This is a fantastic visual illustration of the colonial world system.
It's kind of surprising to me that the US decided to support this and I haven't read enough yet to figure out why.
The situation in Greece is hilarious because New Democracy (liberal conservative ghouls in government) actually had brought it up as an idea early on, but after a while when Syriza also advocated for it they started mocking Syriza and talking about how it's nonsense, despite having considered shortly before themselves. I'm guessing what happened was that the EU told them "OK we're really, really not doing that so don't talk about it, alright?". So after going on for months and months making fun of Syriza and anyone on the left for wanting them to support patents being waived, suddenly the US starts backing it so now they're just either corncobbing or going "uhhhhh yeahhhh ummmm you know we've also been supporting it all along except not really". It's really stupid and it's very likely the position of the country will be reversed soon.
Lol Bill Gates accidentally doing something good by opposing it would be hilarious
That biden has signaled that he supports “a” IP reform not “the” IP reform (full waiving of rights) that activists have been pushing for. And that if we all go home and call it a day it leaves the administration open to pull some kind of 1/4 measure bullshit with tons of caveats and exceptions
In short, Dems are saying yes to a waiver, but not the one proposed. Idea is that they will ride the publicity wave, and not end up doing anything that actually helps. Even waiving the patent doesn't help the Global South with the infrastructure and support they will need to start manufacturing.
Honest to goodness I dont think it's structural. I think it's Biden's death drive making him try to become a memorable president.
Nah I'm pretty sure soemthing like that wouldn't be said just because Biden wants it. I think it might really be that they got scared by India. Its true that pharma doesn't really want the pandemic to end, and it's true that some other industries don't either, but there is also a huge block of powerful industries which does want it, and the governments generally try to do a balancing game. It may also have to do with the fact that China has dealt with covid and is growing fast, unlike the US and their allies, so that's even more incentive to end it. Finally it might be part of the strategy to gain back influence at the world stage.
Again I don't know, I no longer follow American politics as much and I haven't read enough about it to be sure but I think something like that may be the reason.
I think you nailed it.
The India strain scared them because a vaccine resistant strain could honestly spell the end of the US as it is. Another necessary shutdown would be resisted by the business class even harder. Then just leaving things open would wipe out a bunch of the population.
Then you have Russia & China giving out their vaccines to countries and actually helping them instead of extorting them like the global north is looking to.
Then just leaving things open would wipe out a bunch of the population.
That's not their main concern, since covid is not deadly enough to wipe out a significant percentage of the working population or anything like that, however the fear that comes with a surge makes many sectors of the economy seriously underperform. And of course you'd have to deal with the growing dissatisfaction. Many governments are eager to get to that point where people realize they don't have to worry at all any more, since they hope there will be some sort of spending frenzy.
I mostly agree with what you say. It's not their top priority, but I do disagree that the ruling class wouldn't worry about it. We saw 700k+ excess deaths from March till now according to the CDC. That's with only a few places being overwhelmed at certian times.
They'd have a decision to make to kneecap their already weak service economy to keep people alive or keep the economy chugging but have the fragile medical system get overwhelmed and see the death rate skyrocket to what it was earlier in the pandemic due to rationed care.
Either choice would lead to major unrest, imo.
Well it's not exactly that they don't worry about it at all but it can be spun various ways.
the comments on a tech nerd site i visit seem convinced that it won't help anybody, and are generally opposed to this move (think of the investments required! :shocked_porky: ), because they require processes far too advanced for those gross poor nations to be able to benefit from.
It’s kind of surprising to me that the US decided to support this
https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1390027450801864705
Hmm looks like Cuba has a green Full Support icon that is almost entirely covered up by other less full support icons. :soviet-hmm:
I didn't even notice that full support is layered down for the global south, but layered above for italy. God damn.
I can't figure out how this wouldn't have been a deliberate (if perhaps subconscious) choice. These can't have been placed in alphabetical order by country, or the Bahamas AND the Dominican Republic (or perhaps that's Jamaica) wouldn't both be on top of Cuba. If they placed the tokens of same kind all at once, why was the order orange (opposed), undetermined, green (full support), light green (support), yellow (partial support)? That seems like an odd choice to me personally.
Medicins sans frontiers continues to be France's best export, accompanied only by anarchism.
US ending up (eventually) on the right side of this one was pretty surprising.
Funny how closely this mirrors those maps of "freedom" or "corruption"
Here's the source with a larger image (Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders)
https://twitter.com/MSF_access/status/1390263015027707907Let's see that renegotiated TRIPS waiver before we say that the USA is onboard
What do you mean medical patents? You just posted a map of colonies vs colonizers
The Vatican I think judging from the position.
All EU countries are in a block, so it couldn't be Italy.
oh thank god, i know the italians would be very upset if they ever did anything good
Italy are supportive of it though, but they're still covered by the EU refusal. The only country that is vehemently against it in the EU is Germany as far as I am aware.
There's recent signs that Germany's opposition is wavering. If the US goes through with this, Merkel will definitely fall in line.
