Not Lifting Patent Protection on Vaccines is Murder

Recently, Joe Biden finally came out in support of lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccines, allowing other countries to use information related to the structure of the vaccine in order to develop their own. This is something that Biden promised to do during his campaign if a vaccine was developed. For the past two months, people have been pressuring the Biden administration to do so, and Biden has finally relented. During the last month, over 360 thousand people died worldwide of COVID, meaning that Biden's refusal to act quicker resulted in more completely avoidable deaths. Of course, not all of those could have been prevented, but if vaccines were allowed to be distributed worldwide earlier, then we would not see cases and deaths continue to be at this level.

But, of course, Biden did come around on the issue eventually. However, most of Europe hasn't yet. Rich countries are choosing to protect big companies over poor people, as is expected under capitalism. Not allowing access to vaccination for poorer countries is willingly letting people die when you have the power to prevent those deaths. This is a pandemic, affecting the entire globe, but the fates of the poor are irrelevant to the rich, who will continue to profit over the global poor who happen to survive.

The countries that are actually acting sensibly and trying to end the pandemic? China and Russia. Now, regardless of whatever their motives may be, providing vaccines to poorer countries and allowing vaccines to be produced in these countries is an irrefutably good thing. However, of course, this is spurring new American propaganda in the mainstream media. Vaccination and COVID response is being framed as a geopolitical fight between the USA and its enemies, not as a global humanitarian necessity. Articles are being published on how we can't let China "beat us" in COVID response. I see this as some of the most insidious propaganda because it is playing with the lives of ordinary people and making them pawns in some sort of Cold War. I could not care less if poor people in Africa get their vaccines from the USA or from China. It does not matter if vaccine shipments to the Caribbean are American or Russian. What happens is that lives are saved. However, instead of praising the efforts of these rival powers, the USA has significantly delayed its efforts to provide more vaccinations worldwide and is pushing out propaganda to discredit the global health work being done by these countries.

This is more than "making sure vaccines are produced safely" as Bill Gates likes to put it. Refusing to vaccinate the world is evil. Israel vaccinating its citizens and not the Palestinean population it has colonized is continuing its system of apartheid. Rich Western countries keeping vaccines for themselves and money for the pharmaceutical industry is continuing their ongoing systems of colonialism and imperialism. Yes, Biden has finally come around on this issue and the USA may begin to do what needs to be done, but that does not change the underlying reasons why it was slow to and why some countries will never get there. At this rate, the USA and Europe will have achieved herd immunity this year while it may take close to a decade for some other countries. Don't let people tell you this is about vaccine safety. Refusing to provide vaccines to countries that cannot afford them is murder.

Comments

Why "Defund the Police" Isn't a Bad Slogan

Recently, high-profile Democrats have come out against the slogan of "Defund the Police". Obama recently said that it's a bad slogan because it caused the Democrats to lose support and it's "divisive". I've been seeing a lot of Democrats complaining that the slogan is somehow "unclear" or could easily be misconstrued. I've seen other slogans be floated, most commonly "Reform the Police". The idea is that a slogan like that is more honest, more easily attainable, and less divisive. However, the criticisms from prominent liberals aren't backed by anything of value. First off, Obama doesn't like "Defund the Police", not because he's worried about it being divisive, but because he is against the idea. Barack Obama, and the Democrats as a whole, are pro-police. They are pro-cop and they are pro giving the cops more money. Biden even ran on increasing police budgets, showing that it isn't an issue of messagin...

Book Review: How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi

Over the past few months, I've been trying to read more, as staying inside due to the pandemic hasn't exactly been filled with fun ways to fill time. Due to the recent protests in the US in response to the tragic murder of George Floyd and the history of violent oppression and white supremacy, I've specifically been trying to read more books on race and politics by black authors. I have been reading more political writing as of recently, and I thought that it was important to include more black perspectives. I had just completed the far-less mainstream and well-known writing Anarchism and The Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin, which I enjoyed, and I thought I should read something more contemporary and less politically extreme. Therefore, I decided to read Ibram X Kendi's 2019 book, How to Be an Antiracist . The book is made up of 18 chapters, and nearly every chapter is dedicated to a specific kind of racism and antiracism. The book goes through topics lik...

Trump's Transgender Discrimination

Yesterday, on Friday, June 12, the Trump administration finalized a rule that rolls back Obama's nondiscrimination policies in the Affordable Care Act. Basically, the Affordable Care Act says that you can't refuse to give someone healthcare based on a variety of factors, like age, race, or sex. In 2016, the Obama administration had that word "sex" defined to include gender identity as well as biological sex. This particular point is the part that Trump had issues with. Now, the Trump administration defines "sex" as referring solely to biological sex, and they do not provide any further protections regarding gender. Therefore, in changing the legal definition and understanding of that one word, they are essentially making it legal to discriminate against transgender people. The Human Rights Campaign estimates that there are about 700,000 transgender people living in the United States. That's nearly a million people who now, based on how the Trump administ...

