Just as Big Pharma’s worst enemy in D.C. is on his way out, we have “Pfizer says early analysis shows its Covid-19 vaccine is more than 90% effective”. In a world where a lot of people have no goal other than avoiding COVID-19, will Pfizer shareholders now become infinitely rich?
I’m wondering if there will be so much competition in the coronaplague vaccine market that this ends up being only moderately profitable.
First, maybe it isn’t that difficult to create immunity to coronavirus. Here’s a curve of COVID-19-tagged deaths in Sweden.
After a few months of mixing in schools, workplaces, restaurants, gyms, etc., it would appear that a lot of Swedes became immune (otherwise, how to explain the drop in deaths? The Swedes didn’t change their laws or behavior after mid-March. From the IHME prophets:
If it was that easy for Sweden to build immunity, maybe most of the current vaccine candidates from all around the world will work fairly well (WHO report on 47 currently in clinical trials, which also mentions 155 in preclinical evaluation). Except in the U.S., therefore, competition should work to drive down the price.
Related:
- from September: “Trump signs new, expanded executive order to lower U.S. drug prices” (Reuters)
- from July: “Donald Trump goes to war with big pharma…” (Daily Mail)
- from July 2019: “Big Pharma won’t like Trump’s next move after rebate rule is abandoned, investors fear” (CNBC)
The Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at (depending on who you believe) -94 to -103 degrees F, so if the rest of the trials are successful and it’s RTMed, out, anybody making medical-grade deep freezers and equipment with which to transport deeply chilled materials is going to be rolling in dough. So get busy! Even just start yourself a dry ice company!
https://www.rollcall.com/2020/10/13/deep-freezers-and-dry-ice-for-pfizer-vaccine-may-face-shortages/
“The number of medical grade ultra-cold deep freezers in the United States is unknown. And it’s up to states to locate them.”
“Those freezers are like unicorns. They are few and far between in health care settings today,” said Soumi Saha, senior director of advocacy at Premier Inc., which assists hospitals with medical supplies.
Somebody at MIT or CalTech or Carnegie Mellon has to be talking with people at Pfizer right at this moment to figure out exactly how many of what kind of fridges they’re going to need.