Biden Backs Waiving International Patent Protections For COVID-19 Vaccines (npr.org) 189
President Biden threw his support behind a World Trade Organization proposal earlier this week to waive intellectual property protections for COVID-19 vaccines, clearing a hurdle for vaccine-strapped countries to manufacture their own vaccines even though the patents are privately held. From a report: "This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures," U.S. trade representative Katherine Tai said in a statement. "The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines." The pace of vaccinating against COVID-19 in the U.S. is slowing down. In some places, there are more vaccine doses than people who want them. Meanwhile, India is now the epicenter of the pandemic, and just 2% of its population is fully vaccinated. The WTO is considering a proposal to address that inequity, as India, South Africa and over 100 other nations advocate to waive IP rights for COVID-19 vaccines and medications, which could let manufacturers in other countries make their own.
Patents are not the problem (Score:2)
Patents are not the problem.
There are no vaccine factories sitting idle anywhere in the world because they don't have permission to make vaccines.
Re:Patents are not the problem (Score:4, Informative)
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It might be parsing words, but the Intercept article reads "..they stand ready to retrofit facilities and move forward with vaccine production if given the chance." The question of what it would take to retrofit these factories, time and expense, versus just focusing on the existing factories would have to be considered.
It's also the case that these 'volunteers' might not be as adept as producing the vaccine safely. Example one in MD https://www.npr.org/sections/c... [npr.org]
I'm pro waiving patent protections, and
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I'm pro waiving patent protections, and indeed the US might garner so much needed international good will by doing that, reimbursing Pfizer/Moderna to some extent, and stabilizing world affairs.
This!
I am also pro waiving protections and reimbursing companies at a discount. But a good deed of just waiving someone else's protection seems hypocritical.
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Well the governments (ie taxpayers) have already provided significant funding to the various companies to develop these vaccines in the first place.
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I'm pro waiving patent protections, and indeed the US might garner so much needed international good will by doing that, reimbursing Pfizer/Moderna to some extent, and stabilizing world affairs.
Especially given that vaccine producers like Pfizer got early financial support from the Gates Foundation. Since the company didn't shoulder all the financial risk on its own, I'd argue that supports at least considering waiving the usual patent protections.
However the fact that it was a private entity like Gates rather than governmental support might complicate that.
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The "Pfizer" vaccine does not exist.
It was developed by BioNtech, which got no financial aid what soever to "develop" it, only to manufactor it.
No idea if the Gates Foundatin was involved in anything regarding that vaccine, though.
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The one you're referring to is the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine.
In China, they use the Fosun–BioNTech vaccine.
BioNtech designed the vaccines, while Fosun conducted clinical trials and production in China, and Pfizer conducted clinical trials and production in Germany and the US.
Several parts of the BioNtech mRNA strands came from mRNA sequences developed in the US for MERS vaccines.
As for financial aid, it's pretty disingenuous to say "they received no financial aid to develop it, only to man
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The question of what it would take to retrofit these factories, time and expense, versus just focusing on the existing factories would have to be considered.
How do you actually retrofit an existing factory to produce "more"? Hint: you need to build a new factory strand besides it.
How do you retrofit an existing plant? You simply retrofit it.
Re:Patents are not the problem (Score:5, Informative)
"On Tuesday, Martin Friede, coordinator of the WHO’s Initiative for Vaccine Research, said that the hub had already received some 50 expressions of interest from companies, including some that have patents on components or processes involved in vaccine manufacturing.
Friede emphasized that a lack of know-how, as opposed to patent protections, are the major barrier to expanding production.
Others agree sharing know-how is key — and getting cooperation from the companies that created the mRNA vaccines is necessary before deciding to retrofit or build facilities to make them. “It’s useless to focus on that if BioNTech and Pfizer and Moderna are not going to surrender the information on how to do it,” Edward Hammond, an independent consultant who works on vaccine manufacturing, said in a recent online roundtable about vaccine production capacity. “If it is the case that we don’t have an open and cooperative and productive technology transfer environment, then the capacity situation looks a little bit different because you’re going to be relying on a different set of technologies.”
