Pfizer was looking at trump's "kick ass warp speed super cool operation", but turned it down, but why? Pfizer Chief Executive Officer Albert Bourla, "I wanted to liberate our scientists from any bureaucracy. When you get money from someone, that always comes with strings. They want to see how we are growing to progress, what types of moves you are going to do. They want reports. I didn’t want to have any of that. Basically I gave them an open checkbook so that they can worry only about scientific challenges, not anything else. And also, I wanted to keep Pfizer out of politics, by the way."
Pfizer's partner, BioNTech did get $445 million from the German Government, and both companies received technical guidance from several governments other than the USA, which added up to billions in value.
"Operation Warp Speed" (or whatever supposedly "kick ass" stupid name it has) adds a whole other layer of political bureaucrats. trump said that he would give the drug companies access to the "important people", meaning the political appointees, but those are not the people that the drug companies want contact with. They want to talk to the technical people, who have the technical information. These political appointees usually have no background in science, and are often very anti-science. If you mention anything to do with evolution, they howl like banshees, and start blocking you at every turn. Even if you do, you have to explain everything at a 3rd grad level, and hope to indirectly communicate with the technical people you wanted to.
Even with distribution, "Operation Warp Speed" falls apart. There is no attempt to have final distribution, and the supply chain treats this like a normal vaccine. It has to be kept much colder than a normal vaccine, so all the money spent on refrigerated airplanes and trucks is completely useless for the Pfizer vaccine. Pfizer explained this repeatedly to the trump white house over the last 6 months, but no one there could understand this very simple point.
So Pfizer is out of pocket hundreds of millions to distribute the vaccine themselves. Thank God Pfizer has stepped in to replace the US Government while the orange baby has been destroying it.
Pfizer's partner, BioNTech did get $445 million from the German Government, and both companies received technical guidance from several governments other than the USA, which added up to billions in value.
"Operation Warp Speed" (or whatever supposedly "kick ass" stupid name it has) adds a whole other layer of political bureaucrats. trump said that he would give the drug companies access to the "important people", meaning the political appointees, but those are not the people that the drug companies want contact with. They want to talk to the technical people, who have the technical information. These political appointees usually have no background in science, and are often very anti-science. If you mention anything to do with evolution, they howl like banshees, and start blocking you at every turn. Even if you do, you have to explain everything at a 3rd grad level, and hope to indirectly communicate with the technical people you wanted to.
Even with distribution, "Operation Warp Speed" falls apart. There is no attempt to have final distribution, and the supply chain treats this like a normal vaccine. It has to be kept much colder than a normal vaccine, so all the money spent on refrigerated airplanes and trucks is completely useless for the Pfizer vaccine. Pfizer explained this repeatedly to the trump white house over the last 6 months, but no one there could understand this very simple point.
So Pfizer is out of pocket hundreds of millions to distribute the vaccine themselves. Thank God Pfizer has stepped in to replace the US Government while the orange baby has been destroying it.