[2006alum]

Your wish appears to be the administration's strategy:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...us-vaccine

The Trump administration is organizing a Manhattan Project-style effort to drastically cut the time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine, with a goal of making enough doses for most Americans by year’s end.

Called “Operation Warp Speed,” the program will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military to try to cut the development time for a vaccine by as much as eight months, according to two people familiar with the matter.

As part of the arrangement, taxpayers will shoulder much of the financial risk that vaccine candidates may fail, instead of drug companies.

This seems to be the exact thing that has been argued for in this thread and in the Vox article.  So, good job by the administration?

BC

I assume if taxpayers are fronting the financial risk, then whichever company's vaccine goes to market first, that company will not obtain profits from the vaccine's production and administration, right? If so, this seems like the right move.

My only other minor concern is what happens if one of the candidates produced via this project is the first to market globally. Would Trump try to withhold it from foreign nations as negotiating leverage for whatever foreign policy objectives he has? That would be obscene, but not entirely unlikely, given his prior actions.

[2006alum]

Your wish appears to be the administration's strategy:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...us-vaccine

The Trump administration is organizing a Manhattan Project-style effort to drastically cut the time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine, with a goal of making enough doses for most Americans by year’s end.

Called “Operation Warp Speed,” the program will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military to try to cut the development time for a vaccine by as much as eight months, according to two people familiar with the matter.

As part of the arrangement, taxpayers will shoulder much of the financial risk that vaccine candidates may fail, instead of drug companies.

This seems to be the exact thing that has been argued for in this thread and in the Vox article.  So, good job by the administration?

BC

I assume if taxpayers are fronting the financial risk, then whichever company's vaccine goes to market first, that company will not obtain profits from the vaccine's production and administration, right? If so, this seems like the right move.

My only other minor concern is what happens if one of the candidates produced via this project is the first to market globally. Would Trump try to withhold it from foreign nations as negotiating leverage for whatever foreign policy objectives he has? That would be obscene, but not entirely unlikely, given his prior actions.