The fact that the ability to produce these vaccines is only in the hands of these companies, despite there being far, far more facilities capable of producing them, is what stands out to me as the real issue.
Moderna, for example, didn't have the capability to produce its own vaccine, so it outsourced all of its production to other companies that had suitable facilities, which just proves that anyone with the right tools could be making Moderna's vaccine! But Moderna gets to pick and choose the collaborators it needs to fill it's contracts while other suitable production facilities stay dark? It's not like we don't need more doses, considering that 99.3% of the world is still unvaccinated.
We're just refusing to scale up production beyond what these individual companies can manage because... of what, I don't even know. The sanctity of Intellectual Property law? Planned scarcity? Just good ole fashioned incompetence? I know Biden is a drooling idiot but the fact that at any point someone could just make a few phone calls and we'd suddenly double or triple or quintuple our projected vaccine production drives me crazy.
I don't think it would have made a big difference. Like the saying goes, you can't ask nine people with wombs to make a baby in one month.
They could be produced in much bigger quantities if all the data was in the open though.
The fact that the ability to produce these vaccines is only in the hands of these companies, despite there being far, far more facilities capable of producing them, is what stands out to me as the real issue.
Moderna, for example, didn't have the capability to produce its own vaccine, so it outsourced all of its production to other companies that had suitable facilities, which just proves that anyone with the right tools could be making Moderna's vaccine! But Moderna gets to pick and choose the collaborators it needs to fill it's contracts while other suitable production facilities stay dark? It's not like we don't need more doses, considering that 99.3% of the world is still unvaccinated.
We're just refusing to scale up production beyond what these individual companies can manage because... of what, I don't even know. The sanctity of Intellectual Property law? Planned scarcity? Just good ole fashioned incompetence? I know Biden is a drooling idiot but the fact that at any point someone could just make a few phone calls and we'd suddenly double or triple or quintuple our projected vaccine production drives me crazy.