Tamiflu, Rumsfeld and Cheney......Swine flu is a profit-generator . . .

[Guest guest]

Makers of Antivirals, Vaccines and Face Masks Poised to Turn Flu into

Profits

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN

April 28, 2009

 

Face-masks and hand-sanitizer are flying off the

shelves and pharmaceutical stocks are

skyrocketing on fears that a swine flu outbreak could go global.

 

Even as much of the economy took a blow from news

of the potential epidemic, some companies with

the tools to tackle a wide outbreak have already

seen a bump in their share prices and could be

poised to profit if the disease continues its deadly spread around the

world.

 

Photos splashed across newspapers worldwide

Monday showed Mexicans wearing surgical-style

face masks and public health professionals urged

Americans to wash their hands using alcohol-base

sanitizers to stem the spread of the disease.

 

Mask sales already saw sharp increases. By Monday

evening the top two best sellers on Amazon.com in

the Health and Personal Care section were face masks.

 

The top seller, a 3M surgical mask labeled for

" bird flu " use, had sold out on Amazon. Another

manufacturer, Alpha Pro Tech, announced it would

increase production to keep pace with demand.

 

Sales of hand sanitizer have been steadily on the

rise for years, and a spike in mask sales seemed

noticeable on Monday. Purell, the sanitizer

market leader produced by Johnson & Johnson, has

seen its sales double since 2003 to nearly half

or $42 million of total $90.3 million market,

according to Information Resources Inc., a Chicago-based market research

firm.

 

" The hand sanitizer business will soar, " said

Professor Mahmud Hassan, director of the

Pharmaceutical Management MBA Program at Rutgers

University. " People will use more napkins and

lotions. That business will go up. "

 

Of course, J & J is a huge worldwide company with

sales of over $140 billion a year, so sanitizer

profits aren't likely to move the company's

shares, which closed down slightly Monday in an overall bad day for stocks.

 

Manufacturers of antiviral drugs, companies

gearing up to produce a vaccine, and those firms

that make and sell low-tech products like

hand-sanitizer and face-masks are turning profits

in an otherwise skittish and down market.

 

" If this becomes a major pandemic, no one over

the long-term will profit. No one makes money if

everyone gets sick. In the short term, however,

there are a couple of drugs that the CDC says

could potentially treat swine flu and those

companies are worth watching in the short term, "

said Dr. Mark Schoenebaum, a physician turned

biotechnology analyst for Deutsche Bank.

 

As of Monday, some 1,600 people were suspected to

have the disease in Mexico, killing as many as

149 people. In the U.S. 40 cases have been

confirmed, with no related deaths recorded. The

virus, considered dangerous because of an ability

to pass from person to person, has also been

found in Canada, Spain and the United Kingdom.

 

Companies gearing up for swine flu, including

Roche, Gilead Sciences and GlaxoSmithKline, the

manufacturers of the leading antiviral flu

medications, are best positioned to see a boost

in profits if the disease escalates to epidemic proportions, analysts said.

 

Tamiflu, which comes in pills, was developed by

Gilead and manufactured by Roche. Gilead

continues to collect royalties from Roche's sales

of the drug. Both companies' share prices spiked

soon after the U.S. government allowed for its

stockpiles of the drug to be made publicly available.

 

Gilead stock surged to $47.53 at the end of the

day Monday, up 3.78 percent. Roche rose to $31.72, up 4.34 percent.

 

<snip>

 

Companies that make antivirals are not the only

firms poised to profit from the outbreak.

 

Firms that specialize in vaccines, disease

detection and low-tech prevention tools like hand

sanitizer and face masks may also benefit, said Hassan.

 

Race to Produce a Swine Flu Vaccine

 

" The race is on to develop a vaccine, " Hassan

said. " The first company to develop a vaccine

with the patent and gets a monopoly wins. "

 

A potential leader in the race, he said, is

Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine development division of Sanofi Aventis.

 

Sanofi already manufactures a popular seasonal

flu vaccine and a pediatric vaccine. It is

currently awaiting word from the CDC to begin

work on a swine flu vaccine, said company spokeswoman Donna Cary.

 

" We are preparing to begin production if we are

requested to do so. The CDC first needs to

characterize the virus and then develop a seed

virus. We're getting everything ready now, " she said.

 

Another contender in the race to develop a

vaccine is Novavax, which has already developed a

multi-strain vaccine that has yet to be approved by the FDA.

 

Shares of Novavax, a small Maryland developer of

vaccines, soared $1.30, or 79 percent, to close at $2.50.

 

ABCNews Internet Ventures

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/SwineFlu/story?id=7443409 & page=1

~~~

 

Swine flu alert clears old stock of Tamiflu

http://curezone.org/forums/am.asp?i=1409188

~~~

 

Tamiflu, Rumsfeld and Cheney

by owendebanks

Mon Apr 27, 2009 at 03:50:30 PM PDT

 

On November 1, 2005 President George W. Bush went

to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda,

Maryland to hold a high profile press conference,

to announce a 381-page plan, officially called

the

<http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/pdf/part1.pdf>Pandemic

Influenza Strategic Plan

 

<snip>

 

The Secretary of Defense, the man who allegedly

supported the use of contrived intelligence to

justify the war on Iraq, who oversaw billions of

dollars in Pentagon no-bid contracts to Bechtel

and Halliburton corporations, is now poised to

reap huge gains for a flu panic his

Administration has done everything it could to promote.

 

<snip>

 

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/27/725102/-Tamiflu,-Rumsfeld-and-Cheney-