(RTFA v FP) v (patents v saving lives) (Score:3)
The way Slashdot works, there's no time to RTFA if you hope to FP. However I admit that I do have to fault the FP for not coming close enough to the key issue of patents versus saving lives.
Yeah, it's a meta-joke, but I'm not going to get any meta-Funny mod points for it.
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Did you read the article you linked?
Yes, but I was drunk. And like most all "The Intercept" article, they have their own spin, subtle phrasing, and click-baiting headlines.
You, edi_guy, and Beryllium Sphere(tm) all make excellent points that cut to the heart of the issue. Regardless of what politicians, the media, and Internet posters say, It is not patents that are the problem, rather it is the lack of know-how, shortages in material supply chains, issues with quality control and certifications, and possibly a desire to help protect local
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If the patent does nothing, why are the drug companies bothering to file so many of them?
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Plus the web of licenses from suppliers. I've read that Pfizer and Moderna do not own the rights to the lipid formulas that were excruciatingly hard to develop but critical to the effectiveness of their vaccines. What do you want to bet there's a lot more like that?
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A counterpoint to that, from someone who is not specifically a manufacturing expert but does know something about pharma supply chains, is at https://blogs.sciencemag.org/p... [sciencemag.org]
Could be wrong, of course, but he knows more than I do.
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https://www.thehindubusinessli... [thehindubusinessline.com]
Ocugen to seek emergency-use nod for Covaxin in US market
In fact Covaxin has proven efficacy against existing variants.
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https://www.thehindubusinessli... [www.thehin...inessli...] [thehindubusinessline.com]
Ocugen to seek emergency-use nod for Covaxin in US market
In fact Covaxin has proven efficacy against existing variants.
Re:Why is India moaning about patents.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Those numbers are about as valid as the FCC comments regarding net neutrality.
Literally unverified comments open to the public. Calling it CDC-sourced is inaccurate. CDC-collected maybe.
Even in real cases where someone died after the vaccine, it would only be a suspicion on the part of the person reporting it. The CDC's own investigation into the claims has yet to show the vaccine as the cause of death in any of these cases. So if you want to source the CDC, use their findings, not unverified data.
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mRNA vaccines are not mutagens, they do not alter your DNA, or even enter the nucleus of your cells.
Messenger RNA (mRNA) is exported by your nucleus into the cytoplasm where it is transcribed into a protein, and then destroyed.
It is using the body's cells to transcribe a chunk of RNA into a protein, but it does not do this by altering the body's cells.
Guess whom the vaccine 'er' mutagen is most dangerous for, those who have the greatest natural resistance to the virus.
This is some standard anti-vax drivel used by people who fancy themselves "naturally resistant" to engage in stupid,
Re:Why is India moaning about patents.... (Score:5, Informative)
I'll tell you why I am.
When I first read this post, I had a suspicion that Tucker was doing standard Tucker, which is to take information, and misleadingly present it.
So, how do we confirm or deny this suspicion?
First we'll formulate some questions that Tucker raises.
How many flu vaccines have been administered in this period, and how many COVID vaccines? Because he doesn't give those answers.
I wonder if 250 million flu vaccines have been administered in this time period. Seems pretty unlikely to me, as the CDC says only ~150 million were distributed in all 12 months of 2017.
This still represents an elevation, for sure, but already we're using pretty misleading examples.
Next, we go check out VAERS, the CDC vaccine adverse reactions database.
The first thing that sticks out is the disclaimer that you *must* agree to before getting access to the data.
I'll quote the interesting part of it here.
While very important in monitoring vaccine safety, VAERS reports alone cannot be used to determine if a vaccine caused or contributed to an adverse event or illness. The reports may contain information that is incomplete, inaccurate, coincidental, or unverifiable. In large part, reports to VAERS are voluntary, which means they are subject to biases. This creates specific limitations on how the data can be used scientifically. Data from VAERS reports should always be interpreted with these limitations in mind.
