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OP
OP
I'm curious to see the small letters but good.
Not really, they have AZ and their own vaccines. More important for other countries.
India's the world's largest vaccine producer. What does this change for them?
OP
OP
Waiving IPs will do very little in real terms (especially the mRNA). By the time supply chains are up and running there will be more than enough vaccines for the planet.
US stopping domestic companies from exporting raw materials is the biggest issue at the moment
There are several hurdles, waiving the IP isn't going to suddenly solve all the problems, but none of the problems are even going to begin to get solved so long as the IP hurdle remains. The IP waiver is necessary but not sufficient for increasing global protection against covid.
Could someone educate me on this, I assumed the IP belongs to the pharmaceutical manufacturer or no? Like, Does this mean that if this goes through then anyone can make Pfizer's vaccine without having to pay them?
Not really. Our problem isn't IP. We already have the licensing rights for two vaccines (Covishield and the indigenously-developed Covaxin). It's a manufacturing issue. The largest manufacturer in India is the Serum Institute. But it didn't get any funding from the government last year, and had to rely on its own investment to manufacture the vaccines. So it could not establish extra manufacturing facilities to ramp up production in proportion to India's population. We have roughly 150 million vaccinated. That's half of the U.S Population. But Indian population is 1400 million. So it's a drop in the bucket.
Now the government has given an advance to the Serum Institute to expand manufacturing. But that will take time, of course.
EDIT: Also, we exported 66 million doses to neighboring countries under a "vaccine friendship" programme when the government believed that Covid was a solved problem and vaccination in India could take its time.
IP only exists because Governments write laws to support their existence; they are artificial, not intrinsic. They can also make exceptions, many of which exist for all sorts of things already.
I want to see the details, specifically because from the way this is being outlined this is not the US supporting the TRIPS waiver, which suggests they're trying to limit the scope of the IP waiver beyond what is necessary to actually open up vaccine manufacturing.
I'm very skeptical for reasons that I'll defer to Adam Johnson of Citations Needed:
I'm very skeptical for reasons that I'll defer to Adam Johnson of Citations Needed:
Yes. The issue being the vaccine components/compounds and getting the production/supply facilities up and running. By the time that happens Pfizer/Moderna will have created enough vaccine for the world I assume
EDIT - Also if I can get a booster shot made by Pfizer vs. an identical booster shot made by Ffisser, I'm gonna choose the former.
I see. I have no knowledge about how any of this works, so I was mainly curious what a company like Pfizer has to say in all of this. Like, it's safe to assume they spent millions on the research and the facilities to produce the vaccine. At the end of the day they want to recoup that money, so would they have a say in such a thing, the IP of their product being available to everyone?
There's nothing they can say, because the IP laws contain these powers for governments to use. They just aren't used often, or ever really. If it does get abused, it can either turn companies away from R&D or it can cause them to ask for more money up front to try to recoup costs/maximize profits before the patent is yanked form under them.
Yes. Publicly available patent documents should give enough information on how to manufacture the vaccines, it's only legal protections preventing others from doing so. There could be things like trade secretes with some of them though.
They won't be happy but if this is passed there's nothing they can do about it.
Imo governments should have just purchased the IP instead of giving monopoly rights with these vaccines.
User Warned: Attempted Off Topic Thread Derail
But benevolent billionaire and friend of Jeffrey Epstein Bill Gates said this is a bad idea...
It remains a bad idea without guaranteeing the infrastructure to make the vaccine and principally it's components properly and safely. The fact that we still have diseases worldwide that we've had vaccines for for decades and are now patent-less shows that IP alone is a very minor stumbling block on the whole.
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This could be one of the biggest steps to end COVID in the vast majority of the world's poor countries and if you're against any steps towards the goal of waiving vaccine patents you genuinely don't care about the lives of people in the global South and you should reevaluate your beliefs. Let's hope we finally get some responsible wrangling of vaccine IP going on this planet and also hope it's only one step of many towards treating nations of the world compassionately instead of strictly exploitatively.
It's a vaccine not a nuclear bomb. Even significantly less wealthy countries than the US or China or those in Europe have capabilities to manufacture vaccines. Any special considerations towards making this particular vaccine in more countries can be figured out once we lift the protections against spreading the knowledge to make them. At the moment, the vaccine outlook in much of the world is nil. I'd prefer if more regions could feasibly plan around being able to manufacture and supply people with vaccines which this is a large part of.
