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I agree. He insists there's an uncopyable bottleneck that couldn't be overcome by opening things up, BUT then also admits his knowledge of the purported microfl

I agree. He insists there's an uncopyable bottleneck that couldn't be overcome by opening things up, BUT then also admits his knowledge of the purported microfluidics device (which isn't uncommon in pharma manufacture... and big pharma has capacity to manufacture bespoke microfluidics devices if they know the specs) is fuzzy because... ...well, because it's NOT open. The very bottleneck he's talking about is something he has to wave his hands about because it's bespoke, proprietary, and not well-published or open. This inadvertently validates the original tweet!

thayne 6y ago
Another possible benefit of opening it up is that maybe someone else would see a way to speed up production because they have an outside perspective.
- visarga 6y ago
  Clearly patents and secrets work against humanity in this instance. The government should just buy the tech and open it up.
  - thayne 6y ago
    I think that in general patents, copyrights, trade secrets etc. have a negative impact on innovation by hindering potential innovators from building on the works of others. The question is, is that negative impact offset by the positive impact of the incentives to innovate granted by exclusive rights to IP?
  - camkego 6y ago
    You don't think the government already thought of that? (for patents in general, that is). From wikipedia: Section 1498 gives the federal government of the United States the "right to use patented inventions without permission, while paying the patent holder 'reasonable and entire compensation' which is usually "set at ten percent of sales or less" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_patent_use_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_patent_use_(United_...
hcknwscommenter 6y ago
I can assure you, under most meanings of the words "uncommon" and "common", microfluidic devices for manufacturing these nanoscale encapsulated mRNAs are definitely "uncommon." In fact, I would wager that there are probably a handful in the world at most. Moreover, it's a fair bet that no two are alike. Additionally, until this brand new mRNA vaccine technology actually demonstrated efficacy it was not quite so clear cut that we should put a huge proportion of our resources into making more of these devices, rather than explore different vaccine platforms.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  They demonstrated high efficacy in primate models only like a month or two after first developed and earlier than that in vitro. But we're not really limited in resources, here. We have TONS of money, people are unemployed, and this is essentially the biggest problem facing the world right now. We can AND OUGHT TO be "wasting" money by throwing large resources at a wide range of potential vaccines (some of which wouldn't work). The whole "we don't have resources" thing is absurd. We've been spending literally trillions of dollars on COVID-19 relief (and monetary easing, etc) which is a poor substitute for actually solving the COVID-19 problem.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    Money and manufacturing resources are not at all the same thing.
    - Robotbeat 6y ago
      We seem to not be having stainless steel shortages. We have plenty of manufacturing, even precision manufacturing, capacity.
  - hcknwscommenter 6y ago
    We did "waste" billions of dollars on a number of possible vaccine candidates that didn't actually pan out. See, Merck and Sanofi and GSK. Primate models are great (best we have), but we didn't "know" these things worked until end of December. It's beginning of Feb. I know the world is on fire, but things are moving fairly quickly. 1.34 million vaccinations a day in the U.S., from zero at beginning of Dec. That's pretty good. With much luck, the plateau in the vaccination rate this week gets resolved and we manage to hit 2M/day by end of Feb.

thayne 6y ago

Another possible benefit of opening it up is that maybe someone else would see a way to speed up production because they have an outside perspective.

visarga 6y ago
Clearly patents and secrets work against humanity in this instance. The government should just buy the tech and open it up.
- thayne 6y ago
  I think that in general patents, copyrights, trade secrets etc. have a negative impact on innovation by hindering potential innovators from building on the works of others. The question is, is that negative impact offset by the positive impact of the incentives to innovate granted by exclusive rights to IP?
- camkego 6y ago
  You don't think the government already thought of that? (for patents in general, that is). From wikipedia: Section 1498 gives the federal government of the United States the "right to use patented inventions without permission, while paying the patent holder 'reasonable and entire compensation' which is usually "set at ten percent of sales or less" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_patent_use_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_patent_use_(United_...

hcknwscommenter 6y ago

I can assure you, under most meanings of the words "uncommon" and "common", microfluidic devices for manufacturing these nanoscale encapsulated mRNAs are definitely "uncommon." In fact, I would wager that there are probably a handful in the world at most. Moreover, it's a fair bet that no two are alike. Additionally, until this brand new mRNA vaccine technology actually demonstrated efficacy it was not quite so clear cut that we should put a huge proportion of our resources into making more of these devices, rather than explore different vaccine platforms.

Robotbeat 6y ago
They demonstrated high efficacy in primate models only like a month or two after first developed and earlier than that in vitro. But we're not really limited in resources, here. We have TONS of money, people are unemployed, and this is essentially the biggest problem facing the world right now. We can AND OUGHT TO be "wasting" money by throwing large resources at a wide range of potential vaccines (some of which wouldn't work). The whole "we don't have resources" thing is absurd. We've been spending literally trillions of dollars on COVID-19 relief (and monetary easing, etc) which is a poor substitute for actually solving the COVID-19 problem.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Money and manufacturing resources are not at all the same thing.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    We seem to not be having stainless steel shortages. We have plenty of manufacturing, even precision manufacturing, capacity.
- hcknwscommenter 6y ago
  We did "waste" billions of dollars on a number of possible vaccine candidates that didn't actually pan out. See, Merck and Sanofi and GSK. Primate models are great (best we have), but we didn't "know" these things worked until end of December. It's beginning of Feb. I know the world is on fire, but things are moving fairly quickly. 1.34 million vaccinations a day in the U.S., from zero at beginning of Dec. That's pretty good. With much luck, the plateau in the vaccination rate this week gets resolved and we manage to hit 2M/day by end of Feb.