https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/17/biden-pfizer-vaccine-global
“The Biden administration is buying hundreds of millions more doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine to donate to the world” says the Washington Post, which goes on to tell us that “In June, the United States purchased 500 million doses of the vaccine to be distributed by Covax, the World Health Organization-backed initiative to share doses around the globe, and officials said the vaccine would be targeted at low- and middle-income countries.”
Missing from the WaPo article is any information about the pricing of the drug. I don’t know if or how our government negotiates prices with drug companies or whether Pfizer charges the same price to wealthy nations and to poor ones for its covid vaccine. If it does charge different prices to different national customers, then which price did the U.S. pay for those hundreds of millions of vaccine doses which it is now donating to third world nations – the first world price or the third world price? Does this constitute a windfall profit for Pfizer?
Also missing from the WaPo article is any information about Pfizer’s political donations to the president and his party.
In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that “AT&T Inc., Boeing Co. , Pfizer Inc. and Qualcomm Inc., which all gave $1 million to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee four years ago, also gave the same amount to Mr. Biden’s inaugural…”
Last October it was reported that “The pharma industry has put its weight behind Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, reversing a longstanding fundraising trend that has favored the GOP.”
https://www.drugdiscoverytrends.com/guess-who-the-pharma-industry-is-supporting-for-president
You may also recall that Pfizer announced its vaccine breakthrough just AFTER Election Day in November. Its CEO, Albert Bourla, rejected any suggestions that politics played a part in the timing of that announcement.
A White House press release from June sings the praises of NYC-based Pfizer:
“Pfizer plans to produce these half a billion doses in the U.S. at their facilities in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which employs more than 3,000 American workers; McPherson, Kansas, which employs almost 2,000 workers; Chesterfield, Missouri, and Andover, Massachusetts, which employ 700 and 1,800 workers. The American workers who produced vaccines to save American lives will now produce those same vaccines to save the lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world.”
Isn’t that sort of government-sponsored promotion of a corporation worth a lot of PR money to Pfizer? Was that strictly free publicity or was it factored into the negotiated price paid for the vaccine by our government?