from Hacker News

Bill Gates says vaccine formulas shouldn't be shared with developing world

by giis on 4/28/21, 7:45 AM with 15 comments

• by airhead969 on 4/28/21, 10:58 AM

  It's an arrogant assumption on Gates' part. Let other countries worry about the safety and quality of locally-produced vaccines. Give them that choice. Monopolizing a cure to a threat to all of us and assuming other countries can't produce quality vaccines is paternalistic BS.

• by suramya_tomar on 4/28/21, 10:25 PM

  The developing countries are being asked to pay astronomical costs for the vaccines which need to be imported and due to the limited supply (since they are only manufactured in some places) there is not enough supply.

  Some of the folks are suggesting that the Pharma companies license the technologies to local production plants, like how Oxford-AstraZeneca is being manufactured in India so that they can manufacture it at a cheaper cost and reduce the stress on the global supply chain that is frankly struggling to meet the demand.

  More radical folks are suggesting that the IP should be made open to all since it was funded by Tax dollars/Euros/Yen/Rupees etc. In fact the original plan was for Oxford to make its vaccine open access but the Gates foundation convinced them to not do that. (https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine...)

  Remember it's not like the Virus will respect the borders and decide not to spread to the 'developed' countries once it mutates and it will, it's just a matter of time.

  - Suramya

• by MikeUt on 4/28/21, 8:31 AM

  Contrary to what the title implies, those vaccines aren't 'shared' with the developed world either. They're kept by the pharma companies, and the developed world has to pay for doses, despite having funded over 97% of the vaccine development cost with taxes [1,2]. Yet these articles are implicitly asking us to feel guilty for.. what? Allowing the patent cartel to bribe our politicians and extort us?

  [1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/apr/15/oxfordastraz...

  [2] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.04.08.21255103v...

• by fighterpilot on 4/28/21, 8:03 AM

  I wish journalists would stop writing articles about what random outraged people on Twitter are projecting today.

  Here's a better article: Take this comment Gates made and interview three experts from adjacent and relevant disciplines that know what they're talking about to see if what Gates is saying is true.

  Low brow journalism.

• by suramya_tomar on 4/28/21, 10:16 PM

  Cory Doctorow has a great take on this: https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/27/bruno-argento/#pharma-dea... that I thought people here would find useful.

• by badhabit on 4/28/21, 11:41 AM

  can vaccine be open sourced?

• by readonthegoapp on 4/28/21, 8:44 AM

  I think the only question is

  Do we want to commit mass suicide or not?

  If so, it's really easy -- just don't share the vaccines with the world.

  The viruses will mutate and come back and kill us all soon enough. It's already started.

  A metaphore would be global warming

  We solve it for the entire planet, or we all die.

  Maybe I'm missing something, but I doubt it.