Why "What About Black on Black Crime" is a Bad Argument

With the current protests and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, there is a common counterargument used by detractors of the movement: "what about black on black crime?" This is commonly brought up when people mention black people being murdered by police. The argument, is, essentially, that if those who support the Black Lives Matter movement actually cared about black lives, there would be protests for every black person killed by another black person. This is, of course, a particularly bad argument that is pretty irrelevant to the conversation, but I felt the need to write this post to go through all of the problems with this argument. So, here is a list of reasons why "what about black on black crime" is a bad argument. 1. Black on Black Crime is Not Racially Motivated This is the first reason that I'm going through because it's the most obvious reason that automatically shows that this argument holds no water. When protests erupt after p...

Why Political Polarization Isn't the Problem People Say It Is

Every election we hear that America is growing more and more polarized politically and that this is a huge problem dividing the American people. "People used to be able to agree." "Even if you disagreed with each other, you were still Americans." According to these people, now American political polarization has gotten so bad that nobody can agree on anything, and the solution proposed is bipartisanship and moderate centrism that makes everyone gets along. Unity is the most important thing. Now, part of the claim is true. In some sense, America is more politically polarized. But this polarization isn't something that is simultaneously happening at both ends, with Democrats moving drastically left and Republicans drastically right, it's something that is happening at only one end. The Republican party and Republican voters have been moving further to the right, while Democrats have mostly stayed exactly the same, save a few members of government that the est...

Why Bernie and AOC are not Socialists

This is probably pointless to write, as very few people will read it and the majority of those who will will already know this, but it still feels important to do, as the level of misunderstanding surrounding socialism in American political discourse is just insane. Politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have popularized the term and increased support for broadly progressive policies, but they have also helped to introduce many moderates and progressives to a nonsensical view of socialism and a lack of understanding of what it is. Despite the fact that members of this progressive wing are easily the best figures in American politics, they are not socialist, and it is important to understand what socialism is and why it should be supported. A very basic definition of socialism is a system in which the means of production are owned collectively, rather than individually. Under capitalism, capitalists own the means of production (factories, land, etc.) and use the la...

Marx's Birthday

Today is Karl Marx's 203rd birthday, and although Marx died in 1883 at the age of 64, his ideas are still important today and have played a large role in what I believe about politics, economics, and society. I am a socialist and a Communist because of the work and theory that was done by Karl Marx and subsequent interpretations and implementations of his work. On this day, 203 years from when he was born, I have decided to list some of Marx's works that I think are must-reads or are at least important to learn about and understand, and to provide some places to learn about Marxist ideas online. Happy birthday, Marx! Wage-Labour and Capital I consider Wage-Labour and Capital to absolutely be a must-read in Communist theory. This is a fairly short work, and it outlines components of capitalism, namely, as the title suggests, how wage labor works. It can be pretty didactic at times, as Marx tends to get, but it is important in understanding how labor is valued under capitalism a...

Show Review: Netflix's The Politician is Absolutely Terrible

The second season of The Politician came out on Netflix recently, and I watched it, even though I hated the first season, because I had nothing else to watch. Unsurprisingly, I hated this season too, and it was possibly one of the worst things I've had the misfortune of watching. One reason I hated the first season was the overdramatization of a high school student council race , which I assure you, as a high schooler, nobody cares about, so at least this season had higher stakes, as it was a New York State Senate race. Another reason I hated the first season was the fact that there was a Haitian character, played by a Ghanaian, who sounded nothing like a Haitian (although he did a West African accent), was named Pierre Toussaint, and was introduced to us in the middle of what plays as an AIDS joke (I assume anyone reading this knows I live in Haiti, and I'm sure non-Haitians won't even notice how tone-deaf this character is). This will only make sense if you have watched s...

How Capitalism Transfers Blame to Workers

Currently, there is a visible conflict between workers and employers that exemplifies everything that is wrong with the capitalist view of human nature and the tendency of all problems caused by capitalism to be blamed on the working class. One of the best and most tangible aspects of America's COVID response to American workers has been the increase in unemployment insurance. This is obviously a good thing, especially because being paid minimum wage is not worth risking your life to work during a pandemic. Now, however, many are trying to claim that it is a problem, because unemployment benefits have risen higher than current wages and benefits at many restaurants and similar businesses. The issue presented is that people would rather sit at home and collect unemployment instead of working, and the culprit presented is, of course, the greedy working class who wants nothing more than to be paid for doing nothing. This current situation shows so much about what is wrong with the ca...

Songs that Would Be Better National Anthems Than the Star-Spangled Banner

The Star-Spangled Banner is a bad national anthem. It sucks. Every time I hear it I shudder. It's a bad song. You want me to stand and put a hand over my heart for a bad song? I think not. The Haitian national anthem is a billion times better, and there's a reason why I sing along to it and not to the American one. It isn't necessarily because of a difference in patriotic feeling, it's because the American one is objectively worse. We can change that. Here is a list of songs that we could replace the American National Anthem with. Party Rock Anthem - LMFAO Come on, the word "anthem" is literally in the name. My patriotism would increase greatly if every football game started with Redfoo telling me to have a good time. Make this the national anthem and I will fly an American flag and say "God bless America" every day. Party Rock Anthem - Kidzbop Version Same as the last entry, but for the kiddos out there who don't want to hear about butts in thei...

On The Left Side of Things

Search This Blog