Oct. 24, 2023 ❧ Paxlovid price gouging, worldwide marches for Palestine, and Sudan's humanitarian crisis
Plus carbon capture faltering, West Bank settlements, the power of worker co-ops, and Cornel West's strange bedfellow...
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STORIES THAT SHOULD BE BIGGER
PFIZER WILL SELL ITS COVID DRUG FOR 100x MORE THAN MANUFACTURING COST
Pfizer recently announced that it is increasing the price of its patented COVID-19 drug Paxlovid to $1,390 for a five-day treatment course. The cost to produce five days' worth of the drug? $13. The antiviral oral treatment, which was first approved for emergency use by the FDA in December 2021, has proven effective at preventing severe infection from COVID-19 infection, stopping the virus from multiplying in the body. The effects of the medication last up to six months and can reduce the severity of “long COVID.”
But as a result of Pfizer’s exclusive patent, which has prevented generic versions of the drug from being produced, it has been largely inaccessible in low and middle-income nations. And while Pfizer signed an agreement in 2021 with the Medicines Patent Pool to allow generics to be manufactured in 95 of these countries, the advocacy group Public Citizen has since documented a “Paxlovid patent wall” that has prevented countries not part of the deal from creating generics. According to a report from Public Citizen and the Global Access Project (Health GAP):
The number of people with high risk COVID-19 infections in low and middle income countries (LMICs) exceeded procured supply of the World Health Organization’s antiviral of choice – nirmatrelvir/ritonavir, marketed by Pfizer as Paxlovid – by at least eight million courses in 2022. This shortfall late in the COVID-19 emergency left unmet at least 90% of health need for the WHO-preferred treatment in developing countries…Using publicly available supply agreements and data from the World Health Organization, Public Citizen determined that by the end of 2022, only an estimated 916,120 courses of Paxlovid had been procured by LMICs, compared to a minimum population-based need of 9,135,953 courses.
Pharmaceutical companies have jealously guarded their patents over life-saving treatments throughout the pandemic. The costs imposed by pharmaceutical companies for their vaccines led many countries in the developing world to receive just a sliver of the total supply. That same saga is playing out again with oral drugs.
According to Peter Maybarduk, an intellectual property expert and head of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines group, “Drug corporations' high prices, contract secrecy, and monopoly supply all suppress demand, and make it harder for resource-starved health agencies to purchase the treatment they need to care for people.”
FIGHTING BACK
THE WORLD MARCHES FOR PALESTINE
In the past week, demonstrators on every continent except Antarctica have taken to the streets to protest the Israeli government’s ongoing bombing assault on Gaza, which has killed at least 5,087 Palestinians, including 2,055 children, as of Monday. Majority-Muslim countries have led the way, with thousands rallying in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Sunday, in Rabat, Morocco on Friday, in Doha, Qatar, and in Egypt’s celebrated Tahrir Square, where 43 protesters have been arrested. They’re far from the only ones, though. In France, which initially banned pro-Palestinian demonstrations, around 15,000 people came together in the Place de la Republique to chant “Gaza, Paris is with you!,” and 7,000 more marched through the streets of Düsseldorf in Germany. London had one of the largest rallies of all, with as many as 100,000 protesters carrying Palestinian flags and placards reading “WAR CRIME” and “Gaza: Stop the Massacre” to the doors of Downing Street. On Saturday, 15,000 Australians held a march of their own in Sydney, and even Japan has seen protests outside U.S. consulate buildings. This is just a selection of the most notable sites; on Al Jazeera’s website, there’s an interactive map and a list of more than 75 world cities that have taken part.
In this global outpouring of support and solidarity, some of the most notable voices have been those of Jewish groups. In Washington D.C., the organizations Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow collaborated to hold what they’re calling the largest-ever Jewish rally in support of Palestinians, which saw more than 5,000 people march on the National Mall to demand an immediate ceasefire. In a separate event on October 18, an estimated 400 members of both groups protested on Capitol Hill, including 25 rabbis who recited prayers and messages from Palestinians in Gaza. Of that number, around 300 were arrested by Capitol police. Their shared slogan, “Not in Our Name,” gives the lie to the idea that Jews around the world necessarily support Israel’s actions, or that criticizing the Israeli state’s growing list of war crimes is somehow antisemitic.
