RT @peoplesvaccine@twitter.com
SHOCKING: Rich countries are vaccinating 1 person every second while the majority of the poorest nations are yet to give a single #COVID19 dose.
Suspend patents to stop Big Pharma monopolies.
Support #TRIPSwaiver
We need a #PeoplesVaccine
@stevenroose Why do you think that would make any difference? They're bottlenecked on manufacturing capacity(1), not patents. The entire world's supply of equipment and chemicals suitable for manufacturing COVID-19 vaccines has been bought up, and suppliers are desperately trying to make more. Meanwhile, there's been numerous setbacks in actually getting that mfg capacity up and running.
1) Possibly safety testing too, if these potential issues with AstraZeneca turn out to be true.
@pete Do you have any source on that?
Are you aware of what the standard royalty agreements are? I mean, even if the entire world pharma industry managed to get a deal with one of the 5 popular vaccine patent holders, they will (1) certainly have had legal cost and delays to formalize an agreement and (2) might be paying royalties. The size of those royalties determine how high the demand is for the raw materials used to manufacture the vaccines.
@stevenroose Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca are already having a hard time scaling up capacity enough to meet demand for full-price paying 1st world customers. I've spoken to people tangentially involved in vaccine mfg who have told me that the entire world's vaccine manufacturing capacity is running flat out. I've very inclined to believe them. And very unusually, mfgs started mass production pre-approval.
Frankly, it'd risky how fast this stuff is getting rolled out as it is.
@stevenroose "giving companies capable of producing those more incentives of increasing output as well"
That's my point: everyone who can produce that stuff, is producing it, and they're trying to scale up that production as fast as possible.
That's why they're already having quality control problems: *new* manufacturing capacity is being developed from scratch. And getting that right isn't easy. Getting it wrong can easily kill people.
> everyone who can produce that stuff, is producing it
I'm interested in seeing sources of that, though. RNA synthesizing is not rocket science, I can hardly believe many pharmaceutical manufacturers would not be able to build supply chains for new vaccines in months.
@stevenroose Yes, it's not rocket science. It's worse: precision microfluidics.
https://www.microfluidics-mpt.com/industries/vaccine-production
...and scaling up injection grade RNA production hasn't been easy either: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/myths-of-vaccine-manufacturing
@stevenroose AFAICT it would not have been possible to manufacture these RNA vaccines at scale at all about one or two decades ago. It sounds like it took some cutting edge microfluidics manufacturing, among other things, to make them viable, as RNA doesn't do much without the high-tech encapsulation.
@stevenroose Here's a good interview touching on the difficulties of scaling up production, while maintaining quality control: http://enformtk.u-aizu.ac.jp/howard/gcep_dr_vanessa_schmidt_krueger/
Even just getting enough glass vials to put the vaccines in has been a challenge: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-schott-idUSKBN29P28A
That mfg is optimistic. But note how their timeline extends to 2022.
@pete Thanks! Reading for tomorrow!
@stevenroose Oh, and remember it's not just Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca. There's also two Chinese mfgs, Sinovac and Sinopharm, and the russian Sputnik V. Multiple countries are working to manufacture them as well.
There's also many more companies developing COVID-19 vaccines, including Johnson & Johnson (which just started shipping), and Norovax (which just released late stage trials).
@pete Well but this is not about Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca being able to scale up demand, right? It's about other pharmaceutical manufacturers worldwide to be allowed to join in and manufacture the same or similar vaccines themselves.
As I understand it, the more potential manufacturers, the higher the demand for the raw materials, giving companies capable of producing those more incentives of increasing output as well.