The bottom line is that the pandemic isn’t over, and authorities saying it’s over doesn’t make it so. Can we really look at the current patent system for medicines, which primarily protects private sector interests, and then look at a map of the dismal vaccine coverage in poor countries, and think that things are working? These are just two examples that raise significant questions about whether the current dominance of market-driven and capitalist systems are fit for purpose when it comes to upholding the right to health. We also have to look at the first three years of the Covid-19 pandemic and realize that its most important global policy debate – the debate over intellectual property as it related to vaccines, testing, and treatment – took place inside a commerce body, the World Trade Organization (WTO), with no health or human rights mandate. That kind of thing really inverts the “developed/developing world” way of thinking and makes us consider the details of how governance is carried out. How can it not? For example, we have the wealthiest country in the history of humanity – the United States – delivering such a negligent Covid response, that there has been over a million deaths despite nearly unparalleled resources at the government’s fingertips.
It’s a huge challenge to be entering the third year of an era-defining pandemic and have so many health authorities simply shrugging at it: the US Center for Disease Control has basically given up on any sense of equitable protections.īut the pandemic is also fundamentally changing how the world works, even if authorities want to ignore it. The pandemic has been a disaster for human rights, but I think the hardest part of it is watching institutions fade away and kind of give up.
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