Also of note was this little blurg at the top, describing the data set:
The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database contains information on unverified reports of adverse events (illnesses, health problems and/or symptoms) following immunization with US-licensed vaccines. Reports are accepted from anyone and can be submitted electronically at www.vaers.hhs.gov.
So right off the bat, we can see that the likelihood that his use of the data is literally contrary to its valid use case.
Let's do a bit more digging around.
Over 245 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered in the United States from December 14, 2020, through May 3, 2021. During this time, VAERS received 4,178 reports of death (0.0017%) among people who received a COVID-19 vaccine. CDC and FDA physicians review each case report of death as soon as notified and CDC requests medical records to further assess reports. A review of available clinical information, including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records has not established a causal link to COVID-19 vaccines. However, recent reports indicate a plausible causal relationship between the J&J/Janssen COVID-19 Vaccine and a rare and serious adverse event—blood clots with low platelets—which has caused deaths. Get the latest safety information on the J&J/Janssen vaccine. CDC and FDA will continue to investigate reports of adverse events, including deaths, reported to VAERS.
What's all this tell me?
That the CDC is doing their job and investigating each and every case of their being a death after administration of a vaccine, and that they have noticed no actual causal link between the vaccine and the (relatively tiny) amount of deaths (with regard to the number of vaccines administered)
Further,
Maybe we should reconsider vaccinating every man, woman, and child right down to toddlers before exposing them to more risk with this vaccine than they have with COVID itself, since it kills so rarely the young and healthy.
Fucking *nowhere* is this conclusion supported in any of the data given, which tells me you're likely regurgitating it.
You know, I don't blame Tucker for being a fucking hack. That's literally his job.
But what's so fucking miswired in your brain that you don't even try to figure out fact from politics?
Tucker Carlson data point (Score:5, Informative)
After reading this, I will look elsewhere than Tucker Carlson for facts.
https://law.justia.com/cases/f... [justia.com]
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That case alone should have been enough to literally get every reasonable fucking human alive to stop regurgitating stupid shit vomited up by political talkshow hosts without rigorous verification.
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Or if you want it in a more reader-friendly format:
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29... [npr.org]
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Those are reports of deaths after receiving the COVID vaccine, not deaths caused by the COVID vaccine.
The vaccines are protection against the COVID virus, not a guarantee that you will never die. Consider that the first people who were vaccinated were the elderly and particularly vulnerable. Also, remember that the VEARS system is a database of
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But, his data is CDC sourced, and shows that more people now have died in the 4 months since the Vaccine became available than on 9/11.
This is not only spouting crap, but is totally meaningless as a statistic. Of course more people have died in the last four months [I'm assuming you mean from Covid] than on 9/11, but this has nothing to do with the vaccines. The vaccines are what are preventing us from having the same death rate as India.
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Relying on Carlson for information isn't a ticket to truthful reporting, can't be bothered to poke the holes in his effervescence but the some of the posts below do.
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That smacks of "im just saying something I assume"
Re: Patents are not the problem (Score:2)
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Vox has some actual information on the subject in a recent article.
https://www.vox.com/future-per... [vox.com]
They've spoken to people who know about pharma manufacturing.
Today's supply chain issues are temporary. In the longer run, having generics available could make a real difference.
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Not too bad for the rush to FP, but I must beg to differ and insist that patents are part of the problem.
Accepting your premise, then why don't they build more factories to produce more vaccine? Because of the restrictions on creating such factories, and patents that kill people for profit are important restrictions against building more factories.
The priorities are quite confused here. I think lives (and time) are MUCH more important than money, but patent attorneys and greedy pharmaceutical executives dis
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Accepting your premise, then why don't they build more factories to produce more vaccine? Because of the restrictions on creating such factories, and patents that kill people for profit are important restrictions against building more factories.
