Security quote of the week [LWN.net]

Security quote of the week

Posted Sep 17, 2021 15:24 UTC (Fri) by ddevault (subscriber, #99589)
In reply to: Security quote of the week by jschrod
Parent article: Security quote of the week

The Pfizer vaccine was developed by the German company BioNTech, which received, among other investments, €100 of public EU funding and €375 in public funds from Germany, compared to just $320M in private funding. The public funds were offered without incentives for the public, whereas the private funds were in exchange for shares, marketing, and development rights for the lifesaving technology.

Forgive me for not enumerating the precise funding sources for all R&D associated with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Hi from Amsterdam.

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Security quote of the week

Posted Sep 17, 2021 17:49 UTC (Fri) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

The public funds were offered without incentives for the public, whereas the private funds were in exchange for shares, marketing, and development rights for the lifesaving technology.

The public now has access to a vaccine which is widely available at moderate cost and seems to be working quite well. Faced with a disease that has the potential to seriously disable or kill a sizeable proportion of the population (either directly, or indirectly by overwhelming the public health system to a point where other life-threatening conditions cannot be treated properly) as well as to cause enormous damage to the economy, quality of life of people, etc., that looks like a reasonable ROI as far as I'm concerned. (And I'm German so this is my tax money being spent. Would I have been prepared, in early 2020, to personally give €5 to BioNTech, no strings attached, so they could develop a COVID-19 vaccine? You bet.)