We have not yet had time to enjoy the pleasures of the third jab, and are already informed that we must roll up our sleeves yet again for the fourth one. Our eyebrow can no longer be raised, it is stretched to the limit, as are our nerves. A fourth dose within one year? What kind of vaccine is this? Is this the amazing scientific invention that was supposed to save humanity from this terrible pandemic?

When the vaccine was first introduced, we were told that two doses would provide us with optimal protection against infection and disease. The Americans coined the term “fully vaccinated,” and President Biden clearly stated that if 70% of the population were vaccinated, we would reach herd immunity and thus eradicate the pandemic. In the US, Democrats were quick to get vaccinated while the Republicans, supporters of Donald Trump, did the opposite, and as a result the vaccination campaign there is faltering. Israel has declared that all those who have been vaccinated twice are actually unvaccinated, and demands a third dose as a condition for receiving a green pass.

The global expert, Dr. Fauci, who has already survived the COVID-19-denying Trump administration and continues to serve as chief medical adviser to the Biden administration, twisted and turned, explaining that the third dose is probably a “full dose”. Attention should be paid to the term “probably”, which corresponds to “allegedly” in the mouths of legal reporters. In short, nothing is certain, talk is supposedly scientific, but in the end everything remains a matter of speculation. The Americans are loyal to their determination that one who has received two doses is considered “fully vaccinated”, and they only recommend a “booster” without mandating it.

And while they are still explaining the effectiveness of the third dose, Israel comes out with bad news: the booster too is insufficient, and a fourth dose is required to cope with Omicron. This is hits below the belt. While the Americans are fighting Omicron with two doses, Israel has already run towards the fourth. The lights of science, the saints of medicine, stand naked, embarrassed, and without credibility in the face of the Omicron wave.

And what is happening in Israel? As noted, it rushes to the fourth dose after roundly failing with the third. From the country with the highest immunization rate after the first two doses, it has become one of the least vaccinated countries in the West. Why? Because from dose to dose the public loses faith in the vaccine and in the conflicted medical establishment, with a large proportion of doctors claiming the recommendation for a fourth vaccine is not scientifically based. This time, it seems, the medical establishment prefers the popular insight that “what does not kill you makes you stronger” over scientific insight, which is, it turns out, unclear.

In fact, the vaccine strategy is collapsing. As the West digs in and vaccinates itself, the variants become increasingly contagious and durable. To be precise, the problem is not with the vaccine itself, but with the egocentric way in which it is utilized. The basic principle in public health states that “the world is one epidemiological unit, and as long as the world is not vaccinated no one is immune.” Omicron is the convincing proof that the vaccination strategy has collapsed. Wealthy countries stocked up on vaccines and paid exorbitant prices to Pfizer, whose focus is not on humanity but on its shareholders. 80% of all vaccines were purchased by rich countries and only 5% reached poor ones, fertile ground for the development of new variants that penetrate all immune defenses.

Why does the medical establishment continue to market vaccines as a solution to a pandemic, and not demand that resources be directed in a balanced way to the poor and unvaccinated populations, who otherwise become a breeding ground for new and resistant variants? In the midst of the tsunami of text that pervades the Israeli and global media, why is this simple truth not stated? How can a clear and unequivocal voice not rise up to urge statesmen to vaccinate the world as the most effective – and perhaps the only – way to stop the virus that has resulted in millions of casualties in two years? The answer is painful and simple: the medical establishment is held captive by Big Pharma. Without them there are no studies, no international conferences, and most importantly, no salaries and countless benefits.

A few months ago, more than 50 Israeli doctors, including leading public health experts, signed a letter addressed to Prime Minister Bennett and Health Minister Horowitz. Doctors urged the government to work for a temporary waiver of intellectual property (patent) rights of COVID-19 vaccines. This is to enable those countries that can do so to mass-produce the vaccine, making it accessible to the whole world and blocking the development of new variants. The letter did not receive any attention from the recipients or the media.

It is very disappointing that the same doctors themselves, who signed the letter on the understanding that this is the correct and effective way to prevent the spread of variants, appear repeatedly in the media, praising the various boosters while being careful not to mention their true position on intellectual property. As time goes on, the efficiency of the boosters disappoints, and the variants continue to evolve. The medical establishment thus loses credibility.

