The New York Times Opinion: “Otherwise, there won’t be enough shots to go around, even in rich countries. As some reports would have it, this is the beginning of the end. Three coronavirus vaccines have posted excellent results, with more expected to come. But this is not the beginning of the end; it is only the beginning of an endless wait: There aren’t enough vaccines to go around in the richest countries on earth, let alone the poorest ones. That’s why it makes little sense that the United States, Britain and the European Union, among others, are blocking a proposal at the World Trade Organization that would allow them, and the rest of the world, to get more of the vaccines and treatments we all need. The proposal, put forward by India and South Africa in October, calls on the W.T.O. to exempt member countries from enforcing some patents, trade secrets or pharmaceutical monopolies under the organization’s agreement on trade-related intellectual property rights, known as TRIPs. It cites the “exceptional circumstances” created by the pandemic and argues that intellectual property protections are currently “hindering or potentially hindering timely provisioning of affordable medical products”; the waiver would allow W.T.O. member countries to change their laws so that companies there could produce generic versions of any coronavirus vaccines and Covid-19 treatments…” [The authors – Achal Prabhala is the coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines, and a fellow of the Shuttleworth Foundation, in Bangalore. Arjun Jayadev is a professor of economics at Azim Premji University, in Bangalore, and a senior economist at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Dean Baker is a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.]