Neverending Covid-19 Coronavirus

nolalady said:
This new variant, y’all…
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I feel like with the amount of cases being discovered, it has probably already been around for months right? And it's early to tell but signs point toward it being a fast moving, but less lethal version, right? Either way, and this is probably bad, but my capacity for worry during fervor like we're seeing was long ago passed, and all I feel is irritation at this point. I'm tired.
 
Turbo said:
No point in worrying until we know more about how vaccines react to it. I'm sure it's already here though.
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Pfizer says they can have an Omicron booster 90 days from the word go. So current vaccine efficacy studies are critical. Not surprised another variant morphed, especially in Africa. Now we have to deal with travel, holiday, spikes on top of this....sigh
 
JohnnyCashFan said:
Pfizer says they can have an Omicron booster 90 days from the word go. So current vaccine efficacy studies are critical. Not surprised another variant morphed, especially in Africa. Now we have to deal with travel, holiday, spikes on top of this....sigh
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Oh, yeah. If there's anything to learn here, it's about how important it is to get vaccines out all over the world so we don't get variant incubator pockets.

My personal feeling is we'll be dealing with an Omicron wave here around the new year, fueled by holiday gatherings.
 
Turbo said:
Oh, yeah. If there's anything to learn here, it's about how important it is to get vaccines out all over the world so we don't get variant incubator pockets.

My personal feeling is we'll be dealing with an Omicron wave here around the new year, fueled by holiday gatherings.
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Sadly we’ve prioritised allow pharma companies holding onto patents over vaccines funded by public money, and making mega profits from them, as opposed to public health. It’s not only immortal but staggeringly stupid, it’s been clear for nearly a year now that as well as heartlessly disregarding lives in the developing world we’re also creating areas where the vaccine can mutate at will. It’s going to keep coming back to bite us, and is needlessly extending this damned pandemic.

If I miss a second damn Christmas over this shit I’m not going to be happy!
 
Joe Mac said:
Sadly we’ve prioritised allow pharma companies holding onto patents over vaccines funded by public money, and making mega profits from them, as opposed to public health. It’s not only immortal but staggeringly stupid, it’s been clear for nearly a year now that as well as heartlessly disregarding lives in the developing world we’re also creating areas where the vaccine can mutate at will. It’s going to keep coming back to bite us, and is needlessly extending this damned pandemic.

If I miss a second damn Christmas over this shit I’m not going to be happy!
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Now Biden is calling for big pharma to open the patent given the Omicron discovery. The dip in the stock market after Omicron was named probably had a bit to do with it, but if it gets us open patents, that’s fine.
 
nolalady said:
Now Biden is calling for big pharma to open the patent given the Omicron discovery. The dip in the stock market after Omicron was named probably had a bit to do with it, but if it gets us open patents, that’s fine.
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I can’t imagine a call will do anything, they’re brazen enough to have that one up. I’m guessing it will need to be legislated for, let’s see if that happens!
 
I could go on about patents for a long time, given I work in the field. But suffice to say that patents themselves are far from the only issue, and removing them can also have bad negative effects. The incentives from patents is what drives invention and it also allows for the invention to be fully disclosed to the public for future exploitation or present improvement. The alternatives are trade secrets, which are way worse.

Manufacturing is also the huge deal. It's not because something is off patent that manufacturers can come along and make it successfully - it can take years to reverse engineer, because not everything in the invention is necessarily inventive and therefore resorts to the choice of persons skilled in the art that are not spelled out in the patent.

The fastest, surest way forward has more to do with forced licensing at reasonable prices so the technical know-how that's not inventive are provided to 3rd parties (i.e. sharing the stuff that's not written in any patent because it could be done different ways that are already known but that are still crucial technical choices required for manufacturing) and/or sharing and distributing the available stocks between countries. Developing countries are not going to be able to all of a sudden make mRNA vaccines if they're patent-free since they don't have the infrastructures and money to do so.

Pharmaceutical companies definitely have a lot of financial wiggle room, which they obtained because of government subsidies. Governments should use their leverage to force them to license their technologies to 3rd parties so manufacturing capacity is increased and accessibility improved. Astra-Zeneca did it themselves with India to increase manufacturing and they shared their techniques and got them running quickly (India did have adequate manufacturing plants in place for that type of vaccine technology though). This is the model to follow and if pharma doesn't want to do it, governments should force it.
 
