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Is the Real Covid Pharmaceutical Bonanza Just Getting Started?

by Nicholas Williams
29 September 2022 7:30 PM

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), which is not a manufacturer of a Covid vaccine and thus did not benefit from Covid vaccine sales, recently announced second quarter 2022 results that surpassed expectations. This has enabled an upward adjustment in the profit forecast for the full year 2022. The Telegraph reported that GSK shares are up 44% from last spring.

Sales of GSK’s shingles vaccine, Shingrix, was the main driver of growth. Shingrix sales more than doubled in the second quarter, being April to June 2022, pushing up total GSK sales by 13%.

Shingrix is a relatively new shingles vaccine that my doctor tells me is considered an improvement on Zostervax, the traditional shingles vaccine. However, Shingrix is not cheap. A two dose course in Hong Kong costs £600, in the U.K. £440 and in the U.S. around $300. Allowing for distributor and retail margins, I estimate that GSK’s income would be about one third of the retail price. Let’s assume therefore that GSK earns £150 per two dose course on a worldwide average basis.

According to GSK, sales of Shingrix doubled to £731M, an increase of £366M in one fiscal quarter. At £150 per course, this equates to an unexpected increase in sales and thus vaccine recipients in one fiscal quarter of 2.4 million from the expected quarterly run rate.

When asked the reason for this surprising jump in Shingrix sales, GSK’s CEO stated: “It comes after countries started to shift their focus away from Covid towards other jab campaigns.”

Nobody seems to have questioned this statement. In the period in question, April to June 2022, Covid vaccine programmes were still highly active and indeed many programmes across the world were on to their third or fourth booster.  

Though extremely painful, shingles is not life threatening and generally affects people over 50. It affects persons who have previously had chickenpox, often in their childhood, and is triggered mainly by overwork, lack of sleep or similar stress-related reasons. Shingles attacks the nervous system, especially nerve endings, and hence is often intensely painful.

Vaccination against shingles is not routinely given to all over-50s in most countries. Despite this, according to GSK, in the middle of a continuing Covid campaign, countries opted to shift their focus to vaccinating against shingles?

Is this likely? If indeed there was a shift to more usual vaccination programmes, would vaccination against shingles have been prioritised? Additionally, given the cost of this vaccine, and weighing up the public benefit, would most countries or patients really switch to Shingrix from the much cheaper Zostervax?  

All of this seems unlikely. So what has driven a 50% increase in sales of a very expensive vaccine not part of the usual standard vaccination programme?

Further, taking the USA as an example, the ratio of Shingrix to Zostervax sales is 50-50.  In most other countries, Shingrix has less than 50% of the market. If 2.4 million people in one quarter had the Shingrix vaccine, how many more had Zostervax? It is not inconceivable that some 5 million more people than usual were vaccinated against shingles in one quarter.

Can this really be explained by countries restarting their normal vaccination programmes, and for no particular reason adding a shingles vaccines into the standard mix?

I may have the answer. In my 50s I twice had shingles. I can vouch for how painful it is. Since then I have had the traditional shingles vaccine jab every few years and had been shingles free for 15 years. I have also consciously improved how I manage my business travel and lifestyle to reduce travel stress and tiredness, which had been the previous drivers in my case.

In March and April 2021 I had my first and second Pfizer Covid jabs. On the day following the second jab I developed a chickenpox like rash and started to experience nerve pain. As I am something of a shingles veteran, I immediately thought “I am getting shingles!” And this is, indeed, what developed quite badly over the next few days.

I rang my doctor who said, “It can’t be shingles, you are vaccinated.” However, after examining me the next day he agreed I was right. I asked what had brought this on? Could it be the Covid jabs? He replied: “I cannot explain why, but it is not likely to be connected to the Covid jab.  Just unfortunate timing.”

My doctor then prescribed the usual medication for shingles and it cleared up in a week or so (for some it can take many weeks). My doctor then suggested I spend £600 having the new and better Shingrix vaccine, “as obviously your body is now immune to the traditional vaccine”. In his defence, this was very early days for assessing vaccine side-effects.

I decided I would not spend £600. Instead, I set about researching on the internet.

Since then it has transpired that shingles is a recognised reaction to the Pfizer vaccine in older people. Shingles is an inflammation of the nerves and nerve endings. The mRNA vaccines are now known to affect the nervous system in a number of different ways. It appears that triggering shingles is one of them (or else it is a result of a temporary depression of the immune system, as some have suggested).

Significantly, my doctor has confirmed he has now had other patients who contracted shingles after Covid vaccination. Most took up his £600 offer of Shingrix. It does not take much to imagine what a multiplier effect such advice and take-up across the world would have on the sales of Shingrix and the profits of GSK.

