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If these are the options for Covid vaccine manufacture in Canada, let's play hypotheticals. Which would have been possible, if they'd been pursued in late Spring 2020? https://twitter.com/ldobsonhughes/status/1357477907292168192
Let's start with: Canada was always going to struggle to manufacture a new pharma product domestically. Strategically, I'd have gone with some 1-2 bold big bets (which is why I do the advising, not the doing). Tinkering around the margins just wasn't going to cut it
What would have happened if Canada took its $1.5bn in domestic R&D and put it into the Oxford-AZ candidate, to buy leverage in supply negotiations? What about a national project to map then stitch together the broken chain of patchwork capacity here?
This is where my cynicism/social anthropology kicks in. Canada just doesn't do big projects. I've done a thread on this before, but Canada excels at 'OK, I guess, not bad'. I don't see a political, bureaucratic or social culture here of big, bold bets
There's no culture of Operation FireAndExplosions like the US, or Plucky Wartime Spirit like the UK. I'm not sure voters reward big bets or calculated risks. And you only have to say the words 'national project' to set the provinces off predictably
Yes, I think it was possible in April 2020 to launch a big, bold scheme to produce a Covid vaccine here. It would have taken leadership federally and provincially, a bureaucracy able to pivot, innovate and take risks, and a politics that rewards ambitious, new thinking. So...
What's the best option now for manufacture? Depends whether we want to make just a Covid vaccine here quickly, or we're thinking about longterm capacity, independence, and industrial strategy
Ooh I'm curious about the idea of a pandemic vaccine readiness fee, like insurance. We do need a pandemic preparedness strategy now, as a country. It'd be ludicrous not to have one https://twitter.com/jokennelly/status/1357505688642215936
I hope we think long term too. I'm not enthused about major investments for a short-term single vaccine, leaving us still in a precarious position for the next pandemic. I'd rather we learned lessons from this https://twitter.com/jodilhbutts/status/1357505854824714240