Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
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Some headlines for discussion:
4 Palestinians die after the storming of a UN food warehouse in Gaza. A distribution center from a group that agreed to work with Israeli restrictions meant to prevent aid being diverted or controlled by Hamas was also overrun. The head of this later group also resigned
Iran may pause enrichment for a year and ship off its highly enriched uranium in exchange for the US to recognize its right to enrich uranium for its civilian energy program and unfreeze funds.
Israel receives new U.S.-backed Gaza truce proposal: state media-Xinhua
Malta announces plan to officially recognize Palestine
Cholera outbreak in Sudan kills 172 in one week
Amnesty says over 10,000 killed in two years in Nigeria
Trump used offers of trade access to broker India-Pakistan ceasefire, claims U.S. Commerce Secretary
Eric Schmidt warns against China bombing US datacenters
UK announces $1B investment in cyber warfare
Ethiopia reports first mpox case
Trump admin cancels $766M in funding for moderna.
God damn these idiots. Most vaccine candidates against bird flu are reliant on fucking eggs for production. It's kind of a good idea to use mrna.
Moderna profits from COVID vaccines alone is estimated to be over $20-30 Billion. If their research is as promising as they claim it to be, why they need governmental funding? They have more than enough cash to fund, and I am sure there would be a lot of banks willing to extend them a loan. Why everything in the world must be financed by the US taxpayers?
Are you sure it wasn't 20-30bn revenue?
Look at their financials. They don't have that much cash. Market cap is only 10bn, btw.
No, the revenue was higher - around $40bn. Moderna also got a lot of public money for vaccine project. I am not sure what cash has to do with it. Profit and cash are completely different things - you can make a profit on X and then invest it in Y and have no cash at all or negative cash flow. In fact, a lot of R&D-heavy companies operate in exactly that manner. Or you could just distribute all the profits as dividends and have no cash on hand at all. I am not saying these things aren't related at all - if you have a lot of profits, you'd usually have some cash, but there's no direct relation between how much the company makes in profits on specific project and how much it has on hand in cash at any given moment.
As for market cap, it used to have 180bn market cap in 2021 at its peak. I'm sure there were some events happening in 2021 that are much less happening now that could explain that, but I am having hard time remembering what could it be...
I admit some of these figures may be inaccurate, there aren't official number of how much profit they made specifically from COVID, so I had to assemble the information from pieces lying around, and make some assumptions (like about what exactly generated their profits in 2020-2021 and doesn't in 2025 anymore) but I am pretty sure even if I was wrong it's not by an order of magnitude. So the original point still stands - they have enough money to do what they want to do. Of course, if they can get money of my pocket for free (with the taxman serving as the delivery boy) and then pocket all the profit, it's much more lucrative. But I don't see how comes I owe them that.
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