The Politics of Vaccines

I have a few observations on the politics of vaccines. This is happening now, in front of our eyes on the world stage. Vaccines for COVID is far from just a mere incident, rather it is more a raging issue and we are all on the same boat facing it in our own way. The effect of what we are facing is more or less for each one of us, but that does not change the consequence of the incident at all.

Now that the USA has come around, they are ready to let go of the IPR for opening the manufacturing, rights to other countries so that the vaccine production can be ramped up.

I for one don’t understand the psychology of certain nations like Germany, Canada, Norway, Sweeden, Newzealand, and others opposing this motion.

The critical fact is the world population is 7 Billion plus and the developed nation make only 17% of the world population, the rest is developing and underdeveloped. So, the health of the developed nations really depends on how fast the rest of the world can be vaccinated.

It is plain stupid, to talk about IPR and protection because even if the developed world for instance vaccinates 100% of its citizens in the next one year, they cannot guarantee the safety and health of its citizens any more than the situation, which is prevalent today. And the world to operate normally as it was before COVID.

Just keeping your own citizens safe and staying within the bubble of safety is not the way forward. How long will the government or for that matter anyone ensure that there will be no intermingling between people from the developed and the developing countries?

So, let’s burst the bubble and take up the unified aim of ramping up production for the vaccine. The world would require over 14 Billion doses and the world production as of today is not more than 2 to 2.5 billion doses per year.

At the current pace, the Pharma companies will require more than 6 to 7 yrs. to achieve a sizeable production to innoculate the entire world's population (very conservative estimates) and clearly, the world can’t wait for that long to achieve normalcy. So what is the solution?

Give the IPR to nations to ramp up the production. 

The other scenario is that developing nations will be left with no option but to revoke the IPR regime (USTR) in their countries according to WTO in light of human health crises emergency raging in their country.  

In case the Govt does that they aren’t emboldened to give any licensing fees to the patent holders, so they will not have to shell out extra to the original company in terms of the license. That will radically bring down the cost of vaccines to an affordable level in these countries and more and more people can be vaccinated at a lower cost…

So should the Pharma companies come down from their high horse and give the IPR readily?

The gains are plenty even for the pharma companies. If they let the countries ramp up the production and they naturally will be compensated by way of licensing rights to get a pie from this increased production.

It is a question of getting a share from a larger pool or being a larger pool of a smaller base! Well, the Pharma companies will only benefit from here if the production is scaled up 100x, from the present stage.