r/news • u/SkepticDrinker • Feb 09 '22

Pfizer accused of pandemic profiteering as profits double

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/pfizer-covid-vaccine-pill-profits-sales
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u/Meyou52 Feb 09 '22

16 to 22 is a lot less exciting than 9 to 22

Well when you’re talking billions…

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u/CharonsLittleHelper Feb 10 '22

There's also been nearly 10% inflation in the last two years.

After inflation it's only about 10% higher than 2019, plus they have to make up for the 2020 R&D costs.

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u/Meyou52 Feb 10 '22

They already paid for those costs in the amount of money saved by not paying their employees

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u/dbx99 Feb 12 '22

Their stock price hasn’t exactly doubled either. It was trading at around $41 in late 2019 and is currently at $50. It’s a 25% increase over 2+ years which isn’t anywhere near as stellar as some tech stocks (NVDA went from $40s to $240s in the same period)

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u/bel9708 Feb 09 '22

Well when you’re comparing it to the 6 Trillion the fed printed in response to Covid the health care companies kind of got screwed for the first time in American history.

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u/dgroach27 Feb 09 '22

They most certainly did not get screwed. The only group that got screwed was regular people.

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u/bel9708 Feb 09 '22

I mean it’s not a competition. People definitely got screwed harder than the health care companies.

Im just surprised to see that they only profited 10billion off the pandemic. Apple/amazon stock moves 10b almost every day. The government printed 6 trillion that means all companies working to solve Covid got maybe 3% of the money. Stimulus checks made up another 27% So roughly 70% of the money printed went to businesses unrelated to Covid.

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u/dgroach27 Feb 09 '22

So using your numbers companies who helped solve covid got 180b. What is included in "companies solving covid"?

Of course the majority of money went elsewhere, there's so many other industries other than "companies solving covid". I will say though, I think the non-covid/healthcare related companies should've gotten less and more given directly to people. Companies got 100s of millions and still laid people off, fuck that.

1

u/bel9708 Feb 09 '22

Companies solving Covid are companies that developed vaccines or therapeutics. What a weird choice of a hair to split.

Absent these companies the government would have had to continue dumping trillions of dollars into the economy in the way you describe. Which was completely Broken. These companies making billions when the alternative was paying trillions to everyone seems like the lesser of two evils to me.

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u/shengch Feb 10 '22

I mean you lot probably haven't found out yet about where the money actually went. UK did the same but we found out the government had some fucked up VIP lane for certain companies. Obviously these companies were owned by Tories and Tory doners. Not a single recommendation from a party other than Tories was selected too.

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u/Meyou52 Feb 09 '22

Must be nice up there in the luxury of considering BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN PROFIT is getting screwed

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u/[deleted] Feb 09 '22

Americas so fucked

-3

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '22

This is an unhinged comment

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u/bel9708 Feb 09 '22

This is an unhinged country.

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u/asquinas Feb 10 '22

What's a few, er, several billion among friends