The mistakes pharmaceutical companies made with their Covid vaccines

Covid-19 looked as if it would mark the start of a golden age for the pharmaceutical industry. It’s not worked out that way, says Matthew Lynn.

Old lady getting a Covid jab
Covid-19 was no game-changer for Big Pharma
(Image credit: © Matthew Horwood/Getty Images)

Rewind only a year, and it seemed reasonable to assume that Covid-19 would transform the prospects of the major pharmaceutical multinationals.

Three safe and effective vaccines were developed in a year; regulators worked at record speed to get them approved and governments pre-bought doses in the millions to ramp up production – perhaps the same would happen for a whole range of other diseases.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.