The institution entrusted with intellectual property agreements is the World Trade Organization (WTO), in which fruitless discussions have been held for a year about the demand for Pfizer and Moderna to temporarily waive intellectual property relating to vaccines. Global pharmaceutical powers such as Germany, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States and South Korea oppose India and South Africa’s initiative to allow the production and distribution of vaccines to any country possessing the capacity to do so. The economic interests of pharmaceutical companies outweigh the interest of the world in eradicating the pandemic.

The poor world continues to get sick and remains completely exposed to the virus, but the wealthy, satiated, selfish West will also pay the price in the end. From India came the Delta variant, from South Africa Omicron, and these are penetrating every border and spreading across London, Paris and New York, returning us to the pandemic’s early days. The billions of doses already given do not prevent the closures, the collapse of health systems and the death toll that has already crossed 800,000 in the US alone. The pandemic is costing not only lives, but also has a weighty political price: the chaos created by supply chain disruptions, millions of workers forced into unemployment, the rise in prices that accompanies the economic upheaval, spiking inflation – are leading to a loss of trust in heads of state like Boris Johnson and Joe Biden.

And what about Israel? The “government of change” is facing a test it did not expect. The airport closure is reminiscent of the Dutch boy using his finger to plug the hole in the dike that is about to erupt, while Omicron has long been spreading in Israel. Instead of being the first to adopt the fourth dose, the Israeli government must use all its scientific weight to persuade the world to agree on a temporary waiver of the vaccine patents, to protect the Israeli population and contribute to surviving the pandemic worldwide. It’s time to end the addiction to Pfizer and its chairman Albert Bourla, who continues to inflate his profits at the expense of Israeli society and with encouragement of Israel’s medical and political establishments. The medical community in Israel must look in the mirror and tell itself the truth: We have failed, we have not told the whole truth, we have ignored the weak of the world, and Omicron is their bitter revenge.

The post The scandal of the vaccine patents first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.

“Living alongside the coronavirus” is the new mantra of the Bennett-Lapid “Government of Change,” based on the tenets of top epidemiologists. The coronavirus, we are told, “is here to stay.” In contrast to Netanyahu’s populist stance, which saw vaccination as the means to eradicate the pandemic, under Bennett and Lapid the vaccine is supposed to enable the public to live with the virus. In their opinion, the way to do this is to endlessly vaccinate yourself, that is, to go for the booster shot as a means of preventing lockdowns and lowering the infection rate, even if it does not completely flatten it.

Therefore, as of October 1, anyone who received two doses more than five months ago will be considered unvaccinated if they refuse to take a booster third shot. The “green pass” will be taken from them; they will therefore be excluded from public events and be ostracized.   

The United States lags behind Israel by a month, yet even there the American administration is calling for a third dose to be administered as early as September, coining the slogan “this is the pandemic of the unvaccinated.” The percentage of those refusing to be vaccinated in the U.S. is very high and it overlaps with the political rift tearing American society apart: the Democrats are getting vaccinated, while the Republicans are refusing.

While there is much truth in the administration’s declaration that the pandemic is of the unvaccinated, it is not the whole truth. The Biden administration refers to those 100 million American citizens who refuse vaccination, but there are the billions of people in poor countries who want to be vaccinated but cannot. That is why 4.5 million people in the world have already died from COVID-19 and have not been able to ‘live alongside it’. All of them are victims of a criminal health policy that puts the profits of the so-called “big pharma” drug companies above the needs of humanity.

“The end will only come when the whole world becomes ill or vaccinated. It will take a long time,'” says Israel’s number one expert in virology, Prof. Gili Regev from the Sheba Tel Hashomer Hospital (Ynet 20/8/21).  Regev is expressing the cruel and absurd paradigm on which Israel’s epidemiological position is built, that is, “living alongside the coronavirus.” Regev is saying that until we reach herd immunity of 70% for all of humanity, which requires 11 billion vaccine doses, we will continue to live with the virus. We will fall ill, we will die, or recover, and we will continue to be vaccinated every few months.

