Even as the Democrats and their media allies agitate against potentially safe, cheap and effective COVID-19 treatments, the Biden administration is now buying a new drug called Mulnupiravir, created by pharmaceutical giant Merck, at nearly 4,000% more than it costs to create.
According to The Intercept, the new drug Malnupiravir is being hailed as a “huge advance” in the treatment of COVID-19, and costs only $17.74 to produce.
Merck, likely looking at competitors Pfizer and Moderna who have made extreme profits selling vaccines during the pandemic, apparently realized this was an opportunity to expand their profits and decided to charge the government $712 for the same amount of medicine. This is nearly a 3913.53% increase from the cost to produce the supposed miracle drug.
The Intercept notes that “the pill could bring staggering profits to both Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics.” Ridgeback is apparently a “small Miami-based company,” that actually “licensed the medicine from Emory University in 2020 and two months later sold the worldwide rights to the drug to Merck for an undisclosed sum.” The company has been accused of “flipping” the drug for a profit.
To make matters more confusing, the COVID pill was originally a taxpayer funded project from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, part of the Department of Defense. Anthony Fuaci’s NIAID even provided $19 million “in additional grants” to make the project successful. It was originally meant to treat “Venezuelan equine encephalitis,” but strangely Democrats have not warned Americans against taking horse pills.
Some cynical observers may note the irony of Fauci being involved of funding both the research that some say led to the lab leak of COVID-19 and the pill used to treat COVID-19 at an astronomically inflated cost.
Pfizer, meanwhile, not to be upstaged, is racing to produce its own once daily pill that it hopes will become part of a regimen prescribed at the first positive COVID-19 test to people who have minimal symptoms and low risk of succumbing to the virus. Pfizer and Merck both may be simply seeing opportunities for financial gain. In undercover video released by Project Veritas, one Pfizer scientist said that the entirety of Pfizer is now run on “COVID money.”