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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 8261710" data-attributes="member: 177">I think we are talking past each other.  Incentive or not, funding or not, making improvements TAKES TIME.  It isn't like you remove the IP restriction, and next week there's a flood of cheap Pfizer-type vaccine on the market!  There would likely be months of spin up time before anyone else can make it at scale at all, and more months before they could actually improve the process, especially because major process change probably requires a new round of testing and certification for use.If we lifted the IP restriction today, I don't think we'd see much improvement in cost until 2022.  If, say, India's current predicament is the motivator, this is not a viable solution.If you aren't living in a dictatorship, the government has limits.  And, at least here, "the government" is not one entity.  It is at least three.  And one of them has the specific job of checking whether the other two are out of bounds.  There's very little legal similarity between broadly extending rights, and cancelling rights to specific items.We aren't talking about a general change to IP law.  We are talking about cancelling IP rights on two specific items.  This amounts to the government annexing (some would say, "stealing") Pfizer's and Moderna's property.  There are already Constitutional limits on government seizure of property, you know.  It is in the 5th Amendment - "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."The Congress alone is not going to change the Constitution for the vaccine.  If the US government wants to remove the IP protection from these vaccines, they will have to buy them, at fair market value.</blockquote>

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