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Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#121

Post by kmeisthax »

janekm wrote: post #62

The biggest hurdle to getting more vaccine manufacturing capacity online is probably the hysteria around "China might steal our vaccine technology!!!!". There is no other country with the experience of rapidly scaling up manufacturing supply chains. But in the case of these vaccines, especially the mRNA ones, very hard to do without exact specifications of the microfluidics and process parameters needed.

Patent & copyright nationalism is one hell of a drug.

China stealing our vaccine technology has got to be the least convincing threat I've seen. So what if they do? What are they going to do with it? Cure diseases?

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#122

Post by antibuddy »

iso1631 wrote: post #105
antibuddy wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In India currently die ~2 people per 100k per week on Corona. In Germany it was over triple that in December. The total Corona mortality in India is also way way lower as in Germany (16.842/100k vs 100.35/100k). I am not sure that the moral panic is even justified.

You'er basing that on official figures from a country which has cities whose healthcare systems collapsed. Makeshift funeral pyres in the middle of a city street don't happen in a country where something hasn't gone terribly wrong Delhi's official death rate of the last 7 days was 9 per 100k, and University of Michigan are estimating real rates at 2-5 times higher than that for India as a whole.

In Kerala the all-cause mortality decreased from 2019-2020[0] - something you could observe in Germany as well. Kerala is said to be more advanced than other states in India, however it lends some credence to the official numbers.

[0]: https://health.kerala.gov.in/pdf/Technical-paper-All-Cause-M...

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#123

Post by janekm »

kmeisthax wrote: post #121
janekm wrote: post #62

The biggest hurdle to getting more vaccine manufacturing capacity online is probably the hysteria around "China might steal our vaccine technology!!!!". There is no other country with the experience of rapidly scaling up manufacturing supply chains. But in the case of these vaccines, especially the mRNA ones, very hard to do without exact specifications of the microfluidics and process parameters needed.

Patent & copyright nationalism is one hell of a drug. China stealing our vaccine technology has got to be the least convincing threat I've seen. So what if they do? What are they going to do with it? Cure diseases?

Indeed, how dare they! https://www.ft.com/content/fa1e0d22-71f2-401f-9971-fa2731357... ("Vaccine makers say IP waiver could hand technology to China and Russia")

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#124

Post by machinebun »

miked85 wrote: post #112
true_religion wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be fair. We all gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. It was only after years of broken promises, and angry outbursts that some people turned against him by default. Give Biden at least 1 year, and you'll see that some people are reflexively critical of him too.

> We all gave Trump the benefit of the doubt. Seriously? Nothing of the sort happened. There was constant negative media and calls for impeachment immediately.

Let me remind you, in case you forgot, that the Muslim ban EO happened 7 days into Trump's tenure (as well as shithole countries remark). That's about all the "chance" I was prepared to give.

If that's how you lead foreign policy 7 days in, you don't deserve to be president. Full stop.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#125

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

josefresco wrote: post #110
makomk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and if Trump was still in power I have zero doubt the media would call him out on what a cynical stunt this is - but Biden is in charge now, and that makes a huge difference to how they report on everything.

Please stop with this false narrative. American conservatives have giant and pervasive media organizations that cover Biden negatively 24/7. You're selectively choosing which "media" to criticize.

Ah now, the OP definitely has a point.

When Trump didn't condemn Saudi Arabia it was the worst thing any US president had done, when Biden does the same it's crickets.

Like, I hated Trump and I'm pretty happy with Biden, but to say that there isn't a substantial difference in media coverage is really just not true.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#126

Post by username90 »

josefresco wrote: post #110
makomk wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and if Trump was still in power I have zero doubt the media would call him out on what a cynical stunt this is - but Biden is in charge now, and that makes a huge difference to how they report on everything.

Please stop with this false narrative. American conservatives have giant and pervasive media organizations that cover Biden negatively 24/7. You're selectively choosing which "media" to criticize.

I never see your conservative media in any of my feeds unless I specifically go out and look for it. To us Europeans it looks like you Americans blindly approve of everything Biden does because that is the news you choose to show us.

I don't think it is healthy that you need to go to the other sides newspapers in order to get a proper evaluation of what Biden does, why should I have to dig through fox news to understand the narrative?

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#127

Post by newsclues »

meepmorp wrote: post #73
newsclues wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if there is a factory that can spit out lots of effective vaccines if given the recipe? Shouldn’t we use every resource available?

If such a factory existed, it'd be making vaccines already.

It feels like the people saying that have a stake in the existing vaccine manufacturers.

There is a pharmaceutical industry in India that is not being given the opportunity to get in this fight and some people say they could help and others say they can’t.

So give them a chance and test if they can!

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#128

Post by _y5hn »

apexalpha wrote: post #86
_y5hn wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vaccine program was failing to rollout when Biden inherited it.

The vaccines first got approval in December 2020, it wasn't failing it was just starting up. European vaccine rollout also had starting aches but was then very quickly limited by the supply-side.

Fair point. As we've seen there is due process and concerns as seen with some vaccines.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#129

Post by username90 »

jollybean wrote: post #60
throwaway4good wrote: post #27

Something here smells deeply hypocritical. Currently vaccine companies such as the German Curevac (which is the vaccine company Trump famously tried to buy) is being held back by lack of core ingredients which are under American export bans. The US still upholds the export bans setup by the Trump administration. Biden can just revoke those. Yet he promotes the idea of waivering vaccine patents knowing well how hard t…

Opening up the IP is a 'win' for almost everyone but the companies making vaccines, so there's not much downside. Exporting individual vaccines might break contracts, and because it's a little bit zero-sum, the public at large may hold him in contempt for not putting 'America first'.

Biden would 100% be against it if it was an American company that held the patents. He'd say that we shouldn't throw the company that worked so hard to provide us with a vaccine under the buss just to save money.

Removing the patent doesn't save more people, just as many vaccines would get produced, it just shifts money from the company to the state that pays for the vaccine.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#130

Post by haswell »

CountDrewku wrote: post #116
josefresco wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop with this false narrative. American conservatives have giant and pervasive media organizations that cover Biden negatively 24/7. You're selectively choosing which "media" to criticize.

Fox news is the only "giant" media corporation promoting the conservative side and there are several individuals there that praise Biden. Everything else is left to far left, including our education system and the largest corporations in this country. So, take your own advice and stop promoting this false narrative that there's negative Biden coverage anywhere near the amount that Trump had. It's absolutely obvious t…

Let us not forget the climate that Trump created for himself. Much of that constant negative coverage was more about his antics and absurdities, and at some point, it became impossible for him to do/say much of anything without completely deserved backlash.

With that said, I can’t claim there is no media bias re: Biden, but we should not pretend that the circumstances are even close to similar.

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