US declares a vaccine war on the world

The United States and the UK were the only two holdouts in the World Health Assembly from the declaration that vaccines and medicines for Covid-19 should be available as public goods, and not under exclusive patent rights. The United States explicitly dissociated itself from the call for a patent pool, talking instead of “the critical role that intellectual property plays” – in other words, patents for vaccines and medicines. Having badly botched his Covid-19 response, President Trump is trying to redeem his fortunes for the November elections by promising an early vaccine. The 2020 version of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan is shaping up to be, in essence, “vaccines for us” – but the rest of the world will have to queue up and pay what Big Pharma asks, as it will hold the patents.In contrast, all other countries agreed with the Costa Rican proposal in the World Health Assembly that there should be a patent pool for all Covid-19 vaccines and medicines. President Xi Jinping said Chinese vaccines would be available as a public good, a view shared by European Union leaders. Among the 10 candidate vaccines in Phase 1 and 2 of clinical trials, the Chinese have five, the United States has three, and the UK and Germany have one each.​

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OrphanSlug said:

Somewhere the Martin Shkrelis of the world are smiling and calling their stock portfolio managers.

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Lord Tammerlain said:

They will be upset if a company outside of the US or UK develops an effective vaccine first of course. All those hundreds of millions of people getting vaccinations at low cost. It will make them weep at the lost profit

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What if...? said:

You know that we won't be able to get it here, right?

We'll have to pay full pop like we always do.

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