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Out of context: Reply #723
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In a decision on Covid-19 vaccine patents...
Joe Biden chose humanity.
(CNN)President Joe Biden was between a shot and a hard place. In the end, he chose humanity.
The World Health Organization, countries like India and South Africa, and many within Biden's own Democratic Party have long called for the temporarily loosening of pharmaceutical giants' patents on Covid-19 vaccines. They argue that private profits should not take precedence over sharing critical knowledge that could save millions of lives. As America's top infectious disease specialist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, put it in an interview with The Hill: "I believe we have a moral obligation ... to make sure that the rest of the world does not suffer and die, as it were, from something we can help them with and help them prevent."
Critics argued that throwing open Covid-19 vaccine data would give away trade secrets of US firms like Pfizer and Moderna, establish a precedent and act as a disincentive for companies to chase cures and vaccines in other pandemics. Moreover, they said, the move wouldn't even speed up the immediate flow of vaccines to a desperate globe, due to the complexity of the manufacturing process.