Why we don't get vaccines globally in time?
There is enough capacity to make vaccines for global population to be vaccinated within a year. This would stop new virus mutants emerging. Why this possibility to overcome pandemics will be lost?
Introduction
We have been fighting SARS-2 CoVid-19, or coronavirus infection, for more than a year. Lives have been lost to the disease caused by the virus and to other diseases that have been left untreated due to the reduced capacity of health care. The economy and social life have changed. Cross-border travel has almost ceased and many places have had to resort to curfews to prevent the virus from spreading. This has been necessary because the virus is spreading exponentially.
Exponential growth is typically such a phenomenon that a person is not naturally able to understand it in everyday life, so the importance of limiting social contacts is also not understood. This phenomenon has been exploited irresponsibly politically.
Since the SARS-1 epidemic, scientific research has been able to identify the main features of the vaccine development that has now taken place. They were now ready to apply. According to Professor Saksela, he and his team sketched his own Finnish vaccine one afternoon. Publicly funded research and freely available, publicly available information have made this possible globally (Saksela 2020, in the Science Corner Live program). They did not claim any patents, the Finnish vaccine would have been the "Linux" of the vaccines, compared to the Finnish free code computer operating system used in most of the world's information devices (Kaila 2021, Hyppönen 2021).
This information has been commercialized by giving the manufacture of vaccines to large pharmaceutical companies. It is noteworthy that pharmaceutical companies own investments in drug research and development are even smaller than the funds they spend on advertising (Swanson 2015).
Since 1995, the patent and copyright system, ie intellectual property rights, has been transferred to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and since then, the number of patents has increased significantly and their financing has become an increasingly important factor in the world economic system. The operational institution is called the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and is headquartered in Geneva, with an agreement system called TRIPS (Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights). Patents are also traded on a large scale. All WTO members must ratify the TRIPS agreement system (Standing 2017).
Medicines and vaccines are patented for 20 years, which can easily be extended to 40 years. The largest holders of intellectual property rights are the United States, Japan, the EU and China. China aims to become the largest holder of intellectual property rights (Standing 2017).
In the WTO, India and South Africa have proposed in early 2021 a temporary waiver of matrimonial rights for SARS-2 Covid-19 vaccines in order to make the vaccine available to the world's population within a year. There is sufficient production capacity available. After several votings on the issue, those with the most intellectual property rights have already dropped the proposal in March 2021 already eight times (Prabhala, 2021).
The reason why we do not receive vaccines or why the final development of the Finnish vaccine is not supported is most obviously due to the TRIPS rules, which are slavishly obeyed. Due to the rules of TRIPS, we cannot talk about free trade (Standing, 2021).
In the EU, the UN and the WTO should seek to support the abandonment of TRIPS rules, at least temporarily, in order to curb the pandemic; of the Nordic countries, only Norway will support the proposal in November 2021.
One should not go ahead with business policy, nor humble oneself. Why, then, is the Finnish vaccine not even made on a cooperative basis? Personally, at least I would buy a share right away.
The "mutation" of institutions since the 1970s
By institutions, I mean the system mainly created in Bretton Woods in 1944. These include the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank (WB) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) which was created 1994 from the GATT free trade system.
After World War II, these institutions helped Europe and Japan rise from the rubble, as part of U.S. foreign policy planning, the so-called Grand Area. They also contributed, through their regulation, to continued and financial crisis free economic growth, which was still fairly evenly distributed among the various sections of the population in the industrialized countries. Economic growth (GDP /capita) from 1955 to 1980 has been around 2.6% per year.
Since the 1970s, the Bretton Woods institutions have been transformed to implement a neoliberal project and to steer the desired globalization. Economic growth has halved compared to before: in the period 1980-2016 to about 1.4% per year (Chang 2019).
Arguments that, in order to enable economic growth, savings must be made, mainly from social spending or publicly produced public services, or that they and our commons should be privatized, are therefore not true. Indeed, the Bretton Woods institutions have been implementers of economic discipline policies, especially in developing countries. More deeply, they have enabled colonial imperialism through large corporations and lending since the 1970s, when direct state imperialism was declining. There are also problems with foreign or faceless ownership that are not currently raised or acknowledged in the public debate.
The WTO is therefore now holding the keys to opening up vaccine patents and making the vaccine widely available worldwide. Opening up vaccine patents would be a positive globalization. Failure to open is the continuation of a policy of economic discipline with vaccine discipline. Otherwise, subjugation and humiliation, such as colonial policies, are practiced, while at the same time subjecting the entire world population to a constant and possibly ever-worsening pandemic (Glenza, 2021).
WTO rules and thinking date back to the United States in the 1980s. As late as the 1950s, Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine, considered the question of patenting the vaccine incomprehensible. Salk’s thinking had not changed by the 1980s, but legislation had been changed to be business-oriented and HIV vaccines and medications were being developed under patent protection. Thus, less prosperous countries with a severe epidemic could not afford HIV drugs. Moral codes and medical ethics had been turned upside down and transposed into law by lobbying companies
In particular, the U.S. Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 has guided commercialization. It guides the commercialization of inventions made in universities to private beneficiaries, such as pharmaceutical companies, who thus avoid research and development costs. Thus, the taxpayer does not benefit financially from the inventions he finances, but the resulting profit is distributed to a small number of the privileged according to the rules they define. Which means tax avoidance and monopolistic profits. This rule has been globalized through the WTO. Since patents are not considered to apply to medicinal products, but only to a method of manufacture, it is an opportunity for e.g. India to make cheaper copies of expensive medicines. Thus, the American lady featured in the video above buys her leukemia drug from India because she can’t afford a similar American – the medication would take the entire family into financial ruin.
With regard to vaccines, the pressure for privatization will come also from the Gavi Alliance (Storeng 2014). Bill Gates' contribution to this idea and financial support is considerable, and several countries, such as Norway and Finland, also support this financially. In part, this has worked, in part subsidizing American giants such as Pfizer. Gates is a philanthropist, but the American style demands financial returns from philanthropy. The Gavi system apparently largely explains why the vaccine inventions of Oxford University (Washington Post live 2/2021) and Finnish researchers need to be patented and privatized. Gavi’s strategic goal since 2011 has been to "shape the market," bringing a neoliberal agenda to healthcare. Gates is also part of the Wall Street machinery. Gavi's Board of Directors has been chaired since January 2021 by José Manuel Barroso, former Prime Minister of Portugal and President of the European Commission (2004-2014), who also has a branch office at Goldman Sachs (Washington Post live 12/2021), the heart of Wall Street.
Wall
Street and the EU are opposed to the abolition of patents, even for a
limited period
The
concept of social rights with regard to vaccines is not accepted by
the incubator and lobbyist
of a state-free market economy CATO-institute,
vaccines and vaccination
should not be a human right
as presented
by the UN (Bacchus, 2020). When the market, ie in practice large
pharmaceutical companies, whose annual budget may be in the category
of Finland's annual gross domestic product, sets monopolistic prices,
not all countries in the world are able to buy vaccines or medicines
for their citizens, even if they want to. Not to mention the
opportunities for private citizens, many of these trying
to make a living on less
than a dollar a day.
"Freedom" is in quotation marks, because in the current form of a market economy, control is exercised by multinational companies, which thus implement a strict planned economy, from which, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, e.g. Fukuyama claimed to have got rid of. For society, this is economic sub-optimization and problematic for democracy. The division of power in society does not work purposefully. Economic sub-optimization leads to a dangerous situation in a pandemic through a simultaneous increase in the risk of infection and declining social cohesion (e.g. vaccine riots).
In November 2020, the authoritative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal took a stand on behalf of vaccine patents (The Editorial Board, 2020). Thus, the U.S. position is twofold: the official position of President Biden is in favor of the temporary removal of patents (Beckett 2021, Bosley 2021), and Wall Street is against it. Most of Biden’s government is also part of Wall Street, mainly investment firm Black Rock and Brokerage Goldman Sachs, while Senator Sanders also plays a significant role in the administration.
