How a Struggling Company Won $1.6 Billion to Make a Coronavirus Vaccine
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/health/coronavirus-vaccine-novavax.html

"The market wants to believe in fairy tales," said David Maris, the managing partner of Phalanx Investment Partners and a longtime analyst covering the pharmaceutical industry. He said investors wanted to believe that - like Cinderella - the companies that couldn't go to the ball would eventually win the prince.

"It sometimes happens," he said. "Usually it doesn't."

"The U.S. darling of the moment is Novavax," said Kate Elder, a senior vaccines policy adviser for Doctors Without Borders. "But I see this as just a further diversification of the U.S.'s risky bets with public money and little transparency."