For that premise to be true, there would have to be such patents. But there aren't. Patents are national - you have to get a patent in every country you want to assert rights in, and with 195 countries in the world, that gets very expensive, very quickly. Most of the countries are simply not worth the expensive of obtaining a patent, because the local market is too small or unprofitable. As a result, the vast majority of companies obtain patents only in major jurisdictions - the US, EU, UK, China, Japan, Ca
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Hmm... Thanks for the clarification, though your disclaimer seems to be muddling it. I'm also confused about where you stand on the issue of profits versus saving lives, but my understanding is that most pharmaceutical companies prefer to invest in the most profitable drugs, which tend to be palliatives for chronic conditions, rather than one-time cures and vaccines with more limited profit potential.
However I think your understanding must be closer to the reality than mine, and yet, in that case, why are s
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Patents are not the problem.
There are no vaccine factories sitting idle anywhere in the world because they don't have permission to make vaccines.
The problem is exactly that there are no vaccine factories sitting idle. The reason for that is that, if you were the type of place that could easily and cheaply build a vaccine factory, you couldn't be sure that you could produce vaccine there since you might get sued for breaching patents. If the patent protections are taken away then you will know that your factory could produce these vaccines. Plus there could be plenty more investment in production of the raw materials needed to produce those vaccin
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India built an IPhone factory in about a year (Score:2)
Short sighted (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Biden, buy licenses or actual vaccines for those countries instead.
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WORLDWIDE PANDEMIC. That means even the people who run those companies could get sick. They could curtail all they want and in the end hurt themselves for the sake of money.
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They also got pre-orders in the millions of doses. They aren't losing money on this deal.
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Investment. Where did these companies get their money to investigate? The US government, Dolly Parton, all sorts of places were providing R&D funds. Why should they alone reap the benefits?
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Their IP? The U.S. has been funding RNA vaccine technologies for years, that's how the companies were able to throw them together so quickly. And they were paid for the effort.
Next pandemic (Score:5, Insightful)
The current mRNA vaccines are the fruits of about 30 years of hard work. And we are fortunate they had the commercial infrastructure to manufacture these vaccines in time. In fact it was a record time to market, being less than a year.
What would be the motivation of next generation of researchers if they know their patents will be invalidated just when they actually get to use them?
And to be fair, they already pledge sharing their patents in the pandemic:
https://www.jdsupra.com/legaln... [jdsupra.com]
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A desire to stay alive regardless of who they are is a strong motivator towards doing the work. That's why healthcare isn't like any other good or service.
Re:Next pandemic (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be the motivation of next generation of researchers if they know their patents will be invalidated just when they actually get to use them?
Basic human decency.
Re:Next pandemic (Score:5, Insightful)
What would be the motivation of next generation of researchers if they know their patents will be invalidated just when they actually get to use them?
Basic human decency.
Decency is not "altering the deal" with someone after you get what you want out of them.
Re:Next pandemic (Score:5, Insightful)
This is way overly simplistic.
I want to work in a field where I can be proud of the fact that I'm making the world a better place. I'd love to contribute towards the fight against cancer and other diseases. Yet I still have children to feed and I need to consider what the lives of myself and my spouse will be like when we're too old to work.
Companies need to pay their employees, their rent, cover other overhead and the entrepreneurs and investors who risked big chunks of their fortunes and put their lives on hold while they tried to build something they believed might make everyone better off deserve to cash in on the fruits of their labour (intellectual and physical) if successful.
Rather than looking at patent protections and the profit motive as an evil that puts money ahead of people (as if there is a dichotomy there), consider that people sunk a ton of their lives into producing something that others benefit from. I think it's pretty backwards to paint the inventors, researchers and companies as the indecent ones while at the same time suggesting that, despite the fact that they made the world better, they can GTFO as far as their own reward and compensation goes.
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All that has nothing to do with how the (american) patent system works.
In most of the nations you can manufacture stuff that is patented "for a reasonable fee".
In the US, you cant't. The owner of the patent will set a fee you can not pay, and if you do not obligee he will sue you into bankruptcy.
And note: he will not rump up production to fit world wide demand, he will it keep as low as possible to exploit the 101 economics class principle: supply and demand.
Completely neglecting that 7 billion people would
Re: Next pandemic (Score:3)
An entire civilization tried using that as the only reward for your efforts, and here's how that turned out:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHi... [reddit.com]
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"Basic human decency" - Good luck with that.
