Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)

Xizor

Captain
Registered Member
China supplies vaccine raw ingredients to Brazil for the making of the Sinovac vaccine. China is also a big supplier of raw ingredients to India's generic drug industry. How come China is not a leader in generic drugs industry?
Because, Indian law allows for IP violation in case of certain drugs. This forces foreign companies to issue licenses to India for generic drug manufacturing.

China protects IP of foreign drugs.
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xiabonan

Junior Member
Because, Indian law allows for IP violation in case of certain drugs. This forces forein companies to issue licenses to India for generic drug manufacturing.

China protects IP of foreign drugs.
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This.

There was a Chinese movie that came out in 2018 titled "Dying to Survive" which was a huge hit and it told a story exactly about this issue. The movie was about how A Chinese leukaemia patient smuggles cheap but untested drugs from India to help hundreds of Chinese people suffering from cancer, and this movie was based on a real-life story.

In real life and in the movie, this person was prosecuted and sentenced for a few years, I believe under smuggling charges and selling "counterfeit" drugs charges.

A follow-up is, both in real life and in the movie, the Chinese government negotiated a better deal with large pharmaceutical companies and heavily subsidized this and a range of other drugs and included them in the nation's universal healthcare system, such that now patients no longer have to pay so much for this drug.

Also, this process of negotiating better deals with Big Pharma and including more life-saving drugs in healthcare has been going on in China for quite some time and it is still ongoing.
 

plawolf

Lieutenant General
Wait .

Does that mean Pfizer vaccines are not effective against the Indian variant ? Anecdotal, I know, but still....
Hard to tell given how old the guy was. As a general rule you don’t want to make big conclusions on single case examples, no matter how compelling.

The real difficulty and frustration is the lack of reliable and useful info from India given both the scale of scope of the disaster meaning healthcare workers are overwhelmed just trying (and failing) to keep viable patients alive, so don’t have time to do proper analysis and reports on patient vaccination histories; and also due to deliberate suppression and active disinformation campaigns by the Indian state.

Frankly I don’t think we will know definitively if any of the Indian variants are vaccine resistant until we see an explosion of cases amongst the general population of them in other countries and we start to get proper analysis on the infection levels of fully vaccinated people to see if it is statistically significant. This will be more difficult and slower than usual due to the fact that most of the countries who have achieved high vaccination percentages tended to focus on the old and frail. Not only would that throw doubt on the results even if it can be shown; it will probably take much longer for significant case loads to build up in that demographic group than typical due to the fact that older people tend to not go out and socialise as much, so would naturally be less likely to be exposed to the Indian variant(s).

This is why I am extremely pessimistic on the chances of the west if the worst occurs and there are vaccine resistant variants. Because the west would not act decisively until there is overwhelming evidence of that, but by the time such evidence emerges, it is already far far too late to do much about it short of going into another lockdown.
 

Tyler

Captain
Registered Member
Because, Indian law allows for IP violation in case of certain drugs. This forces foreign companies to issue licenses to India for generic drug manufacturing.

China protects IP of foreign drugs.
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How could that be? There is no need to violate the IP, if the drug's effective patent has expired. Any country can make these generic drugs. Maybe China, as the biggest supplier of raw materials, should then "violate" some IP and take this generic drugs market.
 

Xizor

Captain
Registered Member
How could that be? There is no need to violate the IP, if the drug's effective patent has expired. Any country can make these generic drugs. Maybe China, as the biggest supplier of raw materials, should then "violate" some IP and take this generic drugs market.
I don't know the details. But I do know that drug manufacturers often "extend" the IP by introducing small changes to the composition.

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companies are manipulating the system using techniques like ‘evergreening’ and ‘thicketing’ to extend exclusivity for drug and prevent generic competition


Chinese socialism > Irresponsible Capitalism
 

Xizor

Captain
Registered Member
This is why I am extremely pessimistic on the chances of the west if the worst occurs and there are vaccine resistant variants. Because the west would not act decisively until there is overwhelming evidence of that, but by the time such evidence emerges, it is already far far too late to do much about it short of going into another lockdown.
I'd say that the west has learned how to manage the pandemic (after paying a hefty tuition fee). Especially under more left leaning governments, the chances of effective mobilization and dictates would be high.
Im more concerned about the SAsian and South East Asian regions along with Latin America.

Regarding variants, I'm not convinced that India has only two "domestic" variants. I think we are only seeing the more infectious /fatal variants get highlighted here. And there is much more population to eat through.

The one thing I'm more interested in is the talent of the virus or its variants to reinfect. That makes India one huge petri dish for variants to circulate and evolve.
 

supersnoop

Major
Registered Member
I am not trying to defend Canada, but isn't the Indian government more absurd to hang on COVAX (吊死在一棵树上) than purchasing vaccines directly from China? Therefor, Indian government should take much more blame than anyone else. Actually, if China is in Canada's shoes I would expect China to do the same.

Just to follow up on my post yesterday.
Also we have to remember that there was a dual purpose to the selling of the vaccines to Canada besides commercial gain/boost international profile of made in India products.

The other purpose was to embarrass Sikh-Canadians who are seen as separatists/separatist supporters in India. As you saw on the billboard it was sponsored by "Hindu Forum Canada".

Also, we have to remember that the Canadian government was pushed into purchasing direct from Serum Institute by the opposition Conservative party (who counts many Indian-Canadian members who are more in line with Modi).

Just seems like both sides are so absurd, which is why I'm not sure what to think. Just a reminder that lives are cheap to politicians.
 
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