In addition to much and sometimes very justified criticism of the vaccine against Covid itself, the question of distribution and costs also clearly shows: It is not about people' s health, but about capital interests.
While there is a demand on the part of various initiatives and NGOs, as well as about a hundred states, to temporarily suspend the patents on the Covid vaccine, as well as on medicines, protective equipment, or even respirators, it is the imperialist states that oppose this. Imperialist countries such as Germany signed contracts with the pharmaceutical industry months ago and secured vaccines. But while the oppressed countries served as "experimental laboratories" for the pharmaceutical industry in developing the vaccines, like for example Brazil for some Geman companies, they are now to be further bled financially.
In the oppressed countries, there is a serious lack of medical care in the absolute main and especially protection against the Covid pandemic is far from sufficient. According to WTO rules, exceptions are possible, such as requesting the suspension of the patent, but means a burdensome bureaucratic path, which according to their own information would lead to a result in the summer of 2021.
Ursula von der Leyen shows herself to be in solidarity, talks about cohesion and a supply and fair distribution of the new vaccines throughout the EU. But instead of resolving the patent issue in favor of poorer countries, the Imperialists of EU announced plans in November to improve access to Covid vaccines by offering financial incentives to vaccine manufacturers. At the same time, the EU clearly rejected the proposal to suspend the patent, which would greatly facilitate access.
Those Imperialists who mainly benefits from the vaccine oppose a suspension of the patent, which would allow many countries to produce vaccines far more cheaply and, in some cases, independently. Once again, they demonstrate the extent to which bourgeois states and capital have merged. High sums of tax money flowed into the Covid vaccine research, hurdles and deadlines were overturned in the name of people' s health... but it is not about the protection of people' s health, as it is obvious among other things at the question of the patent, but about how the companies hand in hand with the imperialist states can enforce their capital interests in the best possible way!
Comments