The AstraZeneca vaccine was originally developed by Oxford and was going to be public info so countries could make their own (I’m simplifying it going off of memory).
The Gates Foundation urged them to sell the rights to it to AstraZeneca instead, thus killing the plan to make it public. South Africa may not use it now, but that could quite literally be ol’ Bill’s fault since he had it privatized
That's all true, but the reason South Africa didn't use AstraZeneca at the time was because it was ineffective against the beta variant circling back then. So we had to send the AstraZeneca vaccine that we bought back to the manufacturer. It was a national embarrassment that was used by chuds to fuel anti vaccine sentiment at a critical time.
But yes, Bill Gates did do that and his excuse was that African countries couldn't manufacture it safely. Even though there were facilities in place that could.
Ah, I remember some controversy over a minuscule blood clot risk and it getting paused in some Euro countries or something like that too.
I remember it being somewhat less effective (not sure how much offhand), but if it had been publicly available to begin with that still would have been much more than anything else the West has done to help globally.
Also yeah I saw that “poorer countries can’t be trusted to make their own vaccine” bullshit argument from libs so much awhile back. Shit was infuriating.
It's infuriating because South Africa, and other African countries, are opening MRNA vaccine manufacturing plants right now. More complex manufacturing than the AstraZeneca vaccine. Probably to only export the vaccines under some messed up deal.
But noo we're too broke to do it when it's for free, but when they can get something out of it suddenly we have the facilities.
The AstraZeneca vaccine was originally developed by Oxford and was going to be public info so countries could make their own (I’m simplifying it going off of memory).
The Gates Foundation urged them to sell the rights to it to AstraZeneca instead, thus killing the plan to make it public. South Africa may not use it now, but that could quite literally be ol’ Bill’s fault since he had it privatized
That's all true, but the reason South Africa didn't use AstraZeneca at the time was because it was ineffective against the beta variant circling back then. So we had to send the AstraZeneca vaccine that we bought back to the manufacturer. It was a national embarrassment that was used by chuds to fuel anti vaccine sentiment at a critical time.
But yes, Bill Gates did do that and his excuse was that African countries couldn't manufacture it safely. Even though there were facilities in place that could.
Ah, I remember some controversy over a minuscule blood clot risk and it getting paused in some Euro countries or something like that too.
I remember it being somewhat less effective (not sure how much offhand), but if it had been publicly available to begin with that still would have been much more than anything else the West has done to help globally.
Also yeah I saw that “poorer countries can’t be trusted to make their own vaccine” bullshit argument from libs so much awhile back. Shit was infuriating.
It's infuriating because South Africa, and other African countries, are opening MRNA vaccine manufacturing plants right now. More complex manufacturing than the AstraZeneca vaccine. Probably to only export the vaccines under some messed up deal.
But noo we're too broke to do it when it's for free, but when they can get something out of it suddenly we have the facilities.