Patents

The Biden administration has made, what appears to be, an off the cuff decision to turn over covid vaccine technology to the world by waiving patent laws. Much of this science has been the result of years of research at a cost of billions of dollars and millions of man hours. The US industry will quickly produce 12 billion doses and share those with the world at reasonable cost. The big hold up is supply chain. The vaccine requires hundreds of ingredients from dozens of countries and the US has the fastest production facilities. If the technology is released other countries will be competing for the same materials and this will slow down US production and cause the world to wait for other countries to pick up production at less efficient facilities. It also causes concern about future investments by pharma companies. Will their research dollars be wasted if the results of their work is forced to be shared with the rest of the world.