<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><li class="d-none d-lg-block"><svg width="24" height="35" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg"><g fill="none" fill-rule="evenodd"><text font-family="inter-X-Bold, inter" font-size="10" font-weight="bold" letter-spacing=".2" fill="currentColor" transform="translate(-7 -1)"><br class=""></text><text font-family="inter-X-Bold, inter" font-size="10" font-weight="bold" letter-spacing=".2" fill="currentColor" transform="translate(-7 -1)"><tspan x="7.177" y="35"><a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/common-dreams?refcode=side" class=""><br class="">GIVE</a></tspan><a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/common-dreams?refcode=side" class=""> </a></text><a href="https://secure.actblue.com/donate/common-dreams?refcode=side" class=""> </a></g></svg></li><div class="float-left d-print-none justify-content-center col-md-2 d-flex"><div class="block"><aside style="z-index: 3;" class="sticky-top d-flex article__actions align-items-center mt-lg-n5 justify-content-center flex-column py-lg-5"><div class="pt-5"><div class=""><font face="inter-X-Bold, inter" size="4" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3700000047683716px; white-space: nowrap;" class=""><i class="">Nice photos in article…</i></span></font></div><div class=""><font face="inter-X-Bold, inter" size="4" class=""><br class=""></font></div><div class=""><font face="inter-X-Bold, inter" size="4" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3700000047683716px; white-space: nowrap;" class=""><a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/13/stop-blocking-global-covid-vaccines-protests-greet-merkels-white-house-visit" class="">https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/13/stop-blocking-global-covid-vaccines-protests-greet-merkels-white-house-visit</a> </span></font></div><div class=""><font face="inter-X-Bold, inter" size="4" class=""><span style="letter-spacing: 0.3700000047683716px; white-space: nowrap;" class=""><b class=""><br class=""></b></span></font></div></div></aside></div></div><div class="col-lg-7 mx-auto col-12"><h1 class="mb-2" id="node-title">'Stop Blocking Global Covid Vaccines': Protests Greet Merkel's White House Visit</h1><div class="block"><div class="text-lg tracking-tighter headline__field-subtitle leading-tightest">"Every day Chancellor Merkel delays global action on Covid vaccines costs thousands of lives."</div></div><div class="block"><div class="d-flex py-5 align-items-center"><div class="d-flex mr-4 author-images"><div class="overflow-hidden border-white rounded-circle border-2" style="z-index: 0;"> <img loading="lazy" src="https://www.commondreams.org/sites/default/files/styles/article_author/public/2021-06/jake-johnson-200x200.jpg?h=55541bb6&itok=dRxLRucM" alt="" width="60" height="60" class=""></div></div><div class=""><p class="font-weight-bold text-xs text-uppercase mb-0"> <span about="/author/jake-johnson" typeof="schema:Person" property="schema:name" datatype="" lang="en" class=""><a style="color: inherit;" href="https://www.commondreams.org/author/jake-johnson" class="">Jake Johnson</a></span></p> <span class="text-xs"> <time datetime="2021-07-13T11:55:12" class="">July 13, 2021</time> </span></div></div></div><div class="block"><div class="headline__body prose node__body"><p class=""><strong class="">Ahead of German Chancellor</strong>
Angela Merkel's visit to the U.S. later this week, public health
campaigners on Tuesday floated a large banner in front of the White
House calling on the European leader to "stop blocking global Covid
vaccines," a reference to her <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/07/13/dems-request-meeting-merkel-discuss-germanys-blockade-vaccine-patent-waiver" class="">continued opposition</a> to suspending Big Pharma-friendly patent protections.</p><p class="pullquote">"The Merkel-Biden summit will not be a success unless Germany agrees to support the TRIPS waiver and help end the pandemic."<br class="">—Arthur Stamoulis, Citizens Trade Campaign</p><p class="">Organized by a coalition of U.S. civil society groups, Tuesday's demonstration was the first in a <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2021/07/13/biden-merkel-summit-will-be-failure-unless-pres-biden-convinces-merkel-stop" class="">series of actions</a> set to take place ahead of and during Merkel's July 15 meeting with President Joe Biden, who has <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/22/biden-urged-pressure-eu-end-outrageous-opposition-vaccine-patent-waiver" class="">faced criticism</a> for not doing enough to pressure European allies to support a proposed patent waiver for coronavirus vaccines.</p><p class="">Other
actions planned this week include a protest at Germany's Permanent
Mission to the United Nations in New York City on Wednesday, a "die-in"
outside the White House during Merkel's visit on Thursday, and vigils at
German consulates nationwide.</p><p class="">"While Americans and Western
Europeans increasingly have widespread access to Covid vaccination, huge
numbers of people around the world aren't expected to have access to a
vaccine for years unless global production is dramatically increased,"
Arthur Stamoulis, executive director of the Citizens Trade Campaign,
said in a statement. "Every day Chancellor Merkel delays global action
on Covid vaccines costs thousands of lives and increases the chances of a
