You have heard that Bill Gates promotes vaccines because he wants to make money.
Ask these three questions:
1. Is there big money in vaccines compared to other medicines?
2. If there is, how can any investor profit from this?
3. What is the evidence that Gates has made these investments?
1. VACCINE PROFITS VS. NON-VACCINE PROFITS
First, is there big money in vaccines compared to other aspects of phrameceuticals??
This is from Medscape. It is a conventional medical site that targets physicians.
During the past fifty years, the number of pharmaceutical companies making vaccines has decreased dramatically, and those that still make vaccines have reduced resources to make new ones. Pharmaceutical companies are gradually abandoning vaccines because the research, development, testing, and manufacture of vaccines are expensive and because the market to sell vaccines is much smaller than the market for other drug products. Congressional action could assure both a steady supply of existing vaccines and the promise of vaccines for the future.Pharmaceutical companies are businesses, not public health agencies; they are not obligated to make vaccines. Events during the past fifty years have made the manufacture of vaccines more expensive and their sale less profitable.
https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/504779
Is this assessment accurate? According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, it is.
Once a vaccine is manufactured, it hardly rewards the pharmaceutical company for the effort: Vaccines are dramatically less profitable than other drugs. In March, Science reported that GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, enjoyed worldwide vaccine sales of $4.3 billion. Contrast that figure with the profits of one drug, the cholesterol-lowering Lipitor, which grosses $6 billion a year. According to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical intelligence service, vaccines comprise only 1 to 2 percent of global pharmaceutical sales.
The General Accountability office of the U.S. government estimated in 2017 that total world sales of pharmaceuticals in 2015 totaled $775 billion.
Evaluate Pharma estimated in 2019 that the revenues from medical devices were $405 billion (p. 9).
In contrast is the global market for vaccines in 2018. It is estimated at just under $37 billion.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is a nonprofit academic organization that was founded a century ago. Here is an NBER paper's findings on why vaccine research is less profitable than research on medicines to treat chronic diseases. It is written in academic jargon. Let me translate: "It's more profitable to get a patent on a recurring disease than on a cure for a one-shot (pardon the pun) disease that goes away after a year."
First, drug treatments are sold after the firm has learned who has contracted the disease; in the case of heterogeneous consumers who vary with respect to the probability of contracting the disease, there is less asymmetric information to prevent the firm from extracting consumer surplus with drug treatments than with vaccines. We prove that, due to this aspect of pharmaceutical pricing, the ratio of drug-treatment to vaccine revenue can be arbitrarily high; we calculate that the ratio is about two to one for empirical distributions of HIV risk. The second reason for the breakdown of revenue equivalence is that vaccines are more likely to interfere with the spread of the disease than are drug treatments, thus reducing demand for the product.
Conclusion: pharmaceutical companies avoid vaccine research because there isn't much profit potential.
To make a higher rate of profit on vaccine research than other forms of health-related research, there would have to be bigger money in vaccines than other forms of medical research. The facts presented so far do not support such a thesis. I am aware of no counter-facts that prove otherwise.
Does the critic provide such facts? Look carefully for such a presentation. I predict that he does not.
2. HOW CAN AN INVESTOR PROFIT?
The question regarding investing began with an if: "If there is [big money in vaccines compared to other medicines]. But there isn't. That's the whole point.
In every attack on Gates as a promoter of vaccines for pandemics, the critic assumes that there is big money in vaccines. This assumption is incorrect. The critic offers no evidence that there is big money in vaccines. He offers no evidence that vaccines are a significant part of the pharmaceutical industry's profits. The critic assumes what he needs to prove.
He cannot prove it. The facts testify against his assumption.
3. EVIDENCE THAT GATES IS PERSONALLY INVESTED IN VACCINES
The critics offer no evidence that he is.
His net worth is well over $100 billion. He is second only to Jeff Bezos in wealth. Bloomberg's estimate is that he is worth $114 billion. His wealth is managed by his investment firm, Cascade. It is invested in the Four Season's chain, which he owns 47%. (Bad call, Bill. Hospitality is the worst sector to be invested in since March.)
Then there is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is worth $40 billion. As a private foundation, it is subject to the 5% rule. The Internal Revenue Code requires that it give away 5% of its net worth every year. There is no profitability there!
CONCLUSION
If you read an article that says that Bill Gates favors vaccines because he stands to profit from investments in vaccines, you must do two things. First, you must ask yourself the three questions. Second, you must see if the article provides answers to all three questions.
If it doesn't, you can dismiss the article as being written by someone who has an axe to grind against Gates personally, and who does not know the basic requirements of simple Google research. Anyone who asks the three questions can find the answers by Google searching in less than an hour. Anyone who goes into print attacking somebody else's motives ought to spend at least an hour to accumulate evidence that there is any correlation between the accusation and reality.
© 2022 GaryNorth.com, Inc., 2005-2021 All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.