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Turbo said:
I could go on about patents for a long time, given I work in the field. But suffice to say that patents themselves are far from the only issue, and removing them can also have bad negative effects. The incentives from patents is what drives invention and it also allows for the invention to be fully disclosed to the public for future exploitation or present improvement. The alternatives are trade secrets, which are way worse.

Manufacturing is also the huge deal. It's not because something is off patent that manufacturers can come along and make it successfully - it can take years to reverse engineer, because not everything in the invention is necessarily inventive and therefore resorts to the choice of persons skilled in the art that are not spelled out in the patent.

The fastest, surest way forward has more to do with forced licensing at reasonable prices so the technical know-how that's not inventive are provided to 3rd parties (i.e. sharing the stuff that's not written in any patent because it could be done different ways that are already known but that are still crucial technical choices required for manufacturing) and/or sharing and distributing the available stocks between countries. Developing countries are not going to be able to all of a sudden make mRNA vaccines if they're patent-free since they don't have the infrastructures and money to do so.

Pharmaceutical companies definitely have a lot of financial wiggle room, which they obtained because of government subsidies. Governments should use their leverage to force them to license their technologies to 3rd parties so manufacturing capacity is increased and accessibility improved. Astra-Zeneca did it themselves with India to increase manufacturing and they shared their techniques and got them running quickly (India did have adequate manufacturing plants in place for that type of vaccine technology though). This is the model to follow and if pharma doesn't want to do it, governments should force it.
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The other, and I think bigger issue, is who owns these patents given that a large amount of the work was done with public funding.

This is what I consider drama, y'all:

Moderna is offering to share ownership of its COVID-19 vaccine patent with the U.S. government to resolve the dispute, the vaccine maker said, and would allow the Biden administration to "license the patents as they see fit."

An NIH spokesperson declined Monday to comment directly on Moderna's offer, citing "ongoing discussions."


The company claims it had no choice under the "strict rules" of American patent law to list only its own scientists "as the inventors on these claims."

But the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases disagrees.

A spokesperson for the government research arm - housed within the NIH - said that "its own thorough review" had determined that scientists Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham, and John Mascola also deserved to be named as inventors.

"Moderna has made a serious mistake here in not providing the kind of co-inventorship credit to people who played a major role in the development of the vaccine that they are now making a fair amount of money off of," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told Reuters last week.

"Omitting NIH inventors from the principal patent application deprives NIH of a co-ownership interest in that application and the patent that will eventually issue from it," said an NIAID spokesperson.

Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, penned a letter this month to the NIH urging the agency "to publicly reclaim the foundational role" it played in developing the shots, criticizing a July patent filing by Moderna claiming it had "reached the good-faith determination" that the NIH's scientists "did not co-invent the mRNAs" in their application.

www.cbsnews.com

Moderna offers NIH co-ownership of COVID vaccine patent amid dispute with government

Activists have been pushing the Biden administration to "reclaim" ownership over the vaccine, in hopes of increasing global access.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com

I really like that there is finally some push back against big pharma over this. We, as tax payers funded the NIH research. We should get something for that. This would be great to help us fund Medicare.
 
nolalady said:
The other, and I think bigger issue, is who owns these patents given that a large amount of the work was done with public funding.

This is what I consider drama, y'all:

Moderna is offering to share ownership of its COVID-19 vaccine patent with the U.S. government to resolve the dispute, the vaccine maker said, and would allow the Biden administration to "license the patents as they see fit."

An NIH spokesperson declined Monday to comment directly on Moderna's offer, citing "ongoing discussions."


The company claims it had no choice under the "strict rules" of American patent law to list only its own scientists "as the inventors on these claims."

But the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases disagrees.

A spokesperson for the government research arm - housed within the NIH - said that "its own thorough review" had determined that scientists Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham, and John Mascola also deserved to be named as inventors.

"Moderna has made a serious mistake here in not providing the kind of co-inventorship credit to people who played a major role in the development of the vaccine that they are now making a fair amount of money off of," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told Reuters last week.

