Business at Its Best

With a big hand from the government, pharmaceutical companies delivered the vaccine that the world desperately needed. Here’s how something in 2020 went right for a change

- By Drew Armstrong

An All-Hands-on Deck Effort

Just a few in the army of scientists and leaders who made the record-fast development of a Covid-19 vaccine happen

AT THE END OF 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic started, the two best-known faces of the pharmaceutical business were the imprisoned Martin Shkreli and the lawsuit-laden opioid makers at Purdue Pharma LP. The rest of the industry was perhaps best known for the skyrocketing prices of its medicines. In a Gallup Poll of the public’s view of various business sectors, pharma was ranked at the bottom, behind the oil industry, advertising and public relations, and lawyers.

Who’d have guessed that a year later pharma would be getting credit for saving the world? From cruise lines to meatpackers, business will have plenty to answer for in its handling of the pandemic, but this part of it worked. The Covid-19 vaccines developed by the drug industry, in partnership with governments, will almost certainly prevent hundreds of thousands of American deaths and millions more around the world. They will revive trillions of dollars in economic activity, let grandparents see grandchildren, and finally bring an end to a year that has—sing it together one last time as the ball drops over an empty Times Square—really sucked. In a time where almost everything else went wrong, the vaccine effort was something that went (mostly) right.