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Comment by InTheArena | Hacker News Reader

This article is incorrect. This company already has a large footprint in the United States in Boston, which is the epicenter of much of the covid effort. In addition, it's backed by the Bill and Melinda gates foundation (which apparently has a stake in the company).

The same rumors are going around about China buying US companies.

This kind of mob-raising by the media happens in every pandemic, and it does result in people being killed. Knock this shit off until the facts are in.

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If you want not to contribute to mob behavior, please provide corrective information without adding inflammatory rhetoric of your own. Otherwise it's just a game of hot potato.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> In addition, it's backed by the Bill and Melinda gates foundation (which apparently has a stake in the company).

Why is this relevant?

The facts are in. The German government acknowledged reports and said it is engaged in talks. The company reacted and fired the responsible CEO on 2020-03-11, per the companies website. Before you judge reports, look at the available evidence.

The fact that the company is also in Boston is also reported in the German article. That's besides the point though. The real story in this is that reportedly the US Government was/is looking to secure _exclusive_ access.

Where is the evidence that the US would have exclusive access? Had there ever been a US produced drug that the government refused to allow being sold to other countries?

Even if we get a vaccine, production rates for vaccines are going to be insufficient.

Let's say we get a working vaccine and have initial production of 50k doses per week, ramping up. How do you allocate those around the world? 50k per week is enough to get healthcare workers and start firebreaks in the US, but not much of an impact worldwide.

And similarly you would say Germany (or the EU, depending on what you consider the home "country") will now have "exclusive" access?

I think no matter how you allocate limited vaccine doses there are going to be a lot of people and nations upset. And I'm guessing the country where it is developed has a disproportionate degree of control of these decisions.

Is there any source for exclusive access besides the “unnamed official” in the original article?

Yes, the German government confirmed the statements in the original article.

The "confirmation" in the article:

> “The German government is very interested in ensuring that vaccines and active substances against the new coronavirus are also developed in Germany and Europe,” a Health Ministry spokeswoman said

That doesn’t sound like they’re confirming exclusive access. In fact, the quote sounds like they’re explicitly going out of their way to not say that.

No, the article that confirmed only confirmed that some sort of talk has been going on - not any of the specifics.

Are you sure?

> Contacted by Reuters, a spokeswoman for the German Health Ministry said: "We confirm the report in the Welt am Sonntag."

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2020/03/15/coronavirus-germany-trie...

Company's own official statement: https://www.curevac.com/news/curevac-focuses-on-the-developm...

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