Meet the New Billionaires Club: COVID-19 Vaccine Developers
Immediately after the Jan. 30 WHO declaration that a novel coronavirus outbreak in China posed a “public health emergency of international concern,” press releases were issued by the Gates Foundation and World Health Organization (WHO) informing the world that experimental coronavirus vaccines already in development would be put on a fast track to licensure for global use. By mid-March and early April, the WHO, National Institutes of Health, universities, and global pharmaceutical corporations had announced development of more than 50 experimental COVID-19 vaccines. Using vitamin and supplement therapies or currently licensed prescription drugs has taken a back seat to an aggressive push to keep restrictive “social distancing” measures in place until fast tracked experimental vaccines are licensed. Maintaining that the only solution to dealing with the new coronavirus is universal use of a new vaccine, this single solution approach guarantees even bigger profits in the exploding global vaccine market that has doubled over the past decade from $20B in 2010 to $42B in 2018. Dominated by the UK’s GlaxoSmithKline, France’s Sanofi and U.S. drug giants Merck and Pfizer, the vaccine market is projected to double again by 2026 to over $93B. There are already reports from Wall Street predicting big gains in Biotech stocks based on multiple companies developing COVID-19 vaccines and new drugs. One company, Moderna, which is partnering with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Fauci, has seen a 78 percent increase in its stock price since it announced in February that its experimental messenger RNA vaccine was ready for clinical trials. The company’s CEO has become a new billionaire overnight.