Despite rising alarm over the immunization gap and widespread calls for greater cooperation, drug companies are hewing to the industry’s standard playbook when it comes to protecting valuable vaccine patents and manufacturing know-how.
“The fights over vaccine supply are not just over a moral duty of Western nations to prevent deaths and illness overseas. Lack of supply and lopsided distribution threaten to leave entire continents open as breeding grounds for coronavirus mutations. Those variants, if they prove resistant to vaccines, could spread anywhere in the world, including in Western countries that have been vaccinated first.
“It doesn’t make any sense for rich countries to think they can vaccinate their own and let the rest of the world live off dribs and drabs,” said Brook Baker, a Northeastern University law professor.”
www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/20/covid-vaccine-global-shortages/
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