While all of this may have been predictable, it wasn't inevitable. The WHO has cautioned that a "me-first" approach to the vaccines leads to shortages, hoarding, and the pushing-up of prices. And although the profits from this intellectual property are private, the six front-running vaccine candidates have had a total of over $12 billion of taxpayer and public money poured into them.
Intellectual property rights and exclusive vaccine contracts with Big Pharma aren't the only reasons why Covid-19 is morphing ever more distinctly into a poor people's pandemic. They are, however, barriers to a universal and equitable response to a virus that has exposed the world's fragile interconnectedness. With a deadly novel virus on the loose and mutating, at a moment when access to a vaccine may be the difference between life and death, profit over people remains a hegemonic principle. And horrifyingly enough, changes in intellectual property policies over the last few decades may have done even more to increase inequality on this planet than tax cuts for the wealthy.
In the last year, we Americans have battled Covid-19 largely through the same world of trickle-down economics and "austerity" for the poor that was such a reality of the prepandemic world. The Trump administration's response to the disease was a bitter mixture of triage, denial, and greed. The sins of our leaders will leave deep and lasting wounds, but there is, at least, a lesson to be learned from all the suffering, if we're brave enough to take it in: life should come before profit, human rights before property rights. Amen.
Copyright 2021 Liz Theoharis
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