If the result is the ultimate bankruptcy of moderna or their exit from that aspect of their business, what happens the next time we have a pandemic and the drug companies with the ability to develop a vaccine are reluctant to do so because their entire tech stack will be given away for free if they succeed?

You slow down and introduce uncertainty at the very point (the start of a pandemic) when you least want to do so.

Yeah, I mean this is just rephrasing the question. Why wouldn't a company attempt to solve a global pandemic even without the promise of eternal profit? These are exceptional circumstances. Even if pandemics become more common in the modern world, it's not like this is going to happen every 5 years. How can these people not be willing to make a sacrifice (where sacrifice here means saving the world but maybe having to find a new job in ~10 years).

They saved the world already. It's just not evenly distributed yet. It's a bit like me saying, "hey, you know climate change? that's an exceptional circumstance, well why don't you go live a hunter gather existence like our ancestors did to reduce your carbon footprint as much as possible?"

Because that would be a very large sacrifice with a very small benefit. Conversely, Moderna has the opportunity to make a relatively small sacrifice for an incomprehensibly enormous benefit.

If my becoming a hunter gatherer would single-handedly eliminate 50% of global emissions or something, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I see, so long as it's someone else's sacrifice, it's fine, they should do that.

The WHO can absolutely buy the entire process.

Moderna is a public company. It will cost them, at current time, $134 billion.

Ok sure, they should do that then. If they don't, then Moderna needs to step up and release the process anyway, and then write some angry editorials about how they deserved more money if they feel that way.

Why aren't you asking McDonalds to liquidate themselves, buy Moderna, and give it to the WHO for free?

You're picking on one entity here and asking them to give away everything. Moderna is a company that originally intended (and is following through on) developing cancer vaccines.

If Moderna's money goes to competitors and they lose cash flow, their ambitions here become harder if not impossible.

Also ask yourself why the WHO hasn't developed a vaccine for Covid and cancer by itself. It certainly has the funding to do so.

Ask yourself why European countries aren't dishing out money to buy Moderna and open up the patents.

I don't mean to criticize you, merely to get you to think about the interlocking and competing world-scale problem gradients. Nothing is ideal. There's always a bigger picture, and you have to think pragmatically.

No question that tons of other organizations are failing to make any kind of sacrifice. I'm picking on Moderna because this thread is about Moderna. We can't derail every discussion of "why isn't company X doing the right thing" with "well hang on, Jeff Bezos could just buy them and force them to do the right thing, so it's also his fault".

But also, in any discussion of "why doesn't X buy Moderna", a natural follow-up is "wait why doesn't Moderna just do this on their own if they can". Not an expert in hostile takeovers, but I'm pretty sure it would be a lot easier and more efficient for Moderna to just save the world themselves rather than wait for someone to acquire them and force them to do it.

So Moderna has to make a sacrifice and nobody else does?

See why that's unfair?

I'd say it's even worse given that this was their blood, sweat, and tears. An evenly applied tax would be fairer, but you're picking on the winner here and choosing for them to be dismantled. That discourages "winning". It's a very bad objective function.

The founders clearly believe they're worth more than 100B or they'd have sold out already. They have huge ambition. To cure cancers and other ailments.

It seems to me that you think the world can steer this innovation better. It's a very socialist approach. And again, I'm asking why hasn't the world solved this problem outside of capitalism? Why hasn't the WHO stepped up to the plate?

Oh my god, no, anybody with the ability to make this sacrifice should do so. This thread is about Moderna so I'm talking about Moderna. And it's barely even a sacrifice! Are they going to cease to exist if they make this process public? It's not their entire business, it's not going to affect them right away, the potential competition is years in the future. I'm not asking them to sacrifice any of their ambition.

You're right that it's a socialist approach. I don't know why the WHO hasn't bought them if they can. As I've said several times, they should and I hope they do.

The nanolipid process that Moderna won't give up is literally their entire business model. You can see the literal base pairs of the mRNA vaccine in the patent. The method of getting it to cells is the entirety of the secret sauce.

Alright, in that case it would be a real sacrifice, but it's still so obviously worth it. There's very little I wouldn't sacrifice to do what Moderna could do right now. The worst case scenario seems to be that Moderna employees with "helped develop the most effective Covid vaccine on the planet" on their resumes have to get new jobs, and new treatments based on their technology are developed more quickly now that the whole world can experiment with it.