The New York Times reports that pharmaceutical executives are reaping huge profits from stock sales, which have reached over $1 billion since March of 2020. As examples, the value of shares in Regeneron, a biotech company working with the US government to develop a treatment for COVID-19, has increased by over 70% since February; its executives and board members have sold nearly $700 million in Executives at Moderna, who received US government funding to develop their experimental COVID-19 vaccine, have sold $248 million of shares; Moderna’s founder and chairman sold more than $68 million shares in a single day. Shares in Vaxart, which is developing an oral COVID-19 vaccine, soared after the company announced that OWS had selected its product (although the company did not disclose that it was for a trial in primates rather than an advance order for the vaccine). Stock options received in June by Vaxart’s chief executive, Andrei Floroiu, increased in value from $4.3 million to $28 million in a month, generating suspicion that the company overstated its involvement in OWS to raise stock prices. Source