These events matter because the Israeli government relies on the approval and assistance of foreign powers—especially the United States and Europe—to continue waging war on Gaza. For too long, its acts of aggression against Palestinian civilians have simply gone unquestioned. But things are changing. As we showed you in Friday’s briefing, Americans are much more skeptical of the U.S. giving military aid to Israel than our government’s bipartisan response would suggest. An unprecedented 53 percent of Democrats, 55 percent of Independents, and even 43 percent of Republicans say the U.S. should not send weapons to Israel according to a CBS/YouGov poll. Meanwhile, a poll from Data for Progress shows that two-thirds of likely voters agree that the U.S. should call for a ceasefire and de-escalation of violence in Gaza to prevent civilian deaths—a view which the White House Press Secretary called “disgraceful” and “repugnant” when a small group of Congresspeople expressed it last week. Ultimately, changing public opinion may not be enough to push our governments toward brokering a ceasefire. But if enough people raise their voices, it could be enough to break through.
AROUND THE STATES
❧ The Supreme Court has shot down a novel Missouri law that would have dramatically expanded gun rights in the state. The law in question, penned by Republican state legislators, stated that no official had the authority to “enforce or attempt to enforce any federal acts, laws, [or] executive orders” which could be viewed as violating citizens’ Second Amendment rights, including any taxes or fees which might “create a chilling effect on the purchase or ownership” of firearms. In effect, it argued that Missouri could simply ignore any federal gun law it believed to be unconstitutional. Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court did not find this idea compelling and has ruled against the legislation—although Justice Clarence Thomas indicated that he would have ruled in Missouri’s favor.
❧ Louisiana companies are rushing to build carbon-dioxide pipelines, prompting environmental and safety concerns. When the Inflation Reduction Act passed last summer, it dramatically increased government subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration, or CCS—the process of catching carbon emissions from industrial plants, compressing the gas, and storing it deep underground. As a result, a firm in Louisiana is now spending $4.5 billion to capture emissions from ammonia production, pipe the compressed carbon dioxide 35 miles away, and store it under Lake Maurepas. It’s just one such project in Louisiana, which is slated to build nearly a third of the country’s CCS infrastructure. Local groups, though, say companies like the creatively named Air Products have rushed their projects along without appropriate regulation or environmental impact surveys. They also point out that “predominantly Black and rural” areas have been chosen for carbon storage, with one resident of Ascension Parish saying the industry is taking them “back to the sharecropper days” with its disregard for residents’ safety. There’s good reason to be concerned; when a compressed Co2 pipeline ruptures, as one did in Satartia, Mississippi in 2020, it can displace oxygen and cause widespread carbon dioxide poisoning, to say nothing of the force of the explosion itself. Unless more care is taken, the whole CCS industry could be a disaster of Chernobyl proportions, just waiting to happen.
A USEFUL HEALTH TIP FROM 1924
AROUND THE WORLD
❧ As the globe’s attention has been focused on the carnage out of the Gaza Strip, violence has also surged in the West Bank, which Israel also occupies. In the two weeks since Hamas launched the most deadly attack in Israel’s history, at least 91 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank according to the Palestinian Health Ministry. Following the news of airstrikes across Gaza, protests broke out across the occupied territory, which were met with live fire, tear gas, and stun grenades by Israeli occupation forces and Palestinian Authority security. Israel also launched an airstrike on a mosque in the Jenin refugee camp, apparently without warning on Sunday night, killing two Palestinians whom the IDF says were agents of Hamas.
Simultaneously, Israel carried out raids across the West Bank Sunday night that killed five more Palestinians. Since Hamas’ rampage on Oct. 7, More than 470 Palestinians have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of violence by Israeli settlers and two villages have been totally depopulated. This adds to the 1,100 that have already been displaced since 2022 while 530 Palestinian-owned structures have been seized or demolished by Israeli authorities just this year.
