- MRNA COVID vaccine patents weren’t open sourced or available for the third world but Cuba’s vaccine solutions are
- simple things like dental care aren’t offered in the US
I think you should replace “available for the masses” with available “to the middle classes” which may seem the same to the average HN reader but not the average inhabitant of our planet
The statistics simply don't back you up, as not only do the middle classes make up the vast majority of people on the planet now, but those coming from poverty into the middle class is increasing. The much missed Hans Rosling goes through it here:
Bad news: Some people are still poor
Bad news: We will not cure some people with cancer
If I get cancer 10 years from now I could be in luck! But it doesn’t mean I should immediately assume everyone else is.
Bad news: You need to be very rich and very lucky
Once Moderna recoups the cost of R&D and pockets some profits, it will face the need to keep selling. With the pandemic basically over, they'll need to sell to wider markets, because they have the production capacity. They'll lower the price and try to use the economies of scale by selling large amounts.
The fact that any technological advances first become available to those who can pay a high initial price (not only in money) is pretty inevitable. If something is a runaway success, the price goes down with volume, and ideally with pressure from competition.
If you want to make something vitally important available at a low price, you have to find enough money to let the producers make some profit, or at least to recover the cost of development. If you don't, nobody will consider working on it, even if they wanted, because getting an investment would become impossible, and you can't do biotech on pocket money.
(You could of course force them work at gunpoint, but not being forced to work at gunpoint is usually even more vitally important for the health of a society.)
I think the R&D isn't quite done yet.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/04/though-rare-moderna-covid-va...
From the article: "People face a much higher risk of developing myocarditis from Covid infection than the vaccines, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. The risk of myocarditis from Covid is 100 times higher than developing the condition after Covid vaccination, according to a recent paper in Nature Reviews Cardiology."
The R&D is far from done.
No.
Once the patent runs out....