Did Pfizer really not get any public money to develop its successful coronavirus vaccine?

Would big profits for the US pharmaceutical giant be the free market in action? Or would this represent socially unacceptable pandemic profiteering? Ben Chu considers the options

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla sold company stock worth $5.6m on  the day of the vaccine announcement (AP)

The news from Pfizer and BioNTech that their coronavirus vaccine has proved broadly effective in trials added hundreds of billions of dollars to global stock markets on Monday as investors hopes surged that this medical breakthrough would enable economies to return to normal relatively soon.  

The share price of travel companies, leisure firms and real estate companies all jumped.

So too, of course, did the stock prices of America’s Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, with the former putting on $15bn (£11.3bn) of value and the latter $4bn.