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Left party leader Riexinger in front of the Biontech factory in Marburg
Photo: Nadine Weigel / dpa
The world lacks corona vaccine?
Bernd Riexinger has a tried and tested idea: We'll take it from the rich.
On Wednesday, the left boss posted himself in front of the Biontech factory gate in Marburg to heat the owners of the vaccine manufacturer.
"People before profits!" Was his demand: Biontech should kindly release its vaccine licenses.
Now nobody would deny that creative solutions are needed in the pandemic.
As with Biontech, for example, but long before Riexinger was on the mat.
Last year the company entered into a cooperation with the American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.
Then she bought the production facility in Marburg, which had once belonged to the Swiss Novartis group.
And the French manufacturer Sanofi will probably also fill more than 125 million vaccine doses for Biontech from summer.
One can safely assume that everyone involved will get their money's worth.
But it really cannot be said that Biontech's owners are sitting on their secret recipe and not giving it to anyone.
For leftists like Riexinger, it should be an irritating experience.
While government agencies are failing in rows during the corona crisis, school servers are collapsing, health authorities are communicating by fax, the profit-driven private sector has proven to be astonishingly reliable.
The economy's supply chains are largely intact, factories are up and running, and supermarket shelves are full.
Lidl sells FFP2 masks for less than one euro.
Even the suppliers of toilet paper have adapted their supply to the increased demand in a flash, without the left having to threaten to socialize cellulose factories.
Riexinger's enemy image of the rich ("We don't shoot them; we are already using them for useful work") could actually crack.
Without billionaires there would probably be no vaccine from Germany;
lucky that those concerned have not yet been expropriated.
The billionaire twins Andreas and Thomas Strüngmann are behind Biontech.
The Hamburg company Evotec was co-financed early on by a member of the Oetker clan.
At Curevac in Tübingen, on the other hand, they work with the money from SAP founder Dietmar Hopp: a man who has been bullied by football fans as a “son of a bitch” for years.
Now the same fans are hoping that they will soon be vaccinated so that they can even go back to the stadium.
While government agencies fail, the profit-driven private sector ensures full shelves.
What would happen if Riexinger prevailed with the demand for a worldwide license release?
I'm afraid things will turn out badly.
The left may dream of socialism.
But relying on a Venezuelan state pharmaceutical industry to fight the virus seems risky to me.
Nor should we wait for the vaccine from Cuba, which is allegedly currently being tested in Iran.
I see it this way: If some get rich with the fact that everyone will soon be vaccinated, I should be fine.
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