider group of the world's millionaires, approximately 300,000 people worldwide, which capitalizes serious mass production that sells to ordinary middle class people in America and Western Europe, about 1 billion doses at $50, after which it goes off patent and the generic versions are so cheap that all the poor on earth get vaccinated for pennies. That's the virtue (and capitalist power) of auctions. A designer bathrobe costs $900, 30% less at Macy's, only $49 for a mass produced WalMart knock-off, and $5 in a thift shop.
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way with water or toilet paper, which are ubiquitous and cheap and have to be produced locally because they're low value goods -- ludicrous luxury items if you have to transport them halfway around the world. I worked in North Africa. The tap water was filthy, and we bought drinking water bottled in Europe, an absurd economic penalty. That's Africa in a nutshell, absurdly misgoverned by tribal dictators and bureaucrats. Same problem in Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, New Orleans, Atlanta, Savannah, Washington DC. It's insane that industrial powerhouses like Houston, Cleveland, and Minneapolis are governed by grasping thieves, a perpetual "one man one vote" swindle of free shit welfare payola, price no object because race pimps are hostile to preserving anything we need, like low taxes, liberty, and stern interdiction of narcotics, gang bangers, and voter fraud.
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