The Biden administration's (carefully worded) support for a WTO IP waiver on vaccines may not be the full-throated support the issue warrants, but it was still a complete reversal of decades of subservience to Big Pharma, and the industry is waging all-out war.
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The arguments against allowing poor countries to make their own vaccines are a mix of racist condescension ("poor brown people are too primitive to make high-tech vaccines"), misdirection ("patents aren't the problem") and bad faith ("we don't have enough materials").
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Of all the moving, wrenching accounts of death during the pandemic, @mollymcghee's "America's Dead Souls," for the @parisreview stands out: haunting, furious and sad, an rude awakening of the status quo that denies any possibility of inaction.
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I've known McGhee a long time, since she worked on my book INFORMATION DOESN'T WANT TO BE FREE from @mcsweeneys, a professional association we renewed when she landed at @torbooks.
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