Science

The Chinese, Russians and likely Indians will probably make so.ething similar, so it's not all doom and gloom.

At least the labor aristocrats of the west will be able to fly to these places for medical tourism, so all is well (/s)

I’m optimistic on that front. First, this is public-sector research, and second, the approach seems inexpensive and hard to copyright. A lipid nanoparticle is not that special; there are multiple ways to formulate them (some are native to your body), and already there are (I assume) multiple competing firms that can produce them cheaply in large quantities, thanks in part to the pandemic. As for the mRNA sequence packaged inside the nanoparticles, I think if you publish that sequence in a research paper it’s considered factual information that cannot be copyrighted? And furthermore, there are probably multiple valid sequences that would work, maybe even a large number of them. I can’t imagine anyone getting a monopoly on something like this, especially with the enormous demand for it.

*I’m not an expert though, and it just occurred to me that, by the same logic, insulin should be cheap, but iirc it costs hundreds a month in the US

The current study tests are actually priced around 2 mill so yk aim higher

"It """cost"""* us 10 trillion dollars to develop and 100000 per dose*. Sorry peasant, just reality works!"

*Subsidized by the government and profits of other patents they "obtained". *100000 per dose in America, $1 per dose everywhere else.

(Its so cool that my prescriptions would be 1k+ for the 4th most common, ~20 year old anti-depressant, and what is (basically) literal meth.)