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The researchers Don't enjoy the benefits of patents, they merely get to keep their job. The boss gets all the benefits.
People will develop vaccines and medicine to stay alive, not just collect rent.
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So those researchers worked for free? Cool.
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Re: Next pandemic (Score:3)
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These vaccines were produced from public funding
They were not. Kariko has been working for BioNTech since 2013. Both BioNTech/Pfizer and Moderna explicitly rejected public funding because, in their own words, "with accepting money comes accepting control".
You should go and watch The Vaccine: Conquering COVID, on Discovery+. Very informative.
What Joseph Stalin^H^H^H Biden is trying to do is simply take private property, under the threat of a (the goverment's) gun, and distribute it to the third parties without compensation. There is a word for that: r
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The current mRNA vaccines are the fruits of about 30 years of hard work. And we are fortunate they had the commercial infrastructure to manufacture these vaccines in time. In fact it was a record time to market, being less than a year.
What would be the motivation of next generation of researchers if they know their patents will be invalidated just when they actually get to use them?
And to be fair, they already pledge sharing their patents in the pandemic:
https://www.jdsupra.com/legaln... [jdsupra.com]
The objective is to manufacture as many vaccines as quickly as possible.
I think it's possible to do this without making the patents worthless, either use mandatory licensing or simply compensate the drug companies for the waived patents.
Making a vaccine seems difficult enough that I'm not sure how much this would help. Any company with the infrastructure to manufacture a vaccine at scale should also have the infrastructure to enter a mandatory licensing arrangement.
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[replying to multiple threads in one go]
Katalin Karikó was the lead researcher in making mRNA based vaccines a reality. Her research grants were being rejected, and her university had demoted her. Basically public did not believe in her, until she built her private company, and later merged with BioNTech and became a senior vice president there.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/16... [cnn.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It is not like a big company swooped in and took the patents. This was a hard working individu
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Same as the previous generation of researchers?
Dr. Kariko was not driven by greed. She actually hurt her career for years by pursuing mRNA therapeutics.
The companies with the manufacturing capacity could be motivated lots of ways, like research funding and purchase guarantees.
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And we are fortunate they had the commercial infrastructure to manufacture these vaccines in time
Just FYI. This is one of the things that operation warp speed was about. Giving money to help these companies build this infrastructure, rapidly. There's other things like paying to have trails in parallel and logistical support. But it is important that tax payers helped build a good part of that infrastructure for making these vaccines.
What would be the motivation of next generation of researchers if they know their patents will be invalidated just when they actually get to use them?
The US government is already paying a gigaton of money here for vaccines domestically. Is that not already enough? Additionally, researchers are usually not the ones
It was almost entirely govt spending (Score:2, Informative)
We shouldn't leave vital research up to the whims of people who can only plan a quarter or two. And as a matter of fact we don't. We just don't talk about it because that way those CEOs can take the credit and money for themselves.
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I think you missed out on the part where the researcher herself holds the patents, and built her private company. She is now a SVP at BionTech.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Actually, she before when she was at a university, her research was not funded by the government, and grants were rejected. And her current company specifically did not want any public funding either.
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What would be the motivation of next generation of researchers if they know their patents will be invalidated just when they actually get to use them?
No, the researchers are getting paid as much (or little) as they ever do. It's private investors and corporate shareholders who may have cause to be worried, as this may dilute their investment, if it was anything worth noting. Pfizer and Moderna are both being paid in the billions and have a solid business model and essentially exclusive access to the wealt
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Once again the original researcher is an SVP at Biontech, and still holds the patents.
Also, Biontech did not receive public funding for research, but only a recent grant during pandemic to speed up development. And that was German government, not US. That is why Merkel is pretty pissed right now:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
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Re:Next pandemic (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, mRNA vaccines have been around for over 50 years. We've known about the possibility of using them since the 70s. However, packaging the mRNA into a form we could use was only done within the past 5 years.
