You may remember Carlos Slim.  He was a few years ago the largest shareholder of the New York Times.  Recently, he sold some of his investment but still holds a lot of the stock.

Mr. Slim is a very wealthy man and often criticized by the left for being so rich.  At the same time, all of my friends in Mexico say his companies are great to work for, and "Don Carlos," as they call him, takes good care of his people.

This week, Mr. Slim made a big announcement.  He is getting into the COVID-19 business but not for profit.  This is from my friends at Pulse News Mexico:

The London-based biopharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca signed an agreement with Mexico’s Carlos Slim Foundation on Wednesday, Aug. 12, to produce a covid-19 vaccine in both Mexico and Argentina to be distributed without economic profits throughout Latin America.

The experimental coronavirus vaccine, labled AZD1222, which was licensed by AstraZeneca from the University of Oxford, is currently in large-scale Phase III clinical trials and is considered one of the international frontrunners in the race to produce a viable vaccination against covid-19.

Initially, the nonprofit Slim Foundation — founded by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim — will produce 150 million doses of the vaccine to be distributed throughout the region, except in Brazil, where AstraZeneca has a pre-existing agreement with the Jair Bolsonaro government to distribute the new medication.

This is great news and another example of how the private sector is the answer for so many of our problems.  Down in Latin America, public budgets are dry, and health care resources are down to the last drop, as a friend from Colombia told me last week.

Cheers for Mr. Slim.  Of course, the hysterical left will find another reason to criticize him, but this is a man who gets things done.

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Image credit: Agencia Brasil via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.