Vaccine Makers Kept $1.4 Billion in Prepayments for Canceled Covid Shots for the World's Poor (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0170261055
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/02/03/181242/vaccine-makers-kept-14-billion-in-prepayments-for-canceled-covid-shots-for-the-worlds-poor
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/health/covid-vaccines-covax-gavi-prepayments.html
> Drug companies have so far [1]declined to refund $1.4 billion in advance payments for now-canceled doses, according to confidential documents obtained by The New York Times. Gavi, the international immunization organization that bought the shots on behalf of the global Covid vaccination program, Covax, has said little publicly about the costs of canceling the orders. But Gavi financial documents show the organization has been trying to stanch the financial damage. If it cannot strike a more favorable agreement with another company, Johnson & Johnson, it could have to pay still more.
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> Gavi is a Geneva-based nongovernmental organization that uses funds from donors including the U.S. government and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to provide childhood immunizations to lower-income nations. Early in the pandemic, it was charged with buying Covid vaccinations for the developing world -- armed with one of the largest-ever mobilizations of humanitarian funding -- and began negotiations with the vaccine makers. Those negotiations went badly at the outset. The companies initially shut the organization out of the market, prioritizing high-income countries that were able to pay more to lock up the first doses. [...] The vaccine makers have brought in more than $13 billion from the shots that have been distributed through Covax. Under the contracts, the companies are not obligated to return the prepayments Gavi gave them to reserve vaccines that were ultimately canceled.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/01/health/covid-vaccines-covax-gavi-prepayments.html
Capitalists gonna capitalize (Score:5, Informative)
I'm as pro-vax as the next guy, but even I could see that these pharmaceutical companies weren't about to let the gravy train run out of steam. That's what happens when you mix healthcare with for-profit industry, the desire for profit frequently supersedes the desire to make people well. That's just big pharma, bro.
Re:Capitalists gonna capitalize (Score:5, Insightful)
> That's what happens when you mix healthcare with for-profit industry, the desire for profit frequently supersedes the desire to make people well. That's just big pharma, bro.
Exactly. Same with for profit prisons. There's a desire to make sure more people break laws and go to said jails. And once you get put in it, you sometimes [1]can't get out even when your sentence is up. [slate.com]
[1] https://slate.com/technology/2021/02/arizona-software-glitch-prison-report.html
Re: (Score:2)
I would say even more: education too (private education generates several problems...)
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Well, how much of the vaccine was already produced? Once you order a meal at a restaurant, they won't look kindly on cancelling the entree because the appetizer filled you up.
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Exactly. The organization pre-paid for the vaccines. The pharmaceutical companies should not have to cover that. On the bright side $1.4 Billion dollars worth of vaccine doses should still be worth something on the open market. Some people are still updating their vaccinations, and I suspect that the pharmaceutical companies are still making money providing new doses. If the pharmaceutical companies don't want to give Covax back their money, then Covax should simply demand delivery of the vaccine doses
Externalized costs (Score:2)
we all shoulder the costs to our healthcare system from the vaccinated and the sick. It costs more to let people be sick because preventative medicine is cheaper than emergency meds.
A truly successful business learns how to take those costs and make you somebody other than them pays it. That somebody is you.
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> This may sound very cruel, but sometimes I wish "pro-vax" fence-riding morons like you would get a wake-up call in the form of death.
This sounds like a legitimate death threat and you should be arrested for it.
When you're standing over the grave of a loved one, I'll turn to you and say "That's just big pharma, bro" and see how well you accept your own fucking excuse for supporting it.
I guess you forgot about the 16 million polio deaths that vaccines prevented. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one.
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> When you're standing over the grave of a loved one, I'll turn to you and say "That's just big pharma, bro" and see how well you accept your own fucking excuse for supporting it.
This was supposed to be quoted above. It is what OP said, not me.
Re: (Score:1)
I don't know about you, but when I think of the [1]health care industry [youtube.com] the first thing that comes to mind is the word "ethics".
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSiuTE3HYsY
Who would pay (Score:2)
if the vaccines had manufactured, but cancelled? Would the people complaining now have been complaining if the vaccines had simply expired without being used?
Re: Who would pay (Score:2)
Don't kid yourself. Pharma could give all its profits to another Theresa's Home for Needy Children every year and people would still bitch about it.
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Yeah, people are complaining a lot about the expired ones too. We produced a ton for the US, then were super stingy about giving out boosters. Once we realized we had a ton of doses that were going to expire, we debated for months about whether or not to expand eligibility. Then we finally decided to just go with updated boosters for everyone, and wasted billions of dollars worth of doses of the original vaccine.
As an added bonus, all that wasted money just added fuel to the fire for the ani-vax crowd.
Conspiracy Theories (Score:1)
Are you saying these billion dollar corporations are more concerned with money than human health?
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Why not both? If people end up dying then you can't sell them medications at inflated prices.
