📆 Sunday, June 6, 2021
⏰ 2 p.m.
🌎 Marburg, main station.
With 😷 mask and ↔️ 1.5 meters distance.
The current global crisis shows (manifests?) the catastrophic imbalance (disparity) of our world, which is also unmistakably expressed in the issue of vaccines. It is now clear to everyone that the pandemic will not be fully overcome until it is overcome everywhere in the world. But neocolonial power structures and capital interests stand in the way of this goal. Which side the German government is on is shown by its continued (continuous?) blocking stance on the TRIPS waiver.
TRIPS-wtf?!
The so-called waiver permits exemptions from intellectual property and patent rights. It was already proposed at (to) the WTO by South Africa and India back in the fall of 2020. The waiver would cover all products and technologies that contribute to the prevention, containment or (and?) treatment of COVID-19. That is, it could improve not only the supply of mRNA vaccines, but also ventilators, N95/FFP2 protective masks or (and?) therapies.
A global enforcement of patent rights exists since the TRIPS agreement of 1995. At the latest since the HIV/ Aids pandemic it has become more than visible that this right is diametrically opposed to the right to health!
SARS-CoV-2 is the virus. Capitalism is the pandemic.
In the past weeks we have heard much criticism of Biden’s new support for the TRIPS waiver, from Merkel to Biontech founder Şahin. (They claim) That only experienced companies could produce complicated mRNA vaccines, that everyone would be taken care of in a year anyway or that innovation would suffer as a result of a waiver. These are all pretextual arguments, which fall behind previous experiences of pandemic control (e.g. influenza) and protect the profit interests of pharmaceutical companies.
This makes us angry.
➡️ Angry, because when human lives are at stake, profits must not be the issue.
➡️ Angry, because an initiative like Covax is not enough and serves as an excuse.
➡️ Angry, because every week more we have to fight for the waiver, prolongs the pandemic and its deadly consequences.
➡️ Angry, because a much more fundamental question is not being asked at all: who actually owns the mRNA vaccine?
Global Health Equity. For a socialization of vaccine technology.
Billions of dollars of public money have flowed into the basic research of Biontech & Co over the past decades. At the same time, pharmaceutical companies have been refusing to transparently disclose their development costs for a long time now, while making fabulous profits from pandemics like this one. We say (ask), why not expropriate them now and put them under democratic control, e.g. as public law institutions (AdöR).
The Covid-19 pandemic demands global action in solidarity, not fragmented national or imperial responses to fight the virus. Grassroots movements, such as the C19 People’s Coalition in South Africa, are demanding that we in the Global North finally put more pressure on governments and pharmaceutical companies.
That is why we demand:
TRIPS waiver without compromise
Away with the neocolonial patent law!
Vaccine for all – globally and fairly distributed!
Socialization of pharmaceutical companies and hospitals.
Let us together bring these demands to the streets on June 06, 2021!
Organised by the alliance “Vaccine for all – international solidarity during the covid-pandemic”