https://www.healthaffairs.org/It Was The Government That Produced COVID-19 Vaccine Success
It Was The Government That Produced COVID-19 Vaccine Success
The success of the US COVID-19 vaccine effort didn’t happen on its own; it was enabled by decades of long-term investments by the federal government, followed by additional federal investment in the development of the COVID-19 vaccines themselves. The government invested extensively in every aspect of the basic science, preclinical development, and clinical trials for the vaccines; it executed procurement contracts that were critical to creating successful vaccines and ensuring they were available to the US public.
In the case of vaccines in general, the government often plays an outsized role, but in the era of COVID-19 the government’s role was even more central than usual. The government essentially removed the bulk of traditional industry risks related to vaccine development: a) scientific failures, b) failures to demonstrate safety and efficacy, c) manufacturing risks; and d) market risks related to low demand.
Since 2000, taxpayer dollars have financed the development of various vaccine platforms for HIV, pandemic flu, and other threats to public health. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government leveraged investments in those platforms in three ways. First, it supported additional preclinical studies. Second, it absorbed the bulk of human testing costs and risk through a set of contracts that paid for the various phases of vaccine development and manufacturing. And third, it reduced manufacturing risk by underwriting capacity investments.
Estimates of direct public spending on the development and manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines vary considerably based on the range of sources examined and the timing of data collection. Recent estimates from the Congressional Research Service, the Government Accountability Office, and Chad Brown and Thomas Bollyky along with data on the GHIAA.org and Devex websites provide government spending estimates of between $18 billion and $23 billion. Most recently the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biomedical Research and Development Authority (BARDA) alone has spent $19.3 billion on COVID-19 vaccine development. In addition, Lisa Cornish projected $39.5 billion in US spending.
These funds, which have attenuated industry risk in developing COVID-19 vaccines, are on top of years of government-funded vaccine research that set the platforms for the current successes.
Likewise, BARDA has for years invested in the messenger RNA (or mRNA) platform for vaccine development, the technology used in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines. Since 2006, Congress has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars that BARDA used to develop the scientific infrastructure to produce vaccines in response to the threat of pandemic flu. Thus, the basic research undergirding the COVID-19 vaccines was largely publicly supported.
More at link above...
Just to clear up who did what during vaccine development. BARDA was so behind the times and inadequately managed, Trump "fired" its Director and installed someone more positive and less politically motivated to develop vaccines quickly. In any case, BARDA was the conduit through which government funding flowed. There were many agencies involved in Operation Warp Speed.
Operation Warp Speed used BARDA as the financial interface between the U.S. federal government and the biomedical industry.[20] The program was initially being funded with $10 billion,[1] with additional funds allocated through BARDA.[1] Funding was increased to about $18 billion by October 2020.[21]Operation Warp Speed, initially funded with about $10 billion from the CARES Act (Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security) passed by the United States Congress on March 27,[1] was an interagency program that includes components of the Department of Health and Human Services, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA); the Department of Defense; private firms; and other federal agencies, including the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Veterans Affairs.[1]
Rick Bright, the BARDA director, was reassigned on or about April 22, 2020, following his resistance to (as he phrased it) "efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections".[22] In May, new leadership was announced. Moncef Slaoui was named Operation Warp Speed's chief adviser.[1][9] Slaoui is a vaccine researcher and, formerly, Chairman of Global Research and Development and Chairman of Global Vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline, where he led the development of five vaccines.[1] General Gustave F. Perna, who served as commanding general of Army Materiel Command, was named Operation Warp Speed chief operating officer.[1][23] Retired Lieutenant General Paul A. Ostrowski, who previously served as director of the Army Acquisition Corps, was the director of supply, production and distribution.[24][25] Army Major General Christopher J. Sharpsten was the deputy director.[26][27]
Alex Azar, Mark Esper, and Deborah Birx were on the board of directors of OWS, while Tony Fauci, Francis Collins, and Robert Redfield were nonvoting advisers.[28][/i]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed
