D&D and the rising pandemic

[Umbran]

You can even scale it. Like 50% of the medicine has to be made domestically to have patent protection with mandatory licensing, and if 200% of domestic supply is local you are free of the mandatory licensing requirement.

200%? Like, they massively over-produce locally?

 

[NotAYakk]

200%? Like, they massively over-produce locally?

Yes.

If you produce at least 50% of local demand, you get patent protection for that medicine, but with mandatory licensing. So the country can buy the medicine from 3rd party countries, paying you a fixed amount for the doses. The doses you produce locally need not be consumed locally; quite possibly you will want better profits than the mandatory licensing permits you to capture.

If you produce twice enough for local demand, you no longer have mandatory licensing. This will involve exporting, or hell making it and burying it. I don't care what you do with it.

The national security reason is pretty simple; countries have proven willing to shut down trade in an emergency. This endangers national security and the safety of the population.

It isn't safe to depend on imported medicine.

So if you want to have any patent protection, have factories that are local that can't be shut down by emergencies, so we have guaranteed local supply. If not, then we will import from nations that violate your patents we do not recognize, or let locals produce it without patent protection.

And if you want full protection, produce enough locally that if we need more in an emergency we can claim it.

Naturally there are issues, like 50% of all of the supplies needed by the supply chain.

You could permit some parts to be handled by stockpiles. If you stockpile, say, 2 years of supply in the country you might be excused from producing that supply locally.

 

[Umbran]

So if you want to have any patent protection, have factories that are local that can't be shut down by emergencies, so we have guaranteed local supply.

Um... you know that "can't be shut down by emergencies" is literally impossible in a pandemic, right? Drug manufacture is highly skilled labor. If your people get sick, your facility shuts down.

Also, it ignores the global nature of trade today. The end-factory has a long supply chain of tools and materials needed to make vaccines. Day-to-day, it is not necessary, nor in the company's best interests, to limit to local suppliers for all elements.

This, ultimately, is an issue of risk management. What one often finds is that mandates like this are not worth the company's effort to meet - keeping up a huge cost to be prepared for an event that may or may not happen at some unspecified future date is not typically cost effective.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Still, he has a point. There’s a certain amount of vulnerability you can minimize (not eliminate) with strategic planning. That’s one reason why the Feds were willing to float the Big 3 some bailout money during the previuos recession- jobs aside, that kept valuable technology and infrastructure operational within the country’s borders.*

So building up a stockpile of vaccines and/or production facilities makes sense. Maybe not 200%, but somewhere between 75-115% might not be unreasonable, dependi on a variety of factors.

And if the propellerheads at the University of Glascow- or elsewhere-actually succeed in perfecting 3D pharmaceutical production to human-safe levels, that will increase supply safety wherever it can operate.

New "Chemical MP3 Players" could lead to Spotify network of on-demand 3D printed drugs

A study on 3D printed drugs, published in a new paper published today in the journal Science, could lead to a ‘Spotify for chemistry’

www.3dprintingmedia.network

* Sure, if China decided to stop selling us lithium or the Russians stopped selling us titanium, there’d be problems, but we wouldn’t be completely devoid of auto manufacturers (and all the other technologies and industries that supply and support them)

 

[Umbran]

So building up a stockpile of vaccines and/or production facilities makes sense. Maybe not 200%, but somewhere between 75-115% might not be unreasonable, dependi on a variety of factors.

But... you can't. I mean, you don't know what the next thing will be. You don't know what mitigation will come first - vaccine, drug treatment, vector eradication... and what form it would take. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines both use new technology that hasn't been ever been approved for use in a vaccine before! How on Earth do you stockpile for drugs using unforeseen technology?

And, of course, everything we are talking about has an expiry date, so we are not talking about a one-time expenditure to create a stockpile. We are talking about a permanent cost of maintaining a stockpile. Of materials to make enough of... any possible treatment? Think about that for a moment.

Yes, there are things that should be stockpiled - PPE, for example, and common materials used for supportive care, like respirators. And there are other long-term actions that can be taken - every national guard unit should be trained to deploy to support and assist medical personnel in case of pandemic. The pandemic plans that we had that were scuttled by the prior administration need to be put back in place. And overall, we need a long-term plan to foster public support for public health, because above and beyond all the worst issue we faced in this was people who wouldn't comply with regulation to quell the pandemic.

 

[NotAYakk]

But... you can't. I mean, you don't know what the next thing will be. You don't know what mitigation will come first - vaccine, drug treatment, vector eradication... and what form it would take. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines both use new technology that hasn't been ever been approved for use in a vaccine before! How on Earth do you stockpile for drugs using unforeseen technology?

And, of course, everything we are talking about has an expiry date, so we are not talking about a one-time expenditure to create a stockpile. We are talking about a permanent cost of maintaining a stockpile. Of materials to make enough of... any possible treatment? Think about that for a moment.

Yes, there are things that should be stockpiled - PPE, for example, and common materials used for supportive care, like respirators. And there are other long-term actions that can be taken - every national guard unit should be trained to deploy to support and assist medical personnel in case of pandemic. The pandemic plans that we had that were scuttled by the prior administration need to be put back in place. And overall, we need a long-term plan to foster public support for public health, because above and beyond all the worst issue we faced in this was people who wouldn't comply with regulation to quell the pandemic.

The USA is currently engaged in an embargo of vaccines.

Anyone depending on the USA for health care supplies should stop doing so if they donpt want to be naughty word in the next pandemic.

It is true the result ,ight be "pharma companies don't buold factories locally". In which case you pirate all the drugs and don't pay for reseach costs. And get local factories anyhow.

Or maybe they build factories locally and capture those profits. Their choice.

2 of the vaccines where bleeding edge. The other ones where not.

Relying on another nation for emergency healthcare supplies is a danger to national security.

If you have trade that doesn't shut down in an emergency, that is one thing. So having your factories somewhere else inside the EU is safe if you are in it.

Does this mean decoupling from global trade networks for health care supplies? Quite possibly.

The USA is not worth the risk to deoend on when your national security is at stake.

 

[Zardnaar]

The USA is currently engaged in an embargo of vaccines.

Anyone depending on the USA for health care supplies should stop doing so if they donpt want to be naughty word in the next pandemic.

It is true the result ,ight be "pharma companies don't buold factories locally". In which case you pirate all the drugs and don't pay for reseach costs. And get local factories anyhow.

Or maybe they build factories locally and capture those profits. Their choice.

2 of the vaccines where bleeding edge. The other ones where not.

Relying on another nation for emergency healthcare supplies is a danger to national security.

If you have trade that doesn't shut down in an emergency, that is one thing. So having your factories somewhere else inside the EU is safe if you are in it.

Does this mean decoupling from global trade networks for health care supplies? Quite possibly.

The USA is not worth the risk to deoend on when your national security is at stake.

What else you gonna do, EU restricting exports, Chinese one is argueably useless, Russians can't supply their one in enough quanties.

And only a relative few countries could manufacture the vaccines very few can develop one mostly EU/USA and Russia.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

But... you can't. I mean, you don't know what the next thing will be. You don't know what mitigation will come first - vaccine, drug treatment, vector eradication... and what form it would take. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines both use new technology that hasn't been ever been approved for use in a vaccine before! How on Earth do you stockpile for drugs using unforeseen technology?

And, of course, everything we are talking about has an expiry date, so we are not talking about a one-time expenditure to create a stockpile. We are talking about a permanent cost of maintaining a stockpile. Of materials to make enough of... any possible treatment? Think about that for a moment.

Yes, there are things that should be stockpiled - PPE, for example, and common materials used for supportive care, like respirators. And there are other long-term actions that can be taken - every national guard unit should be trained to deploy to support and assist medical personnel in case of pandemic. The pandemic plans that we had that were scuttled by the prior administration need to be put back in place. And overall, we need a long-term plan to foster public support for public health, because above and beyond all the worst issue we faced in this was people who wouldn't comply with regulation to quell the pandemic.

It may not be possible to meaningfully stockpile any of the C19 vaccines at all, in which case you make sure you at least stockpile the non-perishable components and equipment needed to make it.

If the equipment is general/multipurpose and not specialized, you set aside extra parts or even whole units so you don’t need to start from scratch or have to make binary production choices between those other uses and C19 vaccine production if & when.

(This is something the Feds are too good at: we’re currently sitting at 30+ years of spare parts on our current main battle tank, for instance...and still making more. See also strategic reserves of oil, PPE and so forth.)

OTOH, if the predictions about C19 becoming endemic and requiring periodic booster shots, the “stockpile” wouldn’t NEED to last all that long or be that big. Just like hospitals have excess beds beyond their “capacity” as a guard against catas need- thank goodness for THAT- you’d just maintain a rotating stockpile big enough to guard against spikes,

 

[Eltab]

Getting my shot tomorrow.

In response to the vaccine export bans, I'm wondering if countries should simply stop respecting patent protection for any and all medicines not made within the country as a matter of national security.

You can even scale it. Like 50% of the medicine has to be made domestically to have patent protection with mandatory licensing, and if 200% of domestic supply is local you are free of the mandatory licensing requirement.

Dumping patent protection for foreign-invented goods is a recipe for 'no more shared research'. But some kind of emergency clause - which is resistant against 'permanent emergency' abuse - that says something like "local factories can reverse-engineer and produce patented goods, payment for such to be made to the patent holder within a year" might serve to protect both supplier and consumer interests.

 

[NotAYakk]

Dumping patent protection for foreign-invented goods is a recipe for 'no more shared research'. But some kind of emergency clause - which is resistant against 'permanent emergency' abuse - that says something like "local factories can reverse-engineer and produce patented goods, payment for such to be made to the patent holder within a year" might serve to protect both supplier and consumer interests.

You misunderstand. It doesn't matter where it is invented. It just matters where it is manufactured.

As evidenced by this pandemic, materials needed for national security reasons cannot be made in another country. And health care is national security, and when a pandemic hits, the other country will shut off your supplies.

Canada had to literally threaten to black out half of Maine to keep PPE supplies going (it was a very, very polite threat; the fact that Canada powers half of maine was mentioned as part of the high integration of US and Canadian health care systems. Maine was mentioned because there where 2 hospitals powered by Canadian power there), but lacking a sufficient leverage the USA banned all exports of the vaccines Canada purchased.

Canada is aware we share a bed with a drunk elephant.

Canada isn't currently making a fuss over that, as we have reason to believe that the effects of that delay will be a few months long, and we have enough supplies from the EU to vaccinate the most vulnerable. (The EU, unlike the USA, did not shut down vaccine exports; if it had, Canada would be naughty word). Currently Canada is importing AZ vaccine from the USA; mRNA ones are not being allowed to be exported. Canada's mRNA vaccines come from Europe.

Canada sold off its ability to produce vaccines under a previous government to save a bit of money. It is rebuilding again; but with the continued threat to global supply lines, Canada should make it a matter of national security. We'll have domestic manufacturing again by november, part of the plan to deal with the possibility of more embargos. And this plan should be what every other nation on the planet with enough wealth to afford it should do.