Millions Have Died As Wealthy Nations Refuse To Share Vaccine Patents

As many as 3 million people have died across the planet in the roughly 9 months since the COVID vaccines were first rolled out. This is due to the fact that the United States and other wealthy nations are refusing to give up the patents in order for poorer nations to start developing their own vaccines - instead of having to wait for the rich countries to let their supply of vaccines "trickle down" to them. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains how this is going to make the pandemic even longer and worse than it already is.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

It's been nine months, roughly since the vaccine started rolling out in wealthy countries, right? The United States, Canada, Western Europe, you know, UK, France, Germany, Italy, all these countries started rolling out their vaccines about nine months ago and since that time three million people at least have died in poorer countries from COVID. Three million people have died while their governments have been begging countries like the UK and the United States and Germany to give up their vaccine patents, to waive patent law long enough for them to develop their own vaccines so they can protect their people. Right now, it hasn't happened. What we have seen is Countries like the United States sending over, you know, tens of thousands vaccines to countries that have, you know, more than a billion people. So I'm sure 70,000 vaccines really made a dent in that versus just letting them have the patent so they can make it themselves and distribute it to their people.

3 million people are dead because of the greed of not just these countries, but the pharmaceutical companies as well, because those pharmaceutical companies could also voluntarily give their patents to these individuals. They could. Obviously they will never, ever, ever do that. Johnson and Johnson just made $5 billion in the last quarter off their vaccine. So instead, much like Americans were told in the 1980s, and then again in the early 2000's, and then again in 2017, wait for your trickle down because that's now the policy we have by protecting and holding onto these vaccine patents. We're telling these other countries that are dying at staggering rates, especially now that the Delta variant is out there. We're telling them you're going to have to wait. You're going to have to hope that enough vaccine doses trickle down from the United States or from the UK or from Germany, hope that they trickle down to your country. Maybe if we have some extras, we'll send you 10,000 here, 20,000 there.

But, you know, we're not going to do anything else to save you. And we're doing this to our own detriment, obviously. The longer COVID stays out there, whether it's in the United States or it's over in India or China or South Africa, it doesn't matter where it is. The longer the virus is around, the more it's going to mutate. And eventually if these wealthy countries just continue to hoard the vaccines and say, oh, our people are going to be safe. The virus is going to kick around for so long it's going to mutate into something to where our vaccines are no longer relevant. They won't work anymore. So yes, we're all in danger by not vaccinating the world. Yes, we do have a moral obligation, an ethical obligation, to waive these vaccine patents, to let people across the planet start protecting themselves. If we just hoard it for us, if we say only countries that can afford it get to have it, then we'll be dealing with this virus for a lifetime or longer. Millions of more people are going to die and we could stop it. We could stop it. We're making the conscious choice as a nation to not save millions of lives.