*Rich countries could have prevented new Covid variant, say experts.* They could have done this by liberating vaccine production so as to vaccinate the whole world quickly.

While I agree with the article's stance, I have to criticize it for falling for the propaganda trap of "intellectual property". It is a mistake to say that "intellectual property is bad," or to say that "intellectual property is good," because the term is an incoherent over generalization about laws that have very little in common.

The vaccine production issue is partly about patents. Waiving patent rights would totally eliminate that problem. The vaccine production issue also concerns trade secrets — but in a totally different way. What's needed is to order companies to divulge their secrets. The WTO can't do that, but maybe national governments can do it.