Pharma is winning the big business popularity contest
0Reported today on The Verge
For the full article visit: https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/12/22529863/pharma-tech-opinion-pandemic-vaccines
Reported today in The Verge.
Pharma is winning the big business popularity contest
It used to be easy to hate pharmaceutical companies. Between soaring drug costs and the opioid crisis, the industry was widely perceived as one that put profits over people's health. In a 2019 Gallup survey, pharma was ranked dead last for positive perception among United States institutions. People had more positive feelings about the federal government than Big Pharma.
That year, technology companies were more popular. In a different survey, just under half of US adults had a positive view of the tech sector. It's hard to compare two different polls head to head, but the general trend is clear: in 2019, people felt better about tech companies than they did about pharma.
But then, the pandemic hit, and the country's recovery depended on the success of vaccines. Government scrutiny of tech companies - from both sides of the aisle - picked up steam. And the two industries seem to have swapped places in the nationwide popularity contest.
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The COVID-19 vaccines developed by companies like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna are astonishingly effective. Their rollout has helped reduce levels of virus in parts of the US to some of the lowest they've been since March 2020. That success led to a boost in popularity for the drug companies. There were more people who had a favorable view than people who had an unfavorable view of the companies in a March 2021 Data for Progress survey, just as the vaccination campaign in the US was picking up steam.
Meanwhile, during the pandemic, tech companies' popularity took a nosedive. Democrats and Republicans both spent the past year highlighting