cogman , 4 months ago

Certainly, however the long tale of making penicillin is the fermentation process. That requires bigger or more vats on site in the existing facilities in the existing contamination free zones. Maybe there isn’t room in those… but then perhaps there is in the several company sites Pfizer purchased to create a monopoly on Bicillin.

I’m definitely being too flippant about “purchasing a brewery”, however not by much. They certainly have higher requirements for safety and sterility but beyond that, it really is just the same dumb process of “Put in the right food and bacteria, keep the temps consistent, mix, wait for 50 days, separate the Bicillin from everything else”.

Things only get complicated if the pfizer execs decide they need to “optimize” the use of facilities to maximize profits. Reusing fermentation barrels for other more profitable drugs. Or reclaiming space for other processes/office space. But like I said, because the process is that dead simple and the amount of Bicilin needed for the population is so little (We need less than 2.5ml per dosage).

We are talking about 200,000 cases, to treat all them we need a vat that can hold ~500L of materials to generate enough Bicillin for everyone in 50 days.

To get a picture of how much equipment that is, micetcraft.com/500l-micro-beer-brewing-equipment/

Yet Pfizer wants to tell use it costs them 38 million dollars to build out enough capacity? That’s some high bullshit to allow them to ramp up the price.