Canada is delaying Pizfer booster shots:
One size does NOT fit all
If companies are forced to donate/give away their IP they will stop investing in vaccine development. Without patent protections and potential for profits we wouldn't have the most effective vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) available and millions of fewer people worldwide would have been vaccinated.
The problem with asking private companies to waive IP enforcement even temporarily is that once you have shared the secret recipe its out, there is no putting the Genie back in the bottle. Once China, India and Russia have been given the method to produce knock-off version of Pfizer/Moderna, you cant trust them to stop making it (and permanently undercutting the inventors revenue ) at the end of the emergency waiver period.
Plus loaning IP removes the ability for the patent holder to ensure the quality and safety of production, if the knock off versions take short cuts it will then damage the brand for the legit stuff and that erodes confidence everywhere.
More sensible would have been for the governments who have in some instances co-sponsored some of the development to put in a clause that x% of vaccine been produced, be made available "at cost" distribution to poorer countries. In fact this is what Covax facility is supposed to achieve.
But also need to be realistic, mrna vaccines are never going to be in wide use in developing world due to lack of the required super cold storage chains needed. When you are talking about counties like Brazil, India and much of Africa where millions live without running water they need to start with technology which is more readily deployable like AZ.
Like HIV/AID's is is always good to remind people in dirt poor countries, that their deaths are not in vain, because their death supports the IP and profits for future cures after they are dead. It is just the wheel of fate that they weren't born into a rich developed country.
As for copying the technology, this is BS. Making mRNA is surprisingly easy, if you have a master copy(One vial will do). Grossly oversimplified three steps Ferment/Grow, 1st pass, filter test refine what grew (Note you could maybe get away injecting here, if some impurity is acceptable), then as in the US a high tech huge huge cleanroom, final filtering, QA, testing, batch rejections, packaging etc. This is the value added step, because batch compliance/certification is the biggie, plus post stabilization measures so it does not go 'off'. Anyone with the right equipment can reverse engineer, as long as being ignorant of yield is OK.
UQ geneclamp tech - could potentially be used in filtration somewhere.
The drug companies will have a major 'fit' is sloppy production harms their brand, and devalue all the expensive trial work. And small batches solve any less than perfect contamination / variants that crept in.
The complications being added - sterile plastic bags for the growth medium - not stainless steel wine vats, and the new or clean or reuse arguments for a lot of pipes and glassware.
So for Australia, we need big big clean-room, get used to absolute sterile , and I presume lots of sterile water to turn the place into a giant autoclave if necessary.. As .au never did silicon chip manufacturing, there would be a learning curve here. Plus we would have to import most of the equipment. On the plus side we have the brains to design/adapt mRNA, and produce samples, and do QA and defined and proven models.
The major failure of this logic, is that each of the US biggies had several almost identical computer modeled solutions, and picked what they thought was the best one. And that is their secret sauce. Now that the virus has potentially different or multiple spikelets, the problem N to the power of... will present going forward. As nobody is boasting having a variant solution yet, I suggest 'tough problem' , or a whole lot of funding to see how multiple mRNA's work if mixed, or if they trigger adverse reactions, and the best ratios /intervals.
The other error is a global shortage of equipment to duplicate this capability, and the need to concentrate on the now.
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