Sales of Merck's measles vaccine, the MMR combo vaccine that also includes mumps and rubella, continues to soar as Merck reported this week that in the second quarter of 2019, sales for the measles vaccine were 58% higher than the year before, at $675 million.
As CNBC reports:
"Pharmaceutical giant Merck said Tuesday that high consumer demand for its measles vaccines, amid the largest U.S. outbreak in decades, helped boost sales in its second quarter.
Sales of children’s vaccines, which includes the New Jersey-based company’s MMR vaccine, for measles, mumps and rubella, jumped 58% year over year to $675 million, Merck announced in its second-quarter earnings report Tuesday.
Merck, which is the sole U.S. supplier of measles vaccines, said the strong growth was due in part to this year’s measles outbreak..."
Is there any other sector of the U.S. economy that is more profitable than vaccines? Consider these facts:
1. The U.S. Government gave legal immunity to pharmaceutical companies in 1986, because Big Pharma threatened Congress by stating they would stop manufacturing and selling vaccines due to the many lawsuits brought against them for vaccine injuries. Vaccines have proliferated in the market place since 1986 as a result, with the CDC recommending up to 69 doses of vaccines to children before they reach the age of 18.
2. In most states, the CDC recommended vaccine schedule is required for children at attend school.
3. The U.S. Government owns several patents on vaccines, and the CDC is the largest purchaser of vaccines, using U.S. taxpayer funds to purchase more than $5 billion in vaccines each year.
Is there any other market in the U.S. where there is virtually no liability for your products, the government requires you to purchase the product, and the government itself is the largest customer of those products? Also, most vaccines have only one manufacturer approved by the U.S. government for sale in the U.S., such as the MMR vaccine, creating a monopoly for that product.
And if that is not enough to ensure business success, local health departments can pick and choose which illnesses should be classified as "outbreaks" which are then announced by the compliant corporate media, largely funded by the pharmaceutical industry, to boost sales of a vaccine even more.