The NPR Politics Podcast - Patents Are Just One Piece Of The Global Vaccine Manufacturing Problem

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

Technical expertise and supply chains shortages will pose huge challenges for global manufactures hoping to manufacture coronavirus vaccines, despite President Biden's support in waiving patents. Plus, how to convince more Americans to get vaccinated.This episode: political correspondent Juana Summers, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and pharmaceutical correspondent Sydney Lupkin.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, my name is Finley Conway, and I'm enjoying my first day as a college graduate from the University of Pittsburgh. Right now, I'm packing up my van for a gap year full of adventures. This podcast was recorded at 2.09pm on Thursday, May 6th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Enjoy the show! Wow, congratulations. I want to take a gap year too. I kind of wish I had. Yeah, can we get like a midlife gap year? Is that a thing? Are we midlife? We're not midlife. We are definitely not. I'm not claiming that. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And we've got Sydney Lupkin of NPR's science and health team who covers the pharmaceutical industry. Thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me. So there's been so much news in the vaccine world this week. I want to start with a big headline. President Biden says that he now supports waiving some intellectual property protections for coronavirus vaccines. Just to start with the basics here, that's really important because it makes the vaccine less expensive to produce, right? Sort of. So it doesn't support stripping IP entirely. This is more to help other countries

to be able to start making their own supply. So back in 1995, there was an agreement by the World Trade Organization to basically have countries around the world respect intellectual property. In India and South Africa, they said in the course of this pandemic, hey, can you waive parts of this for the pandemic? And the most important thing that this would do is it would allow other countries to jump in on the vaccine patents, allowing them to start making vaccines on their own without waiting for companies like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson to supply them and without worrying about being sued or fined. So for context, even though a third of the U.S. is fully vaccinated,

in India, that number is 2%. Wow. And obviously, we're seeing the consequences of that right now with the just terrible caseload in India. Tam, President Biden had come under increasing pressure to throw his support behind this proposal. Yeah. And the thing is, during the campaign, at one point, Biden was asked, would you support waiving these patent protections? And he said, yes, I'm for it. And so there was sort of a growing drumbeat from people outside of the administration, you know, both progressive health advocates and more international health advocates all saying, do this, do this, do this. And as we understand it, President Biden was presented with a series of options and he said, yes, let's proceed. Let's move forward on this. But I think Sidney can talk to this better than I can. But this is not all that that advocates would like. This is not going to mean that tomorrow India has enough vaccine and it's cheap and it's readily available. In fact, the way the White House is talking about this, they're saying this is going to

be a months-long negotiation at the World Trade Organization. Yeah, basically, like, you know, these are really complicated biologic products. They're not like small molecule generic drugs. They're made from living cells, so they're really hard to make. And of course, Pfizer and Moderna are making mRNA vaccines, and they're literally the first to ever do that commercially. So not only do you need the facilities with the right capabilities to do it, you need to hire and train staff, get equipment, supplies, raw ingredient know-how. Plus, you need to get processes in place that these companies

don't sound too keen to necessarily help out with. And even once all that happens, it's not clear how these additional vaccines sort of made from sharing the patents are going to be regulated. Do you need to have new clinical trials, some kind of abbreviated study to prove that the vaccines made through the patent sharing are similar to the original? So like this is a long, this is not going to help necessarily in the short run. In two years, we might see, I think, more likely that's when it will help. And Sydney, how have the companies who developed these vaccines reacted to this move from the Biden administration? So it's really interesting that you ask about the companies.

I'm actually going to answer how the pharmaceutical industry reacted first, because they, you know, they came out strongly against this. You know, the drug industry relies really heavily on patents and IP to maintain exclusivity, which helps them to set prices. So like even six months of exclusivity on your drug can mean that that drug maker takes in tens of millions of additional dollars over six months. So that's why they're, you know, a big issue for them. They've also said, you know, things like that it could realistically and it could strain already strained supply chains in these vaccines. So meanwhile, Moderna, which of course makes one of the vaccines in the U.S., had its quarterly investor call this morning to report earnings. And they made a profit, by the way, for the first time. And on sort of the analyst portion of the call, its CEO was asked, well, what do you think of this patent waiver

thing? And you know what he said? He said, I believe it doesn't change anything for Moderna. And that's because, like we said, there's so much to making these vaccines that goes beyond the patents. So basically, just because you have the recipe doesn't mean you're going to be able to cook that really complicated dish, right? Just because you have the recipe doesn't mean you're going to be able to cook that really complicated dish, right? Just because you have the recipe doesn't mean that you have the, you know, fancy herb that you can only find in certain stores that is necessary for the recipe. And it doesn't mean that you are, you know, an amazing chef that knows how to brown the butter or whatever, you know, whatever the elements of this recipe are. Right. And it doesn't sound like, at least reading between the lines, it doesn't sound like the patent holders who are kind of being, you know, undercut, I guess, here. It doesn't sound like they're going to jump in and like help with those other things, help you figure out how to brown the butter. So is this super depressing then? I don't

know the answer to this question, but are we, is it like, I mean, as we were reporting it, we're like, this is a big deal. This is happening. But it actually, as we talk, it almost sounds like maybe this is, this is not the path out of the pandemic? In the short term, no, it's not. It's not going to fix things right away. In the long term, it could help. And really, I mean, you know, it's removing a barrier, right? This is all about barriers. So taking this one obstacle away, you know, from other companies could help. All right, we're going to take a quick break and we'll talk more about vaccines when we get back. A few years ago, a website popped up in Stockton, California, and conspiracy theories started ramping way up. And it's being funded by conservative movement underneath the table. And I was like, oh my gosh, you guys, people really believe this. What happens when

