You know what is in every livestock veterinarian's practice? A liquid-nitrogen dewar for storing and transferring livestock semen at temperatures well below what's required for mRNA vaccines. The capability to do that, and therefore the hardware required, are simply part of the ordinary requirements of the practice. And it's not even a major expense for them; they can order one out of the catalog for a few hundred bucks, and liquid nitrogen, even if they lack the ability to make it, is already cheaper than milk.
mRNA vaccines made the hardware for storing and handling them a part of the ordinary requirements of hospitals starting this year. And the only reason it was at all difficult was because hospitals hadn't needed the capability before and everybody was trying to get it at once. The difficulty with that kind of refrigeration was market forces and speed of manufacturing, not any difficulty inherent in fabrication or function. As mRNA vaccines become more common, and the market for that hardware reaches equilibrium, that's going to be just one more routine piece of equipment, with no good reason to be drastically more expensive than an X-Ray machine.
And while actually performing the work is still expensive, it looks like the IP issues are getting the hell out of the way; Biden is apparently ordering a release of the IP to the world so that nations in need can do it for themselves when they need to. "Lives over profits" was the tagline on the article. With the IP issues done, I'm not convinced that the cost of doing it is so high for any reason relating to inherent difficulty of actually doing it or necessarily expensive components of facilities where it can be done.
Finally, just to be crass, something can't become a pandemic without threatening everybody - which by definition includes wealthy people in powerful countries. If only wealthy people in powerful countries are capable of developing mRNA vaccines, you can still damn well bet that they'll be developing them, immediately, in response to any pandemic. And as long as they fear visitors bringing that disease into their nation, and as long as they can score major diplomacy points by doing so, they will be exporting it, and exporting the power to make it, to everybody else just as fast as they can. In fact, as we are doing right now, starting with Biden's release of the IP.
So, yeah, it won't be a response to every epidemic. If something doesn't threaten a set of people including powerful people in wealthy countries, it may get neglected. But an actual pandemic? We're going to be stomping on those from now on.
mRNA vaccines made the hardware for storing and handling them a part of the ordinary requirements of hospitals starting this year. And the only reason it was at all difficult was because hospitals hadn't needed the capability before and everybody was trying to get it at once. The difficulty with that kind of refrigeration was market forces and speed of manufacturing, not any difficulty inherent in fabrication or function. As mRNA vaccines become more common, and the market for that hardware reaches equilibrium, that's going to be just one more routine piece of equipment, with no good reason to be drastically more expensive than an X-Ray machine.
And while actually performing the work is still expensive, it looks like the IP issues are getting the hell out of the way; Biden is apparently ordering a release of the IP to the world so that nations in need can do it for themselves when they need to. "Lives over profits" was the tagline on the article. With the IP issues done, I'm not convinced that the cost of doing it is so high for any reason relating to inherent difficulty of actually doing it or necessarily expensive components of facilities where it can be done.
Finally, just to be crass, something can't become a pandemic without threatening everybody - which by definition includes wealthy people in powerful countries. If only wealthy people in powerful countries are capable of developing mRNA vaccines, you can still damn well bet that they'll be developing them, immediately, in response to any pandemic. And as long as they fear visitors bringing that disease into their nation, and as long as they can score major diplomacy points by doing so, they will be exporting it, and exporting the power to make it, to everybody else just as fast as they can. In fact, as we are doing right now, starting with Biden's release of the IP.
So, yeah, it won't be a response to every epidemic. If something doesn't threaten a set of people including powerful people in wealthy countries, it may get neglected. But an actual pandemic? We're going to be stomping on those from now on.