One day this day will certainly come.
The day when humanity can say to itself: this is the day.
A great day for humanity.
Deliverance Day.
Freedom Day.
The day between the past and the future.
Day of aspiration.
And those who don't want to wait can say it right now.
“Today is a great day for science and humanity,” the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer wrote in its press release.
Remember this day: November 9, 2020.
You ask: what happened on this day?
Yes, actually, nothing.
It's just that Pfizer has issued its press release.
The press release details the trials of a coronavirus vaccine.
It does not say that the tests are over.
It does not say how many and when doses will be produced and how much it will cost.
Nothing is said at all that would outline the prospects for getting rid of the infection.
Well, like in Steven Soderbergh's film "Contagion", where we saw a surviving monkey and immediately understood: everything.
This day.
However, for many, this press release has become like a surviving monkey.
“In the end, we need to see the data, but that still doesn't detract from my enthusiasm.
It's fantastic, ”says Florian Krammer, a virologist at Icahn School of Medicine in New York.
“I think this is an outstanding achievement, even without the details, because there was no guarantee that the vaccine would be effective before we got the first test results,” says Eric Topol, cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translation Institute, La Jolla, Calif. ...
"Pfizer is a serious company and is unlikely to lie," commentators write on Facebook.
And here's how to say.
Pfizer, of course, is a serious company, but the list of its sins for almost 150 years of its existence (and there are far from only lies) is practically innumerable.
Wikipedia has only brought us the last 30 years.
In 1996, as a result of an illegal trial of the Trovan drug in Nigeria (Kano State), 11 children were killed and several dozen became disabled.
A criminal case has been opened against Pfizer.
In 1999, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) reported a case in which Pfizer falsified a series of clinical trials for the antifungal drug fluconazole and refused to provide researchers with the data needed for analysis.
More than 3,000 lawsuits have been brought against Pfizer in connection with illegal actions in the marketing of celecoxib and valdecoxib, a group of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs that are more dangerous than the old ones.
In 2004, the company sent an open letter to Danish doctors stating that Pfizer had reviewed the results of clinical trials of celecoxib in more than 400,000 patients and found no signs of the drug increasing the risk of cardiovascular effects.
The fine for this disinformation was $ 2,000.
In 2012, investor lawyers accused the company of illegally destroying documents related to the development of celecoxib and valdecoxib and exacerbated the situation by making false claims about the existence of a centralized database.
The company denied the existence of electronic databases containing millions of drug files, and said that such a database exists only in the imagination of the plaintiffs.
However, company officials subsequently acknowledged the existence of the base.
In 2004, Pfizer, pleading guilty to two crimes, paid $ 430 million to settle allegations of fraudulent advertising of the antiepileptic drug Neurontin (gabapentin) on an unapproved basis.
In September 2009, in the United States, Pfizer was fined a record $ 2.3 billion among American pharmaceutical companies for inappropriate advertising of four drugs.
The company's subsidiary admitted that it had mislabeled the drugs "with the intent to deceive or mislead."
Pfizer was sued for a $ 1 billion fine for bribing healthcare workers to market these drugs.
In 2011, Japan officially suspended the use of the Pfizer pneumonia and meningitis vaccine due to the death of four children between six months and two years of age, within three days of vaccination.
In fairness, we note that in the case of the coronavirus vaccine, it was not developed by Pfizer at all.
And even the German company Biontech.
But Pfizer is in charge of all the support.
Which, as we can see from the above (and this is a small part of even what is in Wikipedia), does not shun anything for the sake of profit.
Well, that is, "a great day for science and humanity" - this is the day when Pfizer shares rose by more than 15 percent at once.
Then, when it turned out that the tests were not finished, that the production was still unknown when it would start, that the vaccine had to be stored at a temperature of -70 degrees, the stock, of course, fell.
But those who knew about the publication of the press release in advance (and for some reason Pfizer shares were at a rather low level on that very day), of course, they got theirs.
And who knows - maybe we will one day see a new paragraph in the Wikipedia article about Pfizer.
About how awkward it turned out with the coronavirus vaccine.
In the meantime, of course, we have a great day for science and humanity.
Was.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.