Category: News

This week within the campaign we’ve been discussing moral frameworks and how people think about vaccines, healthcare, masks, and more in terms of right and wrong.

The Center for Artistic Activism led a short lesson on moral frameworks this week, and supplemented it with a recent episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast.

In this episode of the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, we sit down with four experts on vaccines, epidemiology, psychology, and science communication to try and understand how we created so much confusion about COVID-19, and how we can avoid doing so again when a vaccine is ready for widespread, public distribution.

Episode 189 – Why we must use social science to fight misinformation, partisanship, conspiratorial thinking, and general confusion when we finally have a vaccine for COVID-19

While the focus of the episode leans toward vaccine hesitancy, the insights on moral frames provide some excellent starting points for strategy and tactic ideas in our work.

You can find You Are Not So Smart wherever you get podcasts and download episode #189. Or check it out on their site.

Throughout the past few weeks, you may have heard us throwing around the term “vaccine nationalism.”  What we at the People’s Vaccine are fighting for is a safe and effective vaccine for everyone, everywhere. Vaccine nationalism defeats this purpose: this is why. 

Vaccine nationalism refers to when countries make efforts to secure supplies of vaccines for their own residents and citizens before they can be made available to other countries. For example, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the European Union have engaged in billions of dollars worth of deals with Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and AstraZeneca, pharmaceutical companies holding promising vaccine candidates, before the vaccines were even proven to be safe and/or effective. These deals are meant to secure vaccine doses for each respective country, without paying much attention to the impact that these practices can have on countries who cannot afford to give billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies.

A briefing from CBC News referred to the dangers of vaccine nationalism as having the potential to prolong the pandemic by inhibiting the ability of the vaccine to reach individuals who need it most. The Chief of the World Health Organization Tedros Ghebreyesus said on Thursday that vaccine nationalism must be prevented, given that “sharing finite supplies strategically and globally is actually in each country’s interest.” Countermeasures to vaccine nationalism have risen, a prominent one being the COVAX Facility, a global effort to distribute the shots globally while making sure that low- and middle-income countries receive adequate doses as well. 

Read more here if you are interested in learning about either vaccine nationalism or the COVAX Facility. 

WASHINGTON, DC–October 9, 2020–Moderna announced yesterday, under pressure from civil society groups including Free The Vaccine for COVID-19 and its allies in their calls for a People’s Vaccine, that it will not enforce patent protections on the pending coronavirus vaccine mRNA-1273. While such actions are a step in the right direction, they are without a doubt being made as a result of financial responsibility to US taxpayers, and the global need to contain and eradicate the virus. This is all a requirement for a People’s Vaccine, a growing global movement requiring that when safe and effective vaccine(s) are available they are produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people everywhere, free of charge. 

In August 2020, Free the Vaccine for COVID-19  and its allies held a protest outside of Moderna’s headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., to urge the corporation to remove intellectual property rights around their pending coronavirus vaccine which was paid for with US taxpayer dollars, and to commit to signing the OpenCOVID pledge. 

To date, Moderna has received close to a $1 billion dollars of taxpayer money for COVID vaccine research and development, which doesn’t include the additional $1.5 billion dollars the U.S. government was slated to pay for 300 million vials of the vaccine once it cleared drug trials. Unsurprisingly, big pharma once again was going to rip off the American public and handsomely profit off of the pandemic. 

Despite a corporate press statement from Moderna highlighting the significance of IP rights and its hurdles, “…[we] recognize that intellectual property rights play an important role in encouraging investment in research,” this isn’t enough. Again, the corporation has yet to sign the Open COVID Pledge. The pledge would help prevent coronavirus-related intellectual property rights from being a future barrier to access worldwide.

“Centering patents and profit will only prolong this plague. Moderna must take action now to ensure that their publicly-funded vaccine candidate is sustainably priced and available to all. We cannot defeat this pandemic without global solidarity, and Moderna can play their part by opening up access to their intellectual property and pricing the vaccine sustainably,” says Sernah Essien, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), North America Coordinating Committee Member and a Free The Vaccine Project Manager. 

In addition to urging Moderna to sign the Open COVID Pledge, the Free the Vaccine campaign is calling on the corporation to commit to sharing all rights and knowledge patent to the World Health’s Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP) for as long as is necessary to end the pandemic. Any decision to the contrary will lead to further unnecessary deaths and vaccine apartheid where only high income countries have priority access.

“We urgently need a People’s Vaccine: available to everyone, everywhere free of charge” says Merith Basey, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, Executive Director, North America. “Any monopolies on a vaccine will only keep prices artificially high and leaving entire nations at risk of vaccine apartheid. No one will be safe until we are all safe and this will be the most efficient way to end the pandemic as quickly as possible”.

As we get (hopefully) closer to a safe and effective vaccine, conversations about “intellectual property” rights and access to the COVID-19 vaccine around the world continue to fill the news. Whether you are taking part in the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 campaign or cheering on from the sidelines, experiencing the dilemmas and distrust that plague the world of vaccine nationalism can be disheartening.

From grueling statistics about the global mortality rate of COVID-19 to international conflicts, it can be exhausting to keep up with everything that is happening in the world– so we are here to do what we do. Give you some good (and hopeful) news. 

It is always encouraging to hear of other entities who are pushing for the same cause that we are. After all, what we are asking for is simple: a vaccine funded by the people should be available to all people, everyone and everywhere. Especially given the scale of the pandemic and its disproportionate burden on low- and middle- income countries (LMICs,) it is important that we advocate for their access rights in addition to the right to access a COVID-19 vaccine. India and South Africa reached out to The World Trade Organization, a supranational organization that deals with international trade, to demand that monopolies don’t not stand in the way of access in LMICs. 

We won’t take you through all the details, but point #3 states: 

If you are interested in reading more, access the whole document from the World Trade Organization here. 

Around the world, there is a call for solidarity and support. You can see the importance of our work at Free the Vaccine for COVID-19– fighting for a People’s Vaccine everywhere is the only way to make sure that we can truly mitigate the effects of this pandemic. Keep educating yourself– use your voice and your art and your platform to demand a People’s Vaccine with us.

Last week, the Johnson & Johnson vaccine entered its next phase of its Research & Development life: Phase 3 trials. Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine joins Moderna and Pfizer as well as several other vaccine candidates worldwide in taking the next step to help mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic — testing their product on thousands of healthy volunteers.

However, as pharmaceutical companies continue to spit out promising candidates for a safe and effective vaccine, experts are urging them to wait for more data on the safety of the vaccine before proceeding to seek FDA authorization. Their sentiments are echoed at Free the Vaccine for COVID-19, where our work revolves around vaccines, diagnostic tools, and treatments that have been proven to be safe and effective. You can read more about the 60 leading bioethicists and researchers who are urging Pfizer to hold off until November on seeking FDA approval here.