Just a few months ago, scientists knew little about the COVID-19 coronavirus that is now sweeping around the planet. And nobody could imagine that it would be necessary to develop a vaccine for it, since ordinary coronavirus infections usually disappear a week after people become infected, similar to seasonal infections like influenza and other such diseases. But the beginning of this century saw coronaviruses from animals come into this world; in 2002 there was SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, and then MERS in 2012 – and it turned out that, unlike respiratory coronaviruses, they cause severe lower respiratory tract infections more frequently. When SARS arose, they began to develop a vaccine, but by 2003 the infection vanished on its own.
Taking into account the danger for the planet’s population that the COVID-19 pandemic has shown due to the substantial quantity of infected people (the number of coronavirus cases identified in the world has already exceeded 11.5 million), as well as the quantity of lethal outcomes (according to WHO reports, more than 240,000 people have passed away around the world), the fight against the coronavirus quickly took on an international format, and the race to search for pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines to fight the pandemic was on.
Currently, there have been several dozen versions of a vaccine to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic showcased around the world, and several of those are already in clinical trials on humans. And it has become unclear what people in the world are more afraid of: an invisible enemy, or the medicine for it that is being manufactured at such a breakneck pace.
Throughout the world, significant funds started to be set aside to develop medicines and vaccines. On 15 April, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, put forth an initiative to hold a pledging marathon to raise funds for the worldwide fight against COVID-19; the goal was to raise 7.5 billion euro to develop vaccines, medicines, and diagnostics systems for the entire world. The European Union itself proclaimed that it would allot 1 billion euro to finance transnational efforts to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus.
Taking into consideration the damage that the COVID-19 coronavirus has already inflicted on various nations around the world and the economies of their countries, in April all 193 countries with the United National General Assembly unanimously gave their support for a resolution with an appeal to prevent profiteering on a future coronavirus vaccine. A number of countries, and specifically China and Russia, have already announced that they intend to make their own coronavirus vaccine available to the entire world.
Nonetheless, the conditions that are emerging have energized unscrupulous producers, bereft of any humane objectives, to actively become involved in the race to develop and produce medicines and vaccines for COVID-19 to reap super-high profits on this global tribulation. And, naturally, certain business owners and companies in the United States started to make frequent appearances in the first waves of this unscrupulous race – and they are already well-known due to other high-profile scandals.
It has been no secret for a long time now to what extent the current US political elite deem themselves above the rest of the world, which, of course, is not the truth. However, their aspirations to subjugate the entire world, including by imposing their medicines and vaccines on everyone else, have been manifesting themselves particularly glaringly as of late. And, unfortunately, this is vividly demonstrated by this latest incident, which is no exception: the US administration bought up virtually all of the COVID-19 antiviral medicine Remdesivir that will be manufactured in July, August, and September. It is known that the drug was developed by the American company Gilead Sciences, and it was slated to be sold around the entire world. However, now other countries simply will not be able to buy the drug over the next several months, since the US bought up about 90% of this medicinal product. After the company Gilead proclaimed – as Forbes reported – its intention to sell the anti-coronavirus drug Remdesivir at the price of 390 dollars per ampoule this means that the necessary five-day treatment will run 2,340 USD for one person (an amount that is beyond reach for many people, even in developed countries, let alone impoverished nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America). And that, for its part, allows making conjectures about the size of the future larger-than-life profits for “American wheeler dealers in medicine”, and that is with the information, according to assessment done by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), that since 18 March the richest people in the US have already become 19%, or 565 billion USD, richer in total!
About ten famous American scientists and a group of business magnates made an announcement, according to The Wall Street Journal, about a behind-the-scenes path toward presenting their plan to search for and develop anti-coronavirus medicines and vaccines, to the White House. Promoting this COVID-19 “Manhattan Project”, this clandestine group of scientists and billionaires made a list of approximately 20 American companies that could reap significant profits from their work, and the participants promised to immediately sell off all the shares in these companies that they hold.
The Sanofi pharmaceutical company intends to distribute a potential COVID-19 vaccine in the US as a matter of top priority; this was announced on 14 May by Olivier Bogillot, a French company representative, which elicited sharp criticism in Germany, France, and many other EU countries.
Using levers of political pressure, over the past few days Washington has actively tried to impose its pharmaceutical drugs on “allied countries”. However, these attempts on the part of the United States are more and more frequently raising natural questions, and resistance, from many experts. For example, the Israel Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona sent a letter to leadership at the Ministry of Health, and to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, condemning the deal to buy vaccines from the American company Moderna. In its letter, the institute says that the deal was signed without consulting with any Israeli specialists, and nobody took into account that the American company does not publish any information on its preclinical trials, or their side effects.
Another example that is noteworthy is backstage collusion between the United States and European bureaucrats to promote American pharmaceutical drugs on the European market. The European Commission, according to a statement that was disseminated on 3 July, preliminarily allowed the American drug Remdesivir to be used on the European market to help treat the coronavirus, even though the WHO raised doubts about whether this drug is effective. This fact involuntarily brings to mind the corruption-related scandal that ignited in February linked to European functionaries and judges with the ECHR that either took bribes directly from the Open Society Foundation, owned by American billionaire George Soros, or via its affiliates, in return for delivering decisions advantageous to Soros and Washington. Taking into consideration what is stated above, including the US policy vis-à-vis Remdesivir and the commonly known links between Soros and American pharmaceutical companies and manufacturers, it is very unlikely that anyone will have any doubts regarding the complicity of this scandalous American “entrepreneur” in unscrupulously pushing US medicinal products on the European market.
Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
