[mullingitover]

I honestly think that centralizing the production is the best way to produce the most vaccine in the shortest amount of time. Giving out the IP around the vaccine wouldn't just immediately bring more production online, and the IP alone isn't a sufficient recipe for producing more vaccines in bulk. What could instead happen is a bunch of players across the globe try to jump-start production and start bidding up the prices of the inputs, making production more costly and thus reducing production. Beyond that, quality control could suffer in the hands of inexperienced producers, and so more vaccine could be wasted.

It's been a weird thing for people to turn on Gates and assume he has some diabolical angle. He was an absolute savage in business, and people rightfully feared/hated him when he was at the helm of Microsoft (I was in college during the MS antitrust trial, and a lot of the CS department was rooting for them to be taken down). What I think motivates him now is straightforward self-actualization, trying to undo some of the fairly justified animosity he earned in business for the sake of his legacy. All the money in the world can't buy you a legacy, only accomplishments can do that, and that's what I think he's chasing now.