Conspiracy Theory: Big Pharma--Some Numbers

As the World is held hostage over a Covid-19 vaccine, and several Pharma giants rush to capture their share of the ransom money, Big Money Gazer's imagination is running wild. How much cash are governments throwing to the wolves, how much are the kidnappers demanding, and how much is the whole racket expected to yield, now and year after year? 

A quick Internet search yielded prices per dose from a low of 2-3 US Dollars or Euros, to slightly below 40 US Dollars. Together with the prices are notes about secrecy and confidentiality and "closely guarded trade secrets". In other words, "they don't want us to know".

More ominous are comments about national governments forking money over, in advance, to foot the bill of developing the different vaccines. In other words, our various governments are paying to develop and bring to market these vaccines. What happened to the much ballyhooed song that Pharma needs highly inflated prices to "develop new drugs"?

Looks like yet another case of "socializing the risk while still keeping the profits private". Since governments are paying, will governments own all those new patents? Trademarks? Well governments get the profits?

But worst of all when it comes to Big Money Gazer is that we are not talking here about open market, arms length transactions. There is lobbying, and Public Relations campaigns, and Donald Trump bragging about the fastest vaccine development time. How much taxpayer's cash did you rush to hand over, Donald Trump? Was this the fastest cash out time in the History of Capitalism?

And then I ran into, rather by accident, into a Yahoo News story about Kong and Li. I would include a link, but I lost it. So below are my copy-pasted notes, verbatim, so you can search for the story if you care to do so: 

 " $2.8 million by selling 58,000 syringes

In one case last November, Kong sold 2,000 shots of the fake vaccine to another suspected criminal named as Li for 1.04 million yuan ($61,053)

Li, who shipped 600 of those doses internationally via Hong Kong on November 12, went on to make a $140,000 profit,"

 

Kong got 2.8 million by selling 58,000 doses. That comes to 48 bucks/dose (I believe all numbers to be US Dollars).

In one case, Kong got $61,053 from Li for 2,000 shots. That comes to about $30.50/shot. But this was a wholesale deal.

And Li made a $140,000 profit, shipped 600 doses via Hong Kong, and ... what happened to the other 1,400 doses? Is the profit related to just the prorated cost of the 600 doses? Ok, this last sentence doesn't give me enough info to deduct anything. Clumsy journalism. 

But these are open market transactions. $48 retail, $30.50 wholesale. We can use these numbers to estimate market size. Let's see: $30 times the maybe one billion persons in the world that may be able to afford this luxury, comes to 30 billion US Dollars. Not bad for a windfall that Donald Trump insists on crediting to China.

And when you add vaccination campaigns paid for by governments and NGOs, it just gets better. And don't forget that new strains will need their own vaccines, and that EVERYBODY will require yearly booster shots. Not bad at all.

Note: Kong and Li should be sitting in jail in China. But you still can use these numbers when shopping for a Covid vaccine, fake or otherwise. Don't pay more. Don't let slick entrepreneurs rip you off.