Moderna, Pfizer, and BioNTech—the makers of the two most successful coronavirus vaccines—are raking in a combined $65,000 in profits every minute as they refuse to share their manufacturing recipes with developing countries, where billions of people still lack access to lifesaving shots.

According to a new People’s Vaccine Alliance analysis of recent earnings reports, the three pharmaceutical giants have made a total of $34 billion in profits this year, which amounts to roughly $1,083 per second, $64,961 per minute, or $3.9 million per hour.

“It is obscene that just a few companies are making millions of dollars in profit every single hour while just two percent of people in low-income countries have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus,” said Maaza Seyoum of the People’s Vaccine Alliance Africa. “Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna have used their monopolies to prioritize the most profitable contracts with the richest governments, leaving low-income countries out in the cold.”

Moderna has delivered just 0.2% of its total vaccine supply to low-income countries.

Pfizer and its Germany-based partner BioNTech haven’t done much better than their competitor, sending less than 1% of their supply to poor nations while profiting hugely from sales to rich countries.

“Contrary to what Pfizer’s CEO says, the real nonsense is claiming the experience and expertise to develop and manufacture lifesaving medicines and vaccines does not exist in developing countries,” Anna Marriott, health policy manager at Oxfam International, said in a statement Tuesday. “This is just a false excuse that pharmaceutical companies are hiding behind to protect their astronomical profits.”

“It is also a complete failure of government to allow these companies to maintain monopoly control and artificially constrain supply in the midst of a pandemic while so many people in the world are yet to be vaccinated,” she added.

 Moderna on Tuesday announced a deal that will allow the European Union and European Economic Area countries to donate coronavirus vaccine doses that they purchased from the company to COVAX, the World Health Organization-backed vaccination initiative.

The agreement was met with derision from vaccine equity campaigners. “Goodness, how generous,” responded Nick Dearden, director of the U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now. “Most people will simply be astounded that you were stopping them from doing this in the first place.”

“Why don’t you, instead, share your publicly funded vaccine recipe with the WHO?” he added. “That might actually help.”

In a letter to Moderna’s billionaire CEO Stéphane Bancel on Tuesday, a coalition of nearly 90 civil society organizations wrote that “we are in no doubt that most Covid-19 deaths in low-income countries are now avoidable deaths: lives that could be saved were effective vaccines, none more than Moderna’s, widely available to their populations.”

The groups called on Moderna to transfer its vaccine technology to qualified manufacturers through the WHO to ramp up global vaccine production and to commit to selling its shot to low-income countries at a not-for-profit price.

‘Obscene’: Pfizer, BioNTech, and Moderna Are Raking in $3.9 Million in Profits Per Hour (commondreams.org)

 Regardless of all the hype that with labour shortages it is a workers market right now, the average pay deal across the UK is worth just 2%, despite a rise in prices that pushed the retail prices index (RPI) – a widely used measure of inflation in pay bargaining – to 6% this month.

Inflation is causing a sharp decline in disposable incomes across much of the workforce, a survey of employers also found they were expecting to increase pay by only 2.5% over the next year.

Average pay deal in Britain worth just 2%, data shows | Business | The Guardian

 Tens of thousands of England’s poorest pensioners face paying the same for their old age care as wealthier people after the government published details of the new cap on home and care costs.

The move will save the government hundreds of millions of pounds but leave many poorer homeowners exposed to “catastrophic costs” including the need to sell their homes to cover long-term care, analysts said.

“The proposed amendments to the Care Act mean reforms will no longer protect those with lower wealth from catastrophic costs,” said Charles Tallack at the Health Foundation thinktank. “The changes seem motivated by the desire to save money but do so by taking protection away from poorer homeowners.”

A pensioner with a £90,000 home in Burnley who qualifies for council help could pay the same for their care out of their own pocket as someone with property worth £250,000 or more in Surrey who is too wealthy for means-tested assistance. Care bills could still eat into almost all of their assets, forcing the sale of the house.

Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation thinktank, said: “if you own a £1m house in the home counties, over 90% of your assets are protected. If you’ve got a terrace house in Hartlepool worth £70,000 you can lose almost everything.” He added: “I’m really not sure the government’s thought this through…”

Analysts said the move could save the government hundreds of millions of pounds from the estimated £3bn cost of the cap, but the savings were being taken from people with low to moderate wealth not richer people.

