Seems like bad business when plenty of countries would have paid $1000/dose if they could get the first deliveries and open their economy a few months earlier.
And those higher prices could have supported more factories being built to make more doses quicker.
Where there backdoor payments to decide who got which doses first?
This shit simply doesn't fly in Germany, it's so insane that no one would ever think about pricing life saving drugs that high
https://bioengineeringcommunity.nature.com/posts/45406-1-mil...
“The first gene therapy approved in the Western world is set to go on sale in Germany at a cost close to $1 million per treatment. The record-breaking price tag came to light in November 2014, when Amsterdam-based Uniqure and its marketing partner Chiesi, of Parma, Italy, filed a pricing dossier with German authorities to launch Glybera.”
Maybe they should have done a charity auction of a few doses at the beginning to billionaires to show what it’s really worth, for the marketing value of “you’re getting a medicine worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for free.” Maybe that would convince the anti-vaxers?
During that time months ago one of our politicians came out and said that thousands of my fellow citizens that did the same were "wasting money on something that only costs €10", but that means nothing when you can't get to that something that only costs €10.
Ask yourself what a security package in any German car brand costs extra. Camera in the rear, extra airbags, lidar/ai, speed sign scanning,.. that is not default but a very expensive extra.
While we in the EU let the free market handle things.
Of course, EU countries were smart enough to buy vaccines collectively :)
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/03/31/why-the-eus-co...
Amazing that Canada was forced to import from the EU because we were prevented from importing from our nearest neighbour and "closest ally" and so were set back by two months on vaccinations.
no, it thought it had control over the situation and started virtue signalling that it was being ethical and that vaccine nationalism was only the sort of thing the Trump administration would do
and at the point it became apparent that it had lost control: the nationalistic flailing began
As I understood it, the US had laws necessary to administratively enact export restrictions during emergencies.
I suspect the EU didn't have the same leaver it could just magically pull. Some individual countries might, but that's no use when production is distributed across the EU.
Unlike the US the EU doesn't have disasters management agencies, many things are left for individual countries.
Generally, there is no administrative authority in the EU that can really do much -- where as the US president can take a lot of actions. The EU would like have had to draft laws stopping exports, and those could be challenged in courts, etc.
More likely, the EU just didn't have an easy button to push, and nobody has agreed upfront on which cases such button should be used.
> I suspect the EU didn't have the same leaver it could just magically pull.
it was given these powers after it was obvious it had lost control of the situation:
https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/eu-gets-new-power...
then it attempted to use the new powers against the UK
this backfired badly: if it had been enacted it would have created a border across Ireland, when the EU had spent the previous 5 years arguing that a border of exactly this type could never be created any circumstances
at which point it was forced politically to withdraw the measures
> this backfired badly: if it had been enacted it would have created a border across Ireland...
Yeah, creating such measures overnight probably wouldn't workout well.
Had consistent and thought-out policy existed upfront maybe it would have been a different story.
Of course Brexit probably would have ruined many such plans with factories distributed throughout EU and UK.
There was never a vaccine export ban by the US (see my other comment for more on this). If I purchase an item before others, purchase by far the most quantities of that item, pay by far the most overall, and pay a considerable amount of money toward funding its development, I should expect that item before others. Any Kickstarter backer knows this; it's what the US and UK did, and what Canada and the EU did not.
By early June 2020 (<https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.)
By contrast, look at Canada as counterexample. Consider Maclean's desperate attempt to spin its procurement difficulties (<https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/where-did-canadas-vaccin...>). If you look past the predictable false eliding of the US's firstest-with-the-mostest contracts as an "export ban", the best the magazine can do is admit that
* all Canadian contracts with vaccine providers that actually delivered were signed between late July and late September
* all contracts were signed after the collapse of the CanSino deal, which Canada had loudly bragged about as proof of its savviness at obtaining vaccines ASAP and circumvent any perfidious US vaccine export ban (which, again, never happened), and which it has done its best since the collapse to pretend that said contract never existed
* the other contracts that the magazine cites as proof that CanSino wasn't the only basket Ottawa was putting all its eggs in are with VBI (Who?) and USask. They may or may not yet deliver effective vaccines, but it's all now a bit beside the point, eh?