Here is a report on the displacement of Bedouin herders from February 2023:
The latest displacements follow a UN report from September warning about rising violence by Israeli settlers against Bedouin herders, who have had more than 110 sq. km. annexed by settlers over the last year. The Bedouin people in the village of Ein Rashash—who have called the village home for four decades—were forced to completely pack up and move this week following months of threats and land grabs from a nearby Israeli settlement called “Angels of Peace” which intensified in the wake of Hamas’ attack. “They came into the village and destroyed houses and sheep pens, beat an 85-year-old man, and scared our children. Slowly our lives became unlivable,” says villager Sliman al-Zawahri to The Guardian. Another village, Wadi al-Siq, was stormed by armed settlers but had already evacuated its women and children after rumors spread of a planned massacre on Facebook. According to Israeli activist Guy Hirschfield, settler attacks like the ones described above have happened “all over the West Bank” as “[The settlers are] taking advantage of the situation and doing whatever they want.” The UN describes Israel’s movement of settlers into occupied territory as a “flagrant violation” of the Fourth Geneva Convention, but the number of settlers in the West Bank has more than doubled since 2005.
❧ Finland’s largest grocery store is a consumer-owned cooperative. In The American Prospect, Ryan Cooper has a fascinating profile of S-Group, a grocery co-op with 2.5 million members and 1,984 stores, representing 47 percent of the Finnish grocery market. Unlike American retail chains, S-Group has no shareholders and no single owner. Instead, “members own the stores at which they shop,” and profits are redistributed to them to the tune of €484 million last year. The entire corporate leadership is democratically elected, and unionized workers hold two seats on the supervisory board. As Cooper writes, it’s not the flashiest or most radical-seeming project, but it works, and provides an alternative model of how entire economies can run:
Here we have a hyper-efficient retail operation, run with cutting-edge management and logistics, dominating half the grocery market of a wealthy country, without minting a single billionaire in the process. It is not just competitive with capitalist businesses; it is more successful. It’s enough to make the ghost of Ronald Reagan cry.
❧ Sudan’s civil war has created a worsening humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations, 24.7 million people are now in need of urgent assistance, and 4.6 million have been internally displaced since fighting broke out in April. Meanwhile, Doctors Without Borders warns that Sudan’s medical sector could soon collapse. Speaking to Al Jazeera, aid workers have blamed the Sudanese armed forces—which control the vital Port Sudan, on the Red Sea—for restricting the flow of supplies into areas controlled by their adversaries, the Rapid Support Forces. For its part, the RSF appears to be selectively handing out what supplies it does have to buy credibility for itself with local populations, despite also being responsible for war crimes like the deliberate shelling of civilian neighborhoods. The situation is dire, and made worse by the lack of funding; at the time of writing, only 33.5 percent of the money the UN estimates will be needed for a humanitarian response has been raised. Perhaps some of the billions currently being used to shower Ukraine and Israel with weapons could be better spent here?
YOU CAN HELP
Donate to Save the Children, which has provided resources—including badly needed food and medical supplies—to more than 2.1 million people in Sudan in 2022
CROOKS vs. SICKOS (or “What’s going on with our politicians?”)
❧ Independent presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West has received a donation from an unlikely source, the right-wing real estate baron (and cartoon supervillain name-haver) Harlan Crow. Supreme Court heads will know Crow as the Republican mega-donor who showered Justice Clarence Thomas with undisclosed gifts. Crow feted the Justice with trips aboard his private jet and 162-foot yacht, stays at his private resort, and even school tuition for his adopted son. Crow has given more than $10 million to GOP candidates over his decades in politics and millions more in undisclosed dark money. “Despite my deep political differences with brother Harlan Crow (who is an anti-Trump Republican), I’ve known him in a non-political setting for some years and I pray for his precious family,” said West, a socialist candidate who describes himself as “unbought and unbossed.” He ultimately decided to return the donation of $3,300 from Crow after initially accepting it and facing criticism. “As a jazzman,” he said, “I listened and decided to give the money back to brother Harlan.”
It’s weird enough that West would find himself rubbing elbows with a guy who collects Hitler’s paintings. Even weirder is that a Republican billionaire like Crow would max out to a Bernie Sanders backer who wants a “wealth tax on all billionaire holdings and transactions” and to “end all tax loopholes for the oligarchy.” Like with a lot of aspects of West’s quixotic foray into electoral politics, it seems better to just throw up your hands. Whether he’s on the Crow payroll or not, he’s still a better choice than anyone else running for president.
