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COVID-19

Bill Gates, The White Man’s Burden And Modi Government’s Vaccine Debacle

May 9, 2021 Prabir Purkayastha, Peoples Dispatch. , , ,
The incompetence of the Indian government is starkly visible in its handling of the current COVID-19 crisis. It fares even worse on the vaccine front. Its belief in the ideology of free-market capitalism is that the market will magically produce whatever we need. This is why it starved the 7 public sector vaccine manufacturing units (Down to Earth, 17 April 2021) of any support. And also gave the public sector vaccine, Covaxin, developed by ICMR and National Institute of Virology to a private company, Bharat Biotech on an exclusive basis. It also believed that Serum Institute of India, another private sector company and the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, would make vaccines in required amounts without orders or capital support.

Vaccine Waiver Pledge Tests Biden-World’s Pharma Ties

May 9, 2021 David Sirota, Walker Bragman and Andrew Perez, Daily Poster. , , ,
Several of President Joe Biden’s most powerful appointees and advisers have had business relationships with pharmaceutical giants lobbying the administration on COVID-19 and intellectual property issues, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Poster. Those ties — and Biden’s longtime alliance with pharmaceutical industry interests — could prove particularly relevant as drug companies now try to defang any new waiver of patent rules that might reduce their profits and facilitate the wider distribution of vaccines to COVID-afflicted countries. Last summer, Biden broke with his own legislative record and pledged to support relaxing those intellectual property rules to distribute a COVID-19 vaccine, saying it “is the only humane thing in the world to do.”

A Temporary TRIPS Waiver Is Not Enough

May 7, 2021 Progressive International. , , ,
A new poll finds that 59% percent of US voters support waiving all patent protections to produce generic versions of life-saving medicines for critical diseases, from Covid-19 and HIV/AIDS, to heart disease and diabetes. Only 28% disagreed. The survey carried out by Data for Progress and the Progressive International, shows a super majority of 71% registered Democrats support the removal of all patent barriers to allow for the cheaper production of life-saving medicines. Even registered Republicans support the action with 47% in favor compared to 39% opposed.

Biden Supports Suspension Of Covid-19 Vaccine Patents

May 6, 2021 Telesur English. , , ,
President Joe Biden's administration on Wednesday supported a proposal submitted by several countries to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to suspend the intellectual property of vaccines against covid-19 when the United States has already administered 250 million doses. The announcement was greeted with sharp falls in the shares of the pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and BioNTech and Moderna and Novavax on the Wall Street stock exchange. Biden made good on his campaign promise to endorse the patent suspension. Still, he has only done so when the U.S. vaccination rate plummets, and the country is sitting on tens of millions of doses yet to be administered.

Biden Chooses Monopoly Profits Over Lives In India

May 2, 2021 Sam Carliner, Left Voice. , , ,
India is prominent in the news right now, as it has become the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic worldwide. Rhetoric from the Biden administration might lead people to believe that resolving the crisis in India is a top priority. As thousands of people die each day in India and the United States restricts all travel from the country, however, it turns out  that Biden’s support for vaccine nationalism is fueling the crisis. Biden has promised aid to India in the form of personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, test kits, and other supplies — but without vaccines, that essentially slaps a band-aid on the problem. There are two actions the United States could take, though, that would make a serious dent in the spread of the pandemic in India.

As Meatpackers Stoked Fears Of A Shortage, Exports Increased

May 2, 2021 Madison McVan, In These Times. , , ,
Last year, as the meatpacking industry’s frontline workers were infected with Covid-19 and the industry pushed claims of a meat shortage, companies in the U.S. exported more than $22 billion in meat products, continuing an upward trend in foreign sales since 2016. Trade data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that in 2020 the value of American meat exports reached its highest level since 2014. Companies exporting meat products from the Midwest also fared well, increasing sales by about $500 million from 2019 to 2020.

Systemic Racism Continues To Plague Pandemic Response

April 21, 2021 Derrick Z. Jackson, Union of Concerned Scientists. , , ,
On March 29, Eric, the most prominent lay leader at my church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, perished from COVID-19. He was one of 685 people across the United States and one of 15 in Massachusetts to die from the disease that day. On April 6, Eric’s mother Elmo also died from the coronavirus, one of 907 in the US and one of 12 in Massachusetts. Both were likely casualties of a nation and state that betrayed them more than once during the pandemic: First by failing to quell the virus last year; secondly by allowing people like them to fall behind in getting vaccines; and thirdly by relaxing coronavirus restrictions while the nation remains riddled with racial vaccine disparities.

