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In reply to the discussion: Biden to announce 'historic partnership': Merck will help make Johnson & Johnson coronavirus vaccine [View all]BumRushDaShow
(128,906 posts)In general, "vaccines" are loss-leaders for big pharma so they usually have to be begged to "please please make some" because they make little or no money on them.
So many of the "big boys" sat this out and smaller companies like Moderna (or some of the subsidiaries of the bigger companies and/or partnerships like Pfizer did) were working on some after the ugly predecessor virus SARS-CoV-1 (commonly called "SARS" in 2003) - possibly so they could exploit the Asian market with a vaccine. But their doing that actually helped to get them in on the ground floor of development early on and thus in position to be ready to go with some vaccine candidates so they could set up trials very quickly.
Meanwhile the "big boys" like Merck and J&J and GSK sortof sat back or tried some halting efforts until they facepalmed with an "Oh shit!" and realized they were now missing out on not just one or two continents' cha-chings, but the WHOLE world's CHA-CHING - $$$$$$$$$!
So here we are.
I expect some of the push (although this vaccine is actually being made by a J&J subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals which is HQ'd in Belgium) is that J&J is an "American company".