Christian nations unite!

Ministers and officials from every nation will meet via video link on Monday for the annual world health assembly, which is expected to be dominated by efforts to stop rich countries monopolising drugs and future vaccines against Covid-19.

  Guardian

Good luck with THAT!

As some countries buy up drugs thought to be useful against the coronavirus, causing global shortages, and the Trump administration does deals with vaccine companies to supply America first, there is dismay among public health experts and campaigners who believe it is vital to pull together to end the pandemic.

While the US and China face off, the EU has taken the lead. The leaders of Italy, France, Germany and Norway, together with the European commission and council, called earlier this month for any innovative tools, therapeutics or vaccines to be shared equally and fairly.

“If we can develop a vaccine that is produced by the world, for the whole world, this will be a unique global public good of the 21st century,” they said in a statement.

Wait...what? We can't let that pass unchallenged. We're the USA!

Countries with major pharmaceutical companies argue they need patents to guarantee sufficiently high prices in wealthy nations to recoup their research and development costs.

Much of their research and development comes from government grants and research.

A hard-fought battle over Aids drugs 20 years ago led to the World Trade Organisation’s Doha declaration on trade-related intellectual property (Trips) in favour of access to medicines for all, but the US, which has some of the world’s biggest drug companies, has strongly opposed wording that would encourage the use of Trips.

Quel suprise.

“In general, it is a disappointment, appalling really. There was better text that was rejected,” said Jamie Love of Knowledge Ecology International. “The US, UK, Swiss and some others, pushed against the WHO taking the lead in pushing for open licensing of patents and knowhow for drugs and vaccines.

“In a global crisis like this, that has such a massive impact on everyone, you would expect the WHO governing body to have the backbone to say no monopolies in this pandemic."

I wouldn't.

Costa Rica will launch a voluntary patent pool later this month. Its president, Carlos Alvarado Quesada, said at the World Health Organization last week: “The pandemic attacks the same in each country regardless of whether you have the resources or not. It attacks people around the world in the same way,.

“Only together with multilateralism, with that sort of leadership, can we defeat coronavirus, not with nationalism and being selfish. It is the time for solidarity. It is the time to work together to show humanity the best that we are made of, the opportunity to show our brotherhood as a whole.”

[...]

Wellcome published a poll on Sunday of 2,000 people in the UK which found 96% supported the idea that national governments should work together to ensure that treatments and vaccines can be manufactured in as many countries as possible and distributed globally to everyone who needs them.

And those people don't run anything other than their own households.

“We have not been included in these discussions and have limited understanding of what exactly is being proposed, and how it is different from the various institutions already facilitating sharing of data, know-how” and intellectual property, [the International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Associations (IFPMA)] said in a statement.

“Voluntary patent pools already exist and many companies are already exploring collaborations and voluntary licenses.”

[...]

“The creation of yet another new platform appears unneeded and would direct resources and energy away from key objectives. We have never needed innovation so much as now and this is probably the worst possible time to weaken intellectual property,” it said.

In other words, let us volunteer; don't regulate us.

The drugmaker Sanofi provoked outrage in its home country of France this week when its CEO, Paul Hudson, told Bloomberg News that the U.S. will get the vaccine first because the U.S. government provided funding for its development.

[...]

“We have manufacturing capacity in the U.S., Europe and all other main regions,” the company said. “The U.S. production will be mainly for the U.S. and the rest of the manufacturing capacity will cover Europe and the rest of the world.”

[...]

One of the potential vaccines that could be ready first, with the first doses as early as September, is being developed by Oxford University in the United Kingdom.

Adrian Hill, director of the Oxford institute working on the vaccine, said Wednesday during the Duke forum that the U.K. government has already spoken to the university about getting priority for the doses of the vaccine.

“We're being told in the U.K. that we've had a lot of U.K. government money, we have, the U.K. would like some doses, soon please,” Hill said. “That's going to be the response everywhere, how do you cut a deal?”

[...]

Of the eight potential vaccines that have entered clinical trials, according to the WHO, four are in China, which would pose an even greater diplomatic challenge for U.S. access compared to close U.S. allies like the U.K. Another of the eight is the Oxford vaccine and three others are developed by U.S. companies: Moderna, Inovio and Pfizer, though Pfizer is also working with the German biotech firm BioNTech.

[...]

Three global health experts, Thomas Bollyky, Lawrence Gostin and Margaret Hamburg, wrote an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association this month to warn that in the 2009 flu pandemic “wealthy nations bought virtually all vaccine supplies.”

Which is what they'll do this time, as well.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told an Israeli journalist on Wednesday that, “We’ll figure out the model for distribution when the time comes.”

  The Hill

That time has come. This attitude of waiting until we're forced to do something is why we're in the situation we are now.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.