the local news outlet isn't fact-checking conspiracy theories, maybe encouraging them? Listen now from NPR's Invisibilia podcast. And we're back. In a speech at the White House this week, President Biden outlined a new strategy to confront the coronavirus pandemic, along with a new vaccination goal. Tam, tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, so the new goal is to have by July 4th, 70% of U.S. adults get their first shot. At this point, we aren't there yet. And this may be a more ambitious goal,

certainly than some of the past goals, because the pace of vaccinations has been slowing dramatically. As you get past the people who were really excited and eager to get the vaccine, now the White House strategy is moving into a phase of, you know, individual conversations, individual persuasion. Gone are the days of the mass vaccination sites. I mean, some of them still exist, but they are talking about smaller pop-up vaccination sites and really emphasizing getting vaccines into local doctors' offices, into places where people trust the people and know the people who would be giving them the vaccine if they ultimately decide to get vaccinated. Sydney, is the goal that President Biden's talking about there realistic by July 4th? So I would say yes, because, you know, the denominator here is U.S. adults.

So there are a lot of people who are not adults who are not counted there. And actually, at this point, the proportion of U.S. adults that have been given one dose, not both doses, is 57 percent. So we're already pretty close to there. Yes, vaccinations have slowed, but there are two months to get from 57% to 70%. So actually, I've heard some grumblings that it's not ambitious enough. Wow. Tam, on the flip side of all of this, I know that you have been doing some reporting on vaccine hesitancy, which obviously does still exist in many places, and how people are working to overcome that hesitancy. Yes, absolutely. If you look at polls, there is a share of the population who simply says they do not intend to get vaccinated.

Then there are a share of people who are not in a hurry to get vaccinated. Hesitant may be too strong a word, but they have questions. I sat in on a focus group led by the Republican pollster Frank Luntz. This new focus group I sat in on were people who had been in his earlier focus groups or who had said that they were hesitant to get the vaccine, who ultimately overcame it and decided to get vaccinated. And so this was looking at what did ultimately work, what convinced them. And there was no one simple, easy answer. There were a few things that stood out, like people do trust their doctor or in some cases their pharmacist, depending on the relationship they have with their pharmacist. And for some people, it was just like there was something they wanted to do.

Like Lauren from New Jersey. Lauren, what's the precise moment when you decided you'd get vaccinated? When we found out that we could go to a Yankee game if we're vaccinated. So my husband's like, we got to get vaccinated. She was somebody who was like, I just don't want to put it in my body. I don't know if I'm ready yet. But then she had heard enough people, her doctor, other people saying, you know, it's safe. It's fine. You can do this. And then there was something that that she wanted to do that the vaccine made possible.

Tam, what other types of folks did you hear from in that focus group? Raphael from California. Similarly, he is truly afraid. He still has concerns and questions. But the reason he got vaccinated overpowered all of that. Being able to go to a Dodger game, being able to travel. You need to have the vaccination to do it. And for me, beating my depression was more important than my fear of the vaccine. He wanted to be able to go back to group therapy in person because Zoom therapy just isn't the same. You know, I live in Baltimore, and at least around here, it feels

pretty easy to get vaccinated. There are walk-up sites. And I feel like half the time I scroll through social media, you see ads from the city health department telling people all the different places they should go and get vaccinated and really just drilling into residents here. This is something you should do and you should tell your friends to do. But Tam, you've also been reporting that when you pull back and you go to other places in this country, particularly in rural America, things look just really different. Yeah. A Kaiser Family Foundation and Washington Post poll found that in rural areas, 30 percent of health care workers said that they didn't plan to get vaccinated. I think it's 29 percent. And I was talking to some folks from the National Rural Health Association who work with rural hospital directors, and they're genuinely concerned that such a small share of their employees have chosen to get vaccinated.

And so there are these pockets where people aren't getting vaccinated in high numbers, where there are plenty of vaccines, where I talked to a hospital director who said that their concern is they're just out of arms and they're afraid they're wasting vaccines. Yeah. I mean, it's so interesting because early on and even a month ago, it feels like the issue was supply, that we didn't have enough of it, that people didn't know how much was coming in. I remember talking to people running clinics in hospitals and saying, you know, they didn't know how many Pfizer pizza boxes, it came in those pizza boxes, or that's what they named them. And, and they didn't know how many they were going to get. So they didn't know how many days they could be open. They didn't know how many appointments they could make. They didn't know how much staff to, to have on hand. So, you know, the idea that now it's sort of the opposite problem is crazy, actually. There is also this issue of not wanting to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, not wanting, and the administration is being very careful about this, not wanting to say, oh, well, conservatives aren't going to get vaccinated or evangelicals aren't going to get vaccinated or people of color in certain areas aren't going to get vaccinated.

They're trying very hard to say, no, no, no. These people aren't hesitant. These people aren't resistant. These people aren't ignorant or whatever anyone might want to call them. They just have questions that need to be answered. And it is now the job of doctors, the administration, regular people just to answer questions without judgment. Because when people feel judged, they put up walls and they're less likely to be willing to go along. That was certainly what watching that focus group taught me. All right. Let's leave it there for now. Sydney, thanks so much for chatting with us today. Oh my gosh, thank you. This was great. Thank you. I'm Juana Summers. I cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.