End vaccine apartheid

‘Vaccine costs have pushed many developing countries to the end of the COVID-19 vaccination queue, with most low-income ones not even lining up. Worse, less vaccinated poor nations cannot afford fiscal efforts to provide relief or stimulate recovery, let alone achieve Agenda 2030.’

This story is well argued and contains several relevant and informative links under the following subheadings:

• Excluding by appropriating:
• Profits booster
• Profits over science
• Apartheid booster
• Vaccine equity necessary

Read here (IPS News, Sept 7, 2021)

Rich country hypocrisy exposed by vaccine inequities

‘No one is protected from the global pandemic until everyone is’ has become a popular mantra. But vaccine apartheid worldwide, due to rich countries’ policies, has made COVID-19 a developing country pandemic, delaying its end and global economic recovery.

This story is well argued and contains several relevant and informative links under the following subheadings:

• Systemic inequities
• Leftovers now charity
• European hypocrisy
• New North-South divide
• Reject new apartheid, cooperate

Read here (IPS News, Jul 13, 2021)

The threat that Covid-19 poses now

‘After a year of waves and surges, the pandemic is entering a “tornado” phase in America...

‘The United States is entering a new phase of the pandemic. Although we’ve previously described the most devastating periods as “waves” and “surges,” the more proper metaphor now is a tornado: Some communities won’t see the storm, others will be well fortified against disaster, and the most at-risk places will be crushed. The virus has never hit all places equally, but the remarkable protection of the vaccines, combined with the new attributes of the variants, has created a situation where the pandemic will disappear, but only in some places. The pandemic is or will soon be over for a lot of people in well-resourced, heavily vaccinated communities. In places where vaccination rates are low and risk remains high, more people will join the 550,000 who have already died.’

Read here (The Atlantic, Apr 6, 2021)

Covid hollows out the middle class everywhere, pushing millions into poverty, new research finds

‘The COVID-19 pandemic has eroded living standards around the globe, shrinking the global middle class and swelling the number of people in poverty amid a historic collapse in economic activity.

‘Analysis from Pew Research Center found that the global economic recession brought on by the pandemic shrank the worldwide middle class by 54 million, and increased the number of people in poverty by 131 million.

‘The middle-class falloff was most evident in South Asia, East Asia, and the Pacific, where the expansion seen over previous years came to a virtual halt. But it could have been worse: “The erosion in the middle class might have been deeper if not for the fact that China—which is home to more than one-third of the global middle class—evaded an economic contraction, even though growth there was slower than anticipated,” the Pew study said.’

Read here (Fortune, Mar 18, 2021)

Analysis: How for-profit health care worsened the pandemic

‘The U.S. remains the only one of the 25 wealthiest countries to not provide universal health care, and the health care system’s focus on profits and not health has cost Americans their lives. Despite having less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. has had 25% of the world’s confirmed cases and 20% of the deaths. Public Citizen’s new report demonstrates how:

• Before the pandemic, approximately 87 million Americans were uninsured or underinsured. About one-third of COVID-19 deaths and 40% of infections were tied to a lack of insurance;
• About half of Americans receive their health care through their employer. With more than 22 million Americans losing their job during the pandemic, millions have lost their health insurance;
• Racial health disparities, including access to care, have led to disproportionate deaths in communities of color;
• We have the highest rate of unmet need of any comparably wealthy country, with one-third of Americans reporting that they or a family member has avoided going to the doctor when sick or injured in the past year due to cost;
• Americans are significantly more likely to die of chronic respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes or cancer than people in comparably wealthy countries with universal health care systems; and
• A lack of essential funding led to insufficient hospital capacity. The U.S. had only around half the hospital beds per capita of peer nations and far fewer than countries like Japan or Germany.’

Read here (Public Citizen, Mar 16, 2021)

Nobel prize economists Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence call for vaccine equity and debt relief

‘Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence are spearheading calls for urgent action to help poorer countries recover from the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, including measures to advance vaccine equity, debt relief, and bolstering fiscal resources for cash-strapped nations.

