But the current situation is one of history's greatest examples of why that sort of thinking simply doesn't work in the real world. The original SARS outbreak saw a brief flurry of interest from the private pharma companies, which died down the moment it was contained and it became clear there would be no big profits to be had. Government funding for research on it dried up almost completely soon after. The same pattern was repeated for MERS. The "pre-fusion stabilised" spike protein construct that both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are based on (the spike protein with two key amino acids replaced by proline so it's unable to "fire") came from a university lab, on government funding, and was rejected for publication 5 times. Meanwhile, the mRNA transfection technology that both vaccines are based on also came from publicly funded university research, which again was rejected for publication and virtually ignored at first as having no practical application. Yet between them, by shortening the length of the pandemic by at least a year, these two key breakthroughs have probably saved the world on the order of $1 trillion. And none of that would have been done by the private sector, because that's just not what they do. The need to satisfy their shareholders means they have to focus on profit above all else - and doing research with no clear immediate application, or working on tools to fight a virus that may or may not become a pandemic, is just not profitable. Not for any single company, anyway. That's exactly the sort of work that needs to be done as a public good.
