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A healthcare worker administers an Oxford/AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to her colleague at Mutuini Hospital in Nairobi. Kenya on March 3, 2021 received its first batch of 1.02 million doses of Oxford/AstraZeneca through global COVAX scheme as part of the 24 million doses the country is expected to import in a couple of months. (Photo: Dennis Sigwe/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
WHO Chief Blasts 'Grotesque' Vaccine Inequality as Rich Nations Block Speedy End of Global Pandemic
"We have the means to avert this failure but it's shocking how little has been done to avert it."
Mar 23, 2021
As rich nations like the United States and pharmaceutical companies face sustained calls to share Covid-19 vaccine knowledge, the head of the World Health Organization on Monday decried the "grotesque" global inequality of vaccine distribution.
"In January, I said that the world was on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure unless urgent steps were taken to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.
"The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage, it's also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating."
--WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus"We have the means to avert this failure," he said, "but it's shocking how little has been done to avert it."
The gap in vaccine distribution, said Tedros, ultimately hurts all nations' effort to defeat the virus.
"The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage," said Tedros, "it's also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating."
\u201cWe have the means to achieve #VaccinEquity, but the gap between the number of vaccines administered in rich countries versus #COVAX is growing every single day and becoming more grotesque. We appeal to countries to share #COVID19 vaccines out of self-interest, if nothing else!\u201d— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) 1616486008
"As long as the virus continues to circulate anywhere, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be disrupted, and the economic recovery will be further delayed," the WHO chief said.
An analysis from Agence France-Presseputs the inequality in stark terms:
Some 56 percent of the doses have been administered in high-income countries accounting for 16 percent of the global population.
Just 0.1 percent have been administered in the 29 lowest-income countries, home to nine percent of the global population.
"The toll in Africa," the New York Timesreported Tuesday, "could be especially profound." Though it has 17% of the global population, the continent "has administered roughly 2 percent of the vaccine doses given globally."
\u201cIf you're telling me that we should do everything we can to fight the pandemic everywhere *while also protecting future pharma company profits* you're telling me that we shouldn't do everything we can to fight the pandemic everywhere.\u201d— Matt Duss (@Matt Duss) 1616517865
Putting focus on Kenya, one of the countries relying on the WHO-backed vaccine distribution scheme known as COVAX, the Times said that cases there are "soaring," and gave a sobering projection:
Even under the best of circumstances, the country is expecting to inoculate only 30 percent of its people, or about 16 million out of almost 50 million, by the middle of 2023. When the rest of the population will get their shots is anybody's guess.
Tedros, in his remarks Monday, pointed to AstraZeneca and said it's "the only company that has committed to not profiting from its Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic" and praised it for having licensed vaccine technology to other companies. While concerns have been raised about AstraZeneca's vaccine causing blood-clotting in some people, the WHO said it has been shown to be safe and approved its use.
\u201cYes, it's not just IP, we know that, but freeing up the ability of actors around the globe is what we need right now, and not contract negotiations one-on-one. 8/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1616445232
Some public health experts, including Tedros, and progressive groups like the People's Vaccine Alliance have been calling for a suspension in the World Trade Organization's intellectual property rules to allow other companies to produce the vaccine and thus widen the scope and scale of doses.
But, as the Timesreported Monday, "Governments have resisted."
By partnering with drug companies, Western leaders bought their way to the front of the line. But they also ignored years of warnings--and explicit calls from the World Health Organization--to include contract language that would have guaranteed doses for poor countries or encouraged companies to share their knowledge and the patents they control.
"It was like a run on toilet paper. Everybody was like, 'Get out of my way. I'm gonna get that last package of Charmin,'" said Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist. "We just ran for the doses."
A proposal from South Africa and India and backed by scores of other nations urges a waiver in the WTO rule, but richer nations, including the U.S and U.K., blocked a measure to do exactly that earlier this month.
\u201cA global pandemic requires a global effort to end it. That includes sharing critical info so other countries can produce the vaccine.\n\nThe U.S. must play its part in ending the vaccine apartheid.\nhttps://t.co/Lg1BHHVqXJ\u201d— Public Citizen (@Public Citizen) 1616513821
According to BBC News, citing a leaked copy of the negotiating text of a WHO resolution, "wealthy nations... are pushing back on provisions in international law" to help poorer nations produce more vaccines. From the news outlet:
The WHO does not have the authority to sidestep patents--but it is trying to bring countries together to find a way to bolster vaccine supplies.
