Bill Gates is setting up factories to manufacture 7 leading vaccine candidates before we know which is best & safest; we can test the vaccines in parallel, and then throw away all but the factory for the best vaccine. May save many months.

Just extraordinary.

Oops, the link: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/bill-gates-factories-7-different-vaccines-to-fight-coronavirus-2020-4

(I have a tremendous amount of admiration for this, and many of his other efforts, & general thoughtfulness. But I must admit, I do get a chuckle out of all the "Bill has decades of experience with viruses!" Windows and MS-DOS jokes.)

Just to be clear, when I said "throw away" the factory I was speaking figuratively. I'm sure the space will be used, and may even be repurposed for vaccine production. But there will still have been billions in sunk costs.

https://twitter.com/kimmaicutler/status/1246524025016221696

(It's usually a mistake to generalize from one data point. And, in any case, false dichotomies like "state xor private sector" are, well, false.)