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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

#111

Post by tssva »

credit_guy wrote: post #93

How is this supposed to work really? The President is not above the law (as Justice Kagan famously put it 2 years ago). He can't just suspend the patent law. He can ask the Congress to revoke the law, but that would be going forward, it would not act retroactively (as per the Article 1 of the Constitution). Let's just say the President issues some type of Executive Order to overrule the patent protections for the Cov…

The patent waiver doesn't require any Congressional changes to US patent law or require the President to unilaterally overrule US patent laws. US patent law only covers patents in the US.

The US and almost all other countries are in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO has an agreement called TRIPS which covers IP requirements of member states. Part of the requirements of TRIPS is that most member states have to reciprocate patent rights for patents issued by other member states. The WTO can waive this requirement with a vote of the WTO General Council. This is what is being proposed and Biden has declared that the US now supports doing so. This is completely within his powers as President.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#112

Post by miked85 »

true_religion wrote: post #69
zo1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But somehow some random "throwaway" account on a forum has more info than all of Biden's advisers? "Benefit of the doubt" is just a cover. We must assume competence and intent on the administration's part and hold them accountable for it (or give them credit), otherwise we're letting our bias/favoritism show through.

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.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#113

Post by blywi »

throwaway6734 wrote: post #81
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…

>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. Do you know specifically which materials?

I had the exact same question. What I could find was this Reuters article [0] which lists nucleotides and special plastic containers as two of the items in short supply.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#114

Post by mbg721 »

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.

"Conservative media" (AM radio, Fox mostly, and various periodicals) are still treated as an alternative to "media", by all sides.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#115

Post by credit_guy »

tssva wrote: post #111
credit_guy wrote: post #93

How is this supposed to work really? The President is not above the law (as Justice Kagan famously put it 2 years ago). He can't just suspend the patent law. He can ask the Congress to revoke the law, but that would be going forward, it would not act retroactively (as per the Article 1 of the Constitution). Let's just say the President issues some type of Executive Order to overrule the patent protections for the Cov…

The patent waiver doesn't require any Congressional changes to US patent law or require the President to unilaterally overrule US patent laws. US patent law only covers patents in the US. The US and almost all other countries are in the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO has an agreement called TRIPS which covers IP requirements of member states. Part of the requirements of TRIPS is that most member states have…

Thank you for the explanation.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#116

Post by CountDrewku »

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.

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 that's not true.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#117

Post by blywi »

beckman466 wrote: post #41
refurb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the NIH helped with the spike protein sequence. There are plenty of other parents needed to make the actual vaccine.

If you are knowledgeable on this, please could you write a short list of the total amount of patents the vaccine currently consists of, or link to a good source?

This is good summary of the intellectual property situation for mRNA vaccine. The link was posted 2 weeks ago on the Twitter stream of Katalin Kariko, pioneer of mRNA vaccine technology and VP at BioNTech.

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2021/04/11/mrna-ip-competitive-la...

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2021/04/21/mrna-ip-competitive-la...

https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2021/04/30/mrna-patent-competitiv...

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#118

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.

> Makeshift funeral pyres in the middle of a city street don't happen in a country where something hasn't gone terribly wrong

The same was said in Germany/Saxony (crematoria capacity reached), however they plain omitted the fact that usually these were outsourced to Czech Republic, but borders were closed. Cherry-picking parts of the story but omitting others is so common that I am hesitant to take it as is.

It would be certainly better to have overall mortality, so it would be easier to reason about the veracity of COVID mortality, however I am not convinced by obvious emotional manipulation.

> 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.

9/100k/w is not very high for cities given they are drastically more affected by pandemics in general. 2-5 times is quite a big margin, but I would be interested in how they came to these numbers.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#119

Post by ta988 »

The problem is not just the intellectual property right now, it is also all the supply chain for its components plus the training and equipment. I can give you the recipe for a truffle egg omelet... Now you need the truffles, the eggs and a way to cook it. In the long term however I hope we are going to start rethinking durg pricing and intellectual property. They had people convinced that making a drug is expensive and they need that to pay for R&D, now that we know it is not what is happening, we can move on.

Re: Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

#120

Post by jayd16 »

makomk wrote: post #53
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…

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.

The persecution complex...

What difference? Were they calling those bans a stunt before? No. You don't need to be hypothetical. This policy wasn't a secret.

The media didn't have to dig this deep when drinking bleach and injecting light were the topics du jour.

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