This is incredibly low. The most pessimistic prediction I had heard was 5 percent. It’s a deep failure by any standard and precisely why the numbers aren’t being advertised. The average person has stopped buying what they’re selling.
Initially, the excuse was that drug stores faced logistical problems. Then, it was widely suggested that they were too expensive. For a few weeks, such diversions dominated the messaging. But in the end, the reality is here: People just don’t want them.
Now, we see why the shot pushers were so intent on mandates wherever and however they could. The makers always claimed that the shots were safe and effective but that bypasses a more fundamental question: Were they necessary?
The demographics of risk of COVID-19 have been published and unchanged since February 2020, fully a year before the shots became generally available. By that time, millions of people were already exposed and gained immunity without the shots.
From the beginning, the claims for what they called a vaccine were wildly exaggerated and obviously so. Vast numbers of people had figured that out by the time they were rolled out.
The Biden administration was advised early on that ending the COVID-19 pandemic required 70 percent uptake, which is consistent with the pharmaceutical target for herd immunity. But that goal presumes an absence of natural immunity, which the crowd in charge at the time pretended didn’t exist or that there wasn’t enough evidence to rely upon it.
When that number failed to stop the spread, the Biden White House kept expanding the goal, from 70 percent to 85 percent to 90 percent to everyone. Finally, they said the whole reason COVID-19 still existed was because of the unvaccinated, which almost every expert knew was false, but the needs of industry at that point overrode all science.
The main competitor to the two mRNA shots of Pfizer and Moderna was Johnson & Johnson, which was a more traditional vaccine and required only one dose. But that was withdrawn briefly for safety concerns by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2021, which wrecked its market share, leaving only two giants to scoop up the fiduciary rewards of public panic.
Keep in mind that these vaccines were developed with tax dollars. The companies enjoyed patent protection. Briefly, the Biden administration toyed with the idea of giving away the formulas so that anyone could make them but that idea faded quickly following panicked industry protests. Then, they relied on mandates, which is a form of conscription. Further, they enjoyed indemnification against harms. Finally, they’re publicly listed companies that could reap the whirlwind of profits, and they did.
After three years, where do the stock prices of Pfizer and Moderna stand? Moderna has lost 74 percent of its value in two years, while Pfizer has lost 46 percent. No question that the time to have sold these stocks was two years ago. The layoffs have already started and their valuation will likely crawl back to what it was two years ago.
There’s a temptation to cheer when big shots bite the dust, and I share that sense. And yet, nothing about a fallen stock price undoes the tremendously terrible history of these shots: the expense, the coercion, the harms, and the wealth transfer associated with them.
All of which is to say: They'll likely get away with the whole thing.
I often think back to what we knew about coronaviruses from the first days. Such viruses are mostly unstable and are prone to constant mutation. They aren’t candidates for viable vaccines. At best, pharmaceuticals can chase down the latest variant and provide some therapeutic benefit. They’re completely unlike polio, measles, rubella, or smallpox, which are stable viruses against which there have been sterilizing vaccines for a very long time.
Again, this isn’t wisdom that we recently discovered. It was widely known and has been for many decades. You could find it in any medical textbook. You could have even learned about it in ninth-grade biology class a generation or two ago.
For some strange reason, by the time 2020 came around, enough people had forgotten or never learned that bad actors were able to manipulate the public into believing that a magic shot could make a respiratory virus go away. There was never any chance that we could vaccinate our way out of this one. Never.
Meanwhile, the FDA had a strong team focused on vaccines, which resigned when they saw what was coming with the first vaccine booster and how the manufacturers were essentially buying their way into the approval process. Those who remain, it’s widely acknowledged, are entirely in the pay of the industry.
Will they get away with all of this? Certainly, the public and the financial markets are now in a punishing mode. It’s about time. As for larger accountability, it’s unclear. We had investigations going and some focus on Capitol Hill, but all that might be shelved now in light of the huge attention being paid to war in the Middle East. War tends to do this: put everything else on the back burner.
No question that we urgently need reforms, particularly with the problem of regulatory capture and indemnification against harms. The 1986 act (National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act) that protects vaccine makers against harms needs an urgent repeal. That will bring an element of reality back to these markets.
Meanwhile, measures must be taken to restore integrity and science at the FDA. That’s just the beginning.
At the start of this entire mess, thinking and writing not as an expert but as a literate human being, I pretty much assumed that the vaccine would be a great distraction from the need for good protocols for dealing with the sick. It turned out to be far worse than a distraction. Many people have been injured and many have died. The entire fiasco has massively raised public doubt about all vaccines, pharmaceuticals, medical services, and public health generally.
What this means is that even without serious efforts at reform, we could see de facto refusal of the public to go along anymore. Public health in this country and around the world squandered decades of goodwill and built up reputational capital on an unworkable project that was never necessary for the vast majority. Now we’re stuck with the consequences.
Given all this, a lowered stock valuation for the main two vaccine distributors is a small consolation.
