On December 14, 2020, the US FDA approved the first vaccine against the Sars-Cov-2 coronavirus that shocked the world: It was produced by Pfizer-Biontech and will be the first in a long series. Vaccines with varying degrees of efficacy, from AstraZeneca to Moderna, from Johnson & Johnson to China’s Sinovax and Russian Sputnik, have helped clear congestion in intensive care units and certainly make Covid-19 a more manageable disease. But the narrative that sees large multinational pharmaceutical companies as the protagonists of research, at least in the West, is at least incomplete. In addition, the cost of the vaccine is burdened by taxpayers both at the research and production stage and at the purchasing stage.
Maximizing profits at the expense of the taxpayer
A study sponsored by a group of Italian researchers commissioned by the European Parliament has brought everyone back to earth and illuminated much of the narrative that states are saved by private individuals. Researchers focused specifically on the research and development of key vaccines to combat the disease in Europe: Pfizer-Biontech, Astrazeneca, Jansenn (Johnson & Johnson group), Sanofi, Moderna, Valneva, GSK. The evidence is that without massive public funding we probably wouldn’t have a vaccine against Covid-19 yet. Against the €5 billion invested by companies in Research and Development activities and €11 billion in productive investments, national governments invested around €9 billion and around €21 billion in research. advanced purchase agreementsthat is, promises of purchase agreements before vaccines are actually produced and there is real evidence of their efficacy and critical problems.
In a nutshell: The public has nearly doubled the money invested by private individuals in general, without exercising any control over the selling prices of contract vaccines, which in many cases have remained secret for months. In essence, it’s as if the taxpayers had paid twice: the first time to fund research, and the second time to buy pharmaceutical products at unregulated prices with their money.
A story that repeats itself
“To sum up, most of the financial risk that allowed the creation of the nine vaccines studied was borne by the public sector, not companies,” says Fabrizio Barca, co-coordinator of the Forum on Inequality and Diversity. The very high extra profits, for some of which amount to tens of billions of euros per single company, are to some extent justified by the market risk they assume. A risk twice as great (today or tomorrow) is borne by governments through taxpayers. But in the face of this risk, States bear the majority of the risk. It has not fulfilled the function of directing and controlling the price and distribution decisions that are the responsibility of those who undertake it”.
For example, excessive financial resources by which states can strengthen national health systems and risk worsening even today. Moderna and Pfizer have announced their intention to quintuple the price per dose from the current $20 to nearly $100, and this immunization only takes a few months.
Massimo Florio, one of the study’s authors, said: “We need a European public response to predict and deal with the next pandemics and other emergencies that are already visible – we need the development of medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, in areas crucial to health and the common goods to citizens. Other remedies will be offered as: Research and Development and also in cooperation with private companies, but under strict public control
Words that seem like evidence are one of the many lessons the pandemic has to teach us. However, as the great Italian poet Eugenio Montale said very often: “History is not the master of anything that interests us”.
Source: Today IT
Roy Brown is a renowned economist and author at The Nation View. He has a deep understanding of the global economy and its intricacies. He writes about a wide range of economic topics, including monetary policy, fiscal policy, international trade, and labor markets.
