Thread by @MMKavanagh

.@JoeBiden must act on vaccine equity. @MadhaviSunder & I argue today @BLaw voluntary measures & donations won't work. USG needs to use leverage of public funding and IP to compel sharing of technology. WTO agreement was premised on tech transfer...
news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/bi…

The US is now vaccinating everyone under 16 while older people & frontline health workers in much of the world have no access.
This is bad public health.
Deeply unjust.
And economically damaging @SecYellen said /2
washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2021…

$4 billion to #COVAX is important, but Covax is struggling to reach even an insufficient goal of 20% vaccinations in low- and middle-income countries. Donating $ and surplus vaccines will NOT achieve vaccine equity or halt the pandemic /3

The U.S. holds 2 keys to enabling LMICs make vaccines for themselves.
1st: US taxypayers funded vaccines.
e.g. @moderna_tx breakthrough technology was not the result of private industry going it alone, but of a public-private partnership w $billions + collaboration @NIH /4

2nd, USG holds patent on remarkable work of Drs K Corbett, B Graham who said
“It’s really up to . . . the political will and the use of public dollars to ask: are we going to use our technologies to solve these problems, and to solve them with global co-ordination?/5

Moderna says will not enforce Covid-19 patents. But that is not enough. Temp waiver @WTO rules would give companies in LMIC security to build new vaccine capacity. This publicly funded tech should be treated as public good—compensating innovators, but not with a global monopoly/6

Some argue that w/o patents companies would not develop. Patents certainly incentivize serving those who can pay--why we have numerous new drugs to treat erectile dysfunction and baldness— but not malaria and TB/7

Companies also have little incentive to prioritize doses for most of world. This is why Moderna’s pledge to make 700m-1 b vaccines so far includes no sales to Covax for LMIC. Giving monopolies in this context does not incentivize innovation, but undermines global public health /8

In fact, tech transfer was at the heart of the 1995 TRIPS agreement @WTO. Developing countries did not want to agree to a system that would charge them monopoly rates for technology they would forever be importing, because they lacked technological capacity and know-how /9

TRIPS was decried as colonial, triggering royalty streams from lower- to high-income countries. Only legitimacy was promise of tech transfer. If wealthy countries turn their backs on that, & during a crippling pandemic, intl IP infrastructure is exposed/10
news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/bi…