Thread by @astroehlein

In blocking wider vaccine production globally, EU & UK take a neocolonialist approach to the pandemic, saying:

❗️ we're in charge;

❗️ we decide who lives & dies;

❗️ we may give you some charity later if we feel generous & if you behave.

It’s arrogant & self-destructive.

From the beginning, the EU & UK have been blocking wider vaccine production globally by obstructing the #TRIPSwaiver, a proposal at the World Trade Organization to temporarily waive some intellectual property rules on vaccines & other health products.

EU & UK leaders have adopted this policy to boost pharma monopoly profits.

They know it will prolong the pandemic & lead to more deaths & suffering.

They know it gives more time for new variants to emerge.

But profits come first, so the policy is: enforce vaccine shortage.

As in colonial days, European powers have created and maintain a system that prioritises the profits of few companies over all other considerations.

In prioritizing the commercial interests of profit-making pharma monopolies, the EU & UK are contributing to continued sickness and death for people in poorer countries.

hrw.org/news/2021/12/0…

Here's what that looks like...

In high- and upper-middle-income countries, 77% of the population has received at least one dose.

But BILLIONS of people elsewhere have not had even one dose yet.

nytimes.com/interactive/20…

How have EU & UK leaders been getting away with this for 15 months? I mean, blocking global vaccine production during a global pandemic? That's clearly madness.

And yet, few people are in the streets about their governments blocking vaccine production during a pandemic.

More people in the EU & UK prefer to protest about having to wear a mask on the train, a completely reasonable public health measure during a pandemic.

Leaders in the EU & UK have the benefit of two things:

1) Many people simply don't know what's going on. If that has anything to do with some major media outlets getting lots of advertising revenue from pharma monopolies, I can't say.

2) A chunk of the population in the EU & UK shares their leaders' neocolonialist and white supremacist attitudes.

They were brought up in it, surrounded by it for decades, in effect brainwashed by it. When it comes to seeing problems and solutions, they are blinded by it.

Take vaccines… EU & UK leaders say - and many in the EU & UK believe - that mRNA vaccines are so complicated that no one in the "developing" world could possibly manufacture them.

Truth is, there are over 100 firms that could - if they were allowed to
hrw.org/news/2021/12/1…

But, you see, that doesn't go with a prevailing popular prejudice - which EU & UK leaders can take advantage of - that those other countries are "backward" or [pick another racist epithet].

If you see those parts of the world as "backward", you'll find it hard to accept the fact that these companies are already producing injectable drugs approved for use in the EU and are perfectly capable of making the new mRNA vaccines.
hrw.org/news/2021/12/1…

This prejudice and ignorance in a portion of the EU & UK population is very convenient for leaders who, even if they aren't equally blinkered, want to keep prioritising pharma monopoly profits over global public health.

EU & UK leaders have also, from the beginning, presented the global pandemic as a regional or national problem. As long as we're all vaccinated here, they say, everything's fine.

And in a context of nationally focused media, that lie will thrive.

Too many of us in the EU & UK have been immersed in societies that are nationally centred and disregard the rest of the world for so long that it seems normal to us that we can disregard the rest of the world in the pandemic, too.

We are, in fact, so blinded by this self-centred, white supremacist mentality, that we can't even see that what our EU & UK leaders are doing isn't just leaving billions to suffer elsewhere, it's sentencing us to an endless pandemic here as well.

A global pandemic needs a global solution.

Yet we can't seem to even begin to think globally.

EU & UK leaders take advantage of that to benefit pharma monopolies, and we don't see it because we can't imagine that we & those "backward" parts of the world are actually all in the same boat - and we need each other.

If we can't even see how scandalous it is that our leaders in the EU & UK are blocking wider vaccine production globally during a global pandemic...

If we can't even recognise the madness of that and how it hurts us...

We should settle in for a very long pandemic.

📢 If you'd rather have a shorter pandemic than a longer one, please join with us in calling for a #PeoplesVaccine.

Support & follow the groups working on it: twitter.com/i/lists/147107…

🇪🇺 And EU citizens can sign this official citizens' initiative: noprofitonpandemic.eu

Same story in the US: people so resistant to helping the perennially dehumanized “other” that they can’t even see it would help them, too.

https://twitter.com/yodifiji/status/1485293128768794627