‘The proposals were outlined in a new interim report released on Thursday – the one-year anniversary of the global pandemic – by the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation, co-chaired by Stiglitz and Spence.‘

Read here (Aljazeera, Mar 11, 2021)\

The pandemic and the economic crisis: A global agenda for urgent action

Read full text here (Institute for New Economic Thinking, March, 2021)

Rich nations stockpiling a billion more COVID-19 shots than needed: Report

‘Rich countries are on course to have over a billion more doses of COVID-19 vaccines than they need, leaving poorer nations scrambling for leftover supplies as the world seeks to curb the coronavirus pandemic, a report by anti-poverty campaigners found on Friday. In an analysis of current supply deals for COVID-19 vaccines, the ONE Campaign said wealthy countries, such as the United States and Britain, should share the excess doses to “supercharge” a fully global response to the pandemic.

‘The advocacy group, which campaigns against poverty and preventable diseases, said a failure to do so would deny billions of people essential protection from the COVID-19-causing virus and likely prolong the pandemic. The report looked specifically at contracts with the five leading COVID-19 vaccine makers - Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, and Novavax.’

Read here (Reuters, Feb 19, 2021)

The pandemic has unmasked America’s deepest inequities: Covid’s disparate racial impacts, by the numbers

‘Covid-19 doesn’t discriminate, but the havoc wrought by the virus—the deaths, economic devastation, and intergenerational trauma—has disproportionately affected Black, Latino, and Native American communities. The Trump administration’s feckless response didn’t help, yet even proactive steps have reinforced preexisting inequities: Stay-at-home orders protected people with the privilege to work remotely while frontline workers, disproportionately Black and Latino, took on greater risk of exposure. People of color have also experienced more unemployment and financial insecurity. As Mary Bassett, director of Harvard’s François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights, explains, none of this is caused by the virus itself: “It’s because of the social consequences of race in our society, which has been reinforced by decades, centuries of bad practices and policies.”

Read here (Mother Jones, Feb 12, 2021) 

Covid-19 pandemic has shown humanity at its best – & at its worst: WHO DG before the UNICEF Executive Board

‘Ultimately, our fight is not against a single virus. Our fight is against the inequalities that leave children in some countries exposed to deadly diseases that are easily prevented in others; Our fight is against the inequalities that mean women and their babies die during childbirth in some countries because of complications that are easily prevented in others;

‘And our fight is to ensure that health is no longer a commodity or a luxury item, but a fundamental human right, and the foundation of the safer, fairer and more sustainable world we all want.

‘History will not judge us solely by how we ended the COVID-19 pandemic, but what we learned, what we changed, and the future we left our children.’

Read here (IPS News, Feb 11, 2021)

Lancet editor says inequality and Covid-19 have converged to create a ‘syndemic’

‘In his new book "The COVID-19 Catastrophe: What's Gone Wrong and How to Stop It Happening Again," Dr. Richard Horton does more than trace the history of the COVID-19 pandemic and explain how we should listen to scientific experts in confronting this global scourge.

‘He does this, of course, but Horton is more ambitious than that. As editor-in-chief of "The Lancet" — one of the world's oldest, most famous and most prestigious medical journals — Horton has overseen the publication of countless articles on a variety of medical subjects. Hence, one can sense in his book a desire to apply the full breadth of his knowledge and experience to this problem. His conclusion is both fascinating and extremely relevant, even urgent.

‘As Horton explains, the COVID-19 pandemic was unnecessarily worsened by deeper social problems, from economic policies that left millions upon millions of people especially vulnerable to Western governments who made political assumptions about the virus that proved to be gravely mistaken. Speaking with Salon, Horton discussed everything from President Donald Trump's failure to address the pandemic (as well as President Joe Biden's early successes) to an intriguing thought experiment on what would have happened if the governments the world could have simply paid people to stay home.’

