The third dose of vaccine will soon be acquired for the majority of the population, at least on this side of the world. When will the fourth, fifth and sixth doses be? Will they be given all at once, to save time, in the increasingly vague and limp hope of getting us out of a nothingness where our herd conformism grows?
While we are under the authoritarian imposition of a new curfew with unconvincing effects, the pharmaceutical companies that produce our vaccines see a bright future blooming before them, as companies endorse, in the name of waves. promises of redemption, new forms of segregation. On the one hand, here is the part of humanity vaccinated and, on the other, that which is not, which cannot be, that made up in part of the destitute, the psychiatrized, the forgotten of the life, cripples, toothless, cracked, left-behind, disunited from all countries.
Should we now consider, as an infallible indicator of poverty, the fact of being unvaccinated? In our country, in any case, there will soon be citizens put aside by the great hand of the State, relegated, for example, to having to buy at high prices small grocery wine under the pretext that it would be a a privilege to obtain it from the large well-stocked shelves of the State monopoly. Is it really in the name of public health that these citizens are downgraded, as if they were just small beer? Who can believe that this questioning of civil liberties can be reduced to a simple question of “privileges”? In such a good way, as long as it is ridiculous, why not demand a vaccination passport for those who intend to buy cigarettes? World power celebrates the free movement of capital while assuming more and more the right to hinder that of individuals, relegating them willingly to the rank of outcasts, immigrants from within.
The non-vaccinated represent, in our societies where inequalities are allowed to flourish, the mirror of a globalized drama that is willingly forgotten. More than 100 countries will not meet immunization targets this year. Almost two years after the start of the crisis, not even half of the world’s population will be minimally vaccinated in 2022.
Even in the name of a higher principle of equality in humanity, bloated national egos are not on the verge of flattening out. Thus vaccines are sent to the poorest countries in the manner of simple alms. Their expiration date, when it is almost passed, has not prevented rich countries from shipping them, while washing their hands in front of the logistics necessary to administer them. Just before Christmas, Nigeria found itself having to destroy 1 million expired AstraZeneca doses. The population of this country of more than 200 million inhabitants is however only vaccinated up to 4%. Variants still have plenty of space on earth to proliferate and mutate.
In an interview published in December, the big boss of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, is not particularly critical of the stratospheric profits made thanks to this pandemic, welcoming instead, in the pages of a Swiss newspaper, the expansion without border of its business. This French company has already raked in tens of billions of euros in profits in recent months. For a company that does not produce anything itself, by outsourcing all of its production, but keeping its hands on patents, this is no small feat.
The boss of Moderna recommended that Switzerland take a subscription to ensure its vaccine supply. This would allow this small country which washes the money of the powerful to secure its vaccine supplies for a few years, while producing its doses at home in a factory specially created and supervised by the patent holder.
The model proposed by Moderna is quite simple. It corresponds to a layer, no more and no less, of the very prosperous digital industry of Silicon Valley. Moreover, Moderna does not hide it. A few months ago, its leader already unveiled, still in the Swiss press, his little idea to better exploit the misfortunes of humanity. A vaccine, to hear it, would be “like the iPhone, a product with multiple applications with updates, according to the strains of the year”. Gone are the days when, taking us for imbeciles, we will be told, as with telephones, of “smart” vaccines?
As if by chance, this paradise of conservatism that is Switzerland is one of the places in the world most opposed to the lifting of pharmaceutical patents. In contrast to these staunch defenders of the puddle of the powerful, the People’s Vaccine Alliance, among other humanitarian organizations, are bawling out to demand that private possession of patents for COVID vaccines be lifted immediately. 19. But the pharmaceutical companies appear especially sensitive to the protection of their pharaonic profits, even if it means refusing to recognize the part played by the States and the public in their economic successes. Thus, the US government, which has funded Moderna’s research to the tune of $ 2.5 billion through the National Institutes of Health, is denied even the credit of its researchers in the vaccine patent. Why share when you can own everything?
Another year of pandemic therefore… And a social climate which risks, once again, leading us to have heads expressing as much joy as pie tins full of soft dough. Happy New Year anyway, everyone.