 As COVID vaccinations continue to tick up in the United States, countries like India are seeing an absolutely brutal second wave with more than 300,000 new cases per day, which has of course led to a lot of problems, shortages of hospital beds. Patients are now dying without oxygen. It's just absolutely gut wrenching and horrific. And on the screen, you're seeing drone footage from New Delhi's mass cremation site that they actually had to construct because they didn't know what else to do with all of the bodies from deaths due to COVID-19. So I mean, you see this footage and it's obvious that had India been able to vaccinate at least as many people as the US has, or as the UK has, then the situation hopefully wouldn't have been as bad. So obviously the conclusion is we need a people's vaccine. And Jessica Corbett passionately argues for this in an article in Common Dreams, which I'll link you to down below. But part of the reason why there isn't a people's vaccine is because of the greed of pharmaceutical giants who recently dispatched an army of lobbyists to block the production of generic COVID vaccines as reported by Lee Fong of the Intercept. And before we go further, it's not just the lack of a vaccine that's leading to an increase in COVID cases. I mean, this surge can be attributed to incompetence from India's far right fascistic leader Narendra Modi. On top of that, a lot of cities in India are densely populated. So there's a number of factors, but of course, having a vaccine, having the ability to vaccinate for months, or at least as long as the United States had, would make the situation better. Now, in an article for The Guardian, journalist Stephen Barani explains how the world is desperate for more vaccines, but patents from pharmaceutical giants have actually stopped countries in the global south like India for manufacturing their own generic COVID-19 vaccines. Stephen explains, many governments and organizations back the idea of opening up production. India and South Africa have asked the WTO to suspend patent protections to allow other companies to produce existing vaccines and drugs, but they have been blocked by rich nations. Former world leaders and Nobel laureates have called for suspending patents and coordinating production across the world. The kind of global effort that eliminated smallpox and polio in the 20th century. But so far, their efforts have been unsuccessful. So this begs the question, why aren't these countries manufacturing their own generic versions of the COVID-19 vaccine? Why are they waiting on Pfizer and Moderna to manufacture enough to distribute them across the world? It's going to take forever if we rely on just a couple of companies. Wouldn't it be more efficient if we just have multiple manufacturing companies around the world make these drugs to distribute them to countries that desperately need them? And the answer is, of course. But companies like Pfizer and Moderna and Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, they don't want anyone else to manufacture their vaccines, the vaccines that they have control over, because they want to be the sole manufacturers because that's how they make a lot of money off of it. It's more lucrative for them to be the sole manufacturer of the COVID vaccines that they have rather than allowing these other companies to manufacture generic vaccines, because then they'd missed out on that money. So, I mean, this is becoming a bigger issue. The need and demand for a people's vaccine is growing. And just a couple of weeks ago, I posted a video on this channel that's super long where I talk about Bill Gates' role in global vaccine apartheid, how he helped perpetuate the system of global apartheid where the folks who want a vaccine in other countries can't get it because richer countries are effectively hoarding the vaccines. So, if you watched that video, I go over a new Republic article that explains his role in this, but he was asked a follow-up about this and whether or not now we see the need for the vaccines shouldn't be the case that the IP rights are waived so other countries can really quickly rush to manufacture these generic COVID vaccines because they have people dying in the streets. And he proceeded to double down and outright lie. And as John Keely of Salon writes, Bill Gates, one of the world's richest men and most powerful philanthropists, was the target of criticism from social justice campaigners on Sunday after arguing that lifting patent protections on COVID-19 vaccine technology and sharing recipes with the world to foster a massive ramp up in manufacturing and distribution despite a growing international call to do exactly that is a bad idea. Directly asked during an interview with Sky News if he thought it would be helpful to have vaccine recipes be shared, Gates quickly answered no. Asked to explain why not, Gates, whose massive fortune as founder of Microsoft relies largely on intellectual property laws that turned his software innovations into tens of billions of dollars in personal wealth said, Well, there's only so many vaccine factories in the world and people are very serious about the safety of vaccines and so moving something that had never been done moving a vaccine say from a Johnson and Johnson factory into a factory in India. It's novel. It's only because of our grants and expertise that that can happen at all. The thing that's holding things back in terms of the global vaccine rollout continued Gates is not intellectual property. It's not like there's some idle vaccine factory with regulatory approval that makes magically