WTO Nations Agree To Ease Patent Rights To Boost Covid-19 Vaccine Supplies in Poorer Nations (wsj.com) 46
The member countries of the World Trade Organization agreed Friday on a narrow measure aimed at boosting the supplies of Covid-19 vaccines in developing countries, wrapping up a bitter fight over corporate patent rights governing critical medical products during a pandemic. WSJ: The compromise measure on intellectual property rights will make it easier for companies in developing nations such as South Africa to manufacture and export a patented Covid-19 vaccine -- under limited circumstances -- without a consent from the patent holder if they have the approval of their own governments. Meeting for the first time in nearly five years, trade ministers from more than 100 countries also agreed on measures to reduce fisheries subsidies to protect fish stocks and pledged to minimize export restrictions on food items amid shortages triggered by the war in Ukraine. An existing ban on the collection of customs duty on digitally-transmitted products like music and movies was continued, to the relief of U.S. officials who had feared a possible change in the status quo would harm U.S. businesses.
Only two years late! (Score:4, Insightful)
Only two years late!
Battle is already over.
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exactly as planned? They've already made most of their early-cash-grab money. They'll forego the last 10% today so that next time something like this comes up they will be able to point to how they so generously gave up their rights last time, so it should be okay for them to do it to us again.
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exactly as planned? They've already made most of their early-cash-grab money. They'll forego the last 10% today so that next time something like this comes up they will be able to point to how they so generously gave up their rights last time, so it should be okay for them to do it to us again.
Erm... sorry, not sorry to interrupt your "bhut Bug Farma" rant... however they've been selling the vaccinations at a lower price since they started. There was no early cash grab... because there was no cash grab. This is just extending the favourable licensing and purchasing terms to poorer nations.
The worst thing that would happen out of this is that they use this loss as a tax break on their real money makers... recreational drugs (I.E. ED) and drugs that don't work (I.E. OTC vitamins). Pharma compani
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There absolutely was a cash grab. Pfizer and Moderna made out like bandits on COVID-19, billions of dollars.
Pharma companies may make very little on vaccines in general (I haven't researched it), but COVID-19 was jackpot for those two.
Sadly India, Brazil, and China did not tell Pfizer and Moderna to take a flying leap. If they had, it would have saved millions of people.
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The only one who grabbed money was Pfitzer, because of Trump stupid offer/order.
Everyone else sold the vaccine for roughly $2 above production costs.
made out like bandits on COVID-19, billions of dollars.
Perhaps you should get a realistic idea what a "billion" is.
a) for starters: the planet has roughly 7 billion people
b) lets assume all got doubled vaxed and boosted -> 21 billion doses
c) a typical company like BioNTech or Moderna "earns" $2 per dose -> $42 billion in earnings (over all companies toget
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b) lets assume all got doubled vaxed and boosted -> 21 billion doses
Why would you make such a stupid assumption?
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Only two years late!
Battle is already over.
What makes you say the battle is over? That the western focused media is not talking about it in your country? That you think just because a poor country doesn't have the resources of a national medical board to report COVID means it doesn't exist?
Congrats, you get COVID and don't die because you are vaccinated. That doesn't mean the battle is over. Why would you even think that? 170 people died of it yesterday in the USA alone. That's with 64% fully vaccinated (an embarrassingly low number by the way). Jus
Mod up above (Score:2)
Mod up above
There's also still the very real fact that Covid could mutate yet again only to become more deadly as it did with the Delta variant. We're best off having everyone on the planet vaccinated to reduce the disease's ability to infect people.
Sadly, due to mutations, these vaccinations arent as effective at reducing infections as many of our other vaccines but they do reduce them by a significant amount and less people with Covid equals less odds of it mutating.
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these vaccinations arent as effective at reducing infections as many of our other vaccines but they do reduce them by a significant amount
The current vaccines provide approximately 0% protection against infection by BA.1 through BA.5. (The raw numbers in Denmark are something like -10% protection against infection, because the very vulnerable have a higher vaccination rate).
We had the chance to stop COVID early with mass vaccinations, but patents prevented the mass rollout, and lack of rollout led to Omicron. Now vaccines keep older people alive, which is nice, but populations in African countries are generally young, so mass vaccination is n
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10% effectiveness? Cite a source because as far as I've seen on a casual google search that's not true.
