Business Insider: the nine "Vaccine Billionaires"

To quote President John F. Kennedy "life is unfair".

Soaring stocks in pharma giants has minted these 9 new 'vaccine billionaires,'

The successful development of COVID-19 vaccines has created at least nine new billionaires since the start of the pandemic, according to a new report by the People's Vaccine Alliance.

********************

It said soaring stocks in pharma giants — fueled by investors who expect huge profits from COVID-19 vaccines — had driven the surge in wealth.

*******************

According to the report, which used data from Forbes, the nine new vaccine billionaires are:

1. 1. Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of American vaccine maker Moderna, who is now worth $4.3 billion.
   2. Ugur Sahin, the CEO and co-founder of German vaccine maker BioNTech, which worked alongside Pfizer on its COVID-19 vaccine. Sahin is now worth $4 billion.
   3. Timothy Springer, an immunologist and founding investor of Moderna, who is now worth $2.2 billion.
   4. Noubar Afeyan, Moderna's Chairman, who is now worth $1.9 billion.
   5. Juan Lopez-Belmonte, the Chairman of ROVI, a Spanish biotech company with a deal to manufacture and package the Moderna vaccine, who is now worth $1.8 billion.
   6. Robert Langer, a scientist and founding investor in Moderna, who is now worth $1.6 billion.
   7. Zhu Tao, a co-founder and chief scientific officer at Chinese vaccine maker CanSino Biologics, who is now worth $1.3 billion
   8. Qiu Dongxu, a co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics, who is now worth $1.2 billion
   9. Mao Huinhoa, also a co-founder and senior vice president at CanSino Biologics, who is now worth $1 billion

The nine new billionaires have a combined net wealth of $19.3 billion, the Alliance said, which it claimed was more than enough to fully vaccinate 776 million people the UN says live in low-income countries. 

Comments

[Valeria Kondratiev]

Now we know why they’re pushing vaccination on children, who are not at risk.

[maria]

Indeed.

[NW 332]

While children appear to be less affected by Covid, they are NOT without risk. In addition, an article published yesterday by Harvard Medical School’s Harvard Health Publishing titled “Coronavirus Outbreak and Kids” states:

“Early studies suggested that children do not contribute much to the spread of coronavirus. But more recent studies raise concerns that children could be capable of spreading the infection… Though the recent studies varied in their methods, their findings were similar: infected children had as much, or more, coronavirus in their upper respiratory tracts as infected adults… the presence of high viral loads in infected children does increase the concern that children, even those without symptoms, could readily spread the infection to others…”
“Further, vaccinating children will be critical to achieving a population-wide level of immunity — herd immunity — sufficient to slow the emergence of dangerous variants and bring an end to the pandemic.”

[tom faranda]

So different priorities have to be weighed up. The fact is they don't have enough data.