We Paid to Develop Merck’s Covid Pill

And now they’re charging us a 4,000% markup on it

Cory Doctorow
GEN
Published in
5 min readOct 6, 2021

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A US $100 bill; in place of Jefferson, there is a covid molecule; the US Treasury seal has been replaced by Merck’s wordmark and the $100 indicia has been swapped for Merck’s wordmark.

Comparing the government to a household or a business isn’t merely inapt (a government is a currency creator, while a household is a currency user — their budgeting constraints are totally unrelated) it’s also profoundly dishonest.

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