Coronavirus: Thread

[grarpamp]

Gates shitty closed-source Windows OS, part Deux,
Pirate Bay, crypto funding, and opensource route-arounds, ftw...


Bill Gates Doubles Down On Opposition To "Open Vaccine" Movement
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-Ic4EN0io4 Gates opposes open vaccines

Roughly one year after the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation seized
control of the global response to COVID-19 with the goal of providing
"equitable access" to a vaccine, Bill Gates & Co. have accomplished
the opposite:  The Covid-19 ACT-Accelerator mechanism, backed by the
Gates Foundation, has a stated policy of respecting the exclusive
intellectual property rights of western drugmakers. At the same time,
the WHO-backed alternative solution, known as Covid-19 Technology
Access Pool, or C-TAP, which was supposed to foster an open-source
pool of vaccine and drug technology, has mostly faltered.

As India's second-wave COVID-19 outbreak spirals out of control, more
parties have come forward to criticize Gates for his support of IP
protections. Considering the scarcity of the medicines, there have
been increasing calls from countries like India and South Africa,
international relief organizations and other public figures to waive
IP protections so that poorer countries can get faster access to the
vaccines. WTO Director General Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has led a host
of emerging-market nations in a push to waive IP protections, arguing
that numerous facilities exist that could ramp up production in the
coming months.

But as pressure to reconsider this stance mounts, Gates insisted
during an interview Monday with Sky News' Sophy Ridge that stripping
IP protections from vaccine recipes wouldn't be helpful. Asked point
blank about the issue, Gates responded with an emphatic "no".

    "The thing that’s holding things back in this case is not
intellectual property. It’s not like there’s some idle vaccine
factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines.
You know, you’ve got to do the trial on these things. Every
manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way,"
Gates explained. "There are all sorts of issues around intellectual
property having to do with medicines. But not in terms of how quickly
we’ve been able to ramp up the volume here."

Watch the full interview below:

As Gates sees it, his foundation has helped to accelerate the pace of
vaccine testing and design by years. In the past, it would likely have
taken decades for poor nations to get supplies from rich states that
designed them. "Typically, in global health it takes a decade between
when a vaccine comes into the rich world and when it gets into the
poor countries," Gates said.

While Gates apparently can't see past how things were done in the
past, critics quickly pointed out that countries like the US are
already stockpiling more vaccines than they can use. And while Gates
insists that there aren't any factories in the developing world
capable of making patented western jabs, India's Serum Institute is an
obvious example of how this simply isn't the case. Plus, many of the
countries pushing the vaccine IP waiver at the WTO have identified
facilities where vaccine production can be ramped up quickly.

Opponents of this approach from within the pharmaceutical industry are
scrambling to lobby the Biden Administration to oppose the waiver push
at the WTO after a recent speech by Katherine Tai, Biden's top trade
official, stipulated that Washington would "consider what
modifications and reforms" can be applied to intellectual property
rules. Among other risks, Big Pharma is arguing that an "open" vaccine
would benefit American rivals like China and Russia.

But the reality is that billions of denizens of the developing world
stand to benefit, while drug companies and the international
pharmaceutical industry stands to miss out on some profits.