This is an interesting article:
https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/ ... d-vaccines
Please read it with a sense of perspective.
There are two conflicting forces, and I personally do not understand where vaccines fall
a) There is the perspective that free markets are more efficient than governments in technology development and commercialization. Therefore it is important to protect vaccine IP and deny transfer of manufacturing technology (what Bill Gates advocates) to preserve profits for Pharma companies. This in turn, will help them invest and discover many more vaccines. There is a kernel of truth here. Remember the 100$ computer project that was funded by governments ? The simputer, OLPC etc etc. I personally remember 2-3 such projects from my college days, all footed by government. Nothing remotely useful came out of it.
Today you have a $100 computer. It has screen, wifi, bluetooth, flash, TCP/IP software stack, cellular radio, decent processor (far faster than the ones I learned computer science on), a modern OS and browser. It is your cheap smartphone and can do many things. It is a product of globalized supply chains, technological innovation and profit motive
b) There is another perspective that governments and public ownership is great at producing basic investment and basic services. This is also true. Technological innovation in the US is tied to close regulation of electricity production, distribution and consumer pricing. Before that, power producers were like robber barons. The regulation and pricing of electricity has produced great societal benefit. Perhaps vaccines and public health is like electricity.
Bill Gates made his fortune on IP, closely guarding the OS and charging per seat for Office.
But the explosion in cloud computing is from Linux, which is free to install in as many machines as possible.