Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by KirillPanov 1870 days ago
Wow, this is a much better article than the one from the NYTimes. Thank you. Especially for this gem:

Supplies of raw materials such as nucleotides are also tight. According to Dr Zarur, Thermo Fisher, an American chemical-supplies company, has spent $200m on a new facility in Lithuania to make these molecules, though the firm itself would not confirm this.

I would not have expected this, but it definitely explains a whole lot of otherwise-cryptic claims being made in the WTO debate. I guess it does sort of make sense. The worldwide demand for pure bulk nucleotides probably shot up hundreds or thousands-fold as a result of COVID-19 vax manufacturing.