This could use some elaboration. Have you been in all three of those countries recently? Or "watched" meaning "saw people talking about online" or such? Or something in between?
I was in Germany in October and with the individual the day they took the second shot. France is a professional contact who mentioned it on the phone, as is China.
Same thing happened with tests a few months ago in Palo Alto. Billionaires with boxes of them at their homes while public stocks ran low.
They had boxes of which vaccine? They all need to be refrigerated. Is this something you saw, heard about second hand or something you read on an open internet forum?
What you have said so far isn't consistent enough to make sense. You said boxes of the vaccine, now you are saying test kits. Test kits have been publicly available, there is no reason a company or a person couldn't buy them. That is not the same as having someone sneak a vaccine out of a -70C warehouse while keeping it refrigerated.
Okay so first of all I'm almost certain no approved vaccine existed in October, the first one started rollout this week, can you back this up with a source?
Maybe you knew someone participating in a study but that's not queue skipping.
Don't get me wrong I hate billionaires but this just seems like it can't factually be correct.
It doesn't need to be approved to be used, and the results of the trial were likely known for a bit now.
It's easily conceivable that billionaires have been pushing to be 'in the loop' on the meds from the start, and will have gained access long ago to whatever was used in the most promising trials. They can take it as soon as the insider doctors flag that it's ok, likely many weeks before any public announcement, and certainly before any governmental validation.
The value of said vaccines are considerable, there's massive money involved, I wonder if the R&D institutions themselves may have been able to find a loophole to allow for it.
With the sheer number of doctors and patients involved in the trial, and vials worth possibly $100-500K on the black market ... it's bound to get out.
And frankly, who cares? A couple thousand early vaccines is basically meaningless from a public health standpoint. It might even be moral to have publicly auctioned off the first mini batch and put the money into production. It's rational because the 'willingness to pay' of some billionaires for the almost arbitrary early access to a vaccine which will soon be cheap and plentiful ... works well as a 'win win' both for the buyer, and society.
Even taking all this at face value, I think the reason so many of your comments are downvoted is that they're sort of off topic for the original suggestion, which was that the government should not be trusted to handle rollout of the vaccine in a safe or fair manner. That would include giving people in positions of power or with a lot of wealth some loophole to legally be vaccinated ahead of schedule.
What you're talking about is literally a black market. The people you are hanging out with are literally criminals, who are at best injecting themselves with an unknown substance provided by criminal doctors. Most of us probably wish to see such people prosecuted.
> nobody in Germany or France has been vaccinated as there are no approved vaccines
Which creates a force field around the warehouses in which it sits? Come on.
I guess I’ll revise to I know of people with substantial resources, hundreds of millions and billions at their disposal, who have been injected with something they believe to be the Pfizer vaccine.
To be clear, you know multiple super rich people that were able to get a vaccine out of a -70C warehouse and keep it refrigerated while it was delivered to them?
Designed by Jan 13, manufactured and first trial by mid-Feb.
Also quote ..
>as early as July the MIT Technology Review reported that a group of 70 scientists in the orbit of Harvard and MIT, including “celebrity geneticist” George Church, were taking a totally DIY nasal-spray vaccine,
JumpCrisscross is on point here, the level of naivte in the discussion is a little much.
This is a global pandemic, trials with 30 000 patients x 5, each one of those vials worth an absolute fortune, there's a 100% chance quite a bit of it has fled into the black market and a sophisticated one at that.
And to wit - there are a lot of people being 'officially' vaccinated right now behind the scenes they're not going to tell us about.
It might be dangerous for politicians to get it early, because if asked by reporters either they have to lie, or say 'yes' and then public outcry.
Special Forces, the Secret Service and some other security personal - just a some examples are going to get it long before we plebes. Among others.
I'm sure it's possible, but that means effectively that said person is now an undocumented trial participant. They have gotten injected with an unapproved medical product. That's a risk they've taken in order to get in early. The physician that administered it has also committed a crime that can cost them their license to practice.
There are easier ways for people in power to get vaccines. In China, the government has granted exceptional permissions to vaccinate a number of people with a vaccine that has not yet completed phase 3 trials. The list of people who qualify for that vaccine is said to be several million people long. It's much easier to get on said list in China than it is anywhere else. A number of other governments have also made exceptions for political leaders and such, treating them with non-approved medication or vaccines. For example, the sheikh of Dubai has been vaccinated with the Sinopharm vaccine before approval (in a very public display of faith in said vaccine, in order to promote vaccination to the population). Some countries are saying they won't bother waiting for phase 3 trials to end on some products and will make vaccines generally available based on current data. This is the case for Russia (with Sputnik-V) and Morocco (with the Sinopharm vaccine). I consider it highly likely that their heads of state are vaccinated under an exceptional authorization.
> the rich and powerful are easily duped into spending their money on placebos
That was frankly my line of questioning. But at least in the German case, the vials and packaging looked legitimate. And it was a reputable doctor administering it at their home who claimed to have directly procured it, though I’m sure that meant warehouse workers or something in the middle, so who knows.
Then you should contact the medical board or whatever the German equivalent is and tell them about this "reputable" doctor. They'd at least lose their license, and for good reason.
If that is the case everyone involved is playing an exceptionally dangerous game and I can't imagine that this would be the norm, especially since I suspect the thieves will get greedy and screw up quickly.
> everyone involved is playing an exceptionally dangerous game
Agree. From how prevalently I watched tests get mis-allocated a few months ago, however, I’m not optimistic about enforcement. Particularly given the political implications it would have for the leaders in power, who are supposed to be doing a better job at this.
I think pre-emptive enforcement of something like this is extremely difficult without getting downright creepy and invasive. The best you can do is drop the hammer on anyone greedy and dumb enough to get caught - and I'm sure there will be some of these! But personally, I prefer vaccines where the chain of custody didn't require massive bribery and risk-taking.
Supply chain integrity is a huge issue that normies take for granted. The surest way to lose normie friends is to point out how much faith people put in supply chains.