Read here (Salon, Feb 6, 2021)

Covid-19 and the convergence of nations

‘Few, if any [government], have set out recovery strategies that include the goal to reduce inequalities as part of future pandemic preparedness. Yet an essential truth of this emergency is that stronger security depends on fairer societies. But that is not the whole story...

‘In a working paper published last week by the US National Bureau of Economic Research, the Nobel economist Angus Deaton concludes that, at least in terms of global income, inequalities have decreased. He claims that the views of several respected authorities, ranging from fellow Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz to the UN Development Programme, are plain wrong. His argument is that high-income nations have suffered higher rates of mortality than low-income and middle-income countries. These higher mortality rates have translated into larger falls in wealth. This is an important observation...

‘The reality is that health and prosperity go hand-in-hand. During this pandemic, the smaller the number of deaths, the larger the income of a nation. The result has been that incomes per person in wealthier countries have fallen more than those in low-income countries. International income inequalities have therefore decreased. Nations have converged, not diverged. As Deaton notes, the pandemic “has brought countries closer together, not further apart”.

Read here (The Lancet, Feb 6, 2021)

Wealth increase of 10 men during pandemic could buy vaccines for all: Oxfam

‘The combined wealth of the world's 10 richest men rose by $540bn (£400bn) during the pandemic, according to Oxfam. The charity claims this amount would be enough to prevent the world from falling into poverty because of the virus, and pay for vaccines for all. The organisation is urging governments to consider taxes on the super-rich. Oxfam's report comes as global leaders gather virtually for the World Economic Forum's "Davos Dialogue" meeting.’

Read here (BBC, Jan 26, 2021)

The inequality virus: Bringing together a world torn apart by coronavirus through a fair, just and sustainable economy

‘The coronavirus pandemic has the potential to lead to an increase in inequality in almost every country at once, the first time this has happened since records began. The virus has exposed, fed off and increased existing inequalities of wealth, gender and race. Over two million people have died, and hundreds of millions of people are being forced into poverty while many of the richest – individuals and corporations – are thriving. Billionaire fortunes returned to their pre-pandemic highs in just nine months, while recovery for the world’s poorest people could take over a decade.

‘The crisis has exposed our collective frailty and the inability of our deeply unequal economy to work for all. Yet it has also shown us the vital importance of government action to protect our health and livelihoods. Transformative policies that seemed unthinkable before the crisis have suddenly been shown to be possible. There can be no return to where we were before. Instead, citizens and governments must act on the urgency to create a more equal and sustainable world.’ 

Download PDF here (Oxfam, Jan 25, 2021)

Dr Paul Farmer: Centuries of inequality in the US laid groundwork for pandemic devastation

‘As the United States sets records for COVID-19 deaths and hospitalizations, we speak with one of the world's leading experts on infectious diseases, Dr. Paul Farmer, who says the devastating death toll in the U.S. reflects decades of underinvestment in public health and centuries of social inequality. "All the social pathologies of our nation come to the fore during epidemics," says Dr. Farmer, a professor of medicine at Harvard University, chair of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School and co-founder and chief strategist of Partners in Health.’

View here (Democracy Now, Youtube, Jan 1, 2021)

Covid-19 has shown us that good health is not just down to biology

‘Of all the lessons we’ve learned from this pandemic, the most significant is how unequal its effects have been. Wealth, it turns out, is the best shielding strategy from Covid-19. As poorer people crowded together in cramped housing, the rich escaped to their country retreats. Two of the largest risk factors for dying from Covid-19 are being from a deprived background and being from a minority-ethnic background, pointing to the underlying role of social inequalities, housing conditions and occupation.

\‘Our society’s recovery from this disease should be centred on building more equal, resilient societies, where people in all parts of the world have access to both protection from the disease and access to research developments. It all starts with government. At the end of a gruelling 11 months, I’m left with Abraham Lincoln’s words in my mind: the pandemic has shown that we need “government of the people, by the people, for the people” – not just government for the wealthy elite. Perhaps that’s the strongest legacy of Covid-19.’

