Bernie: Suspend pharma patents. Make vaccines for whole world

If Mexico wants to take a Russian or Chinese vaccine they can feel free to do so...... I will not.

 

That’s why we’re Americans

 

https://www.businessinsider.com/eu-vaccine-rollout-failing-russia-and-china-are-stepping-in-2021-3

The EU's vaccine rollout is going so badly that Russia and China are now stepping in to take advantage

 

Yeah... I am sure that the Russians and Chinese have followed every possible safety procedure, all vaccinations have been properly vetted and there is nothing to worry about....

 

They are doing basically what Bernie wants, vaccinating everyone in the world.

Obviously they can just laugh at the west and say communist do it better!

 

I think they should license or subcontract production more than they are. Tell them pfizer and moderna that they get paid the same regardless of if they manufacture it or someone else does.

 

I don't think this is an either / or situation and while I don't know the exact details regarding the arrangements that Pfizer, Moderna, etc. have with universities and other public institutes in many of these cases private companies have licensing agreements with universities that compensate them. I know in the case of schools like University of California and University of Minnesota they do get millions annually from agreements with private companies from research developed at the schools.

Also for these schools private companies will provide a lot of grants and money to schools endowments to encourage their research. That is why the University of California endowment is $140 Billion.

In terms of the overall argument I disagree both on the practical and on the philosophical basis. As other posters noted the profit motive worked as Pfizer likely was willing to commit so much to this development for both the prestige of having the first COVID-19 vaccine but also to the likely large return for MRNA vaccines down the road. Further with the COVID-19 vaccines this is a global wide pandemic so geopolitical rivalries helped to drive the development and are also helping to drive distribution. The PRC developed and tested the Sinovac and Sinopharm in several countries and are now distributing them in many countries at little to no costs. The US has purchased 100's of millions of doses of vaccines from private companies that likely aren't all going to be used in the US. Those will likely be routed to other countries. There also is an international CoVax program that already is providing millions of doses to many countries.

Philosophically as have been debating in other threads the creations of the mind are unique. While there is no scarcity of ideas good ideas are scarce. If there was nothing special or unique about developing vaccines for a novel disease COVID-19 vaccines could've been developed earlier and in every country with a decent lab space. The rapid creation of new vaccine using new technology is a major achievement. One that took a lot of effort and a lot of risk. Those who took that effort and that risk should be able to claim it and benefit from it.

 

For example,

a non contributing member of Clutchfans shouldn't benefit like a contributing member of Clutchfans.

 

Companies are not going to invest unless they show a cash flow diagram to investors that shows profits in the near term. Therefore the early stages of mRNA research is funded by tax payer dollars. Once companies see potential, that's when they step in.

The most obvious example of this is the space exploration.

 

Bernie is full kray at this point. I hate big Pharma as much as anyone but what incentive will any business have?

are we going to rely on the same government that can’t efficiently run a ****ing DPS or VA?

 

I think there are a few different topics and debates here.

My original response is to this: "temporarily suspend coronavirus vaccine-related intellectual property rights in order to facilitate speedy global production and distribution of the life-saving shot"

Your point above is valid, but I don't think it's THAT simple. This public funding of "leg work" has been a successful public/private/individual partnership for decades in all kinds of fields not just medicine.

The researchers get the funding and are credited with the work. They hold the patent. That's one of their strong incentive for doing the hard dirty ground-level basic research. The public does get a return on this value. See all the advancements in electronics, medicine, communication, security, and so on. You could argue that perhaps the public should get a bit more in direct return and maybe a % of a value of the patent... seems reasonable and may be politically popular for future funding as well.

Basic research, however, gets you only so far. Productizing is extremely costly and difficult work. In my field of work, 9 out of 10 awesome ideas die because of the productizing phrase. These companies need to have an incentive to go do this work and yes, profit is exactly the incentive. Without profit incentive, we would be here hoping, depending on the goodwill of these multiple national powerful companies to develop these vaccines - I'm very doubtful we would be here today if that was the case.

Today, there are multiple vaccines, many are already very successful and 2021 will see probably more than enough doses to cover every single human on Earth (1.1B for Modera, 2B for Pfizer/BioNTech, at least 200M for J&J, 700M for Sputnik V, 1-2B for CoronaVac, 1B for Novavax, and so on). A number of these companies (J&J, Novavax) have partner with other pharmaceuticals, even their competitors to manufacture these vaccines. If there are indeed idle manufacturers that are capable of producing these vaccines, I would think there would be partnership to use them. I don't see a production problem here. There is probably going to be a huge logistic and delivery problem and a cost problem for poor countries. Those are real concerns and I do support rich nations getting together to solve those problems. The sooner we defeat or slow down covid, the fewer chances we see a killer mutation, one that wouldn't stay local.

 

I invested in Novavax in 2016 in hopes for a trial to pass phase three testing. When it failed the stock tanked almost 85% and later went on a 8-1 reverse stock split. That 30 year old company never made a profit until last year.

Big pharma def has issues but the juniors betting on one or two lines will probably get wrecked by this decision... Which inevitably makes the remaining big players much more stronger and influential (big banks, big tech...)

Keep in mind pharma and genomics is one of the next projected areas of explosive growth. A move like this would be like crippling tech companies like Google or Yahoo in the late 90s because IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft are dicks (they are).

Just get rid of the oligarchal gimmies and tax breaks instead of making a ham fisted populist sounding proclamation that sounds "fair and industry wide".

Why do we pay more for drugs than other countries? Who cares! End patent protections!!!!

Maybe we can streamline FDA process and put more money into reducing wait times for regulatory hurdles with more people on the floor.

Beats me. Too hard thinky. Much rather smash.

 

this is the argument for billionaires

 

I wholeheartedly support people worse off than Glynch being empowered to define his excesses and earmark them for giveaways. That way Glynch can live a virtuous life free from unconscionable accumulations at the expense of those less fortunate.

 

The Renewed War on Christmas begins in 8 months...focus on the important things.

 

On top of the very important cancel culture war, we can't forget to focus on the feminization of America, we gotta keep the queers and women out of the military, and let people know wearing masks is gay.

The American people need us now more than ever.

 

Military? Hell, don't forget the bathrooms.

 

Those lady boys ain't right I tell you hwhat

 

Bernie doesn’t think about business
Which is the cause of the majority of jobs around the world