PAST AFFAIRS
“Cornel West’s Presidential Campaign Deserves the Left’s Solidarity”
by Lily Sánchez (July 8, 2023)
“What if we thought of West’s run not as a “sterile exercise” or only in reference to the two corrupt political parties? West himself has said that leaders can act as catalysts for movements—indeed, we saw this with Bernie and with the elections in recent years of democratic socialists all across the country. So what if we thought of West’s run as a chance to catalyze a larger independent working-class movement? What if West’s appeal could be broader than we think? What if we showed as much solidarity for West’s third-party run as we have year after year after year for a Democratic Party that will never serve our interests? These are the questions we need to be asking ourselves.
If we forgo an opportunity to get behind an exciting left campaign, we’re resigning ourselves to Marianne Williamson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the only alternatives. If we want an alternative to the two parties, here it is.”
[NOTE: At the time of writing, Cornel West was running on the Green Party ticket. He has since changed his identification to Independent.]
❧ There’s a war on in the GOP primary over who can express more disdain toward Palestinian refugees. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attacked his rival, UN ambassador Nikki Haley, last week, unleashing an attack ad slamming her for saying “We should care about the Palestinian citizens” and that “you can separate civilians from terrorists.” In the ad, DeSantis is shown responding by saying: “She’s trying to be politically correct. She's trying to please the media and people on the left. I don't care about that,” DeSantis said. “I can tell you this: as president, the number of people we will bring in from Gaza is zero. We are not going to do that.” DeSantis even went as far as to say that the U.S. should not take any Gazan refugees because they “are all antisemitic” — all 2.3 million of them. (For DeSantis to be on his high horse about antisemitism is rich considering his campaign’s history of hiring and promoting people who express open admiration for the Nazis). But Haley is also a horrible target for this attack, since she has been as aggressive as anyone in supporting Israel’s right to level the Gaza Strip, and stated yesterday on Twitter that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism” and has previously lambasted those who have called for Israel to show “restraint” in its relentless bombing campaign. She has also been staunchly against taking any of the more than a million Gazan refugees the U.S. has helped to displace. “There is no reason for any refugees to come to America,” she says, “And I, you know, my record is very clear on that.” As DeSantis lags in the polls, he appears increasingly desperate to land attacks on the transgressions of his opponents. And, of course, there is no worse transgression one can be accused of in a Republican primary than having a modicum of compassion for your fellow human beings.
UNDER THE HOOD
⚜ One of America’s most powerful Christian legal advocacy groups, the Alliance Defending Freedom, helped to overturn Roe v. Wade next summer. Now they seek religious exemptions to anti-discrimination law, David D. Kirkpatrick writes in The New Yorker:
Founded three decades ago as a legal-defense fund for conservative Christian causes, A.D.F. had become that movement’s most influential arm. In the past dozen years, its lawyers had won fourteen Supreme Court victories, including overturning Roe v. Wade; allowing employer-sponsored health insurance to exclude birth control; rolling back limits on government support for religious organizations; protecting the anonymity of donors to advocacy groups; blocking pandemic-related public-health rules; and establishing the right of a baker to refuse to make a cake for a same-sex wedding. Capitalizing on its success, A.D.F. had tripled its revenue over that period, to more than a hundred million dollars a year. It now had seventy or so in-house lawyers, including the former solicitors general of Michigan and Nebraska and the former United States Attorney for Missouri. The lawyers sent to Amarillo were Erik Baptist, a former top lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency under President Donald Trump, and Erin Hawley, a Yale Law graduate who had clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts, advised the Attorney General under President George W. Bush, and worked on the team that overturned Roe. (She is married to Senator Josh Hawley, of Missouri.) …
The next priority for A.D.F., [chief executive Kristen Waggoner] told me, is fighting “the radical gender-identity ideology infiltrating the law”—that is, transgender rights. Waggoner said that she doesn’t believe in transgender identity, only in “gender dysphoria,” adding, “I believe there are people who are uncomfortable in their bodies.” She cited growing numbers—the 1.4 per cent of American teen-agers now identifying as trans may be roughly double the percentage in 2017, according to a U.C.L.A. study of government data—as evidence that forces in culture, education, and the law have fuelled a “social contagion.” Schools were pushing minors too young to give meaningful consent toward irreversible “sterilization and chemical castration,” all to treat adolescent feelings of awkwardness that could be addressed by psychological counselling. It was all “absurd,” she insisted…