And today we have plenty of vaccines. Is it really a catastrophe that it took 2 months longer?
(Two summer months with weather slightly less conductive to virus transmission)
There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries.
The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine, because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries.
By early June 2020 (<https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.)
The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities. Canada also bet on CanSino because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract.
Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it in addition to the non-UK doses it bought.
(I don't disagree that to country B waiting on doses, the outcome is the same whether or not the cause is country A implementing an export ban or country A having bought up all the doses by having signed the contract first. But there is a difference.)
If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exports, similar to what the EU did implement toward Australia? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money.
>While we in the EU let the free market handle things.
Except Italy as I mentioned, blocking export of vaccine to Australia that the latter had paid for. More to the point, the EU did not ban vaccine exports more widely because it was afraid that the US would cut off component supply chains.
>Of course, EU countries were smart enough to buy vaccines collectively :)
... and because the aforementioned collective effort was delayed relative to the US and UK, the EU saw significant vaccine shortages earlier this year.
Not how I understood it. But it seems you're right, the US only used war time powers to force companies to fill their orders first. The effect is quiet similar, the EU (not even UK) employed such powers.
In either case, it was argued that this made negotiations easier for US.
And yes, it's a fair point that it didn't matter, because the US would have bought the vaccines at whatever price point :)
> Except Italy as I mentioned, blocking export of vaccine to Australia that the latter had paid for.
Fair point :)
> ... and because the aforementioned collective effort was delayed relative to the US and UK
The UK (and probably the US) invested in supporting research, but EU closed contracts for vaccine purchases sooner. (I suspect the EU also sponsored research, but didn't attach strings the same way the UK did)
-----
To be clear, I don't think I would argue that the EU did fantastically well here. Nor that it couldn't have done much better. Namely because it doesn't have a powerful administration, like the US does. (I'm not arguing that it should have one)
Whether or not all this was unfair is hard to tell. Lots of countries poured money into R&D. (Also not sure how relevant it is).
But it is a bit funny that the EU largely let the free market forces play out, while the US didn't.
No. The US did invoke the Defense Production Act for certain medical equipment, to further ensure that its vaccine contracts are fulfilled first (<https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-24/biden-use...>). (But, let me quote for others' benefit (<https://www.ft.com/content/82fa8fb4-a867-4005-b6c2-a79969139...>): "The DPA does not allow the administration to block exports overseas".)
The US's contracts would have been fulfilled first regardless (albeit more slowly) without the DPA, because (as I said) the US was the first and paid the most. We know this because the US's Pfizer contract explicitly prohibited the company from exporting US-produced vaccine doses until March 31, but the company only began to export US-produced doses at the end of April because it still had to fulfill said US contract first (<https://www.barrons.com/articles/pfizer-to-export-u-s-made-v...>).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID-...
(I'm pretty sure that this comparison is a wild exaggeration of what actually happened and that Biontech representatives were very much involved in all the talks, but I assume more in an expert advisor role than as someone with actual influence on the outcome)
It may help to know that Pfizer directly helped with the development - not just the manufacturing & distribution - and deserves some credit as well (even if not as much as BioNTech).
From their March 27, 2020 co-development press release:
"Pfizer and BioNTech to Co-develop Potential COVID-19 Vaccine"
"Builds on 2018 agreement to jointly develop an mRNA-based influenza vaccine"
"The collaboration aims to accelerate development of BioNTech’s potential first-in-class COVID-19 mRNA vaccine program, BNT162, which is expected to enter clinical testing by the end of April 2020. The rapid advancement of this collaboration builds on the research and development collaboration into which Pfizer and BioNTech entered in 2018 to develop mRNA-based vaccines for prevention of influenza."
If it were easy, it wouldn’t have taken so long to scale up manufacturing, even by the largest pharmaceutical companies.
https://biontech.de/sites/default/files/2019-08/20180816_Bio...