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-10%, not 10%. As in, the raw data in Denmark says that you are MORE likely to catch Omicron if you have 3 shots than if you are unvaccinated.
But like I also said, this is probably not a valid result, because the fully vaccinated include practically all the elderly who are likely to get tested, while the unvaccinated are generally younger people who end up having COVID without getting tested and therefore not getting counted.
Even so, the effectiveness against infection must be quite close to zero to end up
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As in, the raw data in Denmark says that you are MORE likely to catch Omicron if you have 3 shots than if you are unvaccinated. ... how?
And that is "plausible"
Idiot.
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It's the data, what can I say?
If you're implying that the data is manipulated, feel free, but data is data. I even provided a plausible explanation in the very next sentence. Feel free to join the antivaxxers in rejecting science, of course.
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Then post the data?
Feel free to join the antivaxxers in rejecting science, of course.
I'm not an anti-vaxxer, idiot.
There is no data that hints - or even proofs - that a vaccinated person against delta is an easy target for omikron: makes no sense at all. Seems, like you are the "anti vaxxer".
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but patents prevented the mass rollout
Patents did no such thing. The mRNA vaccine is difficult to produce and ever lab capable of doing so was doing so, even to the point where the there was concerns that actual other medications were scares. The patent issue was largely resolved within a couple of weeks.
That didn't cause the spread of COVID. Dumbfucks cause the spread of COVID. Dumbfucks that make up the unvaccinated population in countries which had vaccines go off due to religion, conspiracy theories, or covid denial, or some equally stupid
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South Africa is unlikely to be the source of Omicron, it was more likely another African country. South Africa is the only country in Africa that made a decent effort at genome sequencing positive tests (or even testing in the first place). Therefore they first detected Omicron, but it probably didn't start there.
The vaccines that were offered in Africa were a) AstraZeneca which the Western World (except UK) declared unfit for use in humans, and b) Chinese vaccines which did not work. Would you really expec
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South Africa is unlikely to be the source of Omicron
It is actually a fact that South Africa is the source of Omikron.
An immune system handicapped ex HIV patient bred several thousand strains of Covid, and one of them is Omi(k/c)ron. Easy to google.
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It is actually a fact that South Africa is the source of Omikron.
You should tell Nature that: https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
An immune system handicapped ex HIV patient bred several thousand strains of Covid, and one of them is Omi(k/c)ron. Easy to google.
Now you're just in cuckoo territory.
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That nature article is from 28th January, 2022 - (* facepalm *)
In case you have no smart phone: we have 20th of June 2022 now.
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Go on, prove that "An immune system handicapped ex HIV patient bred several thousand strains of Covid, and one of them is Omi(k/c)ron. Easy to google."
You're anti-science.
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You're anti-science.
And you are to dumb to google my claim.
Where do you think i got my information from? Hu?
A medical science magazine, dumbass.
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and b) Chinese vaccines which did not work.
The Chinese vaccine worked well against the original strain. After boosting up to 90% efficient. But 2 shots only were in the 70% range.
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but patents prevented the mass rollout, and lack of rollout led to Omicron.
No, it did not.
Perhaps you want to read up a bit about it.
(* facepalm *)
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No, it did not.
Perhaps you want to read up a bit about it.
(* facepalm *)
Ooh you really owned me there with your superior debating skills.
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We lost the chance to keep the spread of the virus down in the early stages where it might still have been possible.
I would like to blame anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers for being so deliberately toxic and stupid, however they're just a drop in the ocean, and a distraction at best from the main bad faith actors here.
The main responsibility for this lies on the big pharma companies that didn't want to make an exception in their money making schemes in the face of a global pan
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Only two years late!
Battle is already over.
The battle is far from over. The weapons, though, aren't working so well anymore. What we need is to ensure access to the next generation of vaccines. Speaking of which, where the hell are they? Moderna and/or Pfizer were claiming they would have Omicron vaccines this spring. I know they started testing but beyond that, I've only read vague projections from people not in a position to actually know.
Really relevant when vaccine supplies are now fine (Score:3)
Is there a shortage world wide?
https://www.yahoo.com/now/1-eu... [yahoo.com]
The EU is asking Pfizer to provide them with less!
