[suction]

Pfizer surely did help monetarily (investments) and offers global distribution, but that doesn't mean they had any hand in developing the science and the product. Any big pharmaceutical company, like Bayer, could have done the same, but randomly Pfizer got lucky this time.

[spywaregorilla]

Pfizer played a major role in the trials, which is an enormous part of the process.

[suction]

Which, again, any big pharmaceutical company would have offered to a drug developer, and was in no way a special attribute of Pfizer.

[spywaregorilla]

I mean yeah, but it's still a large complicated task. I don't think executing major projects like this should be handwaved because there's alternative options.

This is equivalent to saying there's nothing special about biontech as any specialist in novel MRNA vaccines could have developed these. Which did happen, at moderna.

[kken]

They started working together even before Covid.

https://biontech.de/sites/default/files/2019-08/20180816_Bio...

The Pfizer head of vaccine research seems to be from Germany as well.

[skybrian]

That’s discounting the difficulty of manufacturing these new vaccines, which only a few companies know how to do, and also required many subcontractors.

If it were easy, it wouldn’t have taken so long to scale up manufacturing, even by the largest pharmaceutical companies.

[suction]

What's the endgame here - to point out "Pfizer is awesome!!"? Seems a little strange.