Why is there so much unopposed anti vaccine sentiment on the right? Why can't pharma companies fund guys like Ben Shapiro and fellow travellers to praise the vaccine?
Because the ruling class actually isn’t a monolith and their material conditions don’t lean in any particular direction on this. They’ll get the latest and greatest vaccine no matter what. What the poors think of the vaccine is inconsequential. In fact, it probably lets a fair amount of them be smug and dismiss complaints about vaccine hoarding. They see no difference between an American middle class antivaxxer and someone dying in Cuba because of the embargo including syringes. Act like it’s the same people complaining about lack of vaccines and refusing to get vaccines and it’s pretty easy to dismiss
Edit: also, their infrastructure is set up to push products via reps. Their legal work is centered around drug approval and legality, not around distribution and sentiment. A drug rep’s influence ends at the doctors they sell shit to.
regardless of what faction of capital they're in, isn't it in their general interest for there to be widespread consumption? Which can't happen if millions are sick and out of work, or while the economy is is being slowed down
kind of like how its in their general interest for there to be cheap energy (even though some of them are titans of so called 'green' or renewable energy) and so the oil will still flow
capital isn't that consciously run and organised. The bourgeoise merely tend to behave in the way the capitalist system rewards them for.
Sometimes this leads them to act against their long-term interests or they just don't think of what would actually be the best thing for them to do
"Consumption" of vaccines isn't in their interest.
"Selling" the vaccines is. And since the US government heavily subsidizes vaccine research, production, and distribution regardless of how many vaccines end up in a person the companies who were a part of those areas has already gotten their payday.
It would be different if the companies got paid per vaccine actively used in a human being.
I meant general consumption of goods and services which I'm assuming can't begin to get back to normal until every one is vaccinated
Ah... okay then... there are other comments in this thread talking about how that class, while having solidarity with each other when there is a threat from the lower classes, have no problems fucking each other over for their own gain. There comments probably address that.
They’re not a strict hierarchy so there’s no central planning to make sure what they’re doing is logical. This is why state power exists. If the ruling class can control something in a decentralized fashion there’s no need to centralize it. This may just be something that they don’t have mechanisms for yet (or rather, the mechanisms were discarded so now they’re playing it all by ear)
Yes there a many conflicting interests even at the top of the capitol class, they compete for money and influence, and are often narcissists looking to one up each other. They will only close ranks when threatened and only in very specific areas like tax dodging. The vast majority of pressure capitol gets in the west is from other capitalists looking to displace them as the left is so weak. In this case if the right-wing talking heads took the pro-vax money anti-vax talking heads would just step in to replace them.
The US already bought enough vaccines to vaccinate everyone in the country. That's the end of the pharma companies' interest. They already got the thing, regardless of whether people actually use those vaccines.
Leaving people unvaccinated so new versions of the virus mutates and new vaccines are needed is also an up side for them, I guess. But that requires way more foresight and planning than capitalist companies actually have. That's more of a cartoon villain evil, rather than the incredibly banal evil of the real world.
At present the debate is between pro and anti vax. Removing half if that equation would force the conversion around vaccines back towards public health, at which point the IP issues and complete disregard for the global south might come up. Its better to constantly have to sell more bosters because covid will never be eradicated than have any potential to lose IP.
Won't they make more money if they can just keep making new vaccines/boosters for an ever-evolving COVID?
that will happen regardless of how many people get vaccinated in North America because it will be years before the mass of the world population in India and Africa is vaccinated. There will be new variants even if everyone in America is vaccinated
reminder that if we had luxury global communism, this virus either
- would've been over in 2 weeks, because global lockdown
- wouldn't have even happened, because it wouldn't have been seeded by a US lab
Unless the what, 20% of the US population that's actively anti-vaxer starts to grow higher as every booster or new vaccine fails to fix the problem.
Because capitalism isn't everything, and depraved gulag-worthy behavior/people would still exist in a perfectly communist system, albeit at a significantly lower rate than in capitalism
I would suspect that keeping the virus around means they maintain their market, instead of eliminating it by just vaccinating everyone.
It could just be incoherence though.
They don't have to. It's states they're dealing with, who will buy the vaccines regardless whether they use it or not.
They get paid when vaccines are sold. If an antivaxx group pledged to destroy every dose of vaccine they bought, they would be considered valued customers. The problem wouldn't be the waste of vaccines, but the government/whoever else failing to outbid the antivaxx group on the free market.
Because if they don’t get vaccine, they get the virus, then treatment, and guess who profits off that
Why can’t pharma companies fund guys like Ben Shapiro and fellow travellers to praise the vaccine?
They have been praising them to an extent. Unfortunately once you stoke a culture war issue it's hard to take it back. They tripled down on various forms of soft Corona denial last year and you can't undo that overnight.
Also my 👁 take is there is more profit to sell booster shots for various variants for the rest of time than if they had vaxxed the entire population and eliminated the virus.
It doesn't seem to have decreased demand for the vaccines. US already purchased "enough" for everyone.
Hell, if they expire the US will probably buy even more than otherwise.
