I don't really care whether or not people dislike Merck, I'm just here commenting on a news story with my own opinion, that's the point of Reddit right?

I'm also not entirely sure if that's the case. If we take the article at face value, both contracts were entered into around the same time. The humanitarian one in 2011, and the Chinese one in 2012. It didn't appear to be a problem for a handful of years, only recently.

The supply-demand argument makes sense. Vaccine manufacturing has long lead times, the countries they have humanitarian commitments to all have birth rates between 4 to 6+ per woman, and Chinese demand is skyrocketing in general. They also said they had some production mishaps between all that.

I mean, I can understand the outrage at things like price gauging, intentionally selling defective products, etc. but this one is a little more convoluted. The company voluntarily entered into a humanitarian initiative where they presumably sell their products at a loss, which they fully honored for six years, and will partially honor for two more.

Millions of children were given access they otherwise wouldn't have had. Now they are doing a semi-gradual phase out where the timing likely aligns with another pharmaceutical compan(y/ies) filling their shoes before a complete departure.