They couldn't have bought in bulk "The only unusual hiccup was an email about customs restrictions on COVID-related peptides. Apparently the company was not allowed to send us 9 mg in one vial, but could send us two vials of 4.5 mg each for each peptide."
The big problems with COVID vaccines is making sure they are safe and effective, and logistics. The author doesn't do any of these. There is a scale difference of 7 orders of magnitude compared to what we need. And he is taking risks that would be unreasonable for a commercial vaccine and efficiency is "let's see if it does something".
It is an experiment and it has scientific value, maybe some of the mainstream vaccine candidates started out like this. But it cannot be compared to current widespread vaccination efforts.
As for the money, it is a common fallacy to think that throwing money at a problem will solve it. Same as an often seen argument "it will take $X billion to end world hunger". World hunger is solved with food, not money, people don't eat money. On a small scale, you just have to go to the grocery store and spend money to feed a starving person. On a large scale there simply not enough food available unless we do some major changes regarding agriculture and distribution, throwing in money will just cause price inflation. Same thing with vaccines.
Food supply is not the problem with world hunger. There's more than enough food to go around, and if there weren't that's actually a problem that money would solve very well. The problem is getting the food to the people regardless of circumstance, such as war, repressive regimes, natural disasters, and other problems.
Vaccines are similar: vaccinating the world will be logistically very very hard. But vaccinating first-world countries is a lot easier, and supply of vaccine in rich countries absolutely is a problem that can be solved with more money and resources. The fact that we've had so much trouble solving it is a political problem.
The big problems with COVID vaccines is making sure they are safe and effective, and logistics. The author doesn't do any of these. There is a scale difference of 7 orders of magnitude compared to what we need. And he is taking risks that would be unreasonable for a commercial vaccine and efficiency is "let's see if it does something".
It is an experiment and it has scientific value, maybe some of the mainstream vaccine candidates started out like this. But it cannot be compared to current widespread vaccination efforts.
As for the money, it is a common fallacy to think that throwing money at a problem will solve it. Same as an often seen argument "it will take $X billion to end world hunger". World hunger is solved with food, not money, people don't eat money. On a small scale, you just have to go to the grocery store and spend money to feed a starving person. On a large scale there simply not enough food available unless we do some major changes regarding agriculture and distribution, throwing in money will just cause price inflation. Same thing with vaccines.