US and UK 'lead push against global patent pool for Covid-19 drugs'

I suggest that the 180+ countries which agree should now form their own bloc with an open license system.

If the UK, US and Swiss governments are acting in a way which is harmful to everyone in the world, and against the wishes of 96% of their own population, a parallel power structure should be formed to lock them out and work around that.

To be clear, this is about the phrasing of a resolution, not actual bad behavior, right?

Frankly, I'm less concerned about the words on the paper than what people actually do.

The primary purpose of a patent system is to maximise the benefits of innovation in the long run. Not necessarily to maximise innovation.

Each country's laws are meant to maximise it for its own citizens as long as the laws are applied without discrimination.

If you want to convince a large and poor country to accept your standards in patent protection, show them how a large pool of their population will be involved in productive R&D.

I assume any vaccines or drugs will also cost 20x more in the US vs the rest of the world.

I think we're only going to see more piracy. If third world countries want to stop being underdeveloped, they need to act now and allow pirates to stop this inhumanity.

This is such an absurd argument:

>We continue to support public-private partnerships for product development, and approaches such as non-exclusive voluntary licensing which promote affordable access for all while also providing incentives to create life-changing vaccines.

The researchers doing the actual work to create life-changing vaccines are clearly not driven by profit, nor do they actually get a share of that profit being salaried. The question is of a monetary incentive for funding the research in the first place. Seems to me that this is a strong argument for important research being done at state level since private companies won't do it without a profit incentive.

The right middleground solution would be that countries who can pay should pay and those who cannot can get a license to produce the vaccine domestically without the right to sell it domestically or internationally. Basically socialism on a country level. I’d expect countries like Germany to pay a big price for the vaccine since they can afford it and the research must be funded by the rich, right? Less wealthy nations can get a free license to produce the vaccine domestically without paying. So everyone gets access AND the research gets funded and incentivised.

EDIT:

I expected this to get downvoted. Everyone loves socialism unless they belong to the richer group which is expected to settle the bill.

The hypocrisy is just staggering. Nobody has pushed or send help to countries struggling with SARS, MERS or Ebola. People are still dying from those viruses today. Nobody is pushing for groundbreaking changes to climate change so that we don't kill the people of tomorrow. Just some worthless PR bs agreemetns drafted at some bs EU meetings where countries agree to set low targets, still fail to meet them and just pay small fines for it to wash their hands and feel good about destroying our planet. But as soon as there's a threat to these old fat elites right now then all of a sudden they have a vetted interest in doing the right thing for themselves cough sorry I mean obviously the greater good of humanity in true PR language.

Humans are selfish pricks. The sooner one realises and accepts that as a fact, the sooner one can live in harmony in this world.

I predict that this will backfire in a big way.

The people with the largest government-backed research budget and with the largest pool of data about Covid are likely Chinese. They'll probably also have enough patriotic citizens to try out new vaccines to benefit their country.

Now imagine if a working Covid drug is indeed developed in China. Because the US and UK hollowed out the sharing agreement, they'll then need to call in favors.

That might well ruin Trump politically, but at the very least it'll put both countries in a much weaker negotiation position for future trade agreements.

I just don't see any reason why the US or the UK might be leading this research globally. So why would this seem like a good idea for them?

Of course they led this. How could drug companies exist on open sourced patents? One might say 'it is only the free market system that incents development of new drugs, without which we would all die unmedicated (AKA the ultimate revenge against your MD). There needs to be a middle ground. How else can we eliminate this egregious abuse of the US poor. from wikiperdia: Albendazole was developed in 1975.[5] It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines, the safest and most effective medicines needed in a health system.[6] The wholesale cost in the developing world is between 0.01 and US$0.06 per dose.[7] In the United States, as of 2019, the wholesale cost is about US$128 per dose.[8]