Arsenal of Democracy Then. Vaccine Maker of the World Now.

Demand for vaccines is dropping around the United States.  States are telling the federal government they don’t need their full share.  If we don’t have more vaccines than we need now, we will soon.  So here is an idea of what to do with the extra doses we will have: Send them around the world to the people and countries that need them.

Instead of making a show of supporting a waiver of patent rights in vaccines, something that will take months to negotiate with other countries and months more before companies can start manufacturing vaccines they have never made before, why don’t we make them for the world ourselves?  We can allow American companies to export vaccines.  And for poor countries, we can buy them from American manufacturers and give them to those who can’t afford them.¹

These companies know how to make the vaccines.  They can ramp up production faster than companies who aren’t making them can even start.  Operation Wrap Speed got us vaccines in the United States.  Let’s start a new Operation Warp Speed to make vaccines for the world.

It's true that American pharmaceutical companies will make money from this, but what’s more important: Stopping American drug companies from making money or getting vaccines as quickly as possible to people around the world who need them?

In World War II, we were known as the arsenal of democracy.  In the war against Covid-19, let us be the vaccine maker of the world.
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¹ Further comment (5/10/21 4:50 pm): As to worries about the cost of providing these vaccines, I would say two things: First, the gain to the world would be many times the cost of the vaccines.  Two, the cost to the US of providing the vaccines would disappear in the rounding when compared to all of Joe Biden’s new programs.