Uh, yeah, no. I fully support my country's stance on this. We simply cannot afford to indemnify an multinational company from their own product.
With my cynical hat on, that clause feels like a tactic - an unreasonable demand that tests desperation but also allows for a face-saving concession in negotiations.
Throughout the chain of manufacturing, sales and distribution will be a myriad of people with a profit motive, so even if feedback starts to be received that the drug is causing nasty things to happen, the risk of news suppression and continued sale is probably high. E.g., if power goes out at a storage facility and the temperature at which the drug is held exceeds recommended levels, people might still sell it to get their income and avoid blame even though they know the batch has limited usefulness. Pfizer probably has to protect itself from these elements of fraud and / or negligence which are probably exacerbated by the basic risk of the drug's effects and efficacy.
If the drug has been rushed to market, it is probably not only the drug's effects which have been compromised, but the security and integrity of the entire supply chain that will support how, when and where the drug is administered and by whom.
Yes, Pfizer could just package 100 million vials of tap water and send them to SA. However, whether SA was powerless to do something to the co or not as a result of the agreements it had signed, I very much doubt Pfizer would last long after the news of its behaviour reached the rest of the world. I am sure it still needs to ensure that it does the best job it can.
On the other hand, politicians are masters of the blame game and of wriggling out of any agreement. Even if their language does not allow for deniability, circumstances may change so that old agreements are rendered unenforceable.
I have no doubt that if SA (or many other countries) found it to their advantage to not honour their side of the agreement when circumstances allowed, that they would do so - potentially even without raising any spurious reason to do so other than "we don't want to and you can't make us".
So although I find the terms Pfizer negotiated distasteful, I do not blame them.
I do wonder, though, whether their terms are universally the same for all countries they deal with here. I suspect not, because SA does not have the power of USA or China or even Australia. It is far easier to say to SA 'we do not believe you, so give us the rights to your military base as a guarantee' than it is to say this to many other countries.
But, much of the blame for this poor negotiating position rests with SA itself.
Your choice then. In the EU and NA, wherever nations pride themselves on their vaccination drives, either the makers of the vaccines have been indemnified by law or everyone who wants the vaccine has to sign an indemnification clause before getting the vaccine. In Germany the latter is the case.
It is a highly rational concern to distrust highly experimental vaccines, which these vaccines all are. The question in the risk calculation is, can you afford to position yourself against a means that can lessen the impact of a highly damaging virus? Perhaps individuals should make that choice, if states don't want to.
The potential liabilities are gigantic, and the risk calculation may put the equation under water.
It's the problem with a lot of medical products, particularly vaccines which are hard for pharma companies to market.
But it's made worse in regimes that are either litigious, have little in the way of caps over civil claims, or have Justice Systems which are compromised.
South Africa is a very corrupt state, it's just too easy for that system to act in a way that does not have integrity.
That's the real world risk/reward equation and it's unavoidable.
It's for similar reasons that it's a lot harder to raise financing for building infrastructure in SA (or anything else) than otherwise - the interest rates charged are considerably more as there's greater risk of failure, or problems, and even addressing commercial concerns becomes difficult if the justice system is compromised. For this reason, the loans to SA would have those risks 'priced in' at much higher interest rates ... which by the way is the other way pharma companies would normally give on the indemnity issue negotiation - by raising prices, but price becomes a problem for other ethical reasons.
Being a corrupt state does not imply a corrupt legal system. SA’s legal system is based very closely on the UK’s (with some Dutch law and African customary law tweaks thrown in) and is considered to be very good actually. Some legal systems around the world are weakened by lobbying and politically placed judges and there is lack of evidence that this is a problem in the SA legal system.
A recent demonstration of this resilience to corruption is the fact that the courts recently put the ex-president Zuma in jail; someone with a lot of corrupt power.
Besides, protecting yourself against a corrupt legal system with beneficial legal clauses just doesn’t make sense. Why even use a contract at all if you don’t believe in the legal system? They put those clauses in there precisely because the legal system is good and they will be held to account.
No, Pfizer is just being a bully because they think they can get away with it. Same thing happens every day when individuals feel trapped into signing unfavourable employment contracts because they are too far along and feel that there are no reasonable alternatives. I think that it’s a good thing that this generated bad PR for Pfizer.
And yes, it's helpful to have indemnity clauses especially in a corrupt system, because it becomes easier to negotiate within the system, and politically.
Pfizer is not a bully, they're trying to protect themselves in a very corrupt place.