Not really outraged about this (Score:3)
Under the contracts, the companies are not obligated to return the prepayments Gavi gave them to reserve vaccines that were ultimately canceled.
There's a ton of problems with the pharmaceutical industry, but the COVID vaccines were one of the instances where the model worked fantastically. There were some weird bits (they should have done mandatory licensing instead of waiving patents) but I'd much rather companies invest in things like rapid & effective vaccines for new diseases than finding the minimum FDA approvable incremental improvement on some existing drug.
These companies made a massive contribution to world health and they should make a big pile on money for it.
As for these contracts, there's a legit question whether the contracts were fair or extortionate (and the article is paywalled), but if they were fair contracts (and the companies incurred costs scaling up for the cancelled orders) I don't see an issue with them keeping the payments.
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Interesting to see how different cultures result in different problems. We got a good vaccine plus profit-taking. China got a shit vaccine. Russia got a [1]maybe-good [plos.org] vaccine whose safety and efficacy are shrouded in propaganda and distributed by a government agency exploited as a personal slush fund for Putin.
[1] https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2022/04/20/did-we-ever-find-out-how-effective-sputnik-v-vaccine-actually-is/
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Absolutely disgusting. Big Pharma used lobbying pressure on pols to mandate dangerous, untested vax on population so they could reap billions, using a concoction which even very-pro-vax Bill Gates now admits was ineffective....and you say "good for them". How utterly apalling. Just shows what a high percentage of sheeple will remain forever blinkered.
Would they return donations? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since they aren't reaching their promised goals, I would now expect my donations back. Doesn't matter that I agreed there were no strings attached when I gave you a donation, waah, waah, I want my money back.
Bunch of grifters:
Key Employees and Officers Compensation
DR SETH BERKLEY (CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER) $649,860
ANURADHA GUPTA (DEPUTY CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER) $350,823
ELIZABETH DAVIES (HEAD HUMAN RESOURCES) $311,792
SIMON LAMB (MNG DIR, AUDIT & INVESTIGATIONS) $281,919
Once you have their money... (Score:2)
...never give it back!
Re: (Score:2)
The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, #1, Which is kind of a dig, but I actually like the Ferengi.
Re: Something that nobody needed. (Score:2)
No kidding.
I have stage 4 cancer. I have a plenty compromised immune system. No vaccination here! No mask wearing here! Guess what? Not dead yet!!
Like I give a shit about something like Covid.
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I have stage 4 cancer. I have a plenty compromised immune system. No vaccination here! No mask wearing here! Guess what? Not dead yet!!
You are a member of a group of poster children for sapling bias.
You don't see postings from those with stage 4 cancer, compromised immune systems, no vaccination, no mask wearing, and who died of severe COVID-19. That's because they aren't posting any more.
Hard to beat that for sampling bias extremes.
Greed responds to Ignorance and Apathy. (Score:1)
> "Drug companies have so far declined to refund $1.4 billion in advance payments for now-canceled doses"
Let's be honest...NO ONE is surprised by what Greed N. Corruption does anymore.
What SHOULD be surprising to at least some taxpayers, is watching basically everyone do fuck all about it other than pay for it all, while insisting the corruption continue with yet another booster.
Citizens should enjoy whatever future they've created, because they didn't just ask for it. They fucking demanded it.
Re: (Score:1)
That’s because the USA is a corporatocracy with a revolving door between industry and government with winks going on all around. The downside of a country based on gaining wealth rather than social good.
$10 Billion Dollars (Score:1)
That’s the fines just Pfizer had in last 20 odd years,
and then the governments give them Willa wonkas golden ticket of total legal immunity for new mRNA vaccine, who’s messenging system has clearly now shown to get into the blood stream and land on other organs, then produce spike proteins causing auto immune attacks, cancer, pain and death.
Great racket to be in.
What's the global version of "Nationalize"? (Score:2)
I mean, "Globalize" is taken. There's a whole philosophical movement to "Nationalize Big Pharma", but the pandemic reminds us that health is a global concern, not merely national. Either way, there's just no question any more that Big Pharma does its worst job by just being private at all.
Huh? (Score:2)
Since when has demand for vaccines dried up? There are almost 8 billion people on Earth. I'm just one of them, and I've had four shots now. (And I still caught a mild but unpleasant case of Covid in December.)
Corporations are greedy. (Score:1)
Film at 11.
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You only hear about the bad ones. There are mid to large sized venture capital firms that donate to their local communities like crazy. Weirdly they're all as far away from the US coast as possible. Hmmmmmm.
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[citation needed]
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all American corporations are greedy scum - dont you have it written into your your law they have to maximise share holders returns.
Re: (Score:1)
The simplistic interpretation of that is championed by the crazy free market kooks (here and elsewhere), but the reality is more nuanced.
For example, the execs and board can easily enough choose less profits today as long as they can articulate some plausible harm that could otherwise come to the company later. Such as "if we do this, citizens and lawmakers will WANT us to burn and they will eventually find a way".