This is a politically driven denigration of international intellectual property rights that will discourage further research in the area and related areas.
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As far as I understand, most of the funding for these vaccines came, in some form or another, from public sources anyway. There's not a lot of money in vaccine research, and pandemics aren't as predictable as demand for Viagra.
So the way this currently plays out is that expenses are socialized, but profits are privatized. This seems like a bad idea, parti
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... expenses are socialized, but profits are privatized...
That's called "cost externalization". It's the foundation of our entire corporatocracy, which means it is also the foundation of our current economy. Pharmaceutical research is no exception to the rule; it's simply a high-profile example just now, because it has been spotlighted by the pandemic.
Re:Really relevant when vaccine supplies are now f (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? Did the governments pay for the phase 2 and phase 3 trials - which cost a LOT and could have shown the proposed vaccine to be useless?
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Only for those corporations that are politically driven to the point of putting politics over profit.
Because by now Pfizer and Moderna at least made a really nice profit from those vaccines already.
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So you don't expect drug companies to make any return on the risks they take in developing vaccines? Did the governments pay for the phase 2 and phase 3 trials - which cost a LOT and could have shown the proposed vaccine to be useless?
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So you don't expect drug companies to make any return on the risks they take in developing vaccines? Did the governments pay for the phase 2 and phase 3 trials - which cost a LOT and could have shown the proposed vaccine to be useless?
No, but they should have. Medical research should be paid for by governments so that the benefits are not locked up behind patents, thus ensuring that the world can freely benefit from the results of that research. Nowhere is that more important than in infectious disease research.
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Yeah, that's certainly one way to turn a once-in-100-years event into a clusterfuck. Let Greed have a say.
1 x / century? WOW, are you fucking clueless.
Avian bird flu of 1916-18.
swine flu of 1957.
SmallPox until 60s.
Flu in 1968
AIDs
Somewhat, flu in 2009.
We CONSTANTLY have pandemics.
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Especially such when it was revealed that COVAX, the vaccine distribution group, let a bunch of vaccine go to waste (they ran past their expiry date).
One thing if we're in such a shortage, quite another if we're wasting it by having it sit on shelves.Is there a shortage still - as in do countries still need vaccines? If so, why did millions of dollars worth sit on the shelf of the group whose responsibility is to distribute it?
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If so, why did millions of dollars worth sit on the shelf of the group whose responsibility is to distribute it?
I suspect you've never even taken a lunch order for your co-workers much less tried to navigate the complexities of a managing the transferal of millions of doses of a highly sensitive medical substance with careful storage requirements across a national border to a third world country.
Hint: It's harder than sending an email to your crack dealer.
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COVAX hardly wasted any due to expiry at all. What actually happened was that lots of countries held on to supplies until expiry was just about to happen, and then tried to unload onto COVAX. Denmark alone destroyed at least a million doses.
When COVAX finally got some non-expired supply to distribute, China had already vaccinated those who wanted to be vaccinated, and then Omicron happened and made it all moot.
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Boohoo, Moderna and Pfizer only made $50+ billion off COVID, they will definitely not waste their energy on research when rewards are so puny.
Foolish. Very foolish. (Score:2)
The compromise measure on intellectual property rights will make it easier for companies in developing nations such as South Africa to manufacture and export a patented Covid-19 vaccine -- under limited circumstances -- without a consent from the patent holder if they have the approval of their own governments
Export is the issue. They should NOT be allowed to export it, by stealing technology.
Biden is 1 and done. Hopefully, the next president says that we will not allow ANY drugs from nations that steal the IP.
THis was done for Russia, China, and India, who will not dump on foreign markets.
Why not Compulsory Licensing? (Score:2)
Moderna was founded in 2010, built up a giant pile of investor cash based on their tech, but AFAIK didn't have a viable product until the COVID-19 vaccine, and now they're worth a fortune.
They're about as clear an example as to the value of patents as I can think of.
And now that they've hit the jackpot people want to nullify the patents? What's that going to do to the next Moderna who tries to get funded. Not to mention all the folks whining about how pharmas spend all their money on marketing and tweaking
patent free - corbbevax (Score:1)