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Amazon, Facebook, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Sandia join Open COVID Pledge

Last week the Center for Artistic Activism joined Universities Allied for Essential Medicines in signing the Open COVID Pledge:

Immediate action is required to halt the COVID-19 Pandemic and treat those it has affected. It is a practical and moral imperative that every tool we have at our disposal be applied to develop and deploy technologies on a massive scale without impediment.

We therefore pledge to make our intellectual property available free of charge for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the impact of the disease.

This week we were joined by some unusual allies.

Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories announced today that they are joining the Open COVID Pledge by making all of their patents freely available to the public for use in the fight against COVID-19. Together, the group holds hundreds of thousands of patents and is offering to grant a temporary license that enables the public to utilize any of the pledgors’ patents in the research, development, and deployment of medical equipment, network products, software solutions, and other technologies to assist in this urgent public health crisis.

OpenCOVIDPledge.org
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Free the Vaccine Actions

Check out some of the growing solo-protestor images and contributions to support our campaign from around the world. Tag yours with #freethevaccine and we’ll aim to add them here!

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Time Magazine: To End this Pandemic We’ll Need a Free Vaccine Worldwide

What we’re advocating for is also advocated in this week’s Time Magazine by Gavin Yamey. “Yamey is a physician and professor of global health and public policy at Duke University, where he directs the Center for Policy Impact in Global Health.”

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The Salk Labs: Week One

As you probably know, the Free the Vaccine for COVID-19 Campaign was conceived of mere weeks ago, and we officially launched our first week of online training and activities last Wednesday, April 8th. Hundreds of activists, artists, and others from 29 countries joined Salk Squads in the Advocacy Innovation Labs online platform and gathered in regional groups.

Along with learning some basics about the politics and policies involved in fighting for access to medicines, we jumped right into the first “impossible mission.”

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Take Action

Take Action: Sign the Open COVID Pledge

This week the Salk Labs are seeking out people, universities, institutions, and non-profits to sign the Open COVID Pledge.

Immediate action is required to halt the COVID-19 Pandemic and treat those it has affected. It is a practical and moral imperative that every tool we have at our disposal be applied to develop and deploy technologies on a massive scale without impediment.

We therefore pledge to make our intellectual property available free of charge for use in ending the COVID-19 pandemic and minimizing the impact of the disease.

Please help get the word out. Tell friends about the Open COVID Pledge, send emails, post on social media, write letters to the editor, or come up with your own creative ways to get the word out and add organizations to this effort!

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In the Media

Free The Vaccine Op-Ed in the Cambridge Globalist

The Cambridge Globalist published an op-ed by Free The Vaccine participant Sofia Weiss Goitandia! In her piece, Sofia discusses the challenges in ensuring the equitable distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine. She argues that all vaccines developed with public funding should be sustainably priced, available to all, and free at the point of delivery. Click the link for her in-depth discussion of how these goals can be achieved!

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In the Media

Free The Vaccine Op-Ed in The Tyee

The Canadian news magazine The Tyee published an op-ed by Free The Vaccine mentor Louise Kyle, discussing the campaign around the 50th anniversary of Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine. As Louise writes,

There’s a simple solution to ensure that all diagnostics, vaccines and treatments for COVID-19 that are developed with Canadian public dollars are equitably priced, available to everyone and free at the point-of-delivery. We are asking for conditions on all public funding so that when the people pay for the vaccine, the vaccine gets to the people.

Check out the link to read the rest of the article!

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News

Make Vaccines and Diagnostic Tools for COVID19 Developed with Public Funding in America Available to All

We’re amassing signatures on a petition for Alex Azar II, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force.

It’ll just take a moment and you’ll help us demonstrate the demand for publicly funded medicines to be available to the public.

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Welcome!

Salk Team Members, we have a forum set up for us at labs.freethevaccine.org.

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Information Session

We held two information sessions for potential participants in the Salk Labs on March 27 at 9am and 9pm.

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