safe vaccines. You know, you've got to do the trial on these things. Every manufacturing process needs to be looked at in a very careful way. Critical advocates for robust and immediate change to intellectual property protections at the World Trade Organization when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccines. However, issued scathing indictments of Gates's defense of the status quo. Nick Deirden, executive director of global justice. Now one of the lead partner groups in an international coalition calling for the WTO patent waivers at a crucial meeting of the world body next month characterized Gates's remarks and the ideological framework behind them as disgusting. Who appointed this billionaire head of global health asked Deirden. Oh, yeah, he did. So this is absolutely morally reprehensible and he's a liar. You have countries like South Africa and India begging. They're saying we have the capacity and there's a strong demand for these COVID vaccines because our citizens are dying. They're literally dying without oxygen. So all we're asking is for you to give us the ability, the recipes to manufacture our own generic vaccines so we can save lives. And this billionaire oligarch who unilaterally appointed himself the head of global public health said no. I say no. I say that lifting the patent obstacles and waving them even temporarily, that's not going to help the situation. So he's seriously arguing that it's better to just have three companies manufacture the vaccines rather than having generic alternatives throughout the globe being manufactured. Is that seriously the argument that he's making? Now I watched the actual video interview and I didn't play it because it's from Sky News and I don't know if there'd be any copyright issues with them because I've never played a clip from Sky News to my knowledge. But there's no follow-up from the interviewer. Just a softball question, no follow-up. And he just lies casually with a straight face. It's unreal. It's unreal. But to be fair, Bill Gates isn't alone in perpetuating global apartheid because on the campaign trail, Joe Biden promised to lift any and all barriers that would prevent the manufacturing of generic COVID vaccines. In an interview with Adi Barkan, he was asked this question, would you lift these IP barriers? Would you provide other countries with waivers needed to manufacture their own generic COVID vaccines? And this was his response. Quote, it lacks any human dignity what we're doing, Biden said, of his predecessors refusal to participate in global vaccine initiatives. So the answer is yes, yes, yes, yes. And it's not only a good thing to do, it's overwhelmingly an hour interest to do. However, since taking office in January, the Biden administration has upheld Trump's opposition to India and South Africa's proposal to temporarily waive sections of the agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights. A step that would allow generic manufacturers to replicate vaccine formulas and bolster global supply. So there was a segment from CNBC about a month or so ago, and apparently Biden's administration told a reporter that they were looking into whether or not they would temporarily waive the IP rights so that way this can actually happen. And time sticking. Where's your answer, Joe Biden? On the campaign trail, you said yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Five yeses. You said that it lacks human dignity what Trump was doing because he wouldn't waive the IP rights. And now you're doing the same fucking thing. How much more deliberation is necessary? How much more time do you need to decide whether or not to do the humane thing? And then we have folks like Bill Gates, billionaire oligarchs, whose organization is inextricably linked to the World Health Organization dictating unilaterally the terms of vaccine distribution. I say this every single time I talk about vaccines, but I'm going to say it again because it's really important. If you are a greedy American or a greedy British person and you're satisfied because you got your COVID vaccine and you don't really care what happens in India or South Africa because you have your vaccine and you're protected. Understand that pandemics don't work that way and it's only a matter of time before a new strain, a new mutation emerges that is resistant to the vaccines. If that happens, all the progress that we've made getting Americans and people in the UK vaccinated will be undone. All because we're protecting the profits of pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and Moderna. It is truly just antithetical to a thriving human society. This is all the evidence that you need that capitalism and neoliberal governance has failed. It has failed human beings because it is not giving us the capacity to adequately address a highly contagious, deadly pandemic. And if this doesn't turn every single person into a socialist, then I don't know what will. So I can't believe that Bill Gates is so brazen, but he tripled down here. I'd say doubled down, but he already was really testy with reporters when they followed up beforehand about him defending the IP rights of these companies. But if things go south, if we have a new strain that's resistant to the vaccines, thank folks like Bill Gates, thank folks like Joe Biden, who went back on his promise to waive these IP protections to make sure that folks around the world can actually make their own generic vaccines. Because that's the only way, logistically and feasibly, that we will vaccinate the entire human population before a new strain pops up.