Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Subscribe here. May 6, 2021 Would Waiving Vaccine Patents Really Help? Calls to lift intellectual-property restrictions on Covid-19 vaccines have been fierce.
Drug makers' patents have abetted a "pernicious form of vaccine apartheid" and a "mostly self-created" global shortage of doses, Fatima Hassan wrote for Foreign Policy in February. (Last month, the World Health Organization said just 0.2% of all vaccine shots had been given in low-income countries.) It's "unethical" to uphold patents, economists Mariana Mazzucato and Jayati Ghosh and biomedical R&D expert Els Torreele wrote for The Economist last month, especially since public funds were put up for vaccine development.
US President Joe Biden seems to agree: The US on Wednesday announced it would support an Indian and South African proposal at the World Trade Organization to waive international vaccine-patent protections.
US support does not guarantee the proposal will succeed. But if it did, would it help?
Patent sharing is "necessary but not sufficient" for boosting global vaccine supplies, Matthew M. Kavanagh, Mara Pillinger, Renu Singh, and Katherine Ginsbach wrote for Foreign Policy in March, as drug makers would also need to share manufacturing know-how, in order for developing-world producers to start churning out doses. "I have yet to read or hear someone who knows about vaccine production say that the bottleneck is intellectual property," University of St. Gallen international-trade professor Simon Evenett told Politico. Citing also the scarcity of physical inputs, Stanford law professor and IP expert Lisa Larrimore Ouellette notes that "Moderna already voluntarily waived its patent rights in October, but other manufacturers still aren't able to use Moderna's technology without active cooperation from Moderna."
Others, like The Wall Street Journal's editorial board, have argued for protecting drug-maker profits that incentivize and fund future R&D. But given the complexity of making Covid-19 vaccines—a process that in Pfizer's case spans multiple US states and involves plasmid RNA "templates" using E. Coli bacteria, a "bath of enzymes and nucleotides," and ultimately RNA being encased in lipid nanoparticles, as Sue Halpern detailed in The New Yorker—it shouldn't be surprising if logistics are the main problem. Is Biden Playing a Dangerous Game Over Taiwan? As Beijing's military power grows, commentators have wondered if the US will be able to maintain its "strategic ambiguity" regarding Taiwan—a policy that officially recognizes the island as part of mainland China but entails an ambiguous promise that the US might defend Taiwan if Beijing were to invade. The Economist recently noted American calls for US President Joe Biden to make that promise explicit.
But at The New York Times, Peter Beinart writes that this is nonsense—and that Biden is playing a dangerous game, taking more overt steps to develop relations with Taiwan than any president since Richard Nixon opened US–China diplomacy in 1978 and adopted, as a prerequisite for any Washington–Beijing relationship, the so-called "one China" policy of officially ignoring Taiwan. (Among other moves, Beinart notes that Biden hosted a Taiwanese envoy at his inauguration—a first since Nixon's Chinese opening.)
If Washington thinks it can stand up to Beijing over Taiwan, Beinart writes, it's delusional. China boasts 39 air bases in the area surrounding Taiwan, compared to America's two, and it has invested in "carrier killer" anti-ship missiles that could impose a "hideous" cost to the US in any war over the island. "[D]eterrence requires power and will," Beinart writes, "and when it comes to Taiwan, the United States is deficient in both." It's best, then, not to escalate, Beinart argues: "Hawks will call this appeasement. So be it. Ask them how many American lives they're willing to risk so the United States can have official diplomatic relations with Taiwan." $1.7 Trillion Asset Class Contemporary art prices outperformed S&P 500 returns by 172% from 2000-2020. Skip Masterworks' waitlist today and invest in artists' work at a fraction of the entry price. Highest Paying Cash Back Card Of 2021 $200 bonus offer. 3% cash back choice on every category we love, including online shopping, dining, travel, gas, and more. No annual fee. 0% interest for 15 months. Learn more. Is the GOP Going Full Trump? At The New York Times Magazine, Elaina Plott details the Republican Party's lunge toward Trumpism in a profile of animus in Texas against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has wavered on mask mandates during the pandemic. More significantly, Plott writes that Texas Republicans have doubled down on former President Donald Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud—despite having "won every statewide office of any consequence" in 2020.
As the Texas GOP makes "election integrity" its top issue under chairman Allen West—the former Tea Party figure, Florida congressman, and retired US Army lieutenant colonel—Plott writes that nationally, the Republican Party is "in the awkward position of denying its own down-ballot successes in many states." Plott depicts a party at war with itself, in which officials wink at the false idea of a stolen election, partisan supporters feel defrauded by the 2020 results, and even victory isn't enough. The Migrants Heading Toward the World's Worst Humanitarian Disaster Yemen is often cited as the world's worst humanitarian crisis—but at the Berlin Journal, Nathalie Peutz writes that migrants have continued to enter the country, despite the danger, to seek work on the Arabian peninsula.
"Each year, tens of thousands of Oromo and Amhara [Ethiopian ethnic groups] walk across Djibouti's arid desert and alongside its coastal highway toward the Red Sea towns of Tadjoura and Obock, where they are crowded onto wooden dhows crossing the Bab al-Mandab strait to Yemen … If these Ethiopians do not drown, and if they are not imprisoned or held for ransom in Yemen, they continue their journey northward to Saudi Arabia," Peutz writes. "In 2018, approximately 160,000 migrants and asylum seekers crossed the Red Sea (departing from Djibouti) and the Gulf of Aden (departing from Somalia). In 2019, more than 138,000 migrants and asylum seekers entered Yemen. Notably, this was the second consecutive year that the number of migrants crossing the sea from the Horn of Africa to Yemen exceeded the number of migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean to Europe." The International Organization for Migration designated this pathway "the busiest maritime migration route on earth," Peutz notes.
Some who arrive in Yemen are Yemenis disillusioned with life in refugee camps or in other countries, who return home in search of economic opportunity despite the danger, Peutz writes, suggesting that for all the talk in rich countries about a "refugee crisis," the real problem may be a relative lack of mobility. |
