being online right now is very irritating and stressful because if i open twitter it is divided between two streams right now: extreme doomposting and SOS’ from indian friends/follows and europeans & americans posting earnest but woefully misguided, and therefore patronizingly offensive bullshit, about the west needing to help india
like. this was a government manufactured crisis end to end, but no we’re not actually asking for vaccines that you can’t release because of contracts. we are specifically asking for specialist materials that are produced in the USA to be released so we can continue to manufacture vaccines because guess what, we do have one of the biggest vaccine manufacturing capabilities in the world, and the serum institute of india is the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, but none of that makes a difference if we do not have the material to make vaccines. which is what this is about.
like. i appreciate sanders campaigning to waiver the TRIPS provision but like that is not actually the critically urgent need, the critical urgent need is repealing the defense production act so we can have fucking materials to produce vaccines. you could waiver TRIPS and still not have fucking vaccines BECAUSE THERE ARE NO MATERIALS TO MAKE THE VACCINES WITH BECAUSE CRITICAL SPECIALIST MATERIALS ARE BEING HELD UP IN THE USA.
this is not a case of technology transfer, this is a case of basic supply chain management and hiccups affected by protectionism. why is this so hard to understand. why is this simple basic fact glancing off everyone’s backs. adar poonawalla has been publicly asking for release of these materials for two fucking months, and now that india is in the headlines for the disaster what do well-meaning western leftists/progressives do? talk about shipping vaccines and waiving TRIPS, instead of the simple and immediate action that would actually eliminate a critical hiccup for vaccine production not only in india and europe. is it really that hard to understand that we don’t need gifts or donations; we need you to open up fucking supply chains.
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