Of course. And if they spent $100M on R&D and it failed? What then? Would the gov’t pay those costs? And maybe a small profit?

It’s easy to complain about Pharma profits when you ignore all the money spent that goes “poof”.

When was the last time one of there big pharma companies went bankrupt, barring massive fraud?

I'd be glad to be shown some examples, otherwise it's "privatize profits, socialize losses".

Bankrupt? Not many. Bought for pennies on the dollar? Plenty. Where is Upjohn? Parke-Davis? Schering-Plough? All companies with multi-billion dollar sales figures and all swallowed up when the money stopped coming in.

And if you fold in the start-ups who have one shot and if it doesn’t work out? Plenty of those. They go bankrupt.

Busting the patents on Covid vaccines would be “socializing the gains and privatizing the losses”.

Survivorship bias. The bankrupt businesses never get the chance to become big and so you don't hear about them.

However I'm certain that the category "bankrupt pharma company" is littered with examples.

How many of these small companies are

a) researching Covid-19 vaccines?

b) will they actually get to produce millions and millions of doses?

Almost every case I know of, it's a huge company or even a state owned one.

Who are we actually arguing for/against? The hypothetical "small pharma"?

Keep in mind that just like for banking, due to the amount of (necessary) regulation, there aren't many small pharma companies out there.

Well Biontech wasnt big until beginning of this year.