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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/48-covid-vaccines/">https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/48-covid-vaccines/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">We Suffer from an Incurable Disease Called Hope: The Forty-Eighth Newsletter (2020).</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">November 26, 2020 - Vijay Prashad<br></div>
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<div id="gmail-attachment_31896" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Public-health-propaganda-team-for-the-elimination-of-_four-pests_-China-1958-2.jpg" alt="Public Health Elimination Team for the Elimination of ‘Four Pests’, China, 1958." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="395" height="335"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-31896" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Public Health Elimination Team for the Elimination of ‘Four Pests’, China, 1958.</span></p></div>
<p>Dear friends,</p>
<p>Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.</p>
<p>The total level of global indebtedness now <a href="https://www.iif.com/Research/Capital-Flows-and-Debt/Global-Debt-Monitor">sits</a>
at an astronomical $277 trillion, an increase of $15 trillion since
2019. This amount is equivalent to 365% of the global gross domestic
product. The debt burden is highest in the poorest countries, where
coronavirus defaults have begun; Zambia’s <a href="https://www.themastonline.com/2020/11/18/sovereign-debt-costly-cannot-be-renegotiated-anyhow-musumali/">default</a> is the most recent. The various programmes to suspend debt servicing payments – such as the G20 Debt Service Suspension <a href="https://g20.org/en/media/Documents/G20SS_PR_G20%20Paris%20Forum%20High-level%20Ministerial%20Conference_EN.pdf">Initiative</a>
– and the various programmes of aid – such as through the International
Monetary Fund’s COVID-19 Financial Assistance and Debt Relief <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Topics/imf-and-covid19/COVID-Lending-Tracker">initiative</a> – are certain to fall short. The G20 package has only covered 1.66% of debt payments, since it has <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/eurodad/pages/768/attachments/original/1603714501/DSSIShadowReport_14Oct_%281%29.pdf?1603714501">failed</a> to corral many private and multilateral lenders into its agreements.</p>
<p>The debt burdens are catastrophic for countries that simply do not
have the capacity to pay off their obligations, particularly during the
coronavirus recession. Last month, UNCTAD’s Stephanie Blankenburg <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/43-2020-debt/">told</a>
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research that ‘debt write-offs in
the most vulnerable developing countries will be inevitable, and
everybody recognises this, but the question is on what terms this will
happen’.</p>
<p>The IMF urges countries to borrow since interest rates are generally
low. But this provokes another important question: what should
governments do with the money that they would borrow? What the
differential impact of the pandemic has shown us is that <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-3-coronashock-and-socialism/">countries</a>
with a robust public health system – including significant numbers of
well-equipped public health workers – have been able to better break the
chain of the infection than countries that have cannibalised their
public health systems. Since this is a largely recognised fact across
the political spectrum, it behoves countries to spend more of the new
money on rebuilding their public health systems. But this is not what is
happening.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_31876" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Egon-Schiele-The-Family-1918-4.jpg" alt="Egon Schiele (Austria), The Family, 1918." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="395" height="366"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-31876" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Egon Schiele (Austria), <i>The Family</i>, 1918.</span></p></div>
<p>It is welcome news that there are now vaccine candidates from a range
of firms and countries, including the two m-RNA vaccines from Pfizer
and Moderna, as well as Gamaleya’s Sputnik V and Sinovac’s CoronaVac.
Reports from these and other vaccine candidates show positive results,
which raises hope that we will soon have some kind of vaccine against
COVID-19. Scientists are wary of the claims made by the private
pharmaceutical companies, which have released press statements but have
not made the findings of their clinical trials public. Some of these <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/14/good-news-on-vaccines-but-what-about-its-delivery/">questions</a>
include whether the vaccines prevent infection, whether they prevent
mortality, whether they prevent transmission, and, finally, what would
be the duration of protection.</p>
<p>It is disheartening to see ‘vaccine nationalism’ eclipse the hope
around the development of the vaccine. The rich countries, with 13% of
the world’s population, have already secured 3.4 billion doses of the
potential vaccines; the rest of the world has pre-committed vaccine
orders of 2.4 billion doses. The poorest countries, with a population of
700 million people, have no agreements for the vaccine. They depend on
the <a href="https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/covax-explained">Covax</a> vaccine, developed in partnership between the World Health Organisation, the <a href="https://www.gavi.org/">Vaccine Alliance</a> (GAVI), and the <a href="https://cepi.net/">Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations </a>(CEPI).
Covax has agreements to secure about 500 million doses, which would be
enough to vaccinate 250 million people and cover about 20% of the
populations of the poorest countries. In contrast, the United States of
America, by itself, has made <a href="https://dukeghic.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/20/2020/11/COVID19-Vax-Press-Release__28Oct2020-1.pdf">agreements</a>
to purchase enough doses to cover 230% of its population and could
eventually control 1.8 billion doses (about a quarter of the world’s
near-term supply).</p>
<p>India and South Africa have made a reasonable <a href="https://docs.wto.org/dol2fe/Pages/SS/directdoc.aspx?filename=q:/IP/C/W669.pdf&Open=True">proposal</a>
to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) for the waiver of intellectual
property rights in relation to the prevention, containment, and
treatment of COVID-19; this would mean a suspension of the Agreement on
Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (<a href="https://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/27-trips_01_e.htm">TRIPS</a>).
