Biden’s shift on vaccine patents is a Big Deal

A world turned upside-down.

Last week, Katherine Tai, Biden’s US Trade Rep, made history by announcing that the US would support petitions from countries in the Global South for a patent waiver on covid vaccines, which would broaden the world’s capacity to produce vaccines.

https://twitter.com/AmbassadorTai/status/1390021205974003720

That’s a very important priority. The world’s 125 poorest countries have received zero doses, and 85 countries with a population of 2.5b project that they won’t be fully vaccinated until 2023 or 24.

Not only will this delay sicken and kill millions of people, it will also incubate new variants, some of which may be able to bypass vaccine-based defenses in the rest of the world.

Cue foolish objections that viruses evolve towards less virulence lest they cause their own extinction. That’s not how evolution works. Viruses don’t know if a mutation will cause them to eliminate their host organisms and thus commit suicide.

The mechanism that selects against driving a host to extinction is…driving a host to extinction. Yes, that’ll certainly show covid who’s boss, but it comes at a pretty high cost to host organisms like (checks notes) us.