Thread by @astroehlein

11 March 2025: On the 5th anniversary of the World Health Organization declaring the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic, commemorations are happening around the globe to mourn the loss of over 51 million people…

On the 1st anniversary back in 2021, when “only” 2.6 million deaths had been recorded, many people thought they could see the light at the end of the tunnel…

Vaccines had been developed by pharmaceutical companies in record time – with the help of billions in public money – and some people had already been fully vaccinated within one year. It seemed to many like a remarkable achievement.

But the roll-out of those first vaccines was slow. Pharmaceutical companies refused to share the technology, thus restricting manufacture, and governments from the EU to the US to the former UK simply let them do so.

Countries argued about their own supplies of doses and export bans, but this eruption of “vaccine nationalism,” diverted public attention from the real problem: the deliberate restriction of vaccine manufacturing.

Four years ago, many thought that didn’t matter. Although vaccinations were happening slowly, they believed that, with time, the rest of the world would catch up to countries that had raced to acquire rare supplies of doses.

Many jurisdictions even let down their guard – removing measures like curfews, venue closures and mandatory masks – thinking it was only a matter of time before the pandemic was over.

But for the virus, more time meant more opportunities to spread – and transform.

A significant number of variants had emerged even before the first anniversary, but it wasn’t until late 2021, with the appearance of the now infamous Ruritanian strains, when the real problems started…

Before most of the world could even find North Ruritania on a map, the new strain, dubbed COVID-21, had spread around the globe. The more transmissible and more deadly variant was devastating.

Countries that had failed to achieve herd immunity through the first vaccinations by that point – including, a surprise to many, most EU members – were hardly better off than countries that had received no vaccinations at all.

COVID-21-related deaths globally in the following months shot up. From 5 million pandemic dead in September 2021 to over 17 million by the second anniversary of the pandemic in March 2022.

Then, in late 2022, the South Ruritanian strain emerged: a variant that didn’t respond at all to any of the initial vaccines. COVID-22 ripped through communities around the world.

For reasons still not fully understood, COVID-22 affected younger people harder than the original COVID-19. But, of course, literally, no one was immune.

Governments again gave pharmaceutical companies billions to come up with new vaccines for the new variants, but by the time they were being tested in the autumn of 2023, some 43 million people had already died.

In the meantime, COVID-23a and COVID-23b had appeared, costing millions more lives.

As early as the summer of 2020, epidemiologists had warned that all this could happen. When the first vaccines for the original COVID-19 were announced later that year, they begged world leaders to allow wider production to speed up global vaccinations to prevent it.

Some 100 countries agreed, calling on the World Trade Organization as early as October 2020 to relax some intellectual property rules and allow more manufacturing. But the EU, US, former UK and others, blocked it, siding instead with the pharmaceutical companies.

Looking back from today in 2025, we can see how short-sighted this was.

Along with the unnecessary additional deaths and illness since 2021, the economic impact has been huge – estimated at over 40 trillion US dollars. Job losses and homelessness are incalculable. Political unrest has hit at least a dozen nations.

Today, in 2025, it’s almost impossible to find a family anywhere that’s unaffected by loved ones with serious mental health issues, often labelled “lockdown syndrome” or “pandemic exhaustion.” The dramatic rise in suicides is widespread, though a taboo subject in many countries.

Some politicians who blocked quicker manufacturing of the earlier vaccines in 2020 and 2021 have already paid the price at the polls, with elections in a number of EU states bringing in far-right parties capitalizing on the establishment’s deadly incompetence.

And even today, in 2025, the pandemic and its impacts are far from over. Lessons have been learned. But far too late for tens of millions.

Returning to March 2021 now…

This nightmare scenario is possible.

But there is a way to we can try to prevent it.

Not by "hoping it doesn't happen" but by pressuring the EU, UK, US & other governments to stop blocking wider vaccine production today: euronews.com/2021/03/11/ric…