Money for Jam … or, Vaxxes By Brian Simpson
This is revealing. Pfizer pulled in around $80 billion in yearly revenue from sales of Covid vaccines and the antiviral drug Paxlovid. Pfizer expects these profits to continue as Covid becomes like the flu. Governments have come to cease buying their vax, leading Pfizer to triple the price of a vax from $ 19-$30 to $130 per shot. It has been estimated that each individual shot costs $1.18 to make, so the new price represents a 10,000 per cent mark-up. Who else sees a problem here?
“Pfizer’s chief financial officer has described the Covid pandemic as a 'multi-billion dollar franchise' — and expects profit to continue.
David Denton told investors in an earnings call last week his company's vaccine and antiviral would still be 'relevant for many years to come'.
The CFO said he expects the Covid virus to be 'somewhat like a flu... but more deadly' — meaning therapeutics will still have a massive role in controlling the virus.
So far Pfizer has reaped about $80 billion in yearly revenue from sales of Covid vaccines and the antiviral drug Paxlovid.
The company announced last month it will triple the price of its shot to up to $130 per dose next year — a far cry from the roughly $19 to $30 per dose that the government paid.
Some experts estimate each individual shot to cost just $1.18 to make — meaning the new price represents a 10,000 per cent markup.
Analysts speculate that the move was made so Pfizer could still meet its target of $32 billion of projected vaccine revenue this year.
Critics say that the decision shows the firm's greed. Peter Maybarduk, director of access to medicines at Public Citizen, told DailyMail.com that the firm was already in a good of financial position that they could take some loss.
Maybarduk also said that the firm has already made an 'obscene' amount of money, and will be ok if they do not meet revenue projections that were likely inflated anyways.
Pfizer was an early winner during the pandemic when it became the first company to get a Covid-19 vaccine approved for the US market. Subsequent vaccine mandates for healthcare workers and the military further drove up sales of vaccines.
The company projects $102 billion in total revenue this year with the vaccine and its antiviral Paxlovid - more than double the company's yearly revenue in 2019 ($40.9 billion) and 2020 ($41.7 billion).
Julia Kosgei, policy advisor to the The People's Vaccine Alliance said: 'Experts have estimated that Pfizer's vaccine costs just $1.18 per dose to make... Charging $130 per dose would represent a markup of more than ten thousand per cent. This is daylight robbery.'
'Governments must not stand by while companies like Pfizer hold the world to ransom in a global pandemic,' she added.
Contracts signed by the government to secure billions of doses of vaccines at no cost to Americans will run out soon, shifting the cost of purchasing shots to health insurance companies.
Pfizer CFO David Denton told investors: ‘I think if you look out longer term, the franchise is going to be a multibillion-dollar franchise in the respect that this is going to be somewhat like a flu, sustained flu, but actually more deadly than the flu.
‘I think the products, both from a vaccine and the therapy perspective that Pfizer has developed, are going to be quite relevant for many years to come,’ he said.”
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