Fewer mfrs producing vaccines because of medical liabilities?

[LiberalFighter]

Could it be because there are fewer pharmaceutical companies as a result of mergers?

[Warpy]

1. Bullshit. There are fewer manufacturers because of mergers.

And when one goes down due to contamination or other manufacturing problem (like last year, the virus just plain didn't grow), there are fewer to pick up the slack.

The flu vaccine is grown in eggs, and it takes a very long time to grow, extract and refine into a vaccine. The lead time is months, not weeks. When a megacorporation knows what its market share is likely to be, they won't overproduce on the faint hope they will be able to peddle more. It's too expensive and time consuming a process for that. So they do only what they think they will need.

Mergers have reduced the number of firms making the vaccine. There are no smaller companies left to take up the slack with more expensive vaccine stocks.

The flu vaccine (minus the swine flu debacle in the 70s) has resulted in very little litigation.