[kongolongo]

>manufacturing platforms (much of this is now outsourced to India, Mexico, etc. for drugs being sold in the USA)

This completely trivializes and misses the fact that the manufacturing process itself can be patented.

>As a practical example, look how the best Covid vaccines (mRNA types) have been monopolized, leading to low rates of vaccination in Africa etc., even though that was technology developed with taxpayer funding at public universities.

That's just patently false, Moderna for example, has been waived patent infringement related to covid vaccines. The reason the developing world does not have high rates of vaccination is not because of patents but primarily because of their infrastructure.