Pharmaceutical companies don’t spend millions on making a free vaccine. With the present pandemic, governments may have the ability to force free distribution or at least offering the vaccine cheap enough that everyone could afford. In that event, the pharmaceutical companies would expect compensation from the government. It costs billions to bring a vaccine to market. People do not do that sort of thing to give a little boost to their self-esteem. The investors expect a return on their investment, and rightly so. Nothing is really free. You have to pay for everything one way or another. The real hope, of course, is that this vaccine will sell billions of doses, and thus the cost per shot will be quite low, and yet the investors will recoup their expenses and realize some profit.