Thanksgiving week two years ago was a time of COVID-19 fear in the United States. The Omicron variation had sprung out of the Black Lagoon like a beast. Public health experts said we would require an additional booster shot. Moderna and Pfizer’s stock prices rose sharply.
Pfizer’s stock market value reached over $300 billion after the month, a 50% increase from the epidemic’s beginning. Moderna’s stock had increased by nearly 1,000 percent during the same time frame. Pfizer became the first pharmaceutical business to record annual revenues of over $100 billion in 2022 due to government purchases of its antiviral medication and vaccines.
Go back to the present day. The outbreak has ended. The market for Covid therapies and vaccinations has collapsed. Since the previous year, Pfizer’s overall revenue has decreased by more than 40%. Due to “lower-than-expected demand,” the corporation had to write off $5.5 billion in its Covid products earlier this month. Merely 14% of adult Americans possess the most recent iteration of their booster doses.
Pfizer is firing hundreds of workers because its stock isn’t trading as high as it did at the pandemic’s beginning. Over the previous two years, Moderna’s market worth has dropped by more than $100 billion, and the company’s revenue is also declining. Combination vaccinations against COVID-19, the flu, pediatric human metapneumovirus, and parainfluenza—all respiratory viruses that typically induce symptoms like the common cold or flu—were discontinued in September.
However, the decreasing market share of Covid products is not unexpected nor unfavorable. It’s a positive trend since it will encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest in and conduct better research.
Remember that Operation Warp Speed, launched by the Trump administration, was to lower the risk and opportunity costs associated with creating vaccinations to stop a pandemic that would only happen once in a century. The vaccines flattened the curve for a while, using the expression that Anthony Fauci popularized. However, since the vaccinations were on sale in January 2021, two-thirds of Covid deaths have happened.
The biggest advantage of the jabs was that they gave political leaders the guts to remove harmful lockdowns and covert directives. The vaccinations were intended to be a one-time, two-shot regimen rather than government-sponsored blockbuster drugs that brought in tens of billions of dollars annually in sales.
However, Washington revised the memo. Its deceptive marketing campaigns, annual booster advice, vaccine requirements, and attempts to force electric vehicles on an unwilling population are only surpassed by its sales tactics. Heart attacks can be avoided with statins and diabetes medications. However, the United States does not see government advertisements pushing Lipitor or Ozempic.
In an era where innovation is happening at a breakneck pace, one detrimental consequence of the government’s vaccine boosterism is that it has made people more skeptical of pharmaceutical businesses.
Consider gene therapies: they may be able to treat genetic disorders that last a lifetime. These are one-time treatments, as opposed to the Covid vaccinations. Next month, the Food and Drug Administration is set to approve two treatments to reverse sickle-cell disease, which affects over 100,000 people in the US.
On November 12, researchers revealed that patients with heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia who are born with the technology could lower their cholesterol using Crispr, a gene-editing tool. To avoid frequent blood transfusions, Pfizer requests FDA approval for a gene treatment that allows hemophiliacs to generate a coagulant.
The first mRNA product to be licensed was the COVID vaccination, but the technique has considerably more potential in treating debilitating disorders like cancer, for which the risk-benefit analysis from unfavorable side effects is much more precise.
Together with Merck, Moderna is creating a customized melanoma vaccination that teaches the immune system to find and eliminate cancer cells. In a trial conducted last year, the vaccine and immunotherapy Keytruda lowered the chance of death or cancer recurrence by 44%. An early-stage trial indicated that a customized vaccine for pancreatic cancer would have averted or postponed relapses in roughly 50% of patients. This finding prompted BioNTech and Genentech to initiate a sizable trial for the vaccine last month.
Next is the new range of obesity therapies from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly, which are in a race against one another as Pfizer and AstraZeneca try to catch up with their medications. Overweight and obese patients—more than 70% of Americans—have been found to benefit from Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk medications, which help them lose 15% to 20% of their body weight. These advantages go beyond appearances. This month’s study revealed that overweight people with cardiovascular disease who took Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy had a 20% lower risk of heart attacks, strokes, and cardiovascular deaths over the course of three to four years. For every 100 patients, the medication saved one life by reducing the absolute chance of death by roughly 1%.
Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly are currently valued at more than $900 billion combined because of the enormous market potential and advantages for public health associated with these products. However, don’t count on the investor frenzy to last. Their profits will inevitably decline due to competition. Pharmaceutical companies can only enjoy a particular medication for so long before they have to develop a new, lucrative drug.
