Covid: US backs waiver on vaccine intellectual property

Post by thehappypm » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:15 PM UTC

KirillPanov wrote: post #40

baybal2 wrote: post #28

Indian pharmacies already disregard medication patents without anybody's permission. Vaccine manufacturing is just a way more involved process than anything what an average organic synthesis shop can handle. Dealing with antibodies, proteins, plasmids, or RNA requires real factories rather than garage labs. What one need is a complete process transfer : instructions on setting up every process, along with supplies ne…

I would love it if somebody would post a more detailed explanation of the mRNA vaccine manufacturing process here on HN. The news media keeps mumbling vague terms like "ingredients", and it's frustrating. Conventional vaccine production is a highly biological process... chicken eggs being used to make the flu vaccines and so forth. I was under the impression that the mRNA vaccines are chemically much simpler -- just…

Post by meepmorp » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

newsclues wrote: post #127

meepmorp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Post by tharne » Thu, May 06, 2021, 3:55 PM UTC

apexalpha wrote: post #74

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…

The US put an export ban on basically everything regarding vaccines, very early on. If you look at the amount of vaccines produced , the US and EU are fairly close to each other. The difference in Vaccine rollout comes from the fact that the EU exports vaccines to other countries while the US does not. As a European I would've been in favour of more export controls, but a total ban seems to go too far. Why should 18…

Post by tharne » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:02 PM UTC

_y5hn wrote: post #85

apexalpha wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It must sting that the (arguably) only successful thing to come out of this America First policy is now being credited to the Biden administration. For all the mess Biden has inherited, he also inherited a near perfect vaccine production program. The reversals issued in the first 100 days did not reverse any export bans or regulations the Trump admin put in place for the vaccine production and rollout.

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

Post by MikeUt » Thu, May 06, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

tharne wrote: post #145

apexalpha wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US put an export ban on basically everything regarding vaccines, very early on. If you look at the amount of vaccines produced , the US and EU are fairly close to each other. The difference in Vaccine rollout comes from the fact that the EU exports vaccines to other countries while the US does not. As a European I would've been in favour of more export controls, but a total ban seems to go too far. Why should 18…

> Why should 18 years olds in the EU/US receive a vaccine before 75 year olds in other countries? Because a nation state has a duty to protect the safety of its own citizens first and foremost. If a government continuously puts the needs of other countries over the needs of its own citizens, who is going to support a system like that long-term? Perhaps a handful of upper-middle-class idealists, but not most people. R…