10.6 billion taxpayer dollars down the drain

 

The ongoing chicanery and outright fraud of the COVID-19 imbroglio continues to infuriate me.  Here's the latest round.

Back in November 2021, the White House paid drugmaker Pfizer nearly $5.3 billion ($5,290,000,000) for 10 million treatment courses of its experimental COVID-19 treatment.  Paxlovid is an antiviral combination of nirmatrelvir and ritonavir.

. . .

In addition to the $5.3 billion already committed, in January the U.S. announced a confidential additional “commitment” to order an additional 10 million doses (at the price of 5.3 billion dollars more, for a total of $10.6 billion) giving Pfizer highly sought after “super blockbuster status” (defined as having 10 billion dollars in sales of a single drug).  “The administration is firmly committed to proceeding with the (additional) purchase” a White House official stated in April 2022.

. . .

Pfizer had secretly lowered its own bar following its EUA after the White House had committed to purchasing $5.3 billion dollars of product.  Pfizer stated:

“Following the Emergency Use Authorization of Paxlovid for individuals at high risk of progression to severe COVID-19, the protocol was amended to exclude high-risk individuals and allow enrollment of patients without risk factors for progression to severe COVID-19 who were either unvaccinated, or whose last COVID-19 vaccination occurred more than 12 months from enrollment.”  (emphasis added)

This way, Pfizer was able to administer its drug to a less severely ill, and healthier population in hopes of having a superior efficacy signal and a decreased safety signal, but it still failed to show an adequate clinical effect on any of its prospective protocol-established endpoints.

. . .

By trusting Pfizer and making a considerable gamble with taxpayer funds, the White House flushed $5.3 billion taxpayer dollars largely down the drain.  The White House is now on the hook for an additional $5.3 billion for a total of $10.6 billion for an ineffective COVID-19 treatment that Pfizer had already developed, when they could have spent almost nothing and promoted the established safety and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin with an established, superior outcome.  More practically, since Delta and Omicron are mild, we could have just let COVID-19 mutations run their course and treat infections symptomatically with available generic pharmacology so that individuals can obtain natural immunity.

What a preposterous and outrageous waste of taxpayer money.  Will President Biden or anyone else be held responsible?  I think we all know the answer to that.

There's more at the link.

Consider what could have been done with that $10.6 billion:

• Milling and resurfacing a 4-lane highway costs approximately $1.25 million per mile.  We could have repaired and resurfaced no less than 8,480 miles of US roads - something that's desperately needed in many parts of the country.
• With the exception of the first in the class, frigates of the US Navy's new Constellation class will cost plus-or-minus $900 million apiece.  Therefore, that $10.6 billion could have bought almost a dozen badly-needed new warships.
• The US Strategic Petroleum Reserve was 76.4% full as of May 4, 2022.  Current crude oil prices are approximately $100 per barrel at the time of writing.  That $10.6 billion could have purchased 106 million barrels of oil, enough to fill the SPR to 91.2% of its capacity, giving us a significant boost in energy reserves in case of emergency.

I think any or all of those (or a combination of them) would have been a far better investment of taxpayer dollars than throwing it away on an experimental drug whose effectiveness has been shown to be sorely lacking in the trials we know about.  (Considering Pfizer's duplicity in concealing data from tests of its COVID-19 vaccine - not that you'll see much mention of that in the mainstream media;  you'll need to seek it out from alternative sources - I daresay there's far more to the new tests than we know about, and I suspect most of it is not flattering to Pfizer.)

Will anything be done to rectify the situation?  Will the Biden administration even try to get a refund from Pfizer now that its new drug has been shown to be less than effective?  Will there be any consequences for those who committed this country to that expenditure before it could be demonstrated to be worthwhile?  Your guess is as good as mine . . . but mine's not very positive.

Peter