US Government Fears China will Give Away COVID-19 Vaccine for Free
"The coronavirus pandemic is a clear instance in which the whole world
shares a common interest in developing and distributing a vaccine." - Dr.
Dean Baker
by Alan Macleod
May 04th, 2020
By Alan Macleod
The number of official global coronavirus mortalities surpassed a quarter of
a million people today, including over 69,000 in the U.S. (although this is
very likely an undercount). Polls show that the American people are
extremely worried about contracting the virus. However, the government has a
much bigger concern: that if they find a COVID-19 vaccine, China will copy
it and distribute it for free.
To many, it will not be immediately clear why it would be a problem for a
manufacturing superpower, home to 1.4 billion people, to inoculate itself
and others. But to the White House, this would be "stealing" a potential
American innovation. "Biomedical research has long been a focus of theft,
especially by the Chinese government, and vaccines and treatments for the
coronavirus are today's holy grail," said John C. Demers, the Assistant
Attorney General for National Security, adding that, "Putting aside the
commercial value, there would be great geopolitical significance to being
the first to develop a treatment or vaccine. We will use all the tools we
have to safeguard American research." The fact that intellectual property
and the profits of multinational pharmaceutical corporations are officially
being put before saving lives, even during a pandemic threatening the
entirety of humanity, was not mentioned by The New York Times, who covered
Demers's remarks.
Dean Baker, Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Utah and
Senior Economist at the Center for Economic Policy Research in Washington,
D.C., offered an alternative view, claiming that he would be delighted if
China "stole" vaccine technology and gave it to billions of people, telling
MintPress News that:
The coronavirus pandemic is a clear instance in which the whole world shares
a common interest in developing and distributing a vaccine. This should mean
that we have open research, where all findings are posted on the web as
quickly as possible, so that they can build on them. Once a vaccine is
developed we should want it spread throughout the world as quickly as
possible at the lowest possible cost. Trump's concern that China would
somehow "steal" a vaccine means that he is more concerned about protecting
someone's profits here, as well as possibly an ego trip (we're number one)
than possibly saving hundreds of thousands of lives.
Baker has previously advocated for replacing the system of private medical
research with a publicly-funded open source system that he believes will not
only save lives but will save money.
That the U.S. government is accusing other nations of hypothetical theft
during the pandemic is particularly noteworthy, seeing as it leads the world
in the confiscation and detention of medical supplies paid for and bound for
other countries. Barbados, for example, has accused the Trump administration
of "modern piracy" after it blocked a shipment of 20 ventilators to the
island, instead, keeping them for itself. U.S. officials also hijacked a
plane full of 60 million masks bound for France while on the runway of a
Chinese airport. Meanwhile, at the height of the pandemic, an American
military plane mysteriously managed to fly back to Tennessee with half a
million test kits from Lombardy, Italy.
American pharmaceutical corporations have also been testing out their
products on Chinese COVID-19 patients, hoping to better understand what
works as an effective treatment. In March, the Trump administration
attempted to compel a German pharmaceutical corporation to move production
to the U.S. in order to make sure that America alone had access to and
control of any coronavirus vaccine it might produce. The president
reportedly wished to ensure that it would only be available on a for-profit
basis. "Germany is not for sale," the country's outraged economy minister
replied, rejecting the profit motive.
In the early 1950s, American scientist Jonas Salk pioneered a world-changing
vaccine against polio, a deadly disease that tens of thousands of Americans
contracted annually. Instead of patenting it and making a fortune, he
insisted that his invention belonged to all of humanity. By 1994, polio was
eradicated in North America. Yet 70 years later, the logic of capitalism
dictates that where there is great utility, there are enormous profits to be
made, and anyone acting outside that system to reproduce a vaccine is not
acting responsibly, but "stealing." The fact that Washington wants to limit
those who can drink from any "holy grail" it might find to those who can pay
for it shows how far we have come from Salk's days.
