38 Comments
May 10, 2021Liked by Matt Stoller

Matt,

Excellent update as usual.

You're probably aware of Mariana Mazzucato who has done a lot of work on the issues of public funding of pharma research but the private capture of all of the upside. I think some of her work could dovetail with your thinking here.

More broadly, I think a political argument will continue in the US and elsewhere. It was notable to me that, under the FT's articles on the waivers, there were very many "but who will produce the next vaccine" type comments? The suggestion is that this solution will backfire in the future because companies won't have the same incentive to invest in research and development. What is needed is a quantitative argument to prove this wrong:

- If I read the BioNTech statements correctly, before the end of 2019 total equity investment was <EUR1bn.

- The company today is worth >EUR40bn (with a moderate equity capital raise last year)

So the returns are likely >40x, weighted over all the money that they have raised, even after the announcement of the patent waiver. I don't have the same figures for Pfizer but given they piggybacked on BioNTech's investment, I expect their returns will have been even higher.

So if another pandemic comes down next year, and I have shares in a pharma company - I want them to work on a solution from a purely financial point of view, even if the end game is patent waivers.

I think it's VERY important to counteract the argument that the opponents of this waiver are making - rather than simply appealing to the logical public health aspect of this.

Finally, I note some comments below arguing that this is to "stop China" etc. I have no idea if that's the motive but the issue with all the other vaccines except the mRNA ones is that they (1) don't have the same efficacy particularly vs infection (v good for hospitalisations, death) and (2) can't be re-engineered quickly enough to deal with variants. So this can create the conditions where we have continued circulation of COVID, maybe something that is like flu but possibly worse if variant behaviour is worse and Matt's theory about the annual expensive jabs could hold up.

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I had some trouble with this:

“Nobody really thought Biden was going to take on the pharmaceutical lobby, [they thought] that he would be too scared. But before the financial crisis, everybody thought the financial services industry was untouchable, then that changed. This week showed that pharma companies are the new banks.”

WTF? What changed for the financial services industry after the financial crisis? The TBTF banks got bigger. The banks were bailed out by the taxpayers and the banksters responsible were allowed to keep their bonuses! Finally, not a single banker went to jail.

To me, all that changed for the financial services industry was they got bigger, more powerful, and more untouchable.

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May 10, 2021Liked by Matt Stoller

Thank you for this clear explanation. Keep doing what you do🙏🏾

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Great work Matt!!

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May 10, 2021Liked by Matt Stoller

You grow and grow, dear marvelous Matt Stoller. And you write very well, too. All admiration, from Chris Lydon.

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Everyone who ha thoughtfully studied the issue knows that ivermectin + zinc + Vitamin D3 makes the EUA's illegal. Properly used, ivermectin (and hydroxychloroquine) DO work well, regardless of Big Pharma (and their criminal partners in Big Government efforts to spread disinformation.

No wonder Big Pharma is so upset. They saw how the people reacted to the oxycodone fiasco.

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Hard to believe mr stoller actually believes the “vaccines” are 100 percent responsible for covid trends rather than the normal seasonal course of a flu epidemic. The simpler theory is that bidens handlers know the jig is up and are abandoning the pharmaceutical covid scam ahead of its collapse to posture plausible deniability.

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It is to try "to stop" China.

China has developed nine (9) vaccines - two now approved by WHO.

It has capacity for billions of vaccinations -- and vaccines developed (traditional approach) are save and very low cost.

Whatever Biden blabbers -- US is simply not capable to meet the demand for more than a year.

In meantime, the US is trying all it can do to stop China's vaccine distribution and manufactures "genocide" in China.

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Recalling the BP Deepwater Horizon spill back in 2010, It was Biden (not Obama) who was vociferously adamant that BP was going to pay for all of the cleanup. It may have helped that BP was not a U.S. company but it was definitely Biden who was the "heavy".

It is my sincere hope that Joe Biden has matured into a true "Elder" with a sense of Solomonic justice with no further political aspirations and thus nothing to protect except for the welfare for those without a voice, his own conscience and soul.

