Fwd: COVID made him a billionaire
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Paul Zeitz Unsubscribe
Sun, Jan 29, 7:52 PM
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From: Public Citizen
Date: Sat, Jan 21, 2023 at 3:30 PM
Subject: COVID made him a billionaire
To:
Pharmaceutical giant Moderna is threatening to more than quadruple the price of its COVID-19 vaccine. (Pfizer has already made similar noise.)
A few facts:
Development of the vaccine marketed by Moderna was actually done in partnership with the federal government — specifically scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — and almost entirely funded by American taxpayers, to the tune of some $1.7 billion.
On top of that, the U.S. government has been paying the company an additional $26.36 per dose — for millions and millions of doses — for almost three years now.
As a result, Moderna — a company with just three employees as recently as 2013 — made more than $19 billion in *profits* over just the past two years.
By the way, it costs the company less than $3 per dose to manufacture the vaccine. And — again — research and development was paid for by the American people, not the company.
Yet Moderna’s CEO — a French man named Stéphane Bancel whose personal net worth is estimated at $6.3 billion — wants to jack the price up to as much as $130 per dose.
Here’s some of what Sen. Bernie Sanders said in a recent letter to Moderna’s CEO:
“The purpose of the recent taxpayer investment in Moderna was to protect the health and lives of the American people, not to turn a handful of corporate executives and investors into multi-billionaires. ... Now is not the time for unacceptable corporate greed.”
In reality, the so-called Moderna vaccine belongs to We the People. It is beyond outrageous for the company to even consider jacking up the price.
A message for Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel:
You have already become unimaginably wealthy as a result of the COVID-19 vaccine marketed by your company. As you know full well, the development of that vaccine was funded almost entirely by the American people. Yet you are now planning to more than quadruple the price, which will — not might, will — result in preventable deaths of people who cannot afford your outrageous and immoral price gouging. Dr. Jonas Salk, inventor of the polio vaccine, refused to patent that medication — a choice estimated to have cost him $7 billion. Let that be your guidepost. How much more money could you possibly need, anyway?
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- Robert Weissman, President of Public Citizen
Public Citizen | 1600 20th Street NW | Washington DC 20009 | Unsubscribe
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Dr. Paul Zeitz
Build A Movement 2022
http://www.drpaulzeitz.org/
drpaulzeitz@gmail.com
+1-202-365-6786
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Justin LeBlanc
Wed, Feb 1, 10:48 AM
to Stephen, Alan, Christopher, Paul, covid-19-emergency-response-group@googlegroups.com
I'm all for arguments on maximizing public benefit (and even curtailing risky behaviors and related damages), but leaving out basic context leaves a very bad taste; if Robert operates on comparing exponential growth curve tails with heads but doesn't inform his readers that's what he's doing, can we even trust that he is competent enough to speak, much less provide usable knowledge?
To supply the other parts of the curve that he leaves out:
$500M in funds before 2015[1], a tiny sum considering that the tech
had the potential to not just revolutionize the entire *immunity* stimulation protocol, but *all* stimulation protocol
had been in research for over 40 years, with many researchers shouldering much debt on faith in the above
had recently had a breakthrough in bringing down the immune response stimulation of the delivery 'lipid envelope' to safe levels in those >50 years old
(still not safe for <40, and the Moderna mRNA is ironically *too* accurate for that group, producing extreme inflammation in the heart)
2700 employees in 2021, and (whatever it is now) adding 2000 more this year[2]
PS--Harvard weighed in (unlike with basics such as chronic pain management, when it comes to prevention of death or crippling, pursuing efficacy is imperative, and the immune system is very complex requiring masterful techniques; even still):
'Does this mean that the government should pay anything Moderna demands? Of course not. The “market” for drugs and vaccines is in many ways government-constructed, and policy changes like government healthcare coverage that affect the expected market size have demonstrable effects on pharmaceutical innovation; the U.S. healthcare system is not, classically, a “free market.” U.S. policymakers should consider following the lead of most other countries in adding some form of cost-effectiveness analysis (also known as health technology assessment) to healthcare reimbursement policy, which would limit reimbursement for drugs that provide little benefit over existing treatments. Changes in this direction by private pharmacy benefit managers had a measurable effect in pulling innovation toward more scientifically novel research; reform at the federal level would presumably be even more effective. In short, policymakers should make use of the large number of tools at their disposal to tailor developers’ rewards to the actual social value that their products provide. And for COVID-19 vaccines, that value is pretty darn high.'[3]
[1] https://www.flagshippioneering.com/press/moderna-closes-450-million-financing-support-growth-messenger-rna-therapeutics-platform
[2] https://www.bizjournals.com/boston/news/2023/01/23/moderna-2023-hiring-plans-2000-employees-massachu.html
[3] https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2020/08/27/moderna-covid19-vaccine-government-funding/
Justin LeBlanc
Email: justin.r.leblanc@hotmail.com
Mobile: 530-919-3233
From: covid-19-emergency-response-group@googlegroups.com on behalf of Paul Zeitz
Sent: Sunday, January 29, 2023 4:51 PM
To: covid-19-emergency-response-group@googlegroups.com
Subject: Fwd: COVID made him a billionaire
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/covid-19-emergency-response-group/DM8P220MB0655E505A7A7C358100C3216C9D19%40DM8P220MB0655.NAMP220.PROD.OUTLOOK.COM.
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