Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World's Economy

by Adam Tooze

For Jamie Love, head of the intellectual property advocacy group Knowledge Ecology International, “The decision not to require the transfer of know-how right from the beginning of vaccine development was a massive global policy failure.”47 When a call for patent pooling was made in the summer of 2020, it found few takers. Moderna, which was dependent on public funds, did offer to share its patents. But that had little practical significance if it was not combined with proprietary manufacturing information. South Africa and India launched an appeal at the WTO calling for all intellectual property protections to be lifted on Covid vaccines and treatments. But they were successfully opposed by a coalition consisting of the U.S., the UK, Canada, and the EU.48 They supported cooperation, but only on the terms set by the pharmaceutical industry.