On February 15, Discovery Group CEO Adrian Gore wrote a letter to clients explaining “why we don’t just procure vaccines” for them. The first constraint was that “pharmaceutical companies manufacturing the vaccines will currently sell only to national governments, and not to any other entities”.

Yet developments on the ground in Brazil, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Mexico, and India — along with the circumstances surrounding the Russian Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology vaccine, and the private confirmation of at least one major Western manufacturer — lift that constraint sufficiently for Discovery to seize its opportunity...