The discussions include using provisions in international law to get around patents and helping countries to have the technical ability to make them.
But the drug industry argues that eroding patents would hinder its ability to invest in future treatments for Covid and other illnesses.
Earlier this month, representatives of the U.S. drug industry wrote to U.S. President Joe Biden to share their concerns.
But that sharing of vaccine knowledge is a crucial competent of ending vaccine inequality and thus the global pandemic, according to a call released last week backed by over 1000 scientists and public health experts.
"We must use vaccines this year to control the pandemic around the entire world, not just in a few high-income countries," they wrote.
"In a world where there are enormous inequalities," they wrote, "Covid vaccinations offer us the opportunity to provide everyone globally, regardless of income, race, or nationality, immunological equity to be protected from SARS-CoV-2."
U.K.-based organization Global Justice Now issued a similar message on Tuesday.
"The covid-19 pandemic will not be over for us until it is over for everyone," the group tweeted.
"We can end the Covid-19 pandemic this year," the group said. "But pharma giants are standing in the way."
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As rich nations like the United States and pharmaceutical companies face sustained calls to share Covid-19 vaccine knowledge, the head of the World Health Organization on Monday decried the "grotesque" global inequality of vaccine distribution.
"In January, I said that the world was on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure unless urgent steps were taken to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.
"The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage, it's also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating."
--WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus"We have the means to avert this failure," he said, "but it's shocking how little has been done to avert it."
The gap in vaccine distribution, said Tedros, ultimately hurts all nations' effort to defeat the virus.
"The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage," said Tedros, "it's also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating."
\u201cWe have the means to achieve #VaccinEquity, but the gap between the number of vaccines administered in rich countries versus #COVAX is growing every single day and becoming more grotesque. We appeal to countries to share #COVID19 vaccines out of self-interest, if nothing else!\u201d— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) 1616486008
"As long as the virus continues to circulate anywhere, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be disrupted, and the economic recovery will be further delayed," the WHO chief said.
An analysis from Agence France-Presseputs the inequality in stark terms:
Some 56 percent of the doses have been administered in high-income countries accounting for 16 percent of the global population.
Just 0.1 percent have been administered in the 29 lowest-income countries, home to nine percent of the global population.
"The toll in Africa," the New York Timesreported Tuesday, "could be especially profound." Though it has 17% of the global population, the continent "has administered roughly 2 percent of the vaccine doses given globally."
\u201cIf you're telling me that we should do everything we can to fight the pandemic everywhere *while also protecting future pharma company profits* you're telling me that we shouldn't do everything we can to fight the pandemic everywhere.\u201d— Matt Duss (@Matt Duss) 1616517865
Putting focus on Kenya, one of the countries relying on the WHO-backed vaccine distribution scheme known as COVAX, the Times said that cases there are "soaring," and gave a sobering projection:
Even under the best of circumstances, the country is expecting to inoculate only 30 percent of its people, or about 16 million out of almost 50 million, by the middle of 2023. When the rest of the population will get their shots is anybody's guess.
Tedros, in his remarks Monday, pointed to AstraZeneca and said it's "the only company that has committed to not profiting from its Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic" and praised it for having licensed vaccine technology to other companies. While concerns have been raised about AstraZeneca's vaccine causing blood-clotting in some people, the WHO said it has been shown to be safe and approved its use.
\u201cYes, it's not just IP, we know that, but freeing up the ability of actors around the globe is what we need right now, and not contract negotiations one-on-one. 8/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1616445232
Some public health experts, including Tedros, and progressive groups like the People's Vaccine Alliance have been calling for a suspension in the World Trade Organization's intellectual property rules to allow other companies to produce the vaccine and thus widen the scope and scale of doses.
But, as the Timesreported Monday, "Governments have resisted."
By partnering with drug companies, Western leaders bought their way to the front of the line. But they also ignored years of warnings--and explicit calls from the World Health Organization--to include contract language that would have guaranteed doses for poor countries or encouraged companies to share their knowledge and the patents they control.
"It was like a run on toilet paper. Everybody was like, 'Get out of my way. I'm gonna get that last package of Charmin,'" said Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist. "We just ran for the doses."
A proposal from South Africa and India and backed by scores of other nations urges a waiver in the WTO rule, but richer nations, including the U.S and U.K., blocked a measure to do exactly that earlier this month.