viral mutation that can evade current vaccines and start the pandemic
all over for everyone."</p><p class="">"The Merkel-Biden summit will not be a
success," Stamoulis added, "unless Germany agrees to support the TRIPS
waiver and help end the pandemic."</p><p class="">In a <a href="https://www.citizen.org/article/letter-to-potus-on-chancellor-merkel-summit-and-covid-19-trips-waiver/" class="">letter</a>
to Biden last week, Public Citizen, Amnesty International, and other
progressive advocacy groups characterized the July 15 meeting as "a
unique opportunity" for Biden to "lead the world to the speedy adoption
of a waiver by persuading Chancellor Merkel to join you and end her
opposition."</p><p class="">"The rising Delta variant makes brutally clear that
the world is not winning the battles between vaccines and variants, or
between treatments and needless deaths, or between tests and raging
outbreaks," the letter warns.</p><p class="">Since Biden <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/05/transformative-hopeful-event-under-pressure-biden-backs-covid-19-vaccine-patent" class="">endorsed</a>
the patent waiver in May, negotiations over the proposal have largely
been stagnant as Germany, the United Kingdom, Canada, and a handful of
other rich World Trade Organization (WTO) members remain opposed.</p><p class="">Because
the WTO operates by consensus, the small group of wealthy countries has
the power to block a proposal backed by the majority of the
organization's member countries as well as hundreds of international
humanitarian groups, the head of the World Health Organization, the <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/06/10/european-parliament-endorses-vaccine-patent-waiver-eu-urged-stop-putting-pharma" class="">European Parliament</a>, and a <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/04/23/bernie-sanders-says-backing-waiver-covid-vaccine-patents-common-human-morality" class="">growing number</a> of U.S. members of Congress.</p><p class="">Just days after Biden announced his support for the waiver, Merkel <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/05/07/big-pharma-stocks-rebound-after-germanys-merkel-speaks-out-against-vaccine-patent" class="">blamed</a>
"production capacities and the high-quality standards" of coronavirus
vaccines for supply shortages, dismissing the role that strict
intellectual property (IP) protections have played in <a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/04/29/covid-vaccine-factory-production-ip/" class="">constraining</a> global production.</p><p class="">Asked during a <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/press-briefings/2021/07/09/press-briefing-by-press-secretary-jen-psaki-july-9-2021/" class="">press briefing</a>
last week whether Biden intends to discuss the patent waiver with
Merkel on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki dodged the
question and described the waiver as just "one tool in our toolbox."</p><p class="">"There
are a number of others, including increasing manufacturing," said
Psaki. "Obviously, we've already made an announcement about the number
of doses—the 500 million we're sharing around the world—and we've
already started implementing them."</p><p class="">But public health experts have
argued that vaccine charity, while welcome, will do nothing to address a
major underlying cause of supply scarcity—the pharmaceutical industry's
monopolistic control over production and key technology.</p><p class="">"We
acknowledge that legal factors beyond IP, such as trade and export
restrictions, also shape the ability to produce and access Covid-19
vaccines and therapeutics," more than 100 international intellectual
property scholars <a href="https://research.kent.ac.uk/socril/ip-scholarship-trips-waiver/" class="">wrote</a>
in an open letter on Tuesday. "Nonetheless, it is the case that IP
rights, and monopolies over tacit and informal information, are also
implicated in the current lack of global capacity for vaccine production
and other health technologies, as well as in enabling their inequitable
distribution."</p><p class="">A temporary waiver of vaccine-related patent
protections, the academics argued, "is a necessary and proportionate
legal measure towards the clearing of existing intellectual property
barriers to scaling up of production of Covid-19 health technologies in a
direct, consistent, and effective fashion."</p><p class="">The World Health
Organization estimates that the equitable distribution of 11 billion
vaccine doses will be necessary to end the pandemic. <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations" class="">According to</a>
Our World in Data, just over 3.4 billion doses have been administered
thus far—a mere 1% of which have gone to people in low-income countries.</p><p class="">"With
thousands of people continuing to die of Covid every day for lack of
vaccines and treatments, the idea that Germany would continue to
prioritize pharmaceutical profits over saving as many lives as possible
and ending this pandemic is an outrage," Stamoulis said. "Now is the
time for real leadership.”</p></div></div></div></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><br class=""><div class="">
Arthur Stamoulis<br class="">Citizens Trade Campaign<br class="">(202) 494-8826<br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class="">
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