Hatred of Profits Drives Campaign to Seize Vax Patents

Pfizer, Moderna and other companies quickly produced vaccines that are snuffing out the coronavirus pandemic in developed nations. We now have the luxury of turning our attention to poorer countries such as India, where the disease began spiraling out of control last month. So naturally, some people think they have identified the villains here: the companies that developed the vaccines. They are denouncing “pandemic profiteering” and making loud, angry demands to expropriate vaccine patents.

Supposedly, this movement to expropriate patents is about speeding up vaccinations in less-developed countries, but even if the patents were taken, it’s unlikely the supply of vaccines will increase. The bottleneck is not intellectual property rights but production capacity, particularly because the new mRNA vaccines require new processes and specialized equipment. Any random pharmaceutical factory cannot simply start production.

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