I really admire what Cuba has done in the last half century. They're a fairly resource poor island nation who were cut off suddenly from the trading partner who accounted for 85% of their trade. While they're constantly struggling financially, they have a huge rate of tertiary education, better female participation in the professional workforce than almost all nations, a decent happiness score and a now a better life expectancy than the richest nation in the world.

However, the creation of COVID vaccines was not difficult. COVID is not that dissimilar to a number of existing viruses which we already have vaccines for. The production of a simple vaccine is easy, but rounds of testing and approval take a long time. This is how come Cuba could create vaccines based on existing techniques with slight tweeks.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

However, the creation of COVID vaccines was not difficult.

Looking at the shitfest around the vaccines in the west i would say otherwise, including how they refuse to release the patents.

[–] silvercove@lemdro.id 4 points 1 year ago

mRNA vaccines are difficult and expensive to make. Other technologies are cheaper.

[–] macrocephalic@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

The ones you had to wait for in the west were mRNA vaccines. They are newer, more complicated, and in theory customisable to a wider range of infections. While I'd love to see these opened up and used for their full potential I can see why the pharma corps don't want that.

While I haven't looked, I'll bet that the Cuban ones were"simply" using a deactivated virus - which is less effective and especially less effective against mutated strains.