COVID-19 Vaccine Profits and Public Funding: A Debate

I've brought some facts. The pandemic created at least 40 new big pharma billionaires.

Pharmaceutical corporations like Moderna and Pfizer made $1,000 of profit every second from the COVID-19 vaccine. Wow.

More than two-thirds of Congress received campaign funding from pharmaceutical companies in the 2020 election.

Pfizer chairman Albert Bourla told Time Magazine in July 2020 that his company was developing the COVID vaccine for the good of humanity, not for money, and of course, Pfizer made $100 billion- Right.

Okay. All right ... in profit in 2022. All right.

Fr- I, and, and may I just mention, finally, and these are, this is also a fact, that you, the American public, funded the development of that.

The German public funded the BioNTech, uh, vaccine.

When it came to the profits, they took the profits.

When it came to the funding, you paid for the funding.

It's difficult not to- Okay. But I, I will just add one thing.

It is possible that these are- ... greedy capitalists- Well, Bill- ... made a lot of money.

All I'm querying is this. Yes. Is if you have- All right ... an economic system in which pharmaceutical companies Is if you have- All right ... an economic system in which pharmaceutical companies benefit hugely from medical emergencies,

where a military- Okay ... industrial complex benefits from war, where, uh, energy companies benefit from energy crises, you are going to generate- These get... Right ... states of perpetual crisis- Yes ... where the interests of ordinary people- And, and, well, yes. Uh ... separate from the interests of the elites.

And cottage industries. And, and, Bill- Once you create an industry like, like checking you, I still get checked to see if I have COVID, because it's a cottage industry.

People started making money by sending a nurse to my house, and now no one wants to give up that gravy train