Majority Of US Population Supports Patent Waiver For COVID-19 Vaccine

April 17, 2021 People's Dispatch. , , ,
According to a new survey, more than 60% of US voters across party lines would support president Joe Biden endorsing the demand of a patent rights waiver for COVID-19 vaccines raised by over 100 countries at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The survey conducted by Data for Progress and the Progressive International and published on the latter’s website shows that only 28% of all voters in the US oppose the move.  The survey indicates that the overwhelming majority of Democrats – over 72% – support the move which can reduce the cost of vaccine production and increase its reach to people in poor and developing countries across the globe. Around 50% of the registered Republicans also support the move. 

Self-Emancipation Continues To Rise At The St. Louis City Justice Center

April 15, 2021 Adofo Minka, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
In the early morning hours of April 4, 2021, a day that many Christians recognized as Resurrection Sunday, detainees, at the St. Louis City Justice Center moved in the spirit of insurrection to challenge their oppressors and well documented repression at the jail. After the first major rebellion at the jail grabbed national attention on February 6, 2021, government bureaucrats in collaboration with “activists” of the social justice state scrambled to mystify what is really happening to detainees at the city’s jails through sham reports and pseudo-independent investigations.  The attempt to paper over the status quo of cruelty and inhumanity exacted on detainees in the aftermath of the February 6th jail uprising has proved unsuccessful.  

On Contact: American Economic Illusion

April 11, 2021 Chris Hedges, RT. , , ,
On the show this week, Chris Hedges discusses with the economist Richard Wolff the nearly $5 trillion being allocated by the Biden administration for Covid-19 relief and infrastructure projects.

Why China’s Vaccine Internationalism Matters

April 10, 2021 the Qiao Collective. , , ,
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called it “the biggest moral test” facing the world today. World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom warned of a “catastrophic moral failure” whose price would be paid with the lives of those in the world’s poorest countries.     Such cautionings of inequitable global vaccine distribution have been shunted to the margins; instead, optimistic chatter of “returning to normal” is circulating once again as Global North citizens line up for their long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine. But normal, as ever, is relative: public health advocates warn that some countries may not be able to even begin their vaccination campaigns until 2024.       Vaccine apartheid is here, and it is revealing once more the ways our world continues to be structured by the geopolitical binaries of colonialism, capitalism, and racism.

Corporate Versus Public Control Of Science And Technology

April 10, 2021 Nicholas Freudenberg, Stat News. , , ,
"Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity.” Louis Pasteur said that in 1876. Today it would be more accurate to say that science belongs to the corporations and investors that have the money, power, and savvy to secure patents and bring new developments to global markets, a change that threatens human and planetary health. As illustrated by the pharmaceutical industry’s windfall profits despite its failure to date to get Covid-19 vaccines to the poorest nations and the poorest in wealthy nations, Pasteur’s observation that bringing science to the world is “the highest personification of the nation” now seems aspirational at best.

In The Spirit Of Abolition, Let’s Shut’em Down!

April 9, 2021 Jailhouse Lawyers Speak, Hood Communist. , , ,
A call to action. National “Shut’em Down” demonstrations August 21st and September 9th. Originally published on the Jailhouse Lawyers Speak blog. Over the last year prisoners across the country have been holding the longest and largest spontaneous demonstrations in response to covid. With approximately 300,000 (the number is possibly as high as 800,000) people in prison having been infected by covid prisoners have continued to demand basic human rights protections. These demonstrations have been sporadic and largely ignored by the public as prisoners and supporters demanded covid safety and precautions be enacted in prisons. In a number of states, these covid demonstrations have turned into widespread and hard fought successful court battles for releasing prisoners.

Grocery Companies Denied Us Hazard Pay—So We Went Over Their Heads

April 6, 2021 Sam Dancy and Chandra Messer, Labor Notes. , , ,
We’d like to tell you a story of our struggles with Covid and our safety concerns—and how we ended up getting two city councils to enact hazard pay by law. As grocery store workers, we were called heroes early in the pandemic—but over time, we felt less and less valued. Expendable. Yet we are not victims; we rose up to demand better. To paraphrase Fredrick Douglass, we certainly did not get everything we fought for, but we certainly fought for everything we got. The two of us work at different companies—one at a Kroger-owned store in Seattle and the other at a suburban store run by PCC Markets, a small independent grocery chain.

St. Louis Justice Center Inmates Rise Up Again, Demand Hearings

April 5, 2021 Sam Clancy, KSDK. , , ,
St. Louis, MO - St. Louis police responded to the city's downtown jail Sunday night after inmates broke windows, set fires and threw debris onto the street below Sunday night. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department sent out an all-points bulletin across city police radios Sunday night after inmates on the third floor of the City Justice Center reportedly covered cameras. A short time later, inmates began breaking the windows and throwing things onto the street. At around 9:30 p.m., smoke was pouring out of the broken windows. The St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department's Civil Disturbance Team was among the officers responding to the scene Sunday night. By around 10:20, the inmates had moved away from the windows, and police officers could be seen inside the windows looking around with flashlights in hand.
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