A.D.F. staff in Washington are pushing for legislation that would make it easier to sue school districts for alleged violations of parental rights. Its lawyers have brought “parental-rights” cases both in appellate circuits that lean left and in others that lean right, increasing the chance that a split will compel the Supreme Court to take up the issue. In Waukesha, Wisconsin, part of the conservative circuit based in Chicago, A.D.F. is representing parents suing their school district for ignoring their request to treat their twelve-year-old as a girl (the child, for a time, had requested to be treated as a boy). And in Loudoun County, Virginia, part of the liberal circuit based in Richmond, A.D.F. is representing Christian teachers who oppose the district’s policy of letting students choose their pronouns without telling their parents. (In 2021, A.D.F. won an appeals-court decision that a public college couldn’t make a professor use a student’s preferred pronouns.) …
Pitting conservative Christian parents, employers, and creative professionals against L.G.B.T. rights reminded me of the incremental approach that A.D.F. and its allies had adopted during the long struggle to overturn Roe: undermining the precedent bit by bit, by defending parental-notification laws, waiting periods, and so on. With Roe gone, the surviving precedent most objectionable to conservative Christians is undoubtedly Obergefell—the same-sex marriage decision. In some ways, Obergefell is also fragile. Two of the five Justices in its majority, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Anthony Kennedy, have been replaced by conservatives, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. And some lawyers argue that the Obergefell majority fatally contradicted itself by calling the opposition to same-sex marriage “decent and honorable.” (Robert George, a Princeton legal scholar and another occasional lecturer at A.D.F.’s Blackstone program, told me, “If that line is right, then the outcome is wrong.”) The majority concluded that the right to same-sex marriage was embedded in the Constitution’s guarantees of due process, but in a vigorous dissent Alito quoted a precedent that “due process” includes only rights “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition.” He argued that “it is beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among those rights.” Alito’s argument about “deeply rooted” rights is the exact argument that six Justices endorsed in overturning Roe.
⚜ As Amazon workers around the country fought to unionize in 2021, some drivers testified that the company’s unrealistic delivery quotas forced them to pee in bottles because they didn’t have time to use a proper restroom. The piss-filled bottle became a potent symbol of Amazon’s Dickensian work conditions and a rallying cry for workers organizing for more humane treatment. Despite the testimony of numerous drivers, Amazon has denied that this problem exists. Documentarian Oobah Butler—director of The Great Amazon Heist—has come up with a creative (if rather stomach-churning) way to make them acknowledge it. He writes in VICE:
Clearly Amazon don’t care about their workers’ bladders. But you know what they do care about? Products. And their platform. What if there was a way to make a product out of these urine bottles, list it on Amazon, and do everything in my power to drive it to #1? Now that would get their attention.
CAT FACT OF THE DAY
Cats meow at humans, but they DON’T meow at one another.
They communicate with a more complex language that is mostly made up of scents, body language, touch, and facial expressions. As kittens, they meow to their mothers to signal that they are hungry or cold but usually outgrow this behavior by adulthood. When they do vocalize at other cats, it’s through a set of more subtle chitters, yowls, and snarls that the workaday cat owner may not have encountered before.
Humans are not an advanced enough species to understand cats’ intricate rituals of communication, so they are forced to dumb it down for us. When cats give a short meow, it is often meant as a greeting, whereas longer ones signify demands like food or the right to leave. Each cat develops their own language specifically tailored to what they think their owner will understand!
Writing and research by Stephen Prager and Alex Skopic. Editing and additional material by Nathan J. Robinson and Lily Sánchez. Fact-checking by Justin Ward. This news briefing is a product of Current Affairs Magazine. Subscribe to our gorgeous and informative print edition here, and our delightful podcast here. Current Affairs is 100% reader-supported and depends on your subscriptions and donations.