\u201cA global pandemic requires a global effort to end it. That includes sharing critical info so other countries can produce the vaccine.\n\nThe U.S. must play its part in ending the vaccine apartheid.\nhttps://t.co/Lg1BHHVqXJ\u201d— Public Citizen (@Public Citizen) 1616513821
According to BBC News, citing a leaked copy of the negotiating text of a WHO resolution, "wealthy nations... are pushing back on provisions in international law" to help poorer nations produce more vaccines. From the news outlet:
The WHO does not have the authority to sidestep patents--but it is trying to bring countries together to find a way to bolster vaccine supplies.
The discussions include using provisions in international law to get around patents and helping countries to have the technical ability to make them.
But the drug industry argues that eroding patents would hinder its ability to invest in future treatments for Covid and other illnesses.
Earlier this month, representatives of the U.S. drug industry wrote to U.S. President Joe Biden to share their concerns.
But that sharing of vaccine knowledge is a crucial competent of ending vaccine inequality and thus the global pandemic, according to a call released last week backed by over 1000 scientists and public health experts.
"We must use vaccines this year to control the pandemic around the entire world, not just in a few high-income countries," they wrote.
"In a world where there are enormous inequalities," they wrote, "Covid vaccinations offer us the opportunity to provide everyone globally, regardless of income, race, or nationality, immunological equity to be protected from SARS-CoV-2."
U.K.-based organization Global Justice Now issued a similar message on Tuesday.
"The covid-19 pandemic will not be over for us until it is over for everyone," the group tweeted.
"We can end the Covid-19 pandemic this year," the group said. "But pharma giants are standing in the way."
As rich nations like the United States and pharmaceutical companies face sustained calls to share Covid-19 vaccine knowledge, the head of the World Health Organization on Monday decried the "grotesque" global inequality of vaccine distribution.
"In January, I said that the world was on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure unless urgent steps were taken to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference.
"The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage, it's also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating."
--WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus"We have the means to avert this failure," he said, "but it's shocking how little has been done to avert it."
The gap in vaccine distribution, said Tedros, ultimately hurts all nations' effort to defeat the virus.
"The inequitable distribution of vaccines is not just a moral outrage," said Tedros, "it's also economically and epidemiologically self-defeating."
\u201cWe have the means to achieve #VaccinEquity, but the gap between the number of vaccines administered in rich countries versus #COVAX is growing every single day and becoming more grotesque. We appeal to countries to share #COVID19 vaccines out of self-interest, if nothing else!\u201d— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus) 1616486008
"As long as the virus continues to circulate anywhere, people will continue to die, trade and travel will continue to be disrupted, and the economic recovery will be further delayed," the WHO chief said.
An analysis from Agence France-Presseputs the inequality in stark terms:
Some 56 percent of the doses have been administered in high-income countries accounting for 16 percent of the global population.
Just 0.1 percent have been administered in the 29 lowest-income countries, home to nine percent of the global population.
"The toll in Africa," the New York Timesreported Tuesday, "could be especially profound." Though it has 17% of the global population, the continent "has administered roughly 2 percent of the vaccine doses given globally."
\u201cIf you're telling me that we should do everything we can to fight the pandemic everywhere *while also protecting future pharma company profits* you're telling me that we shouldn't do everything we can to fight the pandemic everywhere.\u201d— Matt Duss (@Matt Duss) 1616517865
Putting focus on Kenya, one of the countries relying on the WHO-backed vaccine distribution scheme known as COVAX, the Times said that cases there are "soaring," and gave a sobering projection:
Even under the best of circumstances, the country is expecting to inoculate only 30 percent of its people, or about 16 million out of almost 50 million, by the middle of 2023. When the rest of the population will get their shots is anybody's guess.
Tedros, in his remarks Monday, pointed to AstraZeneca and said it's "the only company that has committed to not profiting from its Covid-19 vaccine during the pandemic" and praised it for having licensed vaccine technology to other companies. While concerns have been raised about AstraZeneca's vaccine causing blood-clotting in some people, the WHO said it has been shown to be safe and approved its use.
\u201cYes, it's not just IP, we know that, but freeing up the ability of actors around the globe is what we need right now, and not contract negotiations one-on-one. 8/\u201d— Gregg Gonsalves (@Gregg Gonsalves) 1616445232
Some public health experts, including Tedros, and progressive groups like the People's Vaccine Alliance have been calling for a suspension in the World Trade Organization's intellectual property rules to allow other companies to produce the vaccine and thus widen the scope and scale of doses.