Most of the poorer nations are arguing for equitable and affordable
access to medicines and medical products during the pandemic, which the
WHO has backed in the WTO’s TRIPS council. This proposal has been <a href="https://www.keionline.org/34235">opposed</a>
by the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Brazil. They make
the illusionary argument that a suspension of intellectual property
rights during the pandemic will stifle innovation. In reality, a few
major vaccine producers (Pfizer, Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, and Sanofi)
monopolise the development of vaccines, which are often produced using
public subsidies (Moderna, for instance, <a href="https://www.oxfamamerica.org/explore/stories/rich-countries-call-dibs-covid-19-vaccines-image/">received</a>
$2.48 billion in public funds towards the vaccine). Innovation in areas
such as pharmaceuticals is often publicly funded but privately owned.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_31906" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Yoshitoshi-Tsukioka-Smallpox-Demons-New-Forms-of-Thirty-six-Ghosts-1890-3.jpg" alt="Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (Japan), Smallpox Demons, New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts, 1890." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="267" height="395"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-31906" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Yoshitoshi Tsukioka (Japan), <i>Smallpox Demons, New Forms of Thirty-six Ghosts</i>, 1890.</span></p></div>
<p>On 14 May, 140 world leaders signed a <a href="https://www.unaids.org/en/resources/presscentre/featurestories/2020/may/20200514_covid19-vaccine-open-letter">pledge</a>
that demanded that all tests, treatments, and vaccines be patent-free
and that the vaccines be distributed fairly without cost to the poorer
nations. Several countries, including China, have joined this approach.
The idea is that the formula for one or more vaccines can be uploaded to
a public site where governments can direct their public sector
pharmaceutical firms to distribute the vaccines in their countries
either for free or for an affordable price or that private sector firms
make vaccines and deliver them at affordable prices. The need to
diversify production comes because there is simply not enough
deep-freeze courier capacity to transport the vaccines around the world.
The issue of public sector pharmaceutical <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/14/good-news-on-vaccines-but-what-about-its-delivery/">capacity</a>
is a very pressing one, since over the past five decades the IMF has
pushed countries to privatise the public sector and rely upon a handful
of multinational drug companies. It is time, say the heads of
governments who signed the document, to reverse that trend and rebuild
public sector pharmaceutical production lines.</p>
<p>The way things are going, <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/en/press-releases/small-group-rich-nations-have-bought-more-half-future-supply-leading-covid-19">two-thirds</a> of the world’s population will not have a vaccine before the end of 2022.</p>
<p>The struggle between ‘vaccine nationalism’ and the ‘people’s vaccine’
mirrors the fight between the North and the South over questions of
debt and over vast areas of human development. Precious resources need
to go towards testing, tracing, and isolation to break the chain of
infection of the virus; they need to go towards building up the public
health infrastructure, including training health care professionals who
would need to give the two-dose injection to billions of people; they
need to be used for the building of regional pharmaceutical production;
and certainly they need to go towards the immediate relief for people,
including <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-28-coronavirus/">income support</a>, <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/20-2020-famine/">food provision</a>, and social protection against the <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-4-coronashock-and-patriarchy/">shadow pandemic</a> of patriarchal violence.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201125_Mahmoud-Darwish-1.jpg" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="395" height="395"></p>
<p>Talking to doctors and scientists such as Yogesh Jain and Prabir
Purkayastha about the vaccine, I was reminded of a 2002 visit to
Palestine that Mahmoud Darwish had organised for writers, including Wole
Soyinka, José Saramago, and Breyten Breytenbach, when he greeted them
with this meditation on hope:</p>
<p>We have an incurable malady: hope. Hope in liberation and
independence. Hope in a normal life where we are neither heroes nor
victims. Hope that our children will go safely to their schools. Hope
that a pregnant woman will give birth to a living baby at the hospital,
and not a dead child in front of a military checkpoint; hope that our
poets will see the beauty of the colour red in roses rather than in
blood; hope that this land will take up its original name: the land of
love and peace.</p>
<p>The International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People is on
29 November. We, at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research,
affirm our affection and solidarity with the struggle of the
Palestinians for emancipation. We want to put on record a call for the
release of all Palestinian political prisoners, including <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/11/10/palestinian-womens-organization-leader-khitam-saafin-placed-in-administrative-detention-for-6-months/">Khitam Saafin</a>, the president of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, and <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2019/10/31/israel-arrests-palestinian-lawmaker-khalida-jarrar-just-months-after-her-release/">Khalida Jarrar</a>, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. The jails where Israel imprisons Palestinians have <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/covid-israel-palestine-prisoners-infected">seen</a> devastating outbreaks of COVID-19.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_31886" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Kamal-Nicola-Palestine-Sumud-Steadfastness-Palestine-Red-Crescent-Society-1980.-1.jpg" alt="Kamal Nicola (Palestine), Sumud [Steadfastness], Palestine Red Crescent Society, 1980." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="272" height="395"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-31886" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Kamal Nicola (Palestine), <i>Sumud </i>[Steadfastness], Palestine Red Crescent Society, 1980.</span></p></div>
<p> <br>
Physicians for Human Rights Israel wrote a short <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(20)30237-0/fulltext#%20">note</a> in <i>The Lancet</i>
called ‘Battling COVID-19 in the occupied Palestinian territory’. They
describe the efforts of the dedicated Palestinian health care workers as
being ‘hampered by the unique restrictions faced by the Palestinian
health system.’ This includes the separation between East Jerusalem,
Gaza, and the West Bank, the ‘restrictions that Israel imposes’, and the
imprisoned nature of the entire Palestinian population. The three
million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have access to
only 87 intensive care beds with ventilators (with much lower numbers
for the two million Palestinians in Gaza), while Israel enforces a water
and electricity crisis on the Palestinians.</p>
<p>The situation is deplorable. Struggle and hope are its antidotes.</p>
<p>Warmly,</p>
<p>Vijay.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/20201124_Cristiane_EN-Web.jpg" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="395" height="207"></p>
<p><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/48-covid-vaccines/?output=pdf">Download as PDF</a> </p></div></div></div>
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