Covid-19 vaccines in a neoliberal world

[Who owns the patent on this vaccine?] Well, the people, I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun? – Jonas Salk; creator of polio vaccine

The first major outbreak of coronavirus happened almost two decades ago in the shape of SARs (severe acute respiratory syndrome), after which the virus continue to appear from time to time; for instance, the outbreak of MERS epidemic almost a decade ago, but a neoliberal world where ‘market’ is all, and asymmetric information and extractive institutional design work towards implementing of ‘profit over people’, did not allow reaching a vaccine for coronavirus. World renowned linguist and political dissident, Prof Noam Chomsky, highlighted this as ‘We should think about the emergence of this crisis: why is there a coronavirus crisis? It’s a colossal market failure. It goes right back to the essence of markets exacerbated by the neoliberal, savage neoliberal intensification of deep socio-economic problems.’

Producing vaccines takes time, but it is being hastened as many years of work is being squeezed into months. That is absolutely risky the view of the fact that outcomes from people being tested for at the clinical stage take time as some organs of human body show signs of effects slowly while some others do not. While a neoliberal world in which big pharmaceutical companies were busy going after those market signals that ‘optimized profits’ in the short run – like making body creams and lotions – it was hoped that the pandemic would jolt the governments to move away from this neoliberal model of minimum governments and least regulation. At least two Covid-19 vaccines are likely to appear commercially in the next few months. Given the existence of patents, it is quite likely the prices of both the vaccines will be too high to remain out of the reach of many developing countries.

At the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ regime of greater and meaningful government’s role – something which was virtually a norm globally – there was no such presence of neoliberalism, where democracies had significant government presence in markets to ensure that the interests of the people were protected, and not just corporations’. That is why there were public institutions that worked with the sole objective of producing and distributing vaccines – like the polio vaccine produced by Jonas Salk – without any patent walls; and research to this effect was prioritized; not like decades of delay being witnessed in producing a coronavirus vaccine in a neoliberal world that took over world order since early 1980s.

Sadly, even during the many months since the outbreak, which has killed over a million people globally, was not enough motivation for big pharmaceutical companies, multilateral institutions like the WHO and WTO, and individual governments to strongly interfere and break the stranglehold of patents and biotech companies working in isolation. Perhaps, a vaccine could have been developed sooner, and distributed more evenly and quickly, as is appearing to be highly unlikely, if the world had joined hands. What a poor display of globalization even in the midst of a pandemic. It is quite unfortunate that the governments – especially the developing ones – are expending energies on finding and waiting for low-priced versions of the vaccine instead of focusing on managing the issue of creating freezer storages for creating an appropriate environment for vaccines.

Renowned economist Dean Baker in his article ‘It’s not vaccine nationalism, it’s vaccine idiocy’ highlighted this approach of biotech companies to work in silos for selfish gains in the following manner: ‘In the early days of the pandemic, there was a large degree of international cooperation, with scientists around the world quickly sharing new findings. This allowed for our understanding of the virus to advance far more rapidly than would otherwise be the case. But we quickly shifted to a path of nationalistic competition... . But the issue was not just nationalism, it is also the monopolization of research findings. If Moderna, Pfizer, or one of the other U.S. drug companies ends up developing a safe and effective vaccine, they fully intend to sell it at a considerable profit, and they will be sharing the money with their top executives and their shareholders, not the American people. This outcome makes sense if the point of the policy is to maximize drug company’s profits. It makes no sense if the policy goal is to produce the best health outcomes at the lowest possible cost.’ The same could be held as true for people across the world.

A neoliberal world does not allow saving lives equally. That is the harsh main bottom line; managing temperatures is only a functional detail, which could have been better catered to if high budgets were not to be allocated for highly-priced vaccines. With governments, especially the developing world, witnessing high levels of budget deficits and debt – given also fact that the advanced countries and multilateral institutions came to little rescue of developing countries on account of aid, or debt relief or moratorium – such patent-backed vaccines will only add pressure to fiscal balances of developing countries to procure vaccines at high prices, and provide these at subsidized rates. Also, life-saving Covid-19 vaccines will be available for administering with ‘waiting times’, the length of which will depend on how weak the financial position of a country is. This neoliberal influenced policy framework globally needs to change urgently; the jolt of global financial crisis, and the subsequent negative consequences of the austerity drive could not push governments and multilateral institutions away from it, but a pandemic-hit world should. This is also important for saving trust of demos in moderate political parties, and democracies everywhere.

(The writer holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Barcelona, and previously worked at International Monetary Fund) He tweets@omerjaved7

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020