The problem with worldwide COVID vaccine access is not the patents: the vaccines have all been sequenced, the exact contents are on freaking GitHub and have been forever. I know Moderna has waived their patent for sure; I think several others have too. The issue is manufacturing.

The mRNA vaccines in particular need an entirely new manufacturing process that's incredibly difficult to retrofit an existing production line to accommodate. The J&J vaccine has had repeated QA issues when new factories try to convert their production.

The US government (or any government) doesn't need to invalidate patents to improve vaccine equity, it needs to fund and construct billions of dollars of new production capacity.

Patent invalidation is a distraction to get people believing the solution to the inequity is a simple and cheap action. It isn't. We need to spend money.

Letting the conversation continue to coalesce around patents creates a simple villain that can Solve Everything if we defeat it, and if we let that happen, we lose our ability to put pressure where it's needed: funding the global infrastructure for vaccine production.

like clockwork the assholes have arrived to argue with me as soon as the tweet makes it two layers of RTs away, so I'm muting this now, please feel free to call me names amongst yourselves

since you assholes seem to take "I've muted this thread" as an excuse to hassle me elsewhere: despite what that asshole podcaster with zero reading comprehension and terrible followers seems to think, I did not once say that patent invalidation was or would be a bad thing

What I said was: the constant "call these people! Text resistbot! Evil pharma is holding this vaccine hostage and you must stop them!" messaging that is fucking everywhere on Twitter is an oversimplification that reduces "vaccine inequity" to one issue --

--that is *specifically designed* and being messaged to you as a miracle fix when the actual reality is every vaccine patent could be invalidated tomorrow and it would not meaningfully change vaccine inequity in any way without significant additional efforts and money.

This simplification is coalescing the narrative around this single issue until people genuinely believe all they have to do is demand their elected officials support vaccine patent invalidation and everything will be magically fixed.

In reality, vaccine patents are an infinitesimal fraction of the reason why the global vaccine rollout is happening in an inequitable fashion, and the rhetoric treating it like it's the sole action people need to advocate for is ignoring the practical, logistical reality.

If you assholes want to keep hassling me about what I said, please engage with what I actually said, ideally with an explanation for why the companies that have *already* waived their patent rights or licensed their patent for no cost have not made a single dent in the problem.