Photo c/o Public Citizen
Governments must act in the interests of all people
“The Omicron variant and the Delta variant before it are the endless pandemic that public health experts have warned about unless everyone around the world can get vaccinated and there are no raging COVID outbreaks to hatch dangerous new variants. The world has wasted more than a year of trying everything but the necessary emergency suspension of pharmaceutical firms’ monopoly control over how many vaccines and treatments are made, which is necessary to get the supplies needed to end the pandemic.” —Lori Wallach, Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch.
When the first U.S. case of Covid-19 was confirmed January 20, 2020, the former administration had no plan in place to deal with the portending deadly pandemic, in spite of foreknowledge of the virus’s potential to infect millions. By the end of April, over one million Americans were infected by the virus, quickly overwhelming our cumbersome for-profit healthcare system as patients filled hospital wards and morgues, and states and hospital staff were forced to compete for PPE supplies to protect frontline doctors and nurses. Add to this the conflicting advice that emanated from the Trump White House and the CDC. To date, over 803,000 Americans have died. Now one PERSON dies every 62 seconds from this disease in the U.S. By the time vaccines were rolled out, hundreds of thousands had died and the most vulnerable of us were on our own, without a national coordinated plan to get the vaccines where needed most.
Contrast this scenario with countries that have robust national public healthcare systems and citizens willing to do their part for the collective good of all.
Taiwan recorded its first Covid-19 case the day after the U.S on January 21, 2020. It implemented an aggressive nationwide test and contact-trace program through its national health service database. It quarantined inbound visitors and implemented a mask mandate. It identified and quarantined every infected person and by April had isolated and controlled the virus. Many local governments provided options for anyone who tested positive; government-provided quarantined facilities that significantly reduced virus transmissions within familes. The number of cases in the community reduced. When cases surged in May 2021, the Taiwanese government listened to scientists and changed its policies to fight the pandemic. The death rate lowered.
In 2020, Taiwan donated more than 51 million face masks to countries worldwide. Recipient countries, in return, gifted Taiwan vaccines during outbreaks, and Taiwan shared its vaccine with others in need.
Cuba, a tiny island nation, illustrated the difference in outcomes of a system of healthcare based on sound science and the common good as opposed to profits. Cuba produced vaccines for the common good. Despite the U.S. economic blockade, Cuba developed anti- COVID -19 vaccines, shared its technology with other nations in need, and prioritized vaccinating its entire population. The result is that the prevalence of COVID-19 infection in Cuba is only 8.5 per 100,000.
By contrast, in the United States, rejection of scientific facts and expert opinion has led to vaccine refusal and even frustrated efforts to get consensus on mask-wearing and social distancing. The result is that the prevalence of Covid-19 infection in the United States is nearly twice that of Cuba’s and the mortality rate is more than three times that of Cuba’s.
In the U.S., government-subsidized manufacturers make huge profits off vaccines ($18 billion for Moderna in 2021), while millions are sick and dying here and around the world. U.S. government scientists and their pharmaceutical company counterparts collaborated in developing vaccines, but the companies are claiming intellectual-property and patent rights for themselves upheld by the World Trade Organization. More than 100 nations support a temporary, COVID-specific waiver of WTO rules that are part of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). Although the Biden administration announced its support for this TRIPS waiver in May (since being introduced over a year ago, support for the waiver has poured in from the majority of U.S. House Democrats, ten U.S. senators, 170-plus former heads of state and Nobel laureates, 400-plus U.S. civil society organizations, 250 international organizations and over 100 international intellectual policy academics), the U.S. government has not acted to get the few close U.S. allies blocking the waiver, the European Union (pushed by Germany), Switzerland and the UK, to allow progress on the critical initiative.
In November, members of Congress joined health, labor, faith and development leaders to deliver three million petition signatures in support of the waiver, and nine U.S. Senators called on President Biden to “deliver on your promise to defeat the pandemic” by actively pushing for the TRIPS waiver at the (WTO) ministerial. Postponed due to the uptick in Covid-19 infections, advocates are demanding Biden work with the European Union and WTO Director-General to hold an emergency, online meeting to approve the waiver.
A coalition of nurses’ unions representing over 2.5 million health care workers from 28 countries around the world — coordinated by Global Nurses United and Progressive International — filed a complaint to the UN Special Rapporteur on Physical and Mental Health, alleging human rights violations by the EU, UK, Norway, Switzerland and Singapore, for their opposition to the TRIPS waiver. Waiver opposing countries were also directly named and shamed this week by the Council of Global Unions (CGU), which represents over 200 million workers.
It should be apparent to all that in the face of world-wide pandemics that are sure to increase as environmental degradation continues, we need governments to coordinate efforts in the interests of the public good. As a concerned physician and sociologist recently pointed out in the New York Times, “governments have slashed budgets and privatized basic services [so that] people are unlikely to trust institutions that do little for them. Public health is no longer viewed as a collective endeavor based on the principle of social solidarity and mutual obligation… [they need to seek] policies that promote a basic, but increasingly forgotten idea: that our individual flourishing is bound up in our collective well-being.”
Cathy Talbott is a former telephone operator, a job lost to automation. She was a homeless mother of two and fights for welfare rights. A former co-host of a weekly community radio program out of Carbondale, IL, “Occupy the Airwaves,” Cathy is the Environmental Desk for the People’s Tribune.
