Waiving patents to vaccine development seems like a short term great idea, since it could make vaccines cheaper for everyone in the short term. But it’s extremely short sighted thinking. Imagine if we tried to solve transportation issues by making car companies ”sell” their cars for free. That would sure lead to a lot of happy people getting free cars, and it would definitely get a lot more cars on the road in the short term.
It would also immediately bankrupt every single car company and stop every single private investment in producing cars, or research to improve them. So unless the government also stepped in an forcefully took over the entire car industry, you’d quickly see a complete collapse of new car manufacturing.
I assume that Bill Gates has a good idea of the huge investments needed to develop and produce vaccines and how much of that investment is hedged on expectations of future revenue, which is only protected because someone else can’t just copy/paste your research and undercut the pricing straight away.
Hyperbolic metaphores are not worth the paper they're written on. Vaccine companies are large drug companies with many sources of income. It'd be more like (warning: another metaphore) a grocery store gave away hot dogs.
They are usually called loss leaders and they set a limit on how many you buy. The idea is to drive traffic by reducing prices on common items.
Stores would stock them because other stores would and all of the customers want them. Some stores would put a hot topping and sell drinks. Others would advertise other sales driving traffic to other areas of the store.
I assume that Bill Gates has a good idea of the huge investments needed to develop and produce vaccines and how much of that investment is hedged on expectations of future revenue, which is only protected because someone else can’t just copy/paste your research and undercut the pricing straight away.