— It was fully 14 months ago when India and South Africa asked the World Trade Organization to give them a “TRIPS Waiver” setting aside international patent rules on vaccines and Covid medications so they could quickly ramp up vaccinations in their parts of the world. They wanted to protect their own people, but also wanted to prevent new variants emerge that might be even more contagious and deadly than the Alpha, Beta or Delta variants. While letting poorer countries manufacture their own versions of Pfizer, J&J, Moderna and AstraZenica vaccines (rather than forcing them to buy from those companies) would not have decreased those companies’ vaccine profits