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Saturday thoughts on Canada's COVID-19 vaccine roll-out, from a person who studies global health and is active in the global access to medicines fight.
tl;dr it's not going well
A thread 1/
tl;dr it's not going well
A thread 1/
Am noticing a reflex among some Canadians, especially journalists, to frame it as 'oh well, we're a small fish in a big fight, nothing we can do'.
That is just false.
Canada has many options. I'll list those below: 2/
That is just false.
Canada has many options. I'll list those below: 2/
#1. Get other companies to make vaccines on our behalf. This is known as "compulsory licensing" and legislation passed in March reaffirms our right to do that. https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2020/03/25/canada-compulsory-license-coronavirus-covid19/ 3/
#2. Create a public lab to manufacture vaccines and medicines. This might seem outright socialist, but we had such a lab operating for most of the last century, called Connaught Labs. It was sold off to @sanofi in the 1980s. It can come back https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught_Laboratories 4/
#3. Stop making excuses for foreign pharma companies we've paid billions of dollars to. We've signed contracts, they aren't living up to them. At least I assume, Canada's contracts are all secret). Appeasement is clearly getting us nowhere. We are customers 5/
#4. Stop caving to these same companies on drug price negotiations here in Canada. Health Canada just stopped reforms on drug prices here and it looks like this was b/c of threats to withhold vaccines. Well, we delayed it and still have few vaccines. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-opposition-parties-want-pfizer-ministers-to-appear-before-commons/ 6/
#5. Stop blocking countries like India, South Africa who want to make vaccines on the international stage; either at the WTO or WHO. Yes, Canada's "Ottawa group" is actually doing this, thinking #pharma will notice we're a 'team player' 
http://sdg.iisd.org/commentary/policy-briefs/as-vaccine-roll-out-begins-wto-members-intensify-debate-over-policy-solutions/ 7/
http://sdg.iisd.org/commentary/policy-briefs/as-vaccine-roll-out-begins-wto-members-intensify-debate-over-policy-solutions/ 7/
#6. Investigate other vaccine candidates. Yes, Oxford. Yes J&J. But Russia has one. China has one. Cuba has one coming up. Even more candidates are coming. Investigate them. Note also, making a vaccine is tough but not moon-mission hard. 8/
#7. Support "patent pooling" efforts. Patent owners put IP in this pool, others manufacture based on their IP, the IP holder get paid a %, capacity goes up big time. The @MedsPatentPool exists, support it. Disclosure, I'm on the MPP scientific panel. 9/
