 We may not know much about the Omicron variant yet, but what we do know is that we will constantly live under fear of a new variant emerging so long as these developing countries continue to hoard vaccines, so long as greedy pharmaceutical companies refuse to let developing countries manufacture their own generic versions of the COVID-19 vaccines. And really, we're looking at a perpetual state of plague if we don't actually get serious and and vaccine apartheid right now, not in two months, not in three months, not in a year from now, but right now. Because we've seen that Omicron out of nowhere is showing up in so many countries. So are we really going to keep playing this game where we allow new variants to spread in unvaccinated populations? Is that really something that we want to do indefinitely? I don't think so. So it's time to stand up and take a stand. And people are fed up. So there are protesters that gathered outside of the Ministry of Trade Building and the Switzerland Embassy to demand that developed countries support the TRIPS waiver. These are some of the images from the protest and I'm glad to see this. And these protests come as 2.5 million nurses from 28 countries requested that the UN investigate human rights violations from the EU, the UK, Switzerland, Norway, and Singapore for blocking the TRIPS waiver. And you also have Congresswoman Cori Bush signal boosting their message adding, every day that COVID-19 vaccine patents aren't waived is a day that we perpetuate a vaccine apartheid. It's time to ban Big Pharma's greed and waive the vaccine patents. That's how we save lives here and globally. And you also have Bernie Sanders echoing that same sentiment saying, the time for debate by members of the World Trade Organization is over, Sanders said in the statement. As we face the potential threat of a new coronavirus variant, we must move even more urgently to dismantle the vaccine inequality that undermines our ability to confront this crisis. We cannot postpone or delay. It's time for the WTO and our world leaders to step up, to finally put people over profits and make the vaccine technologies available to all, regardless of wealth. Him and Cori Bush are absolutely correct and I commend them for speaking up, because this is a serious issue. You know, it's really convenient to forget what's happening around the world because out of sight, out of mind, here in the United States, people who are over 18 are now eligible to get their booster. But while we're all making appointments to get our booster, let me explain to you what's happening across the world. So as Joseph Sticklets and Lori Wallach explained, fewer than 7% in low income countries have even had their first shot. So while we hoard vaccines here, most people in the developing world still haven't been able to get their first dose. It's truly, it's unacceptable. The only way we're going to be able to vaccinate the entire human population, billions of people, is if each country individually is going to be able to manufacture their own generic versions of these vaccines. But because of pharmaceutical greed, because these countries are in lockstep with the pharmaceutical giants, well, we're not doing that. And as a result, we're making everyone on the planet worse off. We're subjecting everyone to a new variant that could be potentially worse than Delta. So it's been a while since we talked about the trip's waiver, and I do want to give you a bit of a refresher because it really is important that we know the details here. So when it comes to vaccinations, the underlying problem is a lack of global supply. The world required at least 11 billion doses for 2021 before boosters and vaccination of children began. Billions of doses will be needed every year for boosters and to combat new variants and universal access to the promising new antivirals will be crucial to save the lives of those who do get infected. The WTO waiver is an obvious way of increasing supply and helping put an end to the pandemic for good. The WTO's agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, TRIPS, which went into force in 1995, requires the organization's member nations to enforce expansive intellectual property restrictions domestically. Last year, South Africa and India proposed a temporary suspension of the TRIPS barriers for COVID-19 vaccines, treatments, and diagnostic tests. This would allow the many qualified producers in developing countries to manufacture effective vaccines and other COVID medicines rather than face death and economic devastation while waiting for drug companies and rich countries to send help their way. Health advocates have long warned of TRIPS danger for developing countries access to medicine, but no one imagined that advanced countries would put drug company profits above the well being of their own citizens. The Biden administration initially won praise for supporting the WTO waiver back in May. President Biden's statement on Omicron last week urged countries to adopt the waiver now, but the president has put too little effort into actually achieving final agreement at the WTO to enact the waiver. Now another October has come and gone, and while more than 100 countries support a waiver, the European Union, pushed by Germany plus Switzerland and the United Kingdom, continue to oppose. They are exploiting the WTO's consensus, decision-making practices, and the unusually passive role the U.S. is playing in the negotiations to block the waiver, even as millions of people die waiting to be inoculated. So it is a scandal and it's outrageous. Now I want to touch on what they said about Joe Biden, because earlier this year, leftists like myself praised Joe Biden. We gave him credit words due, because we wanted him to support the TRIPS waiver, and he did indeed vocalize support for the TRIPS waiver. However, logically, if you vocalize support for something, there's this expectation that you will actually fight for it and not just say you support it, because the reason why it's so important that the U.S. support the TRIPS waiver is because we have a lot of influence internationally. So if you just say you support it, I mean, I guess that's better than nothing, but ideally, we want you to push for it. Speak to your allies, speak to Germany, speak to Switzerland, and get them to stop blocking this. That's the goal. But the problem is that Biden is talking to talk, but he's not walking the walk. And as Sarah Lazar of In These Times reports, documents reveal Biden administration not fighting for a COVID vaccine patent waiver despite public statements. Now, we're going to get into the article a little bit here in a moment, but before we do that, I just want to explain to everyone that on the 26th of November, when Biden was discussing COVID, he reiterated his support for the TRIPS waiver. That's good. That's excellent, right? But just a couple of days later, when the cameras were off, when nobody was looking behind closed doors, he wasn't fighting for it. Lazarro explains at an informal meeting of the trade-related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Council, the body that determines global intellectual property rules, the United States declined to take robust action to approve an intellectual property waiver and merely referred back to the remarks that President Biden made on November 26th. While the Biden administration has publicly declared support for an intellectual property waiver of some kind, it has not specified whether it supports the specific proposal put forward by South Africa and India in October of 2020, nor clarified what changes it would like to see. The effect global health activists charge has been a slowing down of negotiations in a context where any delay means more lives lost. Instead, these activists say the United States could be using its power at the WTO to pressure its allies to stop blocking discussions and call a general council meeting to pass a waiver, but he's not doing that. So signaling support, that's one thing. Vocally, explicitly coming out in favor of something, that's another thing. That's good, but what really matters is if you're going to fight. I could see if Biden simply said, I support this and people saw that the U.S. did it and they just wanted to follow the U.S.'s lead. Okay, you did your part, but that's not the case. We are looking at pharmaceutical giants who have a stronghold on these countries and Biden could use his power to change their minds. I'm not saying that he will 100% guarantee a change, but the point is you try. The point is you do what you possibly can do because you have a lot of power and influence as the president of the United States. He's not doing that though. So until we actually right this wrong, until we end vaccine apartheid, until the West stops hoarding vaccines, until people in other countries have their own generic versions manufactured at home, we're going to continue to see a never-ending pandemic and it's certainly unfortunate, but this is what happens when you let global capitalism run amok and just dominate the world. It's just, it's unsustainable. It's unsustainable just from a human's perspective because this pandemic is showing how faulty global capitalism is, but it's also unsustainable from a planetary standpoint because we see another way that these giant corporations are ruining the world for their own profits and this is, you know, a similar case. We have these pharmaceutical giants refusing to allow these countries who are begging for vaccines to manufacture their own generic versions and that's unacceptable. They're getting away with this because these countries are letting them and Biden is sitting idly by just letting it all happen while saying, oh, I support it, I did my part. No, you didn't. You didn't do enough. So this is really frustrating, but the more that people make noise about this, the more likely we'll have an impact.