Bill Gates, Intellectual Property, and the COVID Vaccine Supply Crisis w/ Alexander Zaitchik - a podcast by J.G.

On this edition of Parallax Views, Bill Gates has been the target of many a conspiracy theory in lieu of the COVID-19 pandemic and the COVID vaccine. But does this obscure other criticisms of Bill Gates in regards to the vaccine roll-out during the pandemic? Particularly, has Gates' adherence to intellectual property (IP) had negative impacts on the global vaccine roll-out, specifically in the global south? Journalist Alexander Zaitchik has written an extensive piece on this matter for The New Republic entitled "How Bill Gates Impeded Global Access to Covid Vaccines". Zaitchik joins us to discuss some of the main points of this important piece as well as discussing the broader history of intellectual property, problems with intellectual property, how Bill Gates' thinking on IP and vaccines is a symptom of a problem rather than the problem itself, the Gates Foundation, the World Health Organization (WHO), the vaccine supply crisis globally,  the role James Love of Knowledge Ecology International played in Zaitchik's piece, failures of the COVID ACT accelerator, early plans, ideas, and strategies for dealing with COVID-19 vs. how it has been handled since, pharmaceutical companies, public health vs. intellectual property, the libertarian/free trade critique of intellectual property-based patent systems, and much, much more. In reading Zaitchik's reporting one gets the impression that the poorest countries have suffered the most during the roll-out as compared to the richest countries. Is another way possible? Hopefully this conversation can give listeners a few ideas on that and related issues.

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