Finland Had Patent-Free Covid-19 Vaccine 9 Months Ago–Still Went with Big Pharma | Hacker News Reader

Finland Had Patent-Free Covid-19 Vaccine 9 Months Ago–Still Went with Big Pharma

jacobinmag.com

24 pointskakoni7 comments

The story seems so incredible, not sure what to think of it. It was reported by the national broadcaster here already in May 2020 [1]. Would appreciate some medical professional opinion.

1: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11335406

Yes, something is definitely missing from this story!

I thought on first skim perhaps they were leaving out the difficulty of manufacturing mRNA vaccines in volume (there's a classic popular trope, especially with respect to medicine for some reason, of invention being 99% of getting something to market.

However from what limited info is in the article it appears to be something quite easy to manufacture on existing infrastructure.

> they were leaving out the difficulty of manufacturing mRNA vaccines in volume

Article is about adenovirus vaccine, not mRNA vaccine.

Yes that’s what I meant: it isn’t mRNA (my reflexive presumption for something quick these days) and, as a nasal spray, is presumably something conventional, quick amd stable. Seems crazy to have ignored it, based only on what I see in this article.

Since this felt like a highly non-credible story to me (because how on earth would this not get funding for a Phase 3 study?), I searched for some corroboration, preferably from a few months ago. And there is some:

https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnish-developed_open-so...

https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/1...

Here is recent article (in Finnish) about their funding problems (https://www.iltalehti.fi/politiikka/a/3181d8ce-19ce-4d41-a21...)

Tldr; Seems that Finnish government doesn’t have means or/and will to fund these sort of developments (especially if it’s open source)

Kinda sad when at the time Helsinki regions hospital district decided to renew its EHR system into American Epic. Project is estimated to cost 1 billion usd.

Oxford was going to open source their vaccine but the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (a big money donor) pressured them to sign an exclusive deal with AstraZeneca instead:

https://khn.org/news/rather-than-give-away-its-covid-vaccine...

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