I'd be glad to be shown some examples, otherwise it's "privatize profits, socialize losses".
And if you fold in the start-ups who have one shot and if it doesn’t work out? Plenty of those. They go bankrupt.
Busting the patents on Covid vaccines would be “socializing the gains and privatizing the losses”.
However I'm certain that the category "bankrupt pharma company" is littered with examples.
a) researching Covid-19 vaccines?
b) will they actually get to produce millions and millions of doses?
Almost every case I know of, it's a huge company or even a state owned one.
Who are we actually arguing for/against? The hypothetical "small pharma"?
Keep in mind that just like for banking, due to the amount of (necessary) regulation, there aren't many small pharma companies out there.
It’s easy to complain about Pharma profits when you ignore all the money spent that goes “poof”.