Read here (The Guardian, Dec 25, 2020)

Is mass vaccination the best strategy for all countries? A doctor's surprising view

‘COVID-19 is now the second-leading cause of death in the U.S. for 2020. The virus has killed more than 90 people per 100,000, reports Johns Hopkins University. 

‘But in other parts of the world, the virus hasn't been such a big problem. It's not a top killer. Some global health experts are beginning to ask whether immunizing large swaths of the population is the best use of resources for these countries. That's a question that Dr. Chizoba Barbara Wonodi of Johns Hopkins University has been thinking about as mass nationwide vaccine campaigns begin rolling out in rich countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States.’

Read here (NPR, Dec 14, 2020)

The billionaires who profited from the pandemic should help pay for our recovery

‘The collective wealth gain of roughly a trillion dollars that the billionaires have enjoyed is more “than it would cost to send a stimulus check of $3,000 to every one of the roughly 330 million people in America,” the report states. “A family of four would receive over $12,000.” The report points out that a trillion dollars is also “double the two-year estimated budget gap of all state and local governments”—the deficit facing states that will certainly prompt them to make more cuts in public jobs and services if it isn’t addressed. The authors of the report don’t argue that taxing the recent gains of the mega-rich would cover the entire fiscal cost of the pandemic. They stress, instead, the undoubted fact that, at the very apex of U.S. society, there is now a staggering—and historic—amount of wealth that could be taxed.’

Read here (The New Yorker, Dec 10, 2020)

United States: Beyond the wasteland -- New strategies for pivoting from the pandemic crisis to a recovery built on economic justice

‘Decades of falling wage shares mean that millions of households are ready to spend more if only they could earn more income. A well-calibrated recovery strategy that combines public spending on goods and services with regulation of predatory corporate behavior and effective redistribution can unleash a virtuous growth circle that improves living standards for the vast majority and strengthens government finances even as it generates resources to boost public services and tackle the environmental catastrophe.

‘Such a strategy would consist of the following elements:

• A prolonged fiscal expansion with immediate support to employment creation and social services, including a strong component in the care economy;
• Public-infrastructure investment to accelerate the energy transition by combining policies to encourage investments in renewables and discourage fossil fuel extraction;
• Policies to improve industrial capacity based on raising productivity and greater energy efficiency;
• Progressive tax reforms shifting the burden from indirect taxes such as sales and value-added taxes (which are regressive and discourage spending) to direct taxation, especially on high-income earners (whose consumption is relatively unaffected by taxation) and on corporate earnings and rents (with exemptions depending on employment creation).

Read here (The American Prospect, Nov 27, 2020)

Gender equality achievements being wiped out by pandemic

‘The coronavirus pandemic could wipe out 25 years of increasing gender equality, new global data from UN Women suggests. Women are doing significantly more domestic chores and family care, because of the impact of the pandemic. "Everything we worked for, that has taken 25 years, could be lost in a year," says UN Women Deputy Executive Director Anita Bhatia. Employment and education opportunities could be lost, and women may suffer from poorer mental and physical health.

Read here (BBC, Nov 27, 2020)

Has capitalism turned the COVID-19 emergency into a disaster?

‘Exploit it’ - Protect the People or the Profit? ‘We were in a crisis before COVID-19 - a crisis of capitalism. Join Ali Rae in this first episode of “Al Hail The Lockdown” - a 5 part series exploring the complexities of our global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode, Ali speaks with filmmaker and activist Astra Taylor, economist Aditya Chakrabortty and economic sociologist Linsey McGoey about disaster capitalism, philanthro-capitalism and how the structures of capitalism have left us ill-equipped to deal with the fallout of COVID-19.’

View here (Aljazeera, Nov 24, 2020)