“These changes will mean that the people who need the most protection from catastrophically high care costs – those with low to moderate levels of wealth – will get less protection than wealthier people,” said Sally Warren, director of policy at the King’s Fund thinktank. “They may well wonder why the prime minister’s promise that no one need sell their house to pay for care will benefit wealthier people but doesn’t seem to apply to them. The government was brave in raising taxes to fund the long-overdue reform of social care but, having taken two steps forward, has now taken one step back.”

At any one time, tens of thousands of people receiving care have such limited assets that they get means-tested help and so will be affected directly by the proposals. Hundreds of thousands of people who may never need social care will nevertheless be worried about being caught by the new system if they eventually require help. It effectively means some people with lesser assets don’t benefit from the cap at all.

Social care cap could expose poorer homeowners to ‘catastrophic’ costs | Social care | The Guardian

 November 20th

11 – 4pm

​The Casa, 

29 Hope Street,

Liverpool L1 9BQ

See http://merseysidemarxistbookfair.uk/

The Party will have a stall at this event stocking a wide range of Party literature

 Oligarch Elon Musk suggested that he and other billionaires are powerless to help the tens of millions of people across the globe who are suffering from hunger—and dared experts to prove him wrong. 

David Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program did just that, providing a detailed proposal for how Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and other billionaires could prevent 42 million people from starving with a tiny fraction of their vast wealth.

Home secretary, Priti Patel told the House of Lords justice and home affairs committee last month: “All the data and evidence has shown this – that in the last 12 months alone, 70% of the individuals who have come to our country illegally via small boats are single men, who are effectively economic migrants. They are not genuine asylum seekers. These are the ones who are elbowing out the women and children, who are at risk and fleeing persecution.”

Yet data from her own department has concluded that 61% of migrants who travel by boat are likely to be allowed to stay after claiming asylum.

Enver Solomon, the chief executive of the Refugee Council, said: “The analysis contradicts the government’s narrative that people coming across the Channel are not refugees. The reality is that people who come to the UK by taking terrifying journeys in small boats across the Channel do so because they are desperately seeking safety having fled persecution, terror and oppression.”

The Refugee Council analysed Channel crossings and asylum outcomes between January 2020 and June 2021. The charity found that 91% of people who travelled by boat across the Channel came from 10 countries where human rights abuses and persecution were common. These were Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Vietnam, Kuwait, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen.

According to the Home Office, 98% of people coming across the Channel apply for asylum. The report sets out the likely outcome of their asylum claims based on what is known as the grant rate. It finds that the majority of people crossing the Channel are likely to be recognised as being in need of protection at the initial decision stage.

For the top 10 countries of origin arriving by small boat, 61% of initial decisions made in the 18 months to June 2021 would have resulted in refugee protection being granted, the report states. This compares with 52% of decisions made for all nationalities in the same period.

The report shows that for Syrians, 88% are granted refugee status; for Eritreans the rate is 84%; for Sudanese and those from Yemen, 70%; for Iranians, 67%; for Vietnamese, 65%; for people from Kuwait Bidoun, 61%; and for Afghans, 56%.

If an asylum claim is refused by the Home Office at the initial decision stage, the applicant has a right of appeal to an independent tribunal. The report shows 59% of appeals are likely be allowed for the top 10 countries of origin, compared with 46% for appeals allowed for all countries. For example, 59% of appeals by Iranians are likely to be successful, as are 69% of Sudanese appeals and 73% of appeals by Syrians.

Most people who risk Channel boat crossings are refugees – report | Immigration and asylum | The Guardian

 In a 2021 study: Still Not Getting Energy Prices Right: A Global and Country Update of Fossil Fuel Subsidies, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that globally, fossil fuel subsidies were 5.9 trillion US dollars in 2020 or about 6.8 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). 

And that such subsidies are expected to rise to 7.4 percent of GDP in 2025, increasing the figure to nearly seven trillion dollars by 2025.

Commenting on this fact, António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, said that “… promises ring hollow when the fossil fuels industry still receives trillions in subsidies, as measured by the IMF. Or when countries are still building coal plants…”

Andrea Meza, Minister of Environment and Energy for Costa Rica remarked: “Every dollar that we invest in fossil fuel projects is one less dollar for renewables and for the conservation of nature…” 

Politicians Subsidise Fossil Fuel with Six Trillion Dollars in Just One Year | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 Countries are losing almost half a trillion dollars through tax abuse by multinationals and the super-rich, enough to fully vaccinate the global population against Covid-19 three times over, a report has said.

Research found that estimated losses had risen from $427bn last year to $483bn (£359bn) in 2021, with the UK alone responsible for almost 40% of the total. Britain facilitates abuse and evasion through a network made up of British overseas territories and the City of London, the report said.