Something must be happening across the world for sales of an existing single product to double in a quarter by 2.4 million. In the absence of any other new factors, one can conclude that the drive in sales must have been due to one side-effect of the Covid vaccines. Equally one can imagine the booster effect for the makers of Zostervax too.

Whilst not all pharmaceutical companies have produced enormously profitable Covid vaccines, the emerging medical toll, side-effects and general aftermath of these vaccines and lockdowns is only just emerging. I suspect all pharmaceutical companies will now share in a second Covid profits bonanza driven by medications prescribed to deal with the collective aftermath of Covid. GSK has lit the way.

Nicholas Williams is a businessman living in Hong Kong.

Tags: Big PharmaGlaxoSmithKlineShinglesVaccineVaccine side-effects

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23 Comments
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VWTS
VWTS
2 years ago

Italian broadcast TV has started showing an advert for a shingles jab. Before I saw it, I wasn’t aware that any such jabs existed. Sounds like a case of pharma companies exploiting the public’s sensitization – appropriately enough – to vaccination campaigns.

70
-1
JeremyP99
JeremyP99
2 years ago
Reply to  VWTS

UM. Happening over here as well. Government sponsored. Never seen ’em before (I’m 71) We know two people who both had long-lasting shingles after the jab, and given we know the jab resurrects old viruses, well….. at least our neighbour who (who took 2 months to get shot of it) knows it was the booster and will have no more jabs.

42
0
NickR
NickR
2 years ago

Will the author submit to further covid ‘vaccines’. Does he regret having had the 2 he’s had?

46
-1
JXB
JXB
2 years ago
Reply to  NickR

We are become a Nation of jab-junkies.

6
0
Chris P
Chris P
2 years ago

If GSK is not a manufacturer of a COVID vaccine it is not for the want of trying. GSK agreed with UK government in March 2021 to manufacture part of the Novavax vaccine. Patrick Vallance had a £600,000 shareholding in GSK, so there is a potential conflict of interest.

42
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Hugh
Hugh
2 years ago
Reply to  Chris P

Unbalanced?
(I can’t remember if they was knighted).

Last edited 2 years ago by Hugh
11
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sophie123
sophie123
2 years ago
Reply to  Hugh

He was already knighted before the covid farce. LIKE SIR JIMMY SAVILE.

5
0
A Heretic
A Heretic
2 years ago

In his defence, this was very early days for assessing vaccine side-effects.

and this is why one shouldn’t sign up to a medical experiment.

59
0
Epi
Epi
2 years ago
Reply to  A Heretic

Indeed and why his doctor couldn’t and wouldn’t have been able to inform him of any long term side effects absolutely criminal.

24
0
Hugh
Hugh
2 years ago

Will the Times muppets instruct their journalist Oliver Wright (who wrote on big pharma corruption for the Independent in 2014) to investigate this?

Oh no, of course they won’t, they have a conflict of interest.

51
0
Dr G
Dr G
2 years ago

My experience is that a high proportion of doctors seem to be the useful idiots for Big Pharma. When taking a drug history from new patients, it is commonplace for them to be taking antihypertensives (exercise programs are at least as effective), statins (unnecessary in most patients) and antidepressents (ineffective in most patients), and often for no clear reason anyway. The product of intensive advertising to doctors, and the desire of doctors to “do something”.

63
0
Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
2 years ago
Reply to  Dr G

Doctors are people who prescribe medicines about which they know little, to treat illnesses about which they know even less, in people about whom they know nothing at all.

Present company excepted, of course, Dr G!

59
0
Dr G
Dr G
2 years ago
Reply to  Marcus Aurelius knew

Love the quote Joe, and thanks for excluding me!

17
0
Jane G
Jane G
2 years ago

Hell’s teeth! I can sense people’s bloodstreams fizzing like a glass of Andrew’s with the cocktails of drugs to which they are submitting.

In the days when I took peoples’ medical histories the average number of pills taken was about 6 or 7, the worst I had took 13 per day. So much for the NHS ‘health checks’ for 50-75s; I guess it was just a sales pitch to push statins. (I was never invited for another ‘check’ when I said I wouldn’t take these things)

Why are people so stupid? Is it because they don’t have to pay for this polypharmacy?
My OH has been taking anti-epileptics for about 25 years and now has very bad hand tremors (stand well clear if he pours you a cup of tea…) Not sure if it’s connected but it’s a smoking gun, as far as I’m concerned. No way was he having the jabs on top of that.

Let people poison themselves: I’ve given up caring as long as they leave me alone.

