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Coronavirus Vaccine on the Horizon, but White House Intervenes

posted by martyb on Sunday March 15 2020, @10:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the taking-a-stab-at-it dept.

quietus writes:

German company CureVac has received a rather strange offer from the current White House.

On March 3, CureVac's CEO was invited to the White House, for a meeting with President Trump, Vice Pence and several members of the Coronavirus Task Force. Asked for when a vaccine could be ready, he estimated that a potential candidate could be ready within a few months. Apparently, that triggered the members of the meeting so much, that they've now offered to buy the company, at whatever price.

One condition though: production would be exclusively for the United States.

The move is not exactly one to gain popularity, and follows on the heels of the President's worrying statement that "a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe".

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday March 16 2020, @12:03AM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 16 2020, @12:03AM (#971719) Journal

    Maybe Germany will do that, if the company is blinded by money.

    "IF".

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by edIII on Monday March 16 2020, @02:35AM (2 children)

    by edIII (791) on Monday March 16 2020, @02:35AM (#971764)

    Depends on the situation too. If Germany stockpiles enough for itself, and the company's production rate is sufficient for its needs, then is it not the humanitarian thing to do and sell excess production to other countries? I would even go so far as to give them emergency funds to scale operations, including increasing production to make available to other countries.

    It doesn't have to be at an extravagant rate you know, it could be something reasonable. If the US is behind, then why not fund the companies scaling so that they can start providing excess capacity back to the US?

    There seems to be an implicit assumption that selling the cure to foreign countries is a bad thing 100% of the time, and that doesn't sound true.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday March 16 2020, @07:20AM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday March 16 2020, @07:20AM (#971812) Journal

      Depends on the situation too. If Germany stockpiles enough for itself, and the company's production rate is sufficient for its needs, then is it not the humanitarian thing to do and sell excess production to other countries?

      Sure. But there is a difference between selling excess production and selling the producing company.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 16 2020, @09:32AM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 16 2020, @09:32AM (#971826) Journal

        Even when the producing company is in excess itself? (grin)

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford