Biden COVID-19 vaccine patent waiver hopes will run into manufacturing realityhttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/biden-waiver-hopes-manufacturing-realityThe process of manufacturing viral vector and whole virus vaccines presents a challenge to President Joe Biden’s plans to ramp up production by waiving patent protections for COVID-19 vaccines.
Biden floated the idea last Wednesday, angering pharmaceutical companies in the process. Supporters of the proposal believe it would remove a major obstacle to letting the developing world manufacture generic versions of vaccines.
But the impediment may not be intellectual property rights but rather a lack of facilities and expertise.
“There are not that many places that are fully operational and have the human resources that are qualified to operate this kind of technology,” said professor Amine Kamen, the Canada research chairman in bioprocessing of viral vaccines at McGill University.
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“You want to put the process on an existing facility rather than building a facility from scratch,” said Zoltan Kis, a chemical engineer at the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Hub at Imperial College London. “Normally, without a pandemic, it would take about two years before [you are making vaccines]. In the pandemic … it could take six months to a year, and that is being optimistic. It could easily take over a year.”
This article focuses on viral vector vaccines, which have been around for a while. Thus that "optimistic" "six months to a year" is for a somewhat mature technology. Moderna's and Pfizer's mRNA vaccines are literally the first and second vaccines of that technology to be approved and brought into production. IOW, the manufacturing base for mRNA vaccines has only been in development for a year or so. Thus, converting pharmaceuticals facilities from producing whatever to producing an mRNA vaccine could take a year or more.
The bottom line is that were AZ's, J&J's, Moderna's, and Pfizer's patents stolen tomorrow, the consequent increased production would at best start deliveries in a year, plus or minus a couple of months. That ASSumes necessary equipment, production materials, and production miscellanies are not bottlenecks, which is probably ridiculously optimistic. When AZ, J&J, Moderna, and Pfizer can sell more of their product than they can possibly produce, they are very willing to license production of their product, and have, very liberally.
One of the hallmarks of, a key to understanding,
LIEden's
MALAdministration, is to realize that its leaders are the most ignorant, least competent, of their kind in a century or more of US history (maybe Harding's or Grant's peeps were worse). When it comes to the nuts and bolts of project planning and product manufacturing,
LIEden & Crew are willfully and woefully clue free.