Big pharma firms like Pfizer are marketing COVID-19 vaccines for a profit, yet the research behind them would have been impossible without universities and public funding. The lack of an international public health response has placed capitalist profit over human need — and will leave billions of people unvaccinated.
If the GOP has its way, diseases like measles and tuberculosis could make a big comeback.
If ever there were a time to suspend global patent rules to ensure widespread distribution of a vaccine, right now is it. Yet pharma giant Pfizer is currently opposing a proposal at the World Trade Organization to expand vaccine access to poor countries, hoping to hoard distribution — and profits — rather than save lives.
Drug companies have received over $10 billion from the US government for COVID-19 vaccine production. Yet those companies weren’t required to offer their vaccines at fair prices or share intellectual property rights — and they want to keep it that way.
Measures like those France and New York City recently instituted are an appropriate tool for preventing impending and devastating mass death.
The real outrage isn’t that people can get vaccinated, but that due to pharmaceutical greed and government inaction, billions of people can’t.
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s failure to contain the virus in the earliest weeks of the outbreak doomed New York to far more suffering than it needed to endure. Now, with a vaccine here, he is again proving his unfitness to lead his state through the worst crisis it has faced in modern history.
Contrary to claims about “fascist” vaccine mandates currently circulating on the Right, the Nazis actually relaxed German vaccine mandates — and hoped doing the same for people they conquered would kill them faster.
Dr Ashish Jha is the White House’s new COVID-19 response coordinator. He has an opportunity to reverse the Biden administration’s course and push for global vaccine equity — but all signs indicate he won’t.
With pharma giant Moderna planning to quintuple the price it charges for its COVID vaccines — developed using taxpayer dollars — the case for nationalizing an out-of-control drug industry has never been stronger.
NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes in Jacobin arguing that athletes like Kyrie Irving aren’t making a “personal choice” by refusing the COVID vaccine — they’re jeopardizing the public health of all through their platforms.
Thanks to shortsighted nationalism and corporate power, it’s now expected to take until 2078 to achieve global vaccination. The lesson is clear: COVID can’t be overcome until we put human needs before private profit.
The ongoing strike wave in the US has little to do with vaccine mandates. Workers are striking because the labor market is relatively tight — and they smartly see that they have leverage against employers.
The horrifying scenes of COVID-wracked India show that when rich countries like the US back pharmaceutical profits over lives, vaccine inequality turns into global vaccine apartheid. Joe Biden has the power to immediately end this. Release the damn vaccines.
Joe Biden’s administration has proposed vaccination and testing requirements for federally funded health care facilities and businesses — and corporate groups are mobilizing to kill the proposal.
Biden and European Union officials continue to help Big Pharma prevent the distribution of intellectual property rights to fight COVID.
With the spread of the new Omicron variant and low levels of vaccination throughout much of the world, there’s still no real end to COVID in sight. It’s bad news for global public health — but great news for big pharmaceutical companies.
The fact that the United States is recusing itself from pretty much all global cooperation in the search for a coronavirus vaccine does not bode well for equitable distribution of a cure.
Many political and business leaders are defending unethical vaccine patent hoarding. But Sen. Chris Coons recently achieved new levels of repulsiveness, invoking Red Scare rhetoric, the Capitol riot, and the Constitution to justify protecting Big Pharma’s profits.
The spread of COVID-19 anywhere on the planet threatens us all, yet Big Pharma’s monopoly on the vaccine supply ensures that people in most of the world aren't getting inoculated. In this appeal, left-wing figures like Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Rafael Correa, and former Brazilian president Lula call on governments to lift the patents and ensure vaccines are distributed as cheaply and quickly as possible.