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".
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Monday March 16 2020, @02:47AM
Vaccines are barely profitable at the best of times. They're not at all profitable when the U.S. gov't is likely to hand out 300 million shots for free, much as has been done in the past when influenza threatened an epidemic.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.