While I agree with the author that most companies don't disclose their crown jewels in patents, I disagree with the historical perspective that this is somewhat new. Moreover, the author misses the point, in that while patents really don't disclose most of the secrets, they still pose a significant threat to anyone replicating some of the methods, exactly because they are so broad.

So yes the patents don't disclose how to actually produce the vaccines, but that's actually not the problem (see the published work where people already reverse engineered the vaccines). The problem is that patents still prevent people knowledgable in the field from actually making vaccines, because of the threat of expensive litigation.