In 1924, a trademark application was filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in Wisconsin for a product described as “absorbent pads or sheets for removing cold cream.” The product in question was Kleenex, which according to company lore was relaunched as facial tissue after an employee with hay fever used one of the disposable clothes to blow his nose. As of 2010, Kleenex enjoyed a sizable though less than majority market share. No matter: for whatever reason — though presumably in large part thanks to its long-term dominance of the market — the trademark has become a stand-in for facial tissues in general and is even recognized as such by Merriam-Webster: the brand now being synonymous with the product, the product inextricable from the brand.

It’s probably an innocuous enough development, at least to anyone who isn’t a prospective competitor. For obvious reasons, it would be much harder to say the same if the Kleenex trademark applied to a more valuable, consequential, or urgently-needed commodity — a single brand possessing even symbolic monopoly over a major technological innovation or life-saving medicine being something most people would intuitively look upon poorly.

That is, however, exactly what’s happened amid the deadly and disruptive global health crisis of the past thirteen months, as for-profit pharmaceutical giants have effectively made themselves synonymous with vaccinations for COVID-19 — carrying out a Kleenex-like coup that has seen companies like Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca transform into well-regarded household names, fodder for viral memes, and, for some, literal saviors of the human race.