What company would not sign to be able to sell its product all over the world? The pandemic has been a “lucky stroke & rdquor; for some, and the impact of the massive sale of vaccines is already being transferred to the financial results of the most fortunate. Pfizer, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies, It has gone from a turnover of around 42,000 million in the pre-pandemic to a projection of 82,000 million for 2021. Moderna and Biontech, more recently created companies, have also generated profits for the first time in 2021.
The benefits of large companies they generate contradictory reactions that can range from admiration to envy or mistrust. The latter, mistrust, increases when the company or the concentration of the sector is larger, see banks or technology companies. And, of course, the pharmaceutical companies, which, being able to profit from our poor health, can generate more suspicion. Why do companies generate so much distrust, and more so if they have benefits? Is it a hard-earned mistrust or is it an exaggerated mistrust? Three possible reasons for mistrust are listed below.
The first derives from the structure of sales prices and business margins. All companies add a margin to the cost of production in order to make a profit. In the case of pharmaceutical companies, the cost of drug research and development is the main investment, but production can be very cheap. When it comes to products that can save lives, it is inevitable to ask, how many years does it take to offset the research and development stage with margins? We have another sample in the antigen tests, whose price broke records during Christmas to finally be limited to a maximum of 2.94 euros, and without it seeming that there are subsidies to alleviate the possible losses of selling the product at this price.
The second reason for mistrust is the ability of companies to put pressure on national governments and international organizations. In this sense, there are transparency mechanisms. Companies must register as lobis and declare the number of people hired who are dedicated to this activity, as well as the budget that the company dedicates. The Lobbyfacts platform indicates that, in 2020, Pfizer spent between 1.4 and 1.5 million euros in lobbying activities in the European Union (expenditure in 2019 was 800,000) and that there are three people accredited to meet with members of the Commission. The commission’s transparency portal registers the meetings and calls between pharmaceutical companies and commissioners, with names and dates. One of them has had eight contacts during 2021, another has had seven, and a third, two. Due to the coincidence of dates, it can be deduced which have been collective or which have been bilateral. Despite the wealth of data, one cannot avoid trying to figure out what is going on behind the scenes.
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The third reason is the use of tax havens and niches. It is not an illegal practice, but if we take into account that the cycle begins with the purchase of vaccines with public money, this generates benefits for the companies, they minimize the payment of taxes, which ends up affecting the volume of public funds available for health policies. In the financial information published by the Pfizer group in 2020, it can be seen that it has 316 companies, of which 82 are located in Delaware, the quintessential tax haven from the United States – which boasts of having as much population as the number of registered companies – and eight in Luxembourg, another tax haven.
The humans we make the “fundamental attribution error” according to which a person’s behavior is attributable to a lack of character and not to their circumstances. For example, if a person omits the greeting one day, we feel entitled to describe him as rude forever; instead, if I myself have this behavior, it is because that day I am very worried. Could we be making an attribution error when we distrust companies? Popular culture would advise us not to judge without first walking in the pharmaceutical company’s shoes for a few weeks.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com