Hacker News Reader

Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

They received ~252.000.000 Euros from the German government alone in September 2020 [1], and previously another ~560.000.000 Euros from "private" investors in July 2020 (which somehow included another ~300.000.000 Euros from the German government as well)[2].

I'm sure the German tax payers are delighted.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-german...

[2] https://www.curevac.com/en/2020/07/21/curevac-raises-a-total...

View on HN

Eh, BioNTech got about half a billion from the Germany govt. You win some, you lose some.

Like, should the German government have had its on-staff wizards look into the future to decide which on the face of it very similar mRNA vaccine to fund? They funded two, one worked well and hundreds of millions of doses have been administered. That seems like reasonable value for money, to be honest.

If we didn't have the other vaccines, getting 47% efficiency for a billion euros would have been an awesome result. We could have also stopped the pandemic with a 47% effective vaccine. We're just spoiled because the vaccine development efforts did so well in general that 90%+ is now our standard.

Unless there were any known reasons at the time as to why CureVac wouldn't be able to create a functioning vaccine, I'm not sure how it's any use to anybody to take this position. There are no sure bets. There are going to be failures. That shouldn't be reason to stop funding companies like this if they otherwise show they're capable. I'd say Germany has more issues around being too conservative and playing it too safe than taking too many risky bets.

Maybe someone is forgetting that the COVID19-vaccine Pfizer produces is on license from German BioNTech.

(Pfizer did conduct the trial afaik, so maybe that is where the expertise is lacking.)

They were the most promising vaccine company at one point. So promising that Trump tried to buy them.

> I'm sure the German tax payers are delighted.

We really are, thanks for assuming.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com