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Editor's Note: Hedgeye Health Policy analyst Emily Evans explores where Pfizer (PFE) is going in a post-Covid world. For more research and analysis, click to learn more about Health Policy Unplugged. |
webcast Synopsis
After clean water, dependable nutrition and domestic peace, nothing has extended the human lifespan quite like vaccines. Smallpox was such a grim reaper, English Baron Jeffery Amherst found it handy for eradicating the native populations of Massachusetts in the 17th century. During the urbanization of the U.S. in the 20th century, Polio, a disease that was often rebuffed by the robust immune system of rural children, became a scourge for urban and suburban families. Measles can kill and blind if contracted by children, And so on.
For the most part, vaccines administered in the United States have followed a long process for approval by the FDA. The chicken pox vaccine, which arguably is more of a "nice to have" than a "have to have" in the vaccine arsenal, spent 21 years making its way to the child immunization schedule, the highest bar to clear for vaccine manufacturers.
PFE's BNT162 Covid vaccines, marketed under the Comirnaty for certain populations, has followed a much different path. Enabled by political trends; heavy direct-to-consumer marketing that may have suppressed media interest; and the vilification of dissenters by leaders of federal health and science agencies;. the Covid vaccines have been approved for an unheard of span of population cohorts, beginning as early as six months, in record time.
Whatever public good PFE generated in early 2020, it has been washed away by a dearth of clinical evidence, mandates, public resistance and more than a few conspiracy theories. With a shift in power in the air, a president in decline, and the case against safety and efficacy for PFE's vaccines in certain cohorts building, the political and regulatory future of PFE's vaccine program dims.