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You still don't address why Biden would want to incur the wrath of all these former Pfizer executives and lobbyists - why would he risk this? They have a huge role in supporting campaigns and in the media...Isn't this a risk for the Democrats?

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Impressive article, really helpful for this (small c ) conservative to understand and support the government’s actions.

I did notice that when Matt praised Operation Warp Speed, he defined it as coming from the “USGov’t” and not from the Trump Administration. Yet when he wanted to denigrate President Trump, he did so later in the article. I wish Liberal hatred of President Trump wasn’t so encompassing in all they do. And I wish they didn’t have almost complete control of the NARRATIVE.

Nevertheless, I am a supporter, bought Matt’s book, and plan to share this article with friends.

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A few problems with this:

1 - there is no mention of the payment of royalties to the IP rights holder in India and South Africa's proposal, contrary to what you say.

2 - you discuss compulsory licensing but ignore that there are already compulsory licensing flexibilities in TRIPS (I wonder why India hasn't exercised these flexibilities to start manufacturing if that's so easy...). Presumably they want a waiver to do something other than compulsory licensing. What is it? Nobody knows, because they won't say.

3 - you say that the incentive is for the IP rights holder to withhold supply. Not really. The market for COVID vaccines is not a monopoly. There are multiple approved vaccines on the market and you can sell as much as you can produce. Pharma could double the current prices they are charging and still sell as much as they wanted. The idea this is some sort of De Beers situation with diamonds, where they're creating artificial scarcity to drive prices up, is detached from the reality of what is happening in this market.

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So either Biden is out of the loop on world affairs or he knew Merkel would try to stop a patent release. Either way it was a scam. Now someone in the DNC is getting Hollywood to oppose a patent release despite the fact the vaccine patent release proposal is limited to vaccines....so I think Biden’s move was disingenuous at best or he’s not really in charge

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Is there no way for a penalty assessment to be levied on the raised pricing. 2/3s of increase for example. If no direct method exists it may be time to issue RFPs for government health operations inviting bids to find new sources for VA Health, State and Local subsidized health systems, US Military etc. The remarks attributed to greed monger head of one company should be met with a censure of some type that puts him back 3 or so paces and takes the added cream from his margin. This is an abominable action in a never seen disaster of world wide scale. On the flip side; 1) Where are all the bodies from dire numbers reported? 2) Where is media coverage on grieving families and sad funerals? 3) Where are burial and cremation spikes commensurate with published death tolls. 4) And this one ties the others together. How many people do you personally know who have died from this? 2 is my answer. The longer it goes the more political posturing we see and hear but what in the world is the reality here. 1st wave of herd thinning has been my contention pretty much from day one. I ran published numbers from initial 6 months and increase in world mortality rate was less than 1/2 of 1 percent. This barely rises above a noticeable and worrisome increase. Roughly it adds 45 million souls to normal worldwide death counts. Allowing for standard deviation year by year the norm is +/- 320mm yearly with 2 percent deviation up or down considered normal. I hope I recall the number correctly. So much hoopla for a blip said to be done soon'ish'. Mired knee deep in the hoopla behind smoke, mirrors and a tatty curtain. Toto agrees and is rocking out to Starship, "Miracles." To Bond guy, haters hate, tis their nature. But this ongoing operation is starting to stink like the dead calf I had to drag from near my yard fence today. More on beef later from 3rd gen small cow/calf operation in ye olde silicon valley.

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I've been looking forward to your jobs guide for anti-monopolists — is that still in the works?

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> with Russia also pushing its influence through its own effective vaccine.

It is very predictable, that everything Russia has to be presented with a negative connotation. Even this otherwise fantastic article could not avoid doing so. I wonder why? Linking the article that quotes that ghoul Jörg Forbrig, presenting Russian actions in the worst possible light. Why?

Even if that's exactly what Russia is doing, is it _that_ bad? Is the other kind of 'influence' that US is employing (under the barrel of a gun) better? Or withholding patents is better?

Unfortunately, the poison that is Russiagate poisons everything (paraphrasing Hitchens).

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