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Comment by vimacs2 | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if this is sarcastic or not but rest assured, the sociopaths that hoard the IP behind the vaccines have all but guaranteed that there will be plenty of opportunities to study these alleged "positive health applications" at the back of the global south.

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> the sociopaths that hoard the IP behind the vaccines

Uhh... what? The Oxford vaccine (better known as AZ) is available for licensing for everyone interested [1], which the Serum Institute of India has done.

The problem with vaccine equity is not the patents question (Moderna also has announced to not prosecute any IP violations during the pandemic fwiw), the problem is that many poor nations lack the prerequisites of manufacturing high-quality vaccines: a stable electricity grid, political stability (last thing you want is a bunch of warlords or drug cartels quarreling over a vaccine factory), competent people to staff the factories, in case of mRNA vaccines delivery chains that can keep up with handling the storage requirements of the components...

[1]: https://innovation.ox.ac.uk/technologies-available/technolog...

> the problem is that many poor nations lack the prerequisites of manufacturing high-quality vaccines

At least wrt Moderna (and I think Biontech as well), isn’t the issue also that part of the production process are not patented, but trade-secrets and thus simply not available?

I’ve read this multiple times, but so far I have to find a definitive answer (true or false) either way ;)

>>>Uhh... what? The Oxford vaccine (better known as AZ) is available for licensing for everyone interested.

Sure, sure but that is not the whole story[1] and kind of misleading.

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

Ugh. Many global south countries have more vaccinated as a percentage of the population than the US. The reason some countries are having a very low percentage of vaccinated is not IP but lack of organizational will. As an example, dirt-poor Cuba has developed two vaccines in-house and 86% of the population is fully vaccinated.

Cuba has historically funded healthcare and medical research very well. It has a lot of the infrastructure and organisation in place already compared to other poor countries.

Arguably this is what those other countries should have been doing all along. However that level of coordination usually requires a degree of public activity that tends to reduce external private funding from countries like the US. They're in a tricky situation.

I think poor coupled with stability allows this.

Cuba, regardless of its regime, has been stable for a very long time. This enables projects, funding, etc.

But if a civil war, insurrection happens every decade... well, so much for public services.

It also helps being an island. Some dudes can't just walk in.

Cuba is a middle-income country. Vaccination rate in very poor countries is still mostly poor.

Cuba is only one example. Most of Latin America and East Asia is in the 65-80%. It's first in Africa you find very low numbers, down to 0.2% in the Congo.

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