But, as the Timesreported Monday, "Governments have resisted."
By partnering with drug companies, Western leaders bought their way to the front of the line. But they also ignored years of warnings--and explicit calls from the World Health Organization--to include contract language that would have guaranteed doses for poor countries or encouraged companies to share their knowledge and the patents they control.
"It was like a run on toilet paper. Everybody was like, 'Get out of my way. I'm gonna get that last package of Charmin,'" said Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale epidemiologist. "We just ran for the doses."
A proposal from South Africa and India and backed by scores of other nations urges a waiver in the WTO rule, but richer nations, including the U.S and U.K., blocked a measure to do exactly that earlier this month.
\u201cA global pandemic requires a global effort to end it. That includes sharing critical info so other countries can produce the vaccine.\n\nThe U.S. must play its part in ending the vaccine apartheid.\nhttps://t.co/Lg1BHHVqXJ\u201d— Public Citizen (@Public Citizen) 1616513821
According to BBC News, citing a leaked copy of the negotiating text of a WHO resolution, "wealthy nations... are pushing back on provisions in international law" to help poorer nations produce more vaccines. From the news outlet:
The WHO does not have the authority to sidestep patents--but it is trying to bring countries together to find a way to bolster vaccine supplies.
The discussions include using provisions in international law to get around patents and helping countries to have the technical ability to make them.
But the drug industry argues that eroding patents would hinder its ability to invest in future treatments for Covid and other illnesses.
Earlier this month, representatives of the U.S. drug industry wrote to U.S. President Joe Biden to share their concerns.
But that sharing of vaccine knowledge is a crucial competent of ending vaccine inequality and thus the global pandemic, according to a call released last week backed by over 1000 scientists and public health experts.
"We must use vaccines this year to control the pandemic around the entire world, not just in a few high-income countries," they wrote.
"In a world where there are enormous inequalities," they wrote, "Covid vaccinations offer us the opportunity to provide everyone globally, regardless of income, race, or nationality, immunological equity to be protected from SARS-CoV-2."
U.K.-based organization Global Justice Now issued a similar message on Tuesday.
"The covid-19 pandemic will not be over for us until it is over for everyone," the group tweeted.
"We can end the Covid-19 pandemic this year," the group said. "But pharma giants are standing in the way."
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LATEST NEWS
'We're Turning Into a Dictatorship': Trump Tariffs Seen as Ploy to Further Consolidate Power
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy called President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs "a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy."
Apr 07, 2025
Analysts puzzling over the bizarre formula the Trump administration used to calculate its country-by-country tariff rates are wasting their time, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said in a response to the American president that has gone viral in recent days as global markets continue to nosedive.
"It's not economic policy, it's not trade policy," Murphy (D-Conn.) said in remarks recorded after Trump announced the sweeping tariffs last week. "It's a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy."
While President Donald Trump's universal tariffs on imports make no sense as an effort to rectify the failures of the status quo trade regime and bring back offshored U.S. jobs, they are comprehensible when viewed as "a tool to try to compel pledges of loyalty, this time from companies and industries in the United States," Murphy argued.
"You have to understand that everything Donald Trump is doing is in service of staying in power forever—either him or his family or his handpicked successors," the Democratic senator continued. "He's trying to destroy our democracy."
Murphy contended that the president designed the tariffs to be so widespread that corporations across private industry would have to come to the White House and "make an agreement with Trump in which he gives them tariff relief in exchange for a pledge of political loyalty."
"What could that pledge look like?" Murphy continued. "Well, maybe they agree to champion his economic policy publicly. Maybe they agree to make contributions to his political campaign. Maybe they agree to police their employees to make sure that nobody that works for that company works for the political opposition."
Politico reported late last week that businesses across corporate America "fear Trump's wrath" and are thus declining to criticize the president's tariff policies even as they wreak havoc worldwide and threaten to spark a devastating recession.
"There is zero incentive for any company or brand to be remotely critical of this administration," one unnamed public affairs operative told Politico. "It destroys your ability to work with the White House and advance your policies, period."
"While the United States has plenty of real problems to deal with, Trump is ignoring them to manufacture the fake emergencies he needs to further enlarge and centralize his power."
Murphy is hardly alone in seeing Trump's tariffs as an instrument of power consolidation.
Robert Reich, the former U.S. labor secretary, wrote Monday that "we're turning into a dictatorship" as Trump conjures "fake national emergencies" to jack up tariffs, deport people en masse without due process, gut efforts to combat the climate crisis, and dismantle large swaths of the federal government.
