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Question is whether the rest of the world will follow. Germany, for instance, isn't completely on board with waiving vaccine patents. Profit incentive is import

• mytailorisrich 5y ago
  An important question is: what is the bottleneck for vaccine production? Waiving patents may be the "feelgood" option but is it the most effective? A related question being: how easy is it for a pharma company (likely in a less developed country) to manufacture a covid vaccine without prior experience or input? For example, my understanding is that mRNA is state of the art tech. We should work on the bottleneck first, whatever that may actually be.
  • pmastela 5y ago
    You've got a good point there. I've read that one argument for not just releasing the patents into the wild is that there's higher likelihood of botched vaccines which would dampen public's trust in the vaccines and therefore prolong the pandemic. I imagine though that if patents were waived then generics of the vaccines would pop up thanks to whatever manufacturers that are capable of producing the vaccines. Less developed nations would likely have the incentive of purchasing these generic options rather doing it in house if they believe the outside option will deliver higher quality results and retain public trust.