Hacker News Reader

To my knowledge Pfizer didn't really invest anything, it was the German population who financed Biontech through funds paid with taxes: the lab infrastructure pre-covid (through funded cancer research), the vaccine trials, and mass production (both directly and through pre-purchases before the vaccine existed).

View on HN

Biontech invested in the early research. Pfizer invested a lot more into manufacturing and the trials. Both are needed at different times. What Pfizer invested in was a lot lower risk (don't confuse that with low risk - it wasn't except by comparison!), but they invested far more money.

Quit trying to sell either short - without both investments we would be in lockdown yet.

I really looked into that quite deeply. Biontech got so much money for funding the trials that they apparently had too much and put it in reserve for 2022. The public invested billions into building production capacity.

I'd be glad to see what Pfizer actually invested that wasn't backed by prepurchases.

I'm got surprised.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com