The Pfizer head of vaccine research seems to be from Germany as well.
This is equivalent to saying there's nothing special about biontech as any specialist in novel MRNA vaccines could have developed these. Which did happen, at moderna.
The US also moves very slow legally but the reckoning is coming for Pharmaceutical price gouging. Lots and lots of hype in the past few years about it.
[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2018/03/09/martin-shkre...
My state will pay for it wether or not you have insurance.
> Pfizer's agreement with the federal government is the most lucrative to date. The government agreed to buy 100 million doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, being developed with German biotech firm BioNTech, for $1.95 billion. That works out to about $20 per dose.[2]
[1]https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/pfizer-eyes-higher-covid...
[2] https://www.gpb.org/news/shots-health-news/2020/08/08/prices...
Not to diminish the negative effects for the reputation of Germany of these two cases, but they both aren't an expression of libertarianism like the idea that a company has no moral obligations to offer an important drug for an affordable price, but should make as much money as possible from it, which wouldn't fly in Germany.
You're talking about Jan Marsalek, right? That he worked for Russia is new to me.
According to [1], he did business in Russia, but that doesn't make him work for Russia. If you have more information in that, I'd be interested to hear.
[1] https://thebell.io/en/what-links-russia-to-germany-s-wirecar...
I assume you are referring to Wirecard [0] and not privy to information which I am not about the stellar Wireguard [1]? :)
You probably meant Wirecard.
The comment you refer to is also a good summary of US healthcare practices and billing.
This vaccine should be free. Covid is the biggest threat to the future of humanity that has existed since the development of nuclear weapons and we're holding back the solution over $20.
It's pathetic.
A sizeable portion of my friends and coworkers managed to work the system to gain access to vaccines well before they otherwise would have. I'd strongly prefer the honest version of that system, wherein we wouldn't pretend that elites wouldn't cut the queue to finagle vaccines for themselves and their families. One option would have been setting aside ~5% of the total supply and putting it on the open market. I'd guess early doses would have gone for a few thousand dollars and we could have used the money to support vaccinations elsewhere.
$19 is about $18 gross margin on each vaccine dose based on a quick google, which is still an exceptionally lucrative opportunity for something that is desired by several billion people.
The answer is, corporations seek long term profits. Short term gouging tends to make customers angry and seek alternatives, and the same is true for large buyers/government agents.
If this were a single transaction, it would make sense to extract as much revenue as possible. But Pfizer/BioNTech have to balance that against their long term relationships and how to maximize profit over long time scales.
Money was not an object to scaling the manufacture of the vaccines. It was people, knowledge, and equipment that had to be designed, built and tested. That all happened in parallel with statistical evaluation and approval processes.
Nine people can't make a baby in 1 month no matter how much you pay them.
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWedf3mhLwQ
The lipid process at shown at 3:00m
https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-suppl...
I read somewhere* that original materials and the process that is being used by Croda is from a small Austrian company:
https://www.polymun.com/liposomes/reference-projects/
Maybe they have also licensed their process elsewhere?
*found it: https://www.wsj.com/articles/if-one-leading-coronavirus-vacc...
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-to-be-paying-avera...
Really? Could you name a few?
- They are not the only ones making a vaccine: There is also Moderna, J&J, AZ. So there is competition.
- It's more profitable to sell 1 Billion vaccines for $19 than selling 1 Million vaccine for $1000 dollars.
Where did you get that number?
> Seems like bad business when plenty of countries would have paid $1000/dose if they could get the first deliveries...
This is probably why all EU countries bought vaccine collectively.
(A) To avoid member states pushing up prices competing against each other.
(B) To ensure they could demand some of the first doses, due to increased bargaining power given the sheet size of their order.
Finally, keep in mind that with the US blocking exports of vaccines, the only free capitalist market for vaccines was the EU. Lol, one could even say the US went borderline communist :)
Overall, it all worked out pretty reasonable. And I seriously doubt lack of capital have kept vaccine manufacturers from increasing production :)