Oh, vaccines and patents.
There are many things to be said about the US fashion proposal to eliminate patents from vaccines, made while the US does not sell the vaccines produced there and Europe has the weight of the rest of the world on its shoulders.
But let's go in order. The situation among nations that have the industrial capacity to produce RNA (or adenovirus) based vaccines is as follows.
- USA: do not export locally produced vaccines. America First.
- India: do not exhibit locally produced vaccines. The situation is desperate.
- Russia: they can't even produce the vaccines they need for themselves, and are desperately looking for agreements with foreign companies.
- China: they say they are exporting vaccines but so far they have promised 4 billion doses, and have exported 40 million.
- UK: do not export locally produced vaccines, except to some former colonies such as Australia.
The rest of the nations, ie other ~ 190 nations, depend entirely on European exports.
I had already talked about eliminating patents, because it would have better regulated the production of vaccines among European nations, which have the technological and industrial possibilities to produce it. Expanding it to the whole world is useless because to produce an RNA-based vaccine you need several things.
- Consolidated know-how. You need to have people who have worked in tier 1 pharmaceutical industries, and for a long time. But how does a nation that does not own these industries have trained personnel?
- Reagents. A piece of RNA is not easy to produce. The process is long and complicated and requires a gigantic supply chain of reagents. Which are still produced in the same countries.
- Infrastructure. Very sophisticated equipment is needed, which in turn is produced only in some countries. And the staff who know how to use them.
- Logistics: apart from refrigerators at -70 ° C, also the transport of vaccines in these conditions and their packaging itself are non-trivial techniques which in turn require technology and experience.
Under these conditions, making vaccines patent-free changes nothing: it takes about twenty years to build the entire supply chain if a country does not have one. Experience seen in India and China.
Outside of industrialized nations, the proposal to remove the patent from vaccines is nonsense. Pure.
He could balance the accounts between the EU and the UK / USA, and he would do so by allowing the French and Italians to easily get into the game of production, but we are talking about industrialized nations, and for this I had hoped for it too.
But if our goal is to get vaccines to nations that are not industrialized, it is useless. You don't make the vaccine just because you read the formula on the patent.
Why is Biden making that proposal? For one simple reason.
Biden has to rebuild the image of the US. Both internally, where the population has lost faith in the government, and externally.
The internal vaccination campaign, made possible by closing the borders and requisitioning virtually all of the related health material, is getting a moderate sense of success, except that Biden is meeting the hard core of Trump supporters who don't want to get vaccinated.
But in addition to internal problems, Biden has to deal with the image towards the world.
Apparently, in fact, for all the nations that do not have the adequate industrial supply chain, having the vaccine means calling Europe. This is the point.
And for a country that wanted to rebuild its image in the world, hearing 190 chancelleries say that nothing has changed with him compared to Trump's America First, it's not nice. Because even the internal press is starting to notice.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/04/24/world/covid-vaccine-coronavirus-cases
But the problem is that if Biden were to open the borders and export the vaccines, he would find the Republicans of America First accusing him of putting others before the Americans.
The proposal to cancel the patents on vaccines is a flirtatious proposal, made to raise the international image of the USA in the world's chancelleries, which however know the truth:
today, if you really want doses of the vaccine, you have to call a European number.
The Chinese will promise you and then they won't send it to you. The Russians will sell them to you and then they won't send them to you (De Luca, can you hear me? They gave you the package, jerk!), And the others have closed the borders to exports. In practice, only the EU remained to export.
Obviously this brings money to Europe. And of course BioNtech is creating factories upon factories. But the fact that there is an economic profit on the world chessboard is less relevant than the fact that there is a HUGE POLITICAL profit.
EVERY government in the WORLD, which is not in a position to produce vaccines, today has only one issue to do. That of Von Der Leyen.
And this obviously is said in the chancelleries, it is said in the corridors of the UN, the secret services hear it in wiretapping, and so on.
When the emergency is over, perhaps (but not necessarily) the Americans will say that Biden has handled it differently from Trump.
But ALL the less industrialized nations will say that there was no difference between Trump and Biden: "America First" was before, and America First is now.
The proposal to remove the patent from vaccines is just a flirtatious initiative that aims to put Europe in a bad light, which is selling vaccines to the rest of the world, while the USA and the countries of the anglosphere have closed borders.
And it is a pathetic attempt, since not even in the US such a thing has any chance 'of passing. For one reason: the Lobbies.
Pfizer is American. J&J is American. Materna is American.
And none of them want such a precedent. Do you really think such a thing would pass in the Senate?
To Biden the scoundrel is already good that the EU has replied "open the borders". Von Der Leyen was even more evil , because she said she was in favor, knowing full well that the proposal would be quashed by the American lobbies.
Biden is actually being SAVED by "European resistance", because the idea of canceling patents is a precedent that COULD pass in Brussels, but has no chance of passing through the American Senate. And if I say none, I mean hell will freeze the day before.
And if Von Der LEyen had been followed, Biden would have found himself in the embarrassing position of having his own proposal quashed by the Senate.
Do you really want to delude the world that a lobbying senate would have agreed to such an initiative, when it has been extending indefinitely, for 50 years now, patents and trademarks on EVERYTHING?
The same senate that makes rules to protect American trademarks? https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6196/text
Do you seriously believe it?
In any case, under these conditions I don't think anything will be done.