Thank you very much.
Mr. Warner, I was hoping to come back to a comment that you made about eventually getting to the point where the waiver makes sense. If there are companies out there, and presumably there are....
One of the things in this conversation that I find very hard to believe is the suggestion that's been made by a number of witnesses at committee that somehow India, South Africa and other countries that are proponents of the waiver don't understand that waiving the IP rights isn't the end of it, that there isn't a lot more to do. Presumably they're talking to people who are indicating they have some manufacturing capacity and that intellectual property rights are a barrier or they wouldn't be devoting the time and energy that they have been in seeking the waiver.
Even if that capacity is a way down the road—which in fact would make sense, given what we've heard and people's reasonable expectations that manufacturing vaccines is not a simple process—isn't it hard for them to make those investments if they don't know they're going to have access to the intellectual property? Granting the waiver now allows those interested to know they're going to be able to make use of and access that IP, so they can start planning to bring production online in eight, nine or 12 months—whatever is going to make sense for them—as they try to satisfy the other aspects of production, such as technology transfer and skills transfer. However, if they don't know they're going to have access to the IP, then that's another significant barrier on the table.
I think the idea of the waiver is to take as many barriers off the table upfront as possible so that companies that think they can pull this off are able to proceed as far and as quickly as they can.
I wonder if you want to comment. If we wait another eight to 12 months to implement the waiver, that's an eight- or 12-month delay on this additional capacity, on being able to plan for the future and beginning to engage seriously in the other aspects of vaccine production.