COVID is slowly becoming a “third world” disease. While first world countries are hoarding vaccines, having doses for populations many times their size, third world countries can’t get any because pharma companies want to sell to the first world countries first. Even then, first world countries will receive them first. While rich countries recover from COVID, they will forget about the pandemic while many other countries live the absolute worst moment of the pandemic without being able to vaccinate their population.
Watch also when some first world countries finish vaccinating their populations, they will turn to third world countries and “donate” or sell surplus vaccines. People in these countries will go “Oh how sweet! The government is donating vaccines to the poorer countries <3” when it was their hoarding that led to many, many third world citizens dying before they could even get vaccinated in the first place.
african and latin american countries are also pushed by pfizer to give up sovereign assets as part of their vaccine agreement
They’re not only hoarding and blackmailing, but the cherry on top is that the US, UK, Australia, most of Europe, Brazil et al. actually voted AGAINST waiving intellectual property agreements for the existing vaccines, something that India & South Africa proposed MONTHS ago to the World Trade Organization, and which most of the Global South voted yes to. So rather than letting countries manufacture these vaccines themselves, meaning they could have their own supply, they’re being kept, by multiple measures, beholden to the Global North for donations. The US voted multiple times to block this, before and after Biden’s inauguration.
Read more:
Overview from JANUARY of this : https://www.ipwatchdog.com/2021/01/02/india-south-africas-covid-vaccine-proposal-wto-patent-waiver-must-considered-compulsory-licensing/id=128652/
Update from February: https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news21_e/trip_23feb21_e.htm
Recent coverage of the deal not being met (again): https://www.law360.com/lifesciences/articles/1363457/wto-fails-to-reach-deal-on-covid-ip-waiver-proposal-again
Map of the vote (colorblind-friendly): https://twitter.com/comradesquirrel/status/1370595876536729600?s=21
[Image description: a world map. Countries in black (US, Brazil, most of Europe, Japan, Australia) opposed; countries in green (Africa not including Algeria/Libya/Western Sahara/Eritrea; China, South Asia, and most of southeast Asia; and Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua) are co-sponsors/full supporters; countries in yellow (Canada, Mexico, Chile) are undecided; countries in light brown (Colombia, Guyana, Suriname, the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Turkey, Ukraine, Vietnam, Thailand, Bhutan, the Phillipines, and Papua New Guinea) are general supporters; and the remainder are gray, which is not designated as anything]
Meanwhile as India is getting hundreds of thousands of new cases a day and running out of oxygen tanks for hospitals, the US won’t lift restrictions on raw material exports that would support vaccine production: https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/us-defends-restrictions-on-export-of-covid-19-vaccine-raw-materials-amid-indias-request-to-lift-ban/
On vaccine nationalism: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/coronavirus-vaccine-justice/
Poor countries are paying more for the doses that remain after rich countries have had their fill.
and, like, WATCH border policies change because of this
