But, for instance - public money is used to build roads, yet companies that build them make money in the process. There is no state-owned road building company. What's the difference here?

Public money pays for the roads. After the road is built, the road belongs to the public. Public money pays for the research. After the research finishes, the results should belong to the public, the same way as the road does.

The public can of course sell (i), charge (ii) or monetize in any other way.

(i) e.g. privatization of telephone networks

(ii) e.g. toll roads and bridges

They belong to a publicly funded research institute that was given the right by the public to sell it's research to private enterprise.

The 'public' wanted that by voting in the lawmakers making that possible.

That's how democracy works.

Also we're not talking about physical things, but something 'intellectual' like software, so the comparison is inaccurate.

More accurate would be IT research done in a publicly funded university.

> After the road is built, the road belongs to the public.

Depending on where you live, you could very well be under the impression that the roads belong to delivery companies, taxis, etc. (private companies that make money off them) as they are effectively useless to everyone else (= the public) while they are constantly blocking them.

That’s a faulty parallel. The road belongs to the public, while only the building is tendered to a private (in a presumably competitive market) to maximize quality and price ratio.

In this case the building is publicly funded for a profit AND the final result donated in “perpetuity” to make it a private TOLL road.

Double dip?

(I’m ok with subsidizing the research, and even negotiating a bulk manufacturing contract with an agreed margin... but a patent? Isn’t that bending too far?)

My village has their own road building and repairing department--mostly used for repairing. It's called the department of public works. We have our own utility company too. Both of those end up being cheaper than the having private companies do it.

You don't die if you can't afford to drive on the road. That's the difference.

But most places(at least around the EU) have already announced that the vaccine will be free - so there is no question about affordability?

The taxes still paid for it twice

In what way? Yes, the taxes paid for research, then taxes paid to purchase the product. But if everything was state owned top to bottom, the taxes would have had to fund research, then manufacturing, production and distribution. I wager the amount of money spent would have been exactly the same, so it's more like an accounting trick than an actual difference.

Its not about manufacturing costs. The companies continue to own the patents and after some period of time have every plan to start charging for use of it. This means they can get rich for decades off of the taxpayer-funded research. Meanwhile the governments have agreed to take on the risk by buying tens of millions of doses before they vaccines are even approved which means some of them will likely be waste due to either not getting approval or coming after more effective drugs.

Socialized risk and privatized profits. A capitalist's dream.

To go back to your highway analogy, its as if the government contracted for the entire interstate highway system to be built and then let various private companies charge a perpetual toll to use the roads in addition to the money they made for building it.

Its not an accounting trick, its a perpetual royalty on the taxpayer's expense if the drug works (and a profit even if their drug never passes Phase 3 clinical trials).

Is another state going to get sued for having a different company build a road of the same material? I dunno, maybe Asphalt Co should be getting license fees for every road built. Maybe even add a toll booth so drivers have to pay a license fee to Asphalt Co to drive on their roads

Noam Chomsky has quite a bone to pick about toll roads