Moderna Coronavirus Vaccine Racket
July 30, 2020
Every day, at least a quarter of a million people worldwide are infected with the coronavirus, and more than 5,500 die from the disease. Six months after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared its sixth and “most serious” public health emergency of international concern, with at least 17.1 million infected and more than 669,000 deaths, the public outcry for a vaccine spread. has become increasingly urgent.
There are now more than 4.5 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States alone and just under 154,000 dead. The pandemic is out of control. However, months ago the government abandoned any serious effort to contain the virus.
When asked about his administration’s disastrous response to the virus, President Donald Trump inevitably ignores the collapse of the tests and the grim statistics of illness and death, instead promoting the supposed progress in the development of a vaccine. The unsubstantiated premise behind this stance is the murderous “collective immunity” policy and the position the population must learn in the meantime to “live with the virus.”
Enter Moderna Inc., a ten-year biotechnology firm that is researching one of 164 different candidates for a coronavirus vaccine. On Tuesday Financial times He reported that the company is currently planning to charge the United States and other governments $ 25 to $ 30 for a dose of its medication. The pharmaceutical giant’s attitude was expressed more crudely by Stephen Hoge, president of Moderna, who made nearly $ 5 million last year and said at a congressional hearing last week: “We will not sell it at cost.”
Moderna’s price is high even compared to other companies in the vaccine draw, such as Pfizer, which has struck a deal with the US government for $ 19.50 per dose of its vaccine, and AstraZeneca, which has signed an agreement with the Netherlands, Germany, France and Italy for $ 3 to $ 4 per dose if your vaccine is approved.
Moderna has already received $ 955 million from the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed program, spearheaded by former Moderna board member Moncef Slaoui, as well as technical support through his partnership with the National Institutes of Health. If your drug is approved, Moderna can earn potential revenue of $ 16.5 to $ 19.8 billion just from sales in the United States.
This is a pernicious example of how capitalist private ownership of vital industries like health care and for-profit production turn the search for a life-saving vaccine into a racket to make money.
Modern is no exception. Exemplify the rule. AstraZeneca will receive $ 1.2 billion if he can make a vaccine, and Trump has already agreed to buy 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine for $ 2 billion if the drug is licensed. Another pharmaceutical company, Novavax, will make a windfall of $ 1.6 billion if its clinical trials with the coronavirus vaccine are successful.
The government brochures, without conditions, will also go to companies other than vaccines. This week it was announced that Eastman Kodak will receive a $ 765 million loan through the US International Development Finance Corporation to manufacture generic pharmaceuticals. The Trump administration claims this booklet will help produce drugs to fight COVID-19, but Kodak is slated to increase production only in the next 5-8 years.
Democrats have only raised symbolic objections. Representative Jan Schakowsky, in a statement to Barron’s, called for “reasonable prices for the COVID-19 vaccines and treatments that have been developed by taxpayers.” At most, concern has been raised that the budget set for Operation Warp Speed, $ 10 billion, will be matched by a substantial increase in funds for testing and contact tracing.
Meanwhile, some 25 million laid-off workers are losing their $ 600 a week supplemental unemployment benefit, hundreds of thousands of small businesses are bankrupt, and there is supposedly “no money” to fill gaps in state and local budgets that will mean massive cuts in education, health care, public transportation, housing, and other public services.
In an earlier period, there was a certain commitment to providing life-saving vaccines free of charge. After Jonas Salk developed his cure for polio, resources were mobilized to produce enough vaccine to inoculate millions of children and virtually eliminate the disease from the US and the world. As a result, from 1988 to 2018, the number of cases reported each year plummeted from 350,000 to just 33.
There are no plans to develop a similar program to distribute a coronavirus vaccine today. Instead, the pandemic is seen as an opportunity to do financial murder.
Moderna’s market capitalization has increased more than sevenfold in the past 52 weeks, to more than $ 30 billion. Gilead, the creator of the highly touted but mostly ineffective therapeutic remdesivir, is now worth $ 90 billion.
At the same time, the race for a vaccine is being used by the American oligarchy as a blow in the geopolitical arena. The United States government is subsidizing pharmaceutical companies not to save lives, but to produce a vaccine “made in the United States” that will be used as a weapon against countries that are considered impediments to the drive of US imperialism towards hegemony. global, including, but not limited to, China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, and Cuba. An American-made vaccine will also be used to gain influence against Washington’s former European allies.
Fearing that China or even Russia may develop a vaccine before the US, the American corporate media has already launched a campaign of lies accusing the two countries of hacking into American vaccine researchers. This aims to criminalize and undermine their vaccine programs and potentially justify a ban on their importation into the US.
As WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in June, “There should be no division between those who have and those who do not” regarding a coronavirus vaccine.
But such appeals fall on deaf ears. The nationalism exuded by Trump and his global counterparts is not the result of personality clashes, but the economic interests of the capitalist oligarchs who govern and determine policy in all countries.
Those economic class interests are in irreconcilable conflict with the urgent human need for a rational effort, coordinated internationally, using the knowledge and resources of all nations, to develop a vaccine that is available to all at no cost. Any question of national interest or private benefit must be subordinated to this socially necessary task.
This cannot happen under capitalism, an outdated and destructive social system that subordinates all social considerations to the increasing enrichment of a small, parasitic layer of billionaires and billionaires.
The social force whose interests coincide with science and the preservation of human life is the international working class. This is the force that must be brought forward to combat the pandemic.
This means mobilizing the entire working class to expropriate the pharmaceutical giants and any other major industries and transform these monopolies into controlled utilities. The dictatorship of corporate interests over humanity must be abolished and economic life placed in the hands of the workers themselves, establishing a truly democratic socialist society.
Bryan Dyne
The author also recommends:
Tapping Pandemics: Gilead Sciences Takes Advantage of COVID-19
[1 July 2020]
Capitalism vs. Science: The Lessons of the Modern 36-Hour Vaccine Frenzy
[20 May 2020]
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