It's a vaccine not a nuclear bomb. Even significantly less wealthy countries than the US or China or those in Europe have capabilities to manufacture vaccines. Any special considerations towards making this particular vaccine in more countries can be figured out once we lift the protections against spreading the knowledge to make them. At the moment, the vaccine outlook in much of the world is nil. I'd prefer if more regions could feasibly plan around being able to manufacture and supply people with vaccines which this is a large part of.
Your edit is what some of the manufacturers are concerned about and why they prefer licensing over selling IP. That Ffisser will not have as strong safety requirements, botch it, and the blame in people's minds will be with Pfizer than invented it, not Ffisser that actually made it.
This is probably a pretty minor step in the short run. We need orders of magnitude change, not a shift of 10-20%. The entire global production of the underlying supplies is mostly being used.
Opening up vaccine IP in the past didn't really do shit for eradication of their related diseases on its own.
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Wasn't Gates reasoning because without the proper facilities and protections in place other variants of these vaccines may seem "trust" worthy but untested and potentially dangerous?
Not saying he is right though.
I'm sure that will be handled by each individual country's regulators.
This will change very little. As the problem isn't scaling up vaccine production but raw material production waving IPs for vaccines will do very little.
It's nice for SA or others to have their own vaccine production but in real world terms they'll just get outbid by western countries for the necessary materials.
I always hate the infrastructure reasoning as to why this is a bad idea. Last time I checked, Baltimore was in the USA and they fucked up royally so why should we not let other places try? I feel like the people against the waiving of patents make it sound like every lab in the third world is the equivalent of a suburban soccer moms kitchen in terms of regulation.
Well now that big joey biden is on board with this I am formally taking back everything I said justifying the WHO, COVAX, and GAVI's position on this. The past is alterable. I support this waiver. I was supporting this waiver. I have always been in support of this waiver.
.. yes this is cannibalism
.. yes this is cannibalism
That reasoning reeks of "these poor countries are too stupid to use this information and technology".
It should be left to the judgement of each country's regulators and how they decide to proceed, not an American billionaire.
Thanks, Biden! This is very unexpected tbh but I am glad. The US can be a force of unimaginable good for the world when they actually put people over profit.
yes but if a company makes Pfizer and fucks up, will the headlines say company's version of Pfizer fucked up or Pfizer fucked up?
under licensing, at least then the company responsible for licensing it out can monitor and take blame for any fuckups.
Most vaccines aren't even produced in the first world lol This is a really bad excuse to not allow this to happen. Many developing countries like India, Mexico, Argentina, South Africa, etc have modern enough installations public and private to produce safe vaccines. You are suggesting poorer countries aren't smart enough, as if endemic diseases arent more complicated to erradicate than what you are suggesting (or as if many of the examples you are probably thinking about arent still a thing in the first world).
It's not up to him though, he was expressing his opinion.
The reasoning does reek of that a bit for sure. However if the companies who decide to try and make their version rush it out or don't have the safety standards and a bunch of people die thats not great either. People are apprehensive of vaccines as is.
That said opening up the IP is good, however I believe they should make sure that if someone makes a version of the Phizer vaccine thats shit and dangerous, Phizer can't be held liable for it.
that said I think Phizer should be doing this anyways and if they are worried about their image do something like "No licensing fee but you have to have one of us come out and do a quality check on it to make sure its up to the standards"
Bad week for Gates
Also, this is unambigously good even if it won't make a "big" difference, which it will. A "small" change for the good is better than no change at all, specially during a fucking pandemic.
Also, this is unambigously good even if it won't make a "big" difference, which it will. A "small" change for the good is better than no change at all, specially during a fucking pandemic.
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Most covid vaccine production is in north america or europe
COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Potential - Google My Maps
COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Potential
www.google.com
Most covid vaccine production is in north america or europe
COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Potential - Google My Maps
COVID-19 Vaccine Manufacturing Potential
Infographic: The Countries Dominating Covid-19 Vaccine Production
This chart shows the total number of Covid-19 vaccine doses produced by country.
www.statista.com