You see, mRNA by itself is not useful. You can't just inject it and have it work - it needs to "infect" a cell. So you need to enclose it in something that the cell will readily accept.
But even that's not enough, because the body's immune system will attack it before it gets into a cell (foreign body, after all).
Also, mRNA is fairly fragile - it's basically designed to hold a temporary non-reproducing copy of a snippet of DNA so it's designed to be easily created, and easily disposed of, Which means it needs to be protected.
That's been where all the work has gone into. Making mRNA is trivial - a bioreactor with a few cells in it can churn it out all day long. But coming up with the process to coat it with a protective substance so the body doesn't break it down instantly, then coat it with something that the cell will absorb into itself is much more difficult. Did I mention mRNA was fragile?
As for why do it - well, next pandemic, the first to make it available gets to dictate the price and get lots of sales. The price of Pfizer or Moderna is relatively pricey at around $5 a shot or so, not including costs of transportation and storage. Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca are cheaper all around and much easier to store (AstraZeneca can be stored in a standard freezer indefinitely, a refrigerator for weeks, and days at room temperature, while Johnson and Johnson can be stored refrigerated indefinitely and at room temperature for weeks.
Pfizer and Moderna have tied up the first world (the only places that can afford the cooling technology required to store and transport htem) and charge a lot. AstraZeneca and J&J are really aimed at the rest of the world and they'll get their millions from groups like COVAX that do the whole "buy one donate one" campaigns where first world countries buy it at twice the cost and donate one to the poorer countries that can't afford it.
Next disease they'll all be on it again. It's still high reward, just less high. You can be sure that even if they used to make billions before, they'll still make billions after, just a few billions less. It would be surprising if they would say "we didn't bother researching this because we'd only make $10B instead of $12B". or "We'll let Moderna make the billions of dollars instead of us".
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Pfizer is $20 a shot Govt wholesale price - big difference between that and $5
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Pfizer is $20 a shot Govt wholesale price - big difference between that and $5
Isn't that a price for a whole vial, which contains 5 shots?
Re: Next pandemic (Score:2)
_International_ patent protection
It's like getting dropped off at your friend's house and acting like your parents making their parents cut the crust off your sandwiches is something your parents OWE you for being their little shit, I mean Snowflake.
Sure mom does that for you at home, in exchange for you not making her other chores harder, and nobody gives a damn how ungrateful you are in your own home, that's your business, mom is just happy you're eating.
The absolute _height_ of entitlement is throwing a
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They won't be invalidated, just suspended... Temporarily, no less And even then only with respect to development for COVID vaccine generics. Other applications of the patent that are not relevant to COVID19 would still be subject to licensing. Reasonably, their duration should be extended for the same period that they are extended. Once the crisis of short supply has passed, the licensing on the relevant patents would be reinstated.
If massive numbers of people dying were, in fact, objectively more i
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Technology developed over 30 years is a series of incremental improvements, used for many different things not just this one vaccine.
The record time to market was due to a strong push from multiple governments, ie it was paid for by you the taxpayer not by these pharma companies.
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What would be the motivation of next generation of researchers if they know their patents will be invalidated just when they actually get to use them?
Brand recognition and government money up front.
How much money big pharma spend on marketing every year? How much marketing money could compare to the publicly Pfizer is getting now because they have a covid vaccine?
Also, if no US pharma bothered to create vaccine for the next pandemic, the world will simply use vaccine from China or Russia, which means the publicly goes to Chinese/Russian pharma.
How many people in the US have heard of the Chinese pharmas who made covid vaccines (yes, plural)? I bet most
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It's a pointless PR gesture. (Score:5, Informative)
Derek Lowe has a very good write-up at https://blogs.sciencemag.org/p... [sciencemag.org] that explains it well enough that even a politician could understand it.
For anyone who hasn't encountered Derek Lowe (Score:2)
He's a nerd. I've been following his writings for years and have come to respect him. He deserves a careful listen.
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Sort of reminds me of the "eviction ban" that just came up in the news because a judge ruled against it
Instituting an eviction ban was also a nice free gesture because it doesn't cost anything.