"As Trump declares emergency after emergency to justify his reign of terror, he's simultaneously eliminating America's capacity to respond to real emergencies," Reich wrote. "Make no mistake about what’s really going on here. While the United States has plenty of real problems to deal with, Trump is ignoring them to manufacture the fake emergencies he needs to further enlarge and centralize his power."
One analyst, Zack Beauchamp of Vox, argued the tariffs are more a symptom of the decline of U.S. democracy rather than a cause of it.
"Trump's tariffs will, if fully implemented, be remembered as their own cautionary tale. While he campaigned on them, he wouldn't have been able to implement the entire tariff package had he gone through the normal constitutionally prescribed procedure for raising taxes," Beauchamp wrote. "The fact that America isn't functioning like a normal democracy, with public deliberation and multiple checks on executive authority, is what allowed Trump to act on his idiosyncratic ideas in the manner of a Mao or Putin."
"It's still possible that Trump steps back from the brink," he added. "But even if he does, and the worst outcome is avoided, the lesson should be clear: The long decay of America's democratic system means that we are all living under an axe. And if this isn't the moment it falls, there will surely be another."
Trump Calls Tariff Madness a 'Beautiful Thing to Behold' as Global Markets Crater
"If the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."
Apr 07, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump late Sunday openly embraced the global chaos sparked by his sweeping tariffs, careening headlong into a potentially catastrophic trade war as worldwide financial markets plummeted and American retirees began to panic.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump declared that his tariffs are "already in effect, and a beautiful thing to behold."
"Some day people will realize that Tariffs, for the United States of America, are a very beautiful thing!" Trump wrote as recent retirees and people near retirement expressed fear and astonishment at the swift damage the president's policy decisions have done to their investment accounts.
One retiree, a 68-year-old former occupational health worker in New Jersey, told NBC News that she is "just kind of stunned, and with so much money in the market, we just sort of have to hope we have enough time to recover."
"What we've been doing is trying to enjoy the time that we have, but you want to be able to make it last," the retiree, identified as Paula, said on Friday. "I have no confidence here."
Trump's post doubling down on his tariff regime came as Asian markets cratered and U.S. stock futures opened bright red, signaling that Monday will bring another broad sell-off in equities. One of Trump's top economic advisers claimed in a Sunday interview that the president is not intentionally crashing the stock market, even as Trump—returning from a weekend golf outing in Florida—characterized the tariffs as "medicine."
"I don't want anything to go down," the president said. "But sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something."
Bloomberg's John Authers wrote early Sunday that "if the 4.8% fall in S&P 500 futures at the Asian opening isn't reversed, then it's on course for its worst three-day selloff since the Black Monday crash of October 1987."
Though the stock market and the economy are not synonymous, economist Josh Bivens recently noted that they are currently "mirroring each other: Stock market weakness is reflecting broader economic weakness."
"While the stock market isn't the economy, the stock market declines we have seen in recent weeks are genuinely worrying," wrote Bivens, the chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute. "They are a symptom of much larger dysfunctional macroeconomic policy that will likely soon start showing up in higher unemployment and slower wage growth for the vast majority."
'Totally Lawless': Judge Orders Trump to Return Man Sent to El Salvador Prison in 'Error'
"This was an illegal act," said U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis.
Apr 06, 2025
A federal court judge on Sunday declared the Trump administration's refusal to return a man they sent to an El Salvadoran prison in "error" as "totally lawless" behavior and ordered the Department of Homeland Security to repatriate the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, within 24 hours.
In a 22-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis doubled down on an order issued Friday, which Department of Justice lawyers representing the administration said was an affront to his executive authority.
"This was an illegal act," Xinis said of DHS Secretary Krisi Noem's attack on Abrego Garcia's rights, including his deportation and imprisonment.
"Defendants seized Abrego Garcia without any lawful authority; held him in three separate domestic detention centers without legal basis; failed to present him to any immigration judge or officer; and forcibly transported him to El Salvador in direct contravention of [immigration law]," the decision states.
Once imprisoned in El Salvador, the order continues, "U.S. officials secured his detention in a facility that, by design, deprives its detainees of adequate food, water, and shelter, fosters routine violence; and places him with his persecutors."
Trump's DOJ appealed Friday's order to 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Virginia, but that court has not yet ruled on the request to stay the order from Xinis, which says Abrego Garcia should be returned to the United States no later than Monday.
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