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Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

reuters.com

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Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#81

Post by rualca »

mdbug wrote: post #73
rualca wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In a normal market situation, prices are determined by supply and demand. But that's really not such a situation here. Isn't it exactly the situation here? I mean, a few months ago we even had central governments bid against their own local governments to have access to vaccines. Doesn't that lay out quite clearly that this is a demand-driven market?

The market is not normal because countries have invested massive sums of money into these companies without acquiring shares in return, so I just hope they have negotiated other terms to get the vaccines at fair prices.

> The market is not normal because countries have invested massive sums of money into these companies without acquiring shares in return (...)

I don't believe this is a fair or accurate description of what really happens.

Countries invest in education and free and open research, countries invest in entrepreneurship and in people launching startups, and countries invest in partnerships between their public research and private companies to foster the creation of added-value products and services.

And in the end those companies pay taxes back to the state, which in Europe (where BioNTech is from) is higher than 20%.

Furthermore, your comment has nothing at all to do with markets. You're trying to pin onto the "market" tag one of the most basic characteristics of social democratic societies, where the state invests in infrastructure and in lowering or eliminating barriers to entry in business.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#83

Post by heavenlyblue »

rualca wrote: post #81
mdbug wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market is not normal because countries have invested massive sums of money into these companies without acquiring shares in return, so I just hope they have negotiated other terms to get the vaccines at fair prices.

> The market is not normal because countries have invested massive sums of money into these companies without acquiring shares in return (...) I don't believe this is a fair or accurate description of what really happens. Countries invest in education and free and open research, countries invest in entrepreneurship and in people launching startups, and countries invest in partnerships between their public research an…

> And in the end those companies pay taxes back to the state, which in Europe (where BioNTech is from) is higher than 20%.

Every company needs to do that. If a government invests in a company then maybe they should also pay a HIGHER tax rate?

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#84

Post by geoduck14 »

creato wrote: post #79
poof131 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Giving away their vaccine” is the straw man. There is a huge range between free and maximum profits. I’m not arguing that they shouldn’t be incentivized with a profit, the question is how much and what's in the best interest of the American people, not just Pfizer and Moderna.

Do you think the ~$20/dose Pfizer and Moderna are charging is unreasonable?

For poor people in India or Africa - yes.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#85

Post by rualca »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #83
rualca wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The market is not normal because countries have invested massive sums of money into these companies without acquiring shares in return (...) I don't believe this is a fair or accurate description of what really happens. Countries invest in education and free and open research, countries invest in entrepreneurship and in people launching startups, and countries invest in partnerships between their public research an…

> And in the end those companies pay taxes back to the state, which in Europe (where BioNTech is from) is higher than 20%. Every company needs to do that. If a government invests in a company then maybe they should also pay a HIGHER tax rate?

The initial thesis was that governments get nothing in return from their investment in education and research. This is patently false. Companies pay taxes, and the higher income they make, the more taxes they pay.

You may argue that over 20% in income tax is not enough, but in the case of BioNTech and Pfizer, you're arguing between two scenarios: seeing the states get about 20% from the profit extracted from billions in revenue, or getting zero due to the absence of any investment in education and basic research and supporting research projects.

Getting paid a 20% chunk of a multi-billion euro revenue is not small change, and this also ignores the fact that this prior investment in education and research shared with startups, which mind you supported the bulk of the development cost of these vaccines and thus enabled humanity to have vaccines with such a low turn-around time, was what ultimately allowed the world to start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. How valuable is that?

Not to mention the externalities in fostering the creation of industries and high-value tech jobs.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#86

Post by netizen-936824 »

proc0 wrote: post #58
BurningFrog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing vaccine manufacturers to give away their vaccine creates strong incentives against inventing vaccines. It works once, but the next pandemic may happen without any vaccines. The consensual, win-win way is to buy vaccines from the manufacturers, at high prices. This makes manufacturers wealthy by making people healthy and aligns incentives for the common good.

So does that mean they would have not done anything unless they got paid? They would have just let people die? This is one of the many factors that doesn't add up when telling people they have a civic duty, yet the large corporations can't be held accountable and also make a huge profit.

There are some less than amazing ideologies present in the US. Property and money are valued above human life by many.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#87

Post by BurningFrog »

tinus_hn wrote: post #75
BurningFrog wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forcing vaccine manufacturers to give away their vaccine creates strong incentives against inventing vaccines. It works once, but the next pandemic may happen without any vaccines. The consensual, win-win way is to buy vaccines from the manufacturers, at high prices. This makes manufacturers wealthy by making people healthy and aligns incentives for the common good.

Government could have easily forced a reasonable license where the original manufacturer gets paid per shot but is not in a position to limit availability. They are not the only ones able to manufacture these vaccines.

For the mRNA vaccines, I think they actually are.

Only experimental batches had ever been made before, and then they had to invent ways to make billions of doses.

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#88

Post by morpheos137 »

macintux wrote: post #10
morpheos137 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world massively over reacted to covid a disease that mainly affects the old and infirm. $60,000,000,000 / 10,000 saved works out to $6,000,000 per life saved. If the median age of death of a covid victim is 80 then this expenditure amounts to a massive misallocation of resources just on the vaccine alone never mind the hundreds of billions (actually trillions, as you say!) more spent on economically disruptive an…

As we're seeing with the delta variant, the longer we allow the disease to vigorously spread, the potentially more dangerous it becomes. So we (mostly) kept hospitals from having to add beds inside parking garages, and morgues from having to rent ice trucks, and perhaps we also have slowed the rate of new variants. With the lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc, flu deaths practically dropped to zero while COVID…

Is there compelling evidence that "lockdowns" in the west actually had a significant impact on the spread?

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#89

Post by macintux »

morpheos137 wrote: post #88
macintux wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As we're seeing with the delta variant, the longer we allow the disease to vigorously spread, the potentially more dangerous it becomes. So we (mostly) kept hospitals from having to add beds inside parking garages, and morgues from having to rent ice trucks, and perhaps we also have slowed the rate of new variants. With the lockdowns, social distancing, masking, etc, flu deaths practically dropped to zero while COVID…

Is there compelling evidence that "lockdowns" in the west actually had a significant impact on the spread?

Not a scientist, but again the fact that we nearly eliminated the flu through our countermeasures strikes me as strong circumstantial evidence.

https://www.cdc.gov/flu/season/faq-flu-season-2020-2021.htm

Re: Pfizer, Moderna seen reaping billions from Covid-19 vaccine booster market

#90

Post by BurningFrog »

poof131 wrote: post #77
bawolff wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please forgive my personal pet peeve, but nothing BurningFrog said was a straw man as far as i can tell. I don't see any way they misrepresented your argument.

“Giving away their vaccine” is the straw man. There is a huge range between free and maximum profits. I’m not arguing that they shouldn’t be incentivized with a profit, the question is how much and what's in the best interest of the American people, not just Pfizer and Moderna.

I was responding to this, written by someone else:

> force the drug manufactures to share the capability with the rest of the world

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