(Not saying it was a bad idea, but it was sort of like volunteering someone else to help instead of helping yourself)
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Yeah, I don't really understand the rationale here anyway. Freeing up the patents doesn't mean Moderna/Pfizer (especially) need to give anyone the details of how to make their vaccines. So you won't run into patent issues - does this mean any fucking bozo can just start cranking out these highly specialized pieces of engineering that require careful manufacturing processes, refrigeration, etc...? No. It doesn't.
Is J&J's vaccine really the target here, I don't see factories just ramping up to produce mrn
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Patents aren't the problem.
Patents are the problem in the sense that they are always a problem. The patent system should be swept away in its entirety.
Money, cool. Unlimited money, no. (Score:4, Insightful)
There was a lot of funding, at every stage for the long-standing upkeep for starting these vaccines - as soon as it was detected in 2019, it was started, and by January 2020, several vaccines were in their final stage and were onto full testing, by most accounts.
There were many, many forms of additional funding along the way - so there wasn't much unfunded work done on these things at any stage.
So yeah - in cases like those, it's fair to say that there's no unlimited rent seeking needed to make sure everyone is paid and happy for their work on this project.
This isn't one of those tasks that needs unlimited investor frenzy to need motivation to exist. This is basic survival of massive amounts of humanity - and the basis for any minimum continued existence of productivity in any field... you don't need market 'enthusiasm' to keep interests alive on this.
Not to say that we as a people won't forget this - that we won't cut back on vaccine funding over time, or forget it in budgets ... but we do fund organizations that do keep these things alive, and who have learned how to scale up their projects and industry connections when things start to flare up again - as they will.
So yeah - this is totally fair, in an financial sense. No unlimited rent seeking in a global pandemic - it's not needed, or helpful for any outcome.
Patent enforcement also would only slow down the vaccine usage in pockets of the world that will be most crucial to keeping further outbreaks from mutating and spreading it back around.
Ryan Fenton
Moderna (Score:2)
Moderna already waived patent enforcement for their vaccine.
They did it back in October.
The big problem is that all of the factories that could possibly produce these vaccines are already tied up for at least the next year, and none of the third world countries that are screaming for vaccines have any sort of capacity to make these new, high-tech products.
Biden can call for free stuff all he wants, but he's got just about zero control over the situation, even if he wasn't clueless about it.
Think twice (Score:2, Interesting)
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The problem isn't anti-vaxxers (they can't be convinced), or people with in-depth knowledge of the vaccines (they speak objectively to the risks), it's the horde of useful idiots who a
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For every 100,000 people with low exposure risk and ages 20-29, the vaccine will prevent 0.8 ICU admissions, but cause 1.1 serious harms due to the vaccine .
"For people with low exposure risk" is the key. Getting to the point of "low exposure risk" (approx. where the UK was in March) required months of lockdown, and a months-long vaccination campaign of the elderly. Based on where the UK was as recently as February, the risks of covid outweigh the risk of the vaccine in the 20-29 demographic. Very few countries [ourworldindata.org] are in a better spot covid-wise than the UK is now, so for the populations of those countries the under-29s should still be lining up for their AZ sh
That goose looks to fat (Score:2)
She might have just laid several golden eggs...but best to cut her down to size because twitter said so.
Something about eating your seedcorn bears mentioning too.
These kinds of destructive, ineffectual, virtue-signalling stunts is why I haven't vited for a Democrat in 15 years and never will again.
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No, the reason you haven't voted Democrat in more than a decade and never will again is that you're the kind of vile cunt who likes to say, "Now I've got mine, to hell with everybody else".
What you got, you got in a world built for you by stronger, better people than you, a world where the American Dream still actually existed. Now that you have been helped through the door, you want to close it on everybody else.
Fuck you.
Re: That goose looks to fat (Score:2, Flamebait)
And the reason you vote Democrat and always will is because you enjoy stealing from your grandchildren and calling it "compassion."
Go fuck yourself. No one owes you any.