The interesting question is, if epidemiological logic clearly indicates that the sole way to eradicate the coronavirus is to vaccinate the entire world, why does Professor Regev shy away from the question: what prevents the vaccine from reaching the whole world? Professor Regev knows the answer to this question, as does Dr. Fauci, the world’s number one expert in infectious diseases. They refrain from touching it because they too are captives of big pharma.

To vaccinate the whole world, one has to give up the patents registered in the names of Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca, companies which earn billions from the pandemic. Prof. Regev, Dr. Fauci and in fact almost the entire medical establishment situated at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus, will not touch the sacred cow of the modern capitalist regime: intellectual property. In fact, the pandemic revealed that the sanctity of intellectual property transcends the sanctity of life itself. Intellectual property, or in simple language the ‘patent’, the abolition of which is key to eradication of the coronavirus, remains in the hands of pharma company shareholders, whose whole purpose is to put fat dividends into their overflowing pockets.

Almost all scientific research is funded by the big drug companies. Thus, they gain a monopoly not only on drug production but also on scientific research, which turns intellectual property into an untouchable topic not to be discussed or criticized. The absurdity is that research is therefore legitimate as long as it generates profits. Entire branches of medical science are neglected because they are not considered profitable. Ever since government in Israel withdrew from the public arena and privatized entire sectors of health, education and social welfare, capital has become the primary player determining the fate of human beings. Not only has this created social disparities that endanger the democratic regime, capital is today leading humanity to an unnecessary health disaster.

To understand the extent of the absurdity, let us look at the position paper published by The People’s Vaccine, which unites world-renowned personalities and organizations. This paper discusses Covax, which was established in a partnership between Bill Gates and the World Health Organization with the aim of vaccinating the impoverished world. Covax’s policy has collapsed. Gates’ insistence on preventing the abolition of patents, resulting in exorbitant vaccine prices, has resulted in a vaccination rate of only 1% in poor countries.

The position paper states that the production cost of one vaccine dose is about $1.18, but that the published prices demonstrate that countries have paid 4 to 24 times more. Since the priority in vaccine distribution goes to the highest bidder, 90% of all production goes to rich countries. The paper holds that Pfizer and Moderna charged $41 billion more than the estimated cost of production.

The Israeli Ministry of Health published a censored version of its agreement with Pfizer, intending to reassure its citizens that the confidential medical details of the vaccinated will not reach Pfizer. Only one figure does not appear and will not appear in the published agreement, and that is the amount the government paid for the Pfizer vaccines. Well, not only is intellectual property sacred, but so is the so-called “trade secret”. In other words, the price of the vaccine should not be publicly known, so that Pfizer can charge any price it pleases regardless of the production cost.

Israel, for its part, is doing everything to promote Pfizer. From a serological study at the Sheba Tel Hashomer Hospital to comprehensive research on the vaccine’s effectiveness and side effects, conducted jointly by the Clalit HMO and Harvard University on about two million Israelis.  That is, in exchange for a continuous supply at a price of $30 per vaccine, compared to the $14-19 paid by the European Union, Israel does Pfizer’s public relations. We don’t need to be convinced that the vaccine is important and beneficial, we know that. At the same time, we understand that the third shot, which is unequally distributed between rich and poor, does not bring about the end of the pandemic. This unequal division is described by the Director General of the World Health Organization himself, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as “vaccine apartheid.”

The way in which Israel, the United States and the rest of the rich world are behaving is not only selfish and immoral, but epidemiologically inefficient. The abolition of intellectual property for this vaccine, for the sake of the rich and the poor, is the only way to end this pandemic. Furthermore, it can be done. By its total reliance on the third dose, without addressing the Covid 19 crisis in the poorer countries, the Israeli government is short-sighted. Those poor countries are the ones from which new mutations will come. The real breach is not Ben Gurion Airport, the gateway to new variants, it is the millions of unvaccinated people throughout the world who continue to get sick, enabling the virus to evolve. In failing to act on this elementary fact, the Bennett-Lapid government is driven by the same nationalist blindness that views the fate of Israelis as detached from the fate of humanity.

We say to our country and to every rich country: Instead of waiting for the enemy at home, go out to the world and eliminate the chances of further mutation. Most importantly, abolish the patents!

The post Abolish the patents on those vaccines! first appeared on Da'am Party: One state - Green Economy.