Thread by @MMKavanagh

Economists please meet the idea of multiple causality. Insufficient supply of vaccines IS driven by WTO rules & IP monopolies. It's not the ONLY cause. We also need tech transfer & funding & more
@ATabarrok gets so many things here wrong…
a quick list🧵
marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…

“Licenses are widely available” They are not. Most of the world has been dependent on ONE exclusive license to ONE manufacturer, Serum Institute. Many other high-quality firms could be making vaxs but monopoly holders said no. Because of monopoly they can. 2/11

“J&J’s vaccine has been licensed for production in… South Africa.” Nope.
One company has a “fill and finish” contract with J&N in SA. They have been been given the right or the tech to make the full vax or distribute on their own. Sub-contractors are not what’s needed here 3/11

“All of the vaccine manufacturers are trying to increase supply as quickly as possible”
No they simply are not. Multiple firms around the world have asked for & could be making vaccines but have been denied that right by monopoly holders 4/11

“Plastic bags are a bigger bottleneck than patents"
👏Great line. But do you know how global IP works?
Point is these are now proprietary processes, combo of IP mean supply chains are monopolized & secretive. It’s all related. Need to produce more bags too—let’s get on it 5/11

“Moderna has said that they won’t enforce their patents during the pandemic but no one has stepped up to produce because no one else can” This defies logic and evidence.
Multiple firms can: Lonza, for example, Moderna contracted, did tech transfer, producing within months…6/11

…implication of course is that producers in low- and middle-income countries can’t. Moderna & BioNTech?Start-ups with little manufacturing expertise. Meanwhile in India, South Africa, Thailand, Brazil, Vietnam, global companies with powerhouse expertise
Let them all produce 7/11

“US trade representative’s announcement is virtue signaling”
I know this is hard to believe but this is not about you or the USTR. The governments of South Africa, India, and 62 countries co-sponsoring resolution are not the “anti-market left” but govts facing pandemic... 8/11

...they along with the head of the World Health Organization AND the World Trade Organization have said this is a good move. And NOBODY thinks this in the ONLY move (repeat after me: multiple causality).
Stop with the straw arguments. 9/11

An IP waiver is actually a very limited, conservative idea that is only one part of the puzzle—but it is a key piece of the puzzle as we argued:
washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/…
10/11

As @realtahiramin put it well months ago--hoarding doses and hoarding knowledge are driving the continued pandemic. Serious folks need to tackle it all.
foreignaffairs.com/articles/world…

^TYPO! They have NOT been been given the right or the tech to make the full vax or distribute on their own.

*fixing impt typo above😣 Aspen in SAfrica has NOT been given right or tech to make full vax or distribute independently. That's the point here--the monopoly prevents Aspen from doing what it does with ARVs--make them, sell them throughout Africa.

And check out this great piece showing exactly how our “plastic bag” problem is actually a monopoly problem.
Even I was surprised there are 2,800 patents on single-use bioreactor bags

https://twitter.com/matthewstoller/status/1392197663383228418