The European Union has consistently supported patents. The opinion became doubtful e.g. at the mouth of Ursula von der Leyen, after President Biden had expressed his desire to relinquish patents for a limited period (Wintour 2021). However, the Union has remained in favor of patents. At the beginning of the Corona crisis, there were other so-called features that are questionable for European values, e.g. Australia (BBC 2021) and Japan had bought the vaccines through Europe but did not receive them as agreed because the Europeans used them primarily themselves.
Finland most obviously follows the European model. Finnish national thinking has been abandoned, does Norway seem to have more room for maneuver in the EEA than finns in the EU?
Why should a vaccine be made wherever it is possible?
Opening patents on time would have allowed vaccination to reach
60% of the world’s population as early as 2022 (Goodman 2021). In
that case, the emergence of viral mutants that exclude societies
would gradually be depleted and slowed down, allowing us to return to
normal interaction and life with Covid
such as the flu.
Such
a rapid rate of vaccination is required, according to researchers,
because otherwise the spread and development of new mutants will not
go out (Grover 2021). The need to close societies does not end
there.
Governments are, of course, primarily responsible
for the health and well-being of their own citizens, as has been seen
in Europe – Italy was left to its own devices at the beginning of
the pandemic – we Finns
should understand this selfishness in the light of our own history.
German-led collective procurement by the Union would be too slow and
uncertain if it were an even more deadly virus (Henley, John 2021).
As a high-tech country, Finland has the opportunity to develop
vaccines independently, and manufacturing is possible at least for
its own population (Saksela 2021). Because some of our viral
researchers are of absolute international excellence, it is possible
that the vaccine developed in our country would be safer and more
effective than other candidates. Manufacturing should only be
achieved at a rapid pace and industrially if the situation so
requires. All of this also applies to the potential bio-threat that
is generally described by Professor Nikkari in the Annual Review of
the Defense Forces (Nikkari, 2021).
The planned UN Covax cooperation with developing countries has not worked. Only a fraction of the promised vaccines have been delivered (Gregory 2021). Under the conditions of developing countries, it is impossible to store, distribute and vaccinate existing vaccines comprehensively. There is no infrastructure for this. A vaccine administered to the nasal mucosa attached to an adenovirus vector would be a better option, Finland would have had an advantage here, but the government and Minister Lintilä did not seize the opportunity (Lundell, 2021). It remains unclear why not. Despite its title, the article in the evening news does not open the question why not (Gråsten 2021). In March 2021, we did not yet know the position of the Biden government.
Advocates of waiver of patents
If comprehensive vaccine coverage is not achieved globally
within a couple of years, mutant strains will be more difficult to
control in the future (Grover 2021). It is also possible that a
highly contagious and deadly virus variant will emerge, narrowing the
available time window for salvation. In that case, one should act,
not play games of power or gamble
with financial profits.
The temporary revocation of patents has been lobbied by e.g.
Doctors Without Borders (Christou, 2021 – updated website), which
publishes on its website a map of the division of the world for and
against this proposal. At the beginning of November, there were 58
supporters and 100 from the world with a positive attitude. Norway
was the first of the Nordic countries to join the supporters
at the end of November. The
unequal distribution of vaccines was discussed on
a radio program in April (Myrtveit 2021). The World Health
Organization is of the same opinion at the mouth of its
Director-General (Ghebrejesus 2021). The Oxfam organization is also
part of this group (Oxfam 2021). Among economists, e.g. Yayati Gosh,
Joseph Stiglitz, Rohinton Medhora, Michael Spence, and Rob Johnson
take a broader view of the pandemic-induced vaccine and economic
inequality and debt that will be at the heart of future crisis
management (Gosh & al. 2021). Stiglitz writes in the Guardian in December about Germanys new chancellor Scholz´s possibilities to take part for patent waiver (Stiglitz 2021).
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