Mastodawn

I'm sure I've said it before, but I think it bears repeating: many of the societal problems that we face, which might superficially be regarded as something that we look to science to solve, are in fact not problems for natural sciences, but problems for social sciences and politics.

Looking at the horrible #meningitis B outbreak in Kent, the question to ask is not "how can science keep us safe from such things?" Scientists have already given us an effective vaccine against meningitis B.

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Dave Robinson Mar 18

@statsguy arguably, they could have chosen to give it to everyone, but like the COVID-19 vaccines they chose not to for reasons of cost/risk (but mostly cost). Perhaps if healthcare was entirely not-for-profit, globally, such issues would disappear.

Then there's the argument that it's not in the financial interests of the pharmaceutical companies to actually find cures. Expensive palliative medicines are much more profitable.

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Adam Jacobs 🇺🇦Mar 18

@dave I'm pretty sure the reason why it's not given to everyone is cost.

But the big problem I have with the way they do the cost effectiveness calculation for vaccines is that they take a narrow healthcare-system-only perspective.

So the cost of having to treat someone in hospital with meningitis would be included, but the cost of having to close a university campus wouldn't be.

And particularly for covid, the crazy thing is that time off work and sickness benefits are not considered

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Adam Jacobs 🇺🇦Mar 18

@dave I'm sure that if they took a wider societal perspective in the way they do the calculations then many vaccines that are currently considered not cost effective would suddenly become comfortably cost effective.

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Adam Jacobs 🇺🇦

@dave Taking the healthcare-system-only perspective makes sense (in an evil kind of way) in the US if you're a health insurance company deciding whether to pay for vaccines. It makes absolutely no sense in the UK context and I have no idea why they do it.