Pfizer says it's now exploring ways to drive up the cost of its vaccine.
Speaking at a conference last week, Pfizer CFO Frank D'Amelio and investor relations senior VP Chuck Triano discussed how there's a "significant opportunity" to increase how much the company charges for vaccines, according to Business Insider.
"If you look at how current demand and current pricing is being driven, it's clearly not being driven by what I'll call normal market conditions or normal market forces," D'Amelio said at the virtual event. "It's been driven by the pandemic state we've been in, and the needs of governments to secure doses from various vaccine suppliers."
"But we think as this shifts from pandemic to endemic, we think there's an opportunity here for us." pic.twitter.com/Fj7d6up9mW
— Lee Fang (@lhfang) March 15, 2021
Thankfully for the vast majority of the people on Earth who aren't financially vested in Pfizer and would perhaps rather see the vaccine stay inexpensive, D'Amelio clarified that he's thinking ahead to when the worst of the pandemic is over.
These price hikes would likely happen when the coronavirus "shifts from pandemic to endemic," rather than in the midst of the ongoing, urgent push to vaccinate as many people as possible.
It's weird to describe a vaccine that's still deeply coveted by most of the planet as a business opportunity, or to hear D'Amelio say that Pfizer doesn't see the pandemic or the vaccination campaign as a "onetime event." While public health experts have said that we may need extra booster shots to combat coronavirus variants that are infecting and killing people around the world, it's jarring to frame the issue as a matter of corporate profit.
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