Trump sides with pharmaceutical companies and private profit instead of world’s people.
by Jennifer Lin
Trump has announced that the US won’t participate in the WHO-backed COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access Facility (COVAX), a global initiative of 156 countries working together to develop a safe and effective Covid-19 vaccine and distribute it globally. Trump has already withdrawn funding from the WHO, which he falsely accuses of being controlled by China.
While international organizations including the WHO have praised China for its pandemic response and for assisting countries worldwide in curbing the pandemic, Trump insists on blaming China for Covid-19 in order to distract us from just how horrible the situation is in the US. Trump, who doesn’t believe in wearing masks and wants everyone to go back to work even though 200,000+ people in the US have died from Covid-19, once again shows he has zero commitment to public health.
Rather than being on the side of the people, Trump and his cronies are siding with pharmaceutical companies that have been profiting off the pandemic. One of these companies, Gilead, was given $99 million of US taxpayer money to develop remdesivir, a potential treatment for Covid-19. Gilead plans to sell remdesivir at $3120 per patient.
Pharmaceutical companies like Gilead see the pandemic as a giant cash cow, where the people fund research and development for lifesaving resources that Big Pharma hoards to secure billion-dollar profits. That’s why pharmaceutical companies are racing to produce vaccines as part of Trump’s Operation Warp Speed, which aims to sell vaccines by January 2021.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already granted companies like Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer over 6 billion of our tax dollars to develop vaccines. When he was head of Eli Lilly, current HHS Secretary Alex Azar tripled the price of insulin. When asked if HHS plans to make COVID-19 vaccines affordable for all, he replied, “We would want to ensure that we’d work to make it affordable, but we can’t control that price because we need the private sector to invest.” In other words, the U.S. ruling class sees healthcare as nothing but a commodity and is willing to let people die so the rich can profit.
Trump is continuing with the same policy of mass murder we’ve seen since the pandemic began. Corporations have received bailouts totaling $500 billion while workers have lost their livelihoods and lives because of cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and SNAP, mass unemployment, evictions, and being forced to return to unsafe jobs. How will we workers be expected to pay whatever outrageous prices Big Pharma charges for a vaccine when we’re already bankrupt trying to stay alive?
The WHO says another $35 billion will be needed for COVAX to succeed. Trump’s decision not to join this global effort is a threat not to just our safety, but to the safety of people worldwide. The only way out of the pandemic requires countries working together to develop a vaccine that everyone has equal access to, with an emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable populations. Countries like Cuba and China understand this; they are committed to offering vaccines to other countries rather than hoarding them for profit. We must oppose U.S. capitalists by championing global solidarity and organizing to secure healthcare as a right.