53
0
Sue
Sue
2 years ago

Hmmm. So has this got something to do with me being offered the shingles vaccine, out of the blue, when I had my flu vaccine in the autumn of 2021? Never had shingles, never before been offered shingles vaccine. I declined, but after reading this am very pleased I did.
I have peripheral neuropathy following chemo five years ago, and had what I consider to be a neurological reaction following my second shot of AZ in April 2021. It caused severe neuro type pain in my left leg below the knee which impaired my ability to sustain walking activities for about ten months. I’ve never bothered to consult my GP, on the basis they’d likely dismiss my reasoning and would have had no remedies to offer anyway. Cleared now, but no more Covid vaccines for me, and definitely on this report, no shingles vax either. They can keep their flu vax as well. Already had our 2nd run in with Covid earlier this month anyway.

34
0
Dr G
Dr G
2 years ago
Reply to  Sue

Unfortunately it is a case of caveat emptor Sue. Many doctors are unwittingly doing the marketing and sales on behalf of the pharmaceutical companies, following “guidelines” which are often written by researchers who are in the pocket of the drug companies, and pushed by bureaucrats who have no involvement in clinical medicine.

38
0
Bloss
Bloss
2 years ago
Reply to  Sue

Like you I was surprised to be offered a shingles vaccine, by text in my case. Have had a phone call re a flu jab and another text offering a covid ‘booster’ and have declined all. Enough’s enough.

19
0
JohnK
JohnK
2 years ago

News to me re the availability of Shingrix. I don’t know if that’s good value at £440 a pop, though – at least in my case it would be a waste, as I’ve already had a Shingles attack. It happened to me in winter 2012/13, and it wasn’t that bad. Not painful at all, just unpleasant to see etc. It was dealt with using a prescription of Aciclovir (recommended by the local pharmacist and signed off by the GP next door), which seemed to be useful. It was considered to be the long term aftermath of childhood Chickenpox, which I had decades ago.

6
0
Epi
Epi
2 years ago

It’s the gift that keeps on giving in many shapes and sizes.

13
0
fledwidge
fledwidge
2 years ago

GSK’s share price performance cited in this article may have been correct earlier in this cycle but is certainly not now as the stock has been poor since the spin of Haleon

1
0
JXB
JXB
2 years ago

‘Since then I have had the traditional shingles vaccine jab every few years and had been shingles free for 15 years.’

Up there with CoVid vaccination makes getting it ‘less serious’.

A man living in a London suburb observes his neighbour every morning nailing a fried egg to his gate post on his way out to work. After some time the man cannot let this puzzle go unexplained. One morning the man asks his neighbour: “Why do you nail a fried egg to the gate post every morning?”

The neighbour replies, “To keep away the lions.”

The man says, “But there are no lions round here.”

”See. It works”, replies the neighbour.

I had Shingles when I was 38. I have not been vaccinated for it (nor for CoVid – which I haven’t had) and I have been Shingles free for 31 years. Ergo: not being vaccinated is best.

The dormant chicken pox virus which resides in nerve roots in the spinal column reactivates when the immune system is under stress. Vaccination of any sort puts the immune system under stress, the mRNA jungle-juice seemingly more so, with predictable results. Increased CoVid infections, outbreak of Shingles.

As for Shingles vaccines, it is not clear how a vaccine of a virus you already have in your body, which in the past has caused an active disease which was overcome by natural immune response, works. I wonder when the controlled, randomised, blind study was carried out and how?

Like ‘flu vaccines – they work because Big Pharma says so and their best salesmen – Governments and doctors and pharmacists who make money out of them, say so. Like the mRNA jollop. And people believe it.

And cases of chicken pox are on the rise too… coincidentally… along with young adults just dropping dead for no apparent reason and an increase in cardiac disease – in the young – but all this can be attributed to climate change we are told by experts.

10
0
Chris P
Chris P
2 years ago
Reply to  JXB

I think your point is explained well by the writers of the Simpsons: –

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw

3
0
sophie123
sophie123
2 years ago

I haven’t read the whole thing but there are some errors within.

  • The US list price (AWP) is higher than cited.
  • Shingrix holds over 90pct share of the US market for shingles. Zostavax is much less efficacious and was only really sold in the U.K. outside US
  • Sales took a massive knock vs launch trajectory when the pandemic started and “shelter in place” orders were issued.
  • there is now a rebound that accounts for much of the growth
  • This is GSK’s big blockbuster – regardless of the pandemic, they were always going to push this hard and have to do so, because it is one of their few growth drivers

That said obviously the covid jab increases shingles risk, so if you were stupid enough to take that, you probably should go all-in and make sure you are shingles vaccinated. I’m not sure that makes for a good marketing message though…”Hey! Were you dumb enough to damage your immune system with an experimental covid jab? Well now you need THIS jab too, sucker!”

The real impact will come when the amyloid proteins start to build up in brains and veins. That’s going to be the REAL drug bonanza.

3
0

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