Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is also how criminal mobs operate, in terms of protection money, extortion, ransom, etc. The underlying economic principle is the same ("gee, sure would be a shame if this expensive thing X were to break..."). Beware of relying on this as the only reason to justify the cost. Hopefully there is some other significant differentiating characteristic or attribute to justify this state of affairs between society and…
This is not a good argument. We are talking about a company providing a service. They might not have invented the vaccine but they are providing the means to bring it from proof of concept into mass production. The commenter seemed to think that this isn't worth money. I argue that you get quite a bang for the buck.
In the case of farm subsidies it’s grown to the point of being actively unhealthy both in economic terms and the actual root cause of the obesity epidemic. Without sufficient calories you can’t have an obese population due to physics. Medical subsidies have resulted in a host of related problems not just in economic costs, but also in what research gets done and how efficient that is.
The cost of Medical studies in the US has grown wildly out of proportion because their a profit center. This perversely slows down the rate of medical research, even in the case of emergencies like covid 19.