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You have no idea how I vote. If you knew your own country's history, you'd have to admit that the theft from grandchildren has been conducted by post-LBJ Republicans.
But you're either too stupid or too ignorant, or both, to acknowledge simple historical facts.
We need to take the profit out of health care! (Score:3)
We need to take the profit out of health care! and no I'm not saying makeing doctors poor.
Patents are not the problem! (Score:5, Insightful)
A good analysis: [marginalrevolution.com]
Patents are not the problem. All of the vaccine manufacturers are trying to increase supply as quickly as possible. Billions of doses are being produced–more than ever before in the history of the world. Licenses are widely available. AstraZeneca have licensed their vaccine for production with manufactures around the world, including in India, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, China and South Africa. J&J’s vaccine has been licensed for production by multiple firms in the United States as well as with firms in Spain, South Africa and France. Sputnik has been licensed for production by firms in India, China, South Korea, Brazil and pending EMA approval with firms in Germany and France. Sinopharm has been licensed in the UAE, Egypt and Bangladesh. Novavax has licensed its vaccine for production in South Korea, India, and Japan and it is desperate to find other licensees but technology transfer isn’t easy and there are limited supplies of raw materials:
[...]
Technology transfer has been difficult for AstraZeneca–which is one reason they have had production difficulties–and their vaccine uses relatively well understood technology. The mRNA technology is new and has never before been used to produce at scale. Pfizer and Moderna had to build factories and distribution systems from scratch. There are no mRNA factories idling on the sidelines. If there were, Moderna or Pfizer would be happy to license since they are producing in their own factories 24 hours a day, seven days a week (monopolies restrict supply, remember?). Why do you think China hasn’t yet produced an mRNA vaccine? Hint: it isn’t fear about violating IP.
The major bottlenecks are raw materials, factories, and technical capability, none of which are addressed by the patent waiving.
Overall this decision is probably irrelevant to the pandemic, with the slight possibility of it being harmful if less sophisticated domestic producers start diverting raw materials to low efficiency vaccine factories.
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Why do you think China hasn’t yet produced an mRNA vaccine? Hint: it isn’t fear about violating IP.
They do have 1 licensed from BioNTech: Fosun–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, sold by Fosun Pharma.
Hmm. (Score:2)
Not sure why I wasn't attributed for the article that I submitted more than half a day ago and went red since then. This is the second time that's happen.
Anyways I thought this was important as well, and was wondering what people actually thought about the argument that's was not included in the summary.
"The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America expressed pointed opposition to the Biden administration's support for waiving IP protections. The trade group's members include vaccine makers such
Why don't the companies freely license it? (Score:3)
I don't understand why the companies don't just freely license the production. It seems like a win all around.
1. The companies are already making as much vaccine as they can so they are not losing any sales
2. They could (at some expense) also provide the information needed by the factories that is not included in the patent (one of the main objections mentioned above was the lack of this information).
3. Conversely, they could also sell some necessary supplies and make money
4. The license could be for a limited time, so the company has lost nothing
5. It would stop any idea of the government waiving patent protection
6. It would be a huge publicity win for the company.
Shut down the meth lab Bubba.... (Score:2)
Taxpayer funded development (Score:3)
Seems to me that if a company accepts a billion dollars from the taxpayers to develop a vaccine, the resultant intellectual property ought to belong to the taxpayers.
Of course, such an expectation is best included as part of the granting process, not after manufacturing is well under way.
Canada used to make vaccines at home, but no more. (Score:2)
Thanks tons, Mulroney [thestar.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Instead of waiving the patents and effectively stealing some companies IP why doesn't Biden just buy the patents? Once the government owns the patent they can do whatever they want with them.
Biden is not even remotely suggesting waiving US patent rights... He's saying that if other countries want to waive patent rights there, the US won't object.
Patents are national - they stop at the border, and you have to get a patent in each country you want patent protection in. Biden can't do anything directly to affect patents overseas, the most he can do is say that if some other country starts seizing patents from US companies, he would demand trade embargoes and such at the WTO. He's saying he won't