Start at third base and be out at 2nd

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Biden’s vaccine patent theft

With the incredible head start Trump left Biden on COVID, I really didn’t think it was possible to screw it up.

But I underestimated sleepy/woke Joe. First, the ill advised pause on the J&J vaccine over a very rare side effect that can be guarded against now that we know what to look for.

Now we can’t give the J&J vaccine away. The right way to have dealt with it would have been an alert to physicians and a caution note to recipients on what symptoms to watch for. Now the confidence in the J&J vaccine is lost and the damage is spreading to the other vaccines.

Now Biden is supporting giving away the proprietary research that lead to the vaccines to foreign companies that did not participate in the research expenses much less the decades of incremental steps that led to the techniques.

So, next time we need vaccines fast, who is going to step up just to have their intellectual property stolen by the government and given away to curry favor?

Published by Don Tabor

I am a former Chairman of the Tidewater Libertarian Party and was the 2007 LP candidate for the 14th district VA Senate. Previously, I was the Volunteer State Director for the FairTax. I am married 50 years with two grown children and 5 grandchildren.

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21 thoughts on “Start at third base and be out at 2nd”

  1. RE: “So, next time we need vaccines fast, who is going to step up just to have their intellectual property stolen by the government and given away to curry favor?”

    No worries. We’ll just move all R&D into government-funded labs. After that, government can take any privately developed technology under the doctrine of eminent domain. Any time federal funds are short or takings must be paid for, we’ll just print new money to cover the expense. What could go wrong?

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  2. Hold on. Did you forget that we, the taxpayers, took all the risk out of vaccine development via the guaranteed buyouts?

    So actually, as far as vaccine development went, we encouraged it. The payback is to secure effective pandemic protection here and globally.

    Already the drug companies have raked in 100’s of millions in profit. And that is fine. But OWS is like we bought the office building and let the tenants in rent free. They are making money because we did that. And we still own the building. So now is the time for rent in the form of future profits.

    It is in our interests that Petri dishes like India, Brazil, etc. be immunized ASAP to reduce the variants.

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    1. So, it’s OK to steal if it is really, really popular?

      Yes, Trump reduced the risk of developing vaccines by guaranteeing US sales and assisting with regulatory barriers, but those IP processes are sill owned by the Pharma companies, and many of those underlying principles predate COVID.

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      1. You just don’t get it do you?

        The companies only own the processes because we bought them for their use.

        The market is based on risk/reward and we took all the risk out so the reward needs to be proportional.

        The drug companies will still profit, but they have to at least payback the “loan”.

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        1. We didn’t buy Pharma’s processes they used to develop the vaccines, those have been developing for decades, we removed the risk in employing that technology for COVID by guaranteeing that we would buy a fixed amount of their product even if someone else got to market first.

          If you pay a mechanic to fix your car, does that mean you now own his tools and can give them to some other mechanic who doesn’t own his own?

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          3. The processes were also at least partly funded by taxpayers, but that is not the point.

            Or to further the imperfect analogy, we bought the tools for the mechanic in advance so he could pursue his trade. Without that guarantee, the mechanic would need to find another investor. And in the case of the drug companies, no investor would do what governments here and abroad did.

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          5. There are also a lot of other issues with AZ/Oxford.

            Nobody is saying drug companies won’t be compensated, but the waiver will permit easier mass production by third parties.

            Estimates are that the world needs roughly 11 billion doses. Currently we might make 2 billion. Waiving patents will allow the goal to be attainable sooner rather than later.

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          6. “No, it isn’t.”

            Yes, it is. And that is especially true of Big Pharma whose “R&D” consists mainly of jiggering their products to extend patent protections. Truly BASIC research is conducted mainly in government labratories or in university labs that live off government grants. Historically – before Trump – , the share of BASIC research done with government money in this country has been near 60%.

            https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/u-s-r-d-performance-and-funding#figureCtr886

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          7. So, because Britain did the basic work of establishing the English language, it owns HARRY POTTER and every other book published in the language?

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          8. “HARRY POTTER ?”

            Nice try, I suppose, but the analogy between the development of the English language and the discovery of basic scientific knowledge by government funded research is a poor one. For pretty obvious reasons.

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      2. Steal? You mean sharing technology that would not exist without government funding in order to save countless millions of lives? Uh, that is NOT theft no matter what some doctrinaire moral midget writes in the Wall Street Journal. The issues involved in the proposed WTO waivers are complex and a case can be made on either side of the issue.

        https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/05/05/biden-administration-supports-waiving-patents-coronavirus-vaccines-big-pharma-wont-be-happy/

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        1. So, stealing isn’t stealing if it’s for a good cause?

          The technology already existed prior to COVID, Moderna’s vaccine was developed in one week after the virus gene sequence was shared using the technology they already had developed.

          We guaranteed a basic profit(US sales) fir using that technology for COVID. What we really paid for was the cost of complying with our regulatory system,

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          1. Your formulation of this as “stealing” is simply childish. Governments and international agreements make it possible for corporations to have ANY patent protections. Suspending those protections when millions of lives are at stake is NOT “stealing” no matter how often you repeat the silly claim that it is.

            Furthermore, the science that Big Pharma lives on is almost all the product of research funded by the government. In particular, mRNA technology was developed in Universities that live on grants from the government.

            Here is a basic truth about life that people like you either do not get or do not want to acknowledge . . .

            “No man is an island,
            entire of itself;
            every man is a piece of the continent,
            a part of the main.

            If a clod be washed away by the sea,
            Europe is the less,
            as well as if a promontory were.
            as well as if a manor of thy friend’s
            or of thine own were.

            Any man’s death diminishes me,
            because I am involved in mankind;
            and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
            it tolls for thee.” – John Donne 1623

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  3. “With the incredible head start Trump left Biden on COVID”

    In case you have forgotten, the first and best vaccines were developed in other countries. Trump’s lies and mismanagement gave us an “incredible head start” on death counts with hundreds of thousands of lives lost because of his policies.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/birx-recalls-very-difficult-call-trump-says-hundreds-thousands-covid-n1262283

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  4. “Now the confidence in the J&J vaccine is lost and the damage is spreading to the other vaccines.”

    Astra-Zeneca went through the same type of issue in the EU. The pause should do more to promote the safety of the vaccine for anyone not effected by the blood clots.

    There is no damage spreading; there is the hesitancy promoted by the lie of Carlson, Rogan and our own JTR. Hell, even the Captain of the Warp Speed express has done little to nothing to promote vaccine safety.

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