"Omitting NIH inventors from the principal patent application deprives NIH of a co-ownership interest in that application and the patent that will eventually issue from it," said an NIAID spokesperson.

Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, penned a letter this month to the NIH urging the agency "to publicly reclaim the foundational role" it played in developing the shots, criticizing a July patent filing by Moderna claiming it had "reached the good-faith determination" that the NIH's scientists "did not co-invent the mRNAs" in their application.

www.cbsnews.com

Moderna offers NIH co-ownership of COVID vaccine patent amid dispute with government

Activists have been pushing the Biden administration to "reclaim" ownership over the vaccine, in hopes of increasing global access.
www.cbsnews.com www.cbsnews.com

I really like that there is finally some push back against big pharma over this. We, as tax payers funded the NIH research. We should get something for that. This would be great to help us fund Medicare.
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Are western countries going to provide the funds to developing countries so they can set-up their own manufacturing? Opening patents in the US, also only affects the US, as US patents only apply in the US. So is the goal to get US generic companies to supply the developing world? Who's going to fund that? Who's going to make sure Moderna helps the generics, either in the US or abroad, to set-up their manufacturing using their best practices? Or is this going to go the usual way where the generics have to reverse engineer the processes, which could take years?

I still contend that the best way forward is to force cheap/free licensing agreements between Moderna and Pfizer and third party manufacturers around the world and force them to be involved in setting up manufacturing, either in the US for export or in countries that can handle it. The Astra-Zeneca - India model at a cheap price.

The patent debate is being made for political points and Moderna will be perfectly happy to open them up to score good will points, because no other companies will be able to quickly manufacture their vaccines any time soon without their help.
 
www.cnn.com

Stocks and oil prices fall as Moderna CEO says current vaccines will struggle with Omicron

Global stocks and oil prices fell again Tuesday after a brief respite from the heavy sell-off triggered by the emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

What is this Omicron variant? This is the first I have heard about it. Then again I haven't been paying attaching to anything for the last week and a half. Spent 4 days on the road and moved my Grandmother into a new condo in Surfside Beach in South Carolina over Thanksgiving.
 
Another close friend just tested positive for Covid, and he was already boosted over two weeks ago. I haven't seen him in about 10 days so I think I'm ok. He's symptom free, but I am just bottoming out emotionally on this. I feel like this virus is going to swirl around us; morph and regenerate and never leave us alone.

Happy to report my other friend is out of the hospital, so that's good. He was texting goodbyes at one point, said he was sure he was a goner.
 
RenegadeMonster said:
www.cnn.com

Stocks and oil prices fall as Moderna CEO says current vaccines will struggle with Omicron

Global stocks and oil prices fell again Tuesday after a brief respite from the heavy sell-off triggered by the emergence of the Omicron coronavirus variant.
www.cnn.com www.cnn.com

What is this Omicron variant? This is the first I have heard about it. Then again I haven't been paying attaching to anything for the last week and a half. Spent 4 days on the road and moved my Grandmother into a new condo in Surfside Beach in South Carolina over Thanksgiving.
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We're not sure, but it represents a clear evolutionary line in the virus. It is much more contagious but it seems (thus far) to be much less deadly. This is how viruses tend to evolve in populations. The virus can't spread if it kills the host or makes the host too sick. So it adapts to be easier on the host so that it can spread among the host population. I really, really hope this is what is going on.
 
Went to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with the family in-law. Day before turkey dinner my wife's sis texts: her six month-old has contracted COVID. Apparently she brought her baby to a big indoor party where she was "pretty sure" everyone was vaccinated. When my MIL pushed for our other niece, 5yo to get vaccinated, SIL unloaded on her and my wife, saying "we're not going to get a shot every time the cdc says oh you need another vaccine. I'm so over covid and people hating one another on choices."

It's so different down there; it feels like everyone's just pretending it's over. They've decided they're tired of it, so the drug stores just stock tests instead of masks. And I can understand the social pressure; by a week of being in Florida, I found myself going out and realizing I forgot to bring a mask or not worrying about putting one on in environments I'd mask up back home (where most people are masked even in outdoor public spaces).

She did acquiesce that "yes some people are dying," so I shouldn't question how seriously she's taking this. So, hey.
 
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