Podcast: A Forever Pandemic
Vaccine shortages frustrate countries around the world. The lines for vaccines are illogical. But residents of wealthy nations will likely get access to doses in the coming months. It may be much longer for the rest of the world—and, as epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves explains on the podcast Social Distance, that affects us all and should prompt dramatic action.
Listen to his conversation with co-hosts James Hamblin and Maeve Higgins here:
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What follows is a transcript of the episode, edited and condensed for clarity:
Maeve Higgins: A listener named Chris left a voicemail:
“I have a question about vaccine manufacturing. I was wondering if they could do what we do for generic drugs. Could Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson give their formula—just make it public—and allow other countries or other vaccine makers to just copy their process and increase the supply? I know obviously there are business reasons. They want to make money. But I think it would make sense for maybe the Gates Foundation or a country to just pay them, and say: We’re just going to make this available to everybody to manufacture, so the whole world can have vaccines as quickly as possible.”
Higgins: What do you think? There’s a vaccine shortage. That seems like a cool solution.
James Hamblin: That does sound like a cool idea. It’s more complicated than that might seem, but I’m also not sure it needs to be more complicated.
Higgins: I saw your tweet about how.
