[ebg13]

> I suggest that we should give merek the for profit monopoly, but allow for non profit manufacturing. If another organization wants to make the vaccine but not derive profit from the process, let them.

Not-for-profit manufacturing would have to be done by the government itself, wouldn't it? Otherwise, what other entity would and could actually pay to set that up?

[krferriter]

Non-profit companies exist all over the US. Even non-profit drug manufacturing is done to some extent, but at a much smaller scale right now than we could have. The companies still charge money for services, the employees get paid, but the governance of the company is not focused solely on increasing profit margins. Most medical core science is done non-profit right now, at US universities. Many universities have on-premise small-scale manufacturing capabilities which serve their own needs, in medical labs but also others, like materials sciences and chemical science/engineering. There's no intrinsic reason why those couldn't be ramped up, or even pooled between physically close universities by creating a joint non-profit entity.