Dean Baker

The idea that millions of people will needlessly die because our political leaders did not want to jeopardize the profits of the pharmaceutical industry is too horrible to be aired in places like the New York Times, Washington Post, and National Public Radio.

Our decision to structure patent and copyright monopolies in a way that allows for a small number of people to get incredibly rich is because we have politicians who like very rich people.

In short, it doesn't seem like the deficit hawks have much of a case.

This would mean suspending intellectual property claims over these vaccines.

The national debt is a meaningless number.

In a normal flu season, close to 2 million shots are given every day, without any heroic efforts by the government. Given the urgency of getting the pandemic under control, it is hard to understand why we could not have administered shots at this pace, if not considerably faster.

There is evidence that the pandemic was already present in Europe before the end of 2019, at a point where no one in China had any clear idea what they were dealing with.

We should have been prepared to start inoculating millions of people the day a vaccine was approved. This is a massive policy failure.