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Bill Gates (through the Gates Foundation) is one of the main funders for the Oxford Vaccine Centre. As the centre embarked on the trials for the Covid-19 vaccine, Bill Gates insisted that the Centre collaborate/ pair with a pharmaceutical company to develop the vaccine, also restricted or prohibited the idea of making the vaccine “open source” (which means anyone can produce it). Of course this gave many conspiracy theorists the excuse and explanation they want to link Bill Gates to whatsoever they wet dream about!
Today, Astrazeneca is facing so much scrutiny over the vaccine because:
EU complaining about the production and not meeting the contractual agreements
EU keeps raising flags about safety concerns
Those issues, are –on the surface at least- are politically driven, and it is causing a lot of problems for the company’s public image and a lot of hard work to resolve.
Now, this is all happening to Astrazeneca with millions of vaccines distributed and millions more to be produced and distributed, with no money making, no profit. AstraZenica agreement with the Oxford Vaccine Centre that no profit to be made during the pandemic phase, which is now. Meanwhile Pfizer and other drug companies are making billions out of their vaccines, and of course much less headache.
Bill Gates, in explaining his decision about the pairing with a pharmaceutical company, he said that the mass production required - once the vaccine is approved- is something of a scale that the Centre could not meet, also the standards for safety of production is paramount, for the current vaccine and for vaccination in general, and that could not be guaranteed if the vaccine was made “open source” and anyone could produce it. Therefore, as the Centre paired with Astrazeneca they ensured that they are getting the manufacturing power required to mass produce, they got the media machine and legal teams of big pharma to work in support of the vaccine and they avoided the problems that a small research centre could not handle.
My Concern is will this happen again? If we have another pandemic –very likely- would a big pharmaceutical company pair with a research centre to mass produce a vaccine at no profit, but a lot of scrutiny, politics and bad media?
Ahmad Baker
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