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Moderna has already said it won't enforce its patents. That's not the barrier to duplicating its vaccine. https://twitter.com/ElsTorreele/status/1386414933672292352
There's a lot of fuzziness in the way people write about the question of what's actually needed for developing countries to be able to produce mRNA vaccines on their own. People mush "IP rights" and "technology transfer" together when they're 2 v. different things.
Making mRNA vaccines is not like making a generic version of a conventional drug: it's a new, much more complicated and fragile process, dependent on a great deal of tacit knowledge (and special materials, etc.) https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/02/02/myths-of-vaccine-manufacturing
That's why the most obvious solution is for the US, Europe, and Japan to pay Pfizer and Moderna to license their technology and transfer their knowledge to developing-country manufacturers.
