Carl, is door number one the one with the NRA bumper sticker on it?
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Tuesday, May 5, 2020 10:38 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: US Government Fears China will Give Away
COVID-19 Vaccine for Free
personal opinion, Frank, and I can't divulge my sources, is that those wealthy
"small business" owners were *Not already vaccinated by the Trump
administration.
They, and their White Red Necked Fundamentalist Brethren are all infected by
the latest virus named the Triple T virus(Trump Truth Twisters), and they can
be identified by the fact that they have their pants on backward and their
shoes on the wrong feet...if they own a pair of shoes.
To these defenders of Peace and The American Way of Life, there are only two
doors. The first door leads to Salvation and the second door leads to Hell.
I'm choosing door number three!.
Carl Jarvis, Just a Poor Wayfaring Stranger...wondering how I could have
forgotten Berl Ives, one of our truly great Folk Singers.
On 5/5/20, Frank Ventura <frank.ventura@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The whole message here is that a vaccine is still in the future. I
doubt that. I think it already exists. Yesterday, here in MA, there
was a large protest of, as they called themselves, "Trump nation".
None of them were practicing safe distancing and none were wearing
masks. Do you think these wealthy "small business" owners were already
vaccinated by the Trump administration?
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of
miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, May 4, 2020 4:01 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] US Government Fears China will Give Away
COVID-19 Vaccine for Free
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.
