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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2020, @01:15PM
Reading these articles, especially the Vox one, I got the impression that the recipients are basically demanding in PR space that they should just get the money to do what they want to do with it. It's whining that they on the one hand want to use other people's money for padding their empires, on the other hand have free rein on what to spend on.
It is the donor's money, it is the donor's choice how they spend it. Nobody is forcing the recipients to take Gates' dirty money. The are free to apply to other sources of funding. And if there is none, they can try to make an argument for it.