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Comment by rwieruch | Hacker News Reader

"Trump was doing everything he could to secure a vaccine for the United States, "but only for the US," the newspaper quoted an anonymous German government source as saying."

One related Tweet which goes around: https://twitter.com/thorstenbenner/status/123908864178962841...

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I personally first saw it in this tweet translating the Welt article[0] and after looking into it other sources seem to agree.

For what is worth, in Germany's case, in particular, there is very little concern with them not sharing the vaccine, but I can see how the US might think it can profit by having exclusive rights to it initially..

0. https://twitter.com/nicktolhurst/status/1239117898901266432

I can't. Any businessman/profiteer that thinks IP rights are going to be maintained in this case is a moron. Trying to secure exclusivity in this case is obviously futile.

This is almost certainly about securing a supply of doses, which well duh. Any government voluntarily putting itself at the back of that line will be overthrown immediately.

Unfortunately, the businessman involved is a moron.

Who do you mean by saying 'the US', when it comes to have exclusivity in profiting? Of course the US as a country has an interest in pushing development of vaccine in any possible way.

This isn't pushing development, this sounds like jumping in near the end of development and waving a chequebook to obtain the vaccine for sole use. Probably to sell it to the rich at a huge cost and then eventually make it free or low cost for other countries. Essentially price gouging at a massive scale.

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