The State of Tax Justice 2021 – jointly published by the Tax Justice Network (TJN), the Global Alliance for Tax Justice and the global union federation Public Services International – said $312bn of the total sum was the result of cross-border corporate tax abuse by multinational corporations and $171bn offshore tax evasion by wealthy individuals.

Alex Cobham, the chief executive of the TJN, said: “Another year of the pandemic, and another half-trillion dollars snatched by the wealthiest multinational corporations and individuals from public purses around the world. Tax can be our most powerful tool for tackling inequality but, instead, it’s been made entirely optional for the super-rich.

The report said the total was calculated based on data self-reported by multinational corporations and banking data collected by governments. Miroslav Palanský, a TJN data scientist, said the figures represented “the tip of the iceberg” and that actual losses from tax abuse were much higher.

The tax revenues lost by lower-income countries would be enough to vaccinate 60% of their populations, bridging the gap in vaccination rates between poor countries and wealthier western nations. However, it found rich countries were responsible for facilitating 78% of global tax losses.

The OECD brokered a deal between almost 140 nations to agree a minimum 15% global tax rate for corporations was expected to recover only a fraction of revenues lost to tax havens and would redistribute most recovered taxes to rich OECD members instead of the countries where the taxes should have originally been paid.

Almost $500bn ‘lost to tax abuse by firms and super-rich in 2021’ | Tax havens | The Guardian

The growing rush of commodities-driven land grabbing is “trashing” the environment and displacing people, says new research by research firm Verisk Maplecroft

Palm oil and cobalt were extreme risks for land grabs according to an analysis of 170 commodities. Alongside cobalt, other minerals used for “clean” technology, including silicon, zinc, copper, were high risk and undermined the sector’s label. The research showed that goods such as coconuts, garlic, tea and cocoa were also high risk for land grabbing.

The demand for more land to produce goods had been accompanied by displacement of indigenous communities and damage to natural capital – “such as clean air and water, pollinating insects, and soil quality” – crucial to battling the climate crisis.

Will Nichols, Verisk Maplecroft’s head of environmental research, said, “There is a lot of money to be made from trashing the environment rather than saving it when you are a landowner or someone looking to invest in these kinds of industries and you’re aware that the government isn’t going to stand in your way.” 

Campaign group Focus on the Global South published a letter signed by 257 organisations last Tuesday rejecting carbon-offsetting pledges from corporations and warning that initiatives such as tree planting will displace indigenous populations while land is still exploited for industrial agriculture.

Despite world leaders agreeing to stop deforestation at Cop26 this month, Ward Anseeuw, at the International Land Coalition, said there was a gap between government pledges and action on the ground. Anseeuw highlighted Madagascar, where he said a new land law voted in this year by parliament actually reversed efforts to allow poorer farmers to secure land rights. He said the law would strip away land rights handed out since 2005.

“It gives government very strong central power over these lands and they can decide unilaterally what can happen. That opens up the door for a huge land grab. More than 3 million households could be affected,” he said. “It really shows the contradiction of what is being discussed, and the actions or decisions being taken at a global level, and what is going on in the field with governments and specific companies.”

Kirtana Chandrasekaran, a programme coordinator at Friends of the Earth, said agribusiness was driving land grabs.

“There is a huge connection. In Indonesia, for example, there are several million hectares that have been grabbed from small-scale producers. Sometimes they do produce some palm oil for their own consumption but the problem is when it becomes needed for high-scale production for export,” said Chandrasekaran. “You see huge lands rights violations, where people are completely thrown off land and or harassed and threatened.”

Chandrasekaran said the increasing production of commodities was driven not by demand but by companies’ desire to lower prices, as well as trade agreements, such as the EU’s proposed deal to import beef from South America. She said this drive for commodities was despite most of the world’s food being produced by family farms, not by big corporations.

“People are still consuming things that are produced locally by small-scale producers. Commodities production can be considered food, but it’s highly processed, not accessible outside urban centres and not very nutritious,” she said.

Palm oil land grabs ‘trashing’ environment and displacing people | Global development | The Guardian

 The government of Kiribati, a collection of islands in the central Pacific,  has announced it will open up one of the world’s largest marine protected areas to commercial fishing, citing economic benefits to its people. The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) spans 408,250 sq km (157,626 sq miles) – an area about the size of California – and was created in 2006 with the entire area declared a “no-take” zone in 2015, meaning that commercial fishing is forbidden. As a sovereign nation, Kiribati has the authority to decide on the future of PIPA

The office of the president of the Kