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Comment by vermontdevil | Hacker News Reader

They also did not take $ from Operation Speed Warp so I think they waited till now to keep this apolitical.

Right. But, I think it's double-sided. Would they started the research without US govt's contract of almost $2B to buy their vaccine?

https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-release/press-release-deta...

Of course, do you think they would be hurting for money once they have a vaccine developed? The demand will always be there. They just took the risk with their own money. They have been in the business for decades and they know how to sell a prized drug - with or without a buyer already lined up. A commitment to purchase doesn't mean much in a "seller's market". It will be profitable for the company either way - with or without a pre-contract.

Not necessarily, even if another company beats them to market and has a better vaccine - they will still get $2bln, it's easier to work when you are not under time pressure to beat the market.

Of course yes. Every person on earth will want this vaccine eventually. If the US wants to play games, they have tens of billions of units to sell elsewhere.

At this point this is obvious, but it took the pandemic getting out of hand to create the demand. When SARS hit many companies invested in vaccines and demand vanished. The purpose of the government guaranteed buy is to move up the timeline of when R&D starts.

In principle, yes, that would have been a good example of government intervention to stabilize market expectations. However, in practice that isn't what happened.

First, this is a line of research that began in January well before the pandemic actually got out of hand. Researchers started developing a vaccine as soon as there were indications that the transmission rate and fatality rate would be high.

Second, Operation Warp Speed was announced in early April. This was already long after the pandemic had gotten out of hand.

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