Pfizer alone made 26 billion dollars in just the first 3 months of 2022. Moderna made 18 billion dollars in 2021. Meanwhile, low-income countries face the highest debt in the last 20 years and increasing inflation rates.
Yet, the EU, US, UK and Switzerland are hiding behind the shield of patents and intellectual property rights, dragging on and on the discussions at the WTO on a temporary waiver that could contribute to putting an end to the madness. These governments shamefully conspire to make it all but impossible to break Big Pharma’s monopoly on the vaccines.
It’s Big Pharma’s profit first. People’s lives and livelihoods are at the end of the queue.
Sharing technology and know-how so other countries could produce the vaccine and protect their populations? No. Let them reinvent the wheel, and when they do, claim their wheel is crooked and probably won’t roll, so the best option is to buy their wheel instead. You don’t have to dig too deep to find the racist roots of this rationale.
Healthcare workers on the frontlines exposed to the deadly virus, elders with frail immunity fatally contaminated by a disease for which the cure had already been developed, children orphaned and lives ruined.
As trade representatives meet in Geneva for another round of negotiations, just before the upcoming Ministerial Conference at the WTO, it’s clear that positions have not changed at the top. No sharing, no way. Free market fundamentalism does not share, not even when 15 million people lay dead. Immoral? Monstrous? It doesn’t matter, Big Pharma’s raison d’être is simple, singular and direct: profit.
On the other hand, the #TRIPSWaiver would make health tech available, unburden health systems & contribute to economic development in the South. ✊
#EndCOVIDMonopolies #Fem4PeoplesVaccine
