[CTC] Big lie behind who gets to make COVID vaccines won't protect us

[Arthur Stamoulis]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/12/16/covid-vaccine-omicron-share-mrna/8909296002/ <https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/12/16/covid-vaccine-omicron-share-mrna/8909296002/>

Big lie behind who gets to make COVID vaccines won't protect us
By Priti Krishtel and Chelsea Clinton 
12/16/2021
 
Global health experts’ predictions are being realized. In the midst of tragically unequal vaccination access, <https://microbiologycommunity.nature.com/posts/10-images-illustrate-the-global-vaccine-inequity> a new variant of COVID-19 has emerged. As omicron cases are identified all over the world <https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/12/14/covid-omicron-south-africa-study/6502201001/>, no GDP is high enough and no health system strong enough to keep out the truth: Nobody is safe until we are all safe.

What is standing in our way of making sure the whole planet gets the vaccines that will actually get this pandemic under control?

Not lack of charity. The United States has shipped more than 300 million doses to over 110 countries <https://www.state.gov/covid-19-recovery/vaccine-deliveries/> (out of the 1.1 billion <https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/u-s-international-covid-19-vaccine-donations-tracker/> pledged).  It’s heartwarming, but it’s not paradigm-shifting. Less than 4% of the population in low-income countries has been fully vaccinated <https://www.one.org/africa/issues/covid-19-tracker/explore-vaccines/>, compared with more than two-thirds in higher-income countries. 

Not lack of incentive. Though not everyone recognizes it, low vaccination rates anywhere put everyone at risk everywhere for new and potentially more deadly variants. Omicron is a case in point. This new wave already means more economic backsliding, unfair travel bans <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/world/europe/coronavirus-omicron-variant.html> and the emotional toll of revisiting last year’s myriad traumas.

Pfizer and Moderna are expected to reap billions in profit

What’s really preventing us from closing the vaccine gap is the belief that markets can efficiently solve global health challenges, even the most urgent and ubiquitous ones. Governments in wealthy countries continue to abrogate their public purpose in favor of private interests. We, the authors, are not anti-innovation or anti-competition. We are pro-public health and pro-solving global challenges at global scale with governments in the driver’s seat.

The pharmaceutical industry <https://www.ifpma.org/global-health-matters/challenges-and-solutions-to-scaling-up-covid-19-vaccine-manufacturing-capacity/> in the West and its proponents <https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-global-covid-vaccine-heist-11605829343> claim that manufacturers from other countries do not have the capability <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/22/science/developing-country-covid-vaccines.html> to make vaccines. 

That, as we discuss below, is a lie. The politically and socially objectionable truth? They are doing exceptionally well by keeping this lifesaving knowledge to themselves. In 2021 alone, Pfizer and Moderna are expected to reap over $50 billion in vaccine sales, and an eye-popping $93 billion <https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/pfizer-moderna-will-rake-a-combined-93-billion-next-year-covid-19-sales-says-analytics-group> next year. 

And it doesn’t stop at COVID-19. They stand to make even more profit by using this knowledge and technology to address other diseases <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/03/how-mrna-technology-could-change-world/618431/>.

We have to empower the world to vaccinate itself. But so far we’ve been distracted by a false narrative about the limited capabilities of manufacturers in the Global South rather than what we know in our bones: that ingenuity and dedication are everywhere.

Manufacturers capable of producing mRNA vaccines

A newly released expert evaluation <https://accessibsa.org/mrna/> has revealed that at least 120 manufacturers across Africa, Latin America and Asia are capable of producing mRNA vaccines. 

What these manufacturers need in order to start saving lives is for the monopolies standing in their way to be removed. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, in particular, has minimized what is at stake while hoarding his company’s lifesaving secrets. When asked about the lack of progress in a closed door meeting with the World Health Organization's director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Bourla blamed Ghebreyesus for <https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/pfizer-fights-to-control-secret-of-36-billion-covid-19-jab-recipe-121111600053_1.html> getting “emotional.” 

To call for vaccine equity in the face of more than 5 million deaths  <https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/01/world/covid-19-5-million-deaths-globally-intl-hnk/index.html>isn't “emotional”; it’s principled leadership. Profit and public health can coexist – but only if we don’t distort intellectual property beyond recognition. It was designed to unleash and reward invention to benefit the public, not hoard and hunker down to benefit the few.

Lifesaving vaccines at lower cost

We need our Dr. Hamied moment. A brief history lesson: in 2000, a Lithuania-born scientist and businessman <https://www.hbs.edu/creating-emerging-markets/interviews/Pages/profile.aspx?profile=yhamied> named Dr. Yusuf Hamied called the Western world’s bluff by standing up at a European Commission meeting on AIDS <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/feb/18/aids.sarahboseley13> and announcing that his generics company could make lifesaving drugs at a fraction of the cost. 

It wasn’t just wishful thinking. Dr. Hamied’s India-based company, Cipla, alongside others in the Global South, produced AIDS drugs at a fraction of the cost <https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/07/world/indian-company-offers-to-supply-aids-drugs-at-low-cost-in-africa.html>, and helped break the cartel of the big drug companies. Their audacity changed everything.

Today an HIV-AIDS diagnosis is not a death sentence, even in some of the most economically marginalized parts of the world; lifesaving drugs are more accessible, <https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/MsjRClYkB5hOO2KrptG3Zs-?domain=clintonhealthaccess.org> both geographically and economically. 

The mostly U.S. and European-based pharmaceutical companies have long been afraid of buccaneering generics companies that threaten the demonstrably racist and colonial presumption on which Big Pharma stands: that only massive, Western companies have the intellectual chops and persistence to develop and produce lifesaving medical products – and therefore can control the pricing and distribution of them. Not to mention that many of the products they ultimately sell were actually pioneered in university and government labs <https://www.pnas.org/content/115/10/2329>. 

Some experts say COVID-19 vaccines are a different case because they are new and more complex than drugs. We would be wise to remember, however, that this is precisely what they said about hepatitis B vaccines <https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/us/politics/biden-coronavirus-vaccine-patents.html>. Indian manufacturers were told they couldn't master new recombinant vaccine technologies developed by Western drugmakers.

But they could – and they did. Indian suppliers spurred massive global price reductions from $23 a dose to just $1 <https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21507259/>,allowing hundreds of millions of people worldwide to be immunized with hepatitis B vaccines from India.

As Dr. Hamied proved two decades ago, the West underestimates the Global South’s ability to manufacture and distribute medicines at our own peril. We must pressure our government to lead and persuade all countries to waive intellectual property rights, and urge – or if necessary force – companies to share this lifesaving knowledge so that local manufacturers can produce their own vaccines. Charity alone is simply insufficient.

We – American taxpayers – largely funded the creation of this lifesaving knowledge. It’s time for us to advocate that our investment be fully leveraged for the health of all humanity. Our government’s current approach is hoping the world won’t need our leadership on global vaccine equity. Americans are better than this, and we will all be safer when we get our leaders to start acting like it.

Arthur Stamoulis
Citizens Trade Campaign
(202) 494-8826




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