Side effects include CEO bonuses

There's money being made on Covid, and you can bet Big Pharma is right up front for its heaping helping of moolah. 

They're insisting on their international patent rights, rather than letting them go and thus saving the world without making a profit. Boo.

Then there's the whole Johnson & Johnson vaccine thing. It kills a tiny fraction of the women who receive it. There are other vaccines that don't, as far as we know, kill anybody. That's enough for me to say, discontinue the J&J. Sorry, boys.

But it's not enough for our politicians, who are showered with drug company cash every election cycle. People who include the Patty Murrays and Cory Bookers of the world; don't kid yourself. They'll bend over backward for the Johnson & Johnson types, any day of the week.

Don't you think the quick resumption of the J&J is going to ramp up vaccine hesitancy quite a bit? Seems counter-productive. But the Benjamins.

Has anybody seen the government supply contracts with the drug companies for the vaccines? Those would be interesting reads indeed. Particularly what they say about who pays what if there's a problem.

Don't get me wrong, I'm eternally grateful for the vaccines. But I'm not fool enough to think that big bucks aren't involved. Or that those bucks don't affect important decisions, with lives on the line.