Well, let's look at what exactly Bill Gates said. I don't see a direct transcript; the most explicit description I can find is:
Asked directly by Sky’s Sophy Ridge if he thought changing patent restrictions “would be helpful,” Gates answered with a quick and curt “no,” before continuing:
“Well, there’s only so many vaccine factories in the world, and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done — moving a vaccine from, say, a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India — it’s novel. It’s only because of our grants and our expertise that can happen at all. The thing that’s holding things back in this case is not intellectual property. There’s not like some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you’ve got to do the trials on these things, and every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way.”
So, first of all, I think it's a mistake to take this and say Bill Gates is "opposed". He's just saying he doesn't think it would be helpful. Secondly, I think this rationale is very clear. He does not think waiving patents would be helpful because the intellectual property is not a bottleneck on developing vaccines, because it isn't straightforward to develop these vaccines in new factories.
One fact that I think is really important to this debate - Moderna announced they are not enforcing their patents, months ago when their vaccine got approved.
However, there aren't any new factories springing up making the Moderna vaccine without Moderna being involved. In all this news coverage discussing whether waiving patent rights is urgent, it seems pretty important that Moderna is already waiving these rights! And it isn't making any difference.
I am not a vaccine expert but to me the most obvious conclusion is that Bill Gates believes what he said, that waiving patent rights won't really help that much. He might be wrong but his position really isn't obviously malicious or anything like that.
Asked directly by Sky’s Sophy Ridge if he thought changing patent restrictions “would be helpful,” Gates answered with a quick and curt “no,” before continuing:
“Well, there’s only so many vaccine factories in the world, and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines. And so moving something that had never been done — moving a vaccine from, say, a [Johnson & Johnson] factory into a factory in India — it’s novel. It’s only because of our grants and our expertise that can happen at all. The thing that’s holding things back in this case is not intellectual property. There’s not like some idle vaccine factory, with regulatory approval, that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you’ve got to do the trials on these things, and every manufacturing process has to be looked at in a very careful way.”
So, first of all, I think it's a mistake to take this and say Bill Gates is "opposed". He's just saying he doesn't think it would be helpful. Secondly, I think this rationale is very clear. He does not think waiving patents would be helpful because the intellectual property is not a bottleneck on developing vaccines, because it isn't straightforward to develop these vaccines in new factories.
One fact that I think is really important to this debate - Moderna announced they are not enforcing their patents, months ago when their vaccine got approved.
https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-d...
However, there aren't any new factories springing up making the Moderna vaccine without Moderna being involved. In all this news coverage discussing whether waiving patent rights is urgent, it seems pretty important that Moderna is already waiving these rights! And it isn't making any difference.
I am not a vaccine expert but to me the most obvious conclusion is that Bill Gates believes what he said, that waiving patent rights won't really help that much. He might be wrong but his position really isn't obviously malicious or anything like that.