Disagree. We should be honest. IT IS A ZERO-SUM GAME. Vaccine manufacturers are not able to meet demand. Production is already maxed out. If we hoard or have vaccines expire rather than share, that doesn't make it a non zero-sum game, it just makes us morally bankrupt.https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1438103141216575490 …
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It's appealing to believe there is a non-zero sum solution to the global vaccine supply crisis—magical supply increase via waiving patents etc. There is not. Not blaming individuals. Not saying boosters wouldn't help (though clearly some more than others). But reality is reality.
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100%. Complex manufacturing of stuff has an enormous amount of 'know-how' or tribal knowledge, in addition to all the physical inputs. It would be like Boeing or Airbus giving all their design drawings for everything to a 3rd party and telling them to start building planes now.
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@zeynep is right - the vaccine mfgs would have needed to do more than just give people the recipe - they would've needed to do a tech / know-how transfer. Can only come if governments provide coordination (just like US Gov DPA for Ford / Lockheed making Boeing bombers in WWII)
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I understand it’s a complex issue; there are raw material constraints, quality control issues, technology transfer throughput, etc - what (inc others) are most critical in your view? All the same many argue IP is a long-standing block to optimal vaccine innovation and production.
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There’s still time; the pandemic won’t be over any time soon, especially without capacity building in the majority world with a goal of total population basic healthcare coverage.
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On the flip side, the government *has* spun up novel industrial processes at a colossal scale on timelines short enough to be relevant, when survival is on the line -- e.g., the Manhattan Project plant at Oak Ridge. Would be nice to have a plant like that for this stuff.
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A lot of the "we can't do it in time" arguments assume the pandemic to be short term. We have been talking about doing it for over 6 months now. If we only got rid of this line of argument& accept that the supply demand problems are a five year problem, this could have been done
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yup yup agreed, its true in the case of Africa and HIV there was lag and IP share l8 - but equally HIV is only reason we turned the vax around in time - well malaria really - but yep
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In particular mRNA is a new technology that requires its own new and unique manufacturing processes and those take time to get up and running at scale.
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Chemical engineering fact of life: if you run a reaction in a 1 liter tank, it works fine. If you run the same reaction but with 100x more of the reactants in a 100 liter tank, it may well just explode.
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