[Vision2020] Thank Public-Private Partnerships for COVID-19 Vaccines

[Nicholas Gier]

Greetings Visionauts:
For those who don't take the DNews here is my column from this morning. The
long version has been submitted to Pocatello's Idaho State Journal where
I'm privileged to publish the longer versions of my columns.
Everyone over 16 can get their shots (or "jabs" as the Brits say), so make
sure you make an appointment.
nfg
  *Thank Public-Private Partnerships for COVID Vaccines*

            In his column “Private Sector Saved Us while Government Bungled
Covid Details” (*Spokesman*, March 7), conservative Marc Thiessen claims
that the “medical miracle” of the COVID vaccines was the result of the “the
innovative free enterprise system.”

 It is unlikely that Johnson & Johnson would have gone forward without a
government grant of $456 million. U.S. taxpayers gave Moderna $955 million
for late-stage clinical testing. Pfizer refused to take government funds
for the development of its vaccine, but Trump officials did guarantee $1.95
billion for production and distribution.

Biochemist Katalin Kariko, originally from Hungary, and University of
Pennsylvania immunologist Drew Weissman did the original research on the
revolutionary mRNA vaccine, first licensed by Moderna.

Pfizer’s German partner BioNtech received $455 million in government funds
and used Kariko’s and Weissman’s research for its vaccine. So far Uncle Sam
has distributed about $14 billion to seven drug manufacturers for COVID
vaccine development.

There is nothing miraculous about drug companies’ desire to make huge
profits in a market of 7.9 billion people. These companies have largely
stayed out of vaccine development primarily of the risk of low profits.
This is most likely the reason why they have not produced better treatments
for tuberculosis, whose primary victims are the world’s poor.

Drug companies will also have to concede that decades of research at the
National Institutes of Health, the California Institute of Technology, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dartmouth College, Scripps Research
Institute, Universities of Pennsylvania, Cambridge, and Oxford have
contributed to the research.

Other COVID vaccines that will soon be available use older methods that
were also largely funded by government agencies. There is a reason to place
“public” first in the phrase “public-private partnerships,” because many of
the achievements of the 20th Century (space, health, infrastructure) could
not have been accomplished without government support.

Outside Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, there is a state-of-the art
pharmaceutical factory whose managers want to produce COVID vaccines, but
Pfizer, Moderna, and AstraZeneca refuse to waive their intellectual
property rights. The U.S. government will soon hold a patent on Moderna’s
mRNA vaccine, but its contract came with the provision that the technology
not be shared for world-wide production.

The World Health Organization is insisting that President Biden use his
executive power to break this vaccine monopoly. Otherwise, hundreds of
millions of lives will be held hostage by profit rather than pursuing the
common good. The longer the developing world waits for vaccines, the
greater the risk for mutant variants, which are a danger for rich countries
as well as the poor.

After ignoring public funding for vaccine development, Marc Thiessen then
criticizes government failures during the pandemic. He takes cheap shots at
Anthony Fauci’s alleged mistakes, but does not mention ex-President Trump’s
responsibility—the biggest “bungler,” to use Thiessen’s word. Trump
privately admitted to Bob Woodward that he knew that the virus was far more
deadly than the flu, that it was air borne, and that children could die
from it.

In a previous column (*Lewiston Tribune*, Jan. 7) Thiessen candidly wrote
about Trump’s 10 worst mistakes, and one was that his “vaccine distribution
has been an inexcusable disaster,” as it left “about 22 million Americans
without any immunity during the deadliest period since the pandemic began.”

 Trump and his wife were inoculated in private, and, only when prompted on
Fox News, did he say that people should get the vaccine. However, he
immediately undercut his recommendation by saying that “we have our
freedoms and we have to live by that, and I agree with that also.”

In a recent poll, 41 percent of Republicans (49 percent of men) said that
they won’t get the shot, while only 11 percent of Democrats did. It will be
very difficult for us to reach herd immunity with so many foolish people
opting out.

Why isn’t some attorney willing to file a class action suit on the part of
families who have lost love ones, citing Trump’s willful and gross
negligence?

Nick Gier is professor emeritus at the University of Idaho. Read all his
columns on the virus at www.tomandrodna.com/nick_gier/coronavirus.pdf.
Email him at ngier006 at gmail.com.



A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they
shall never sit in.

-Greek proverb

“Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance
from another. This immaturity is self- imposed when its cause lies not in
lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without
guidance from another. Sapere Aude! ‘Have courage to use your own
understand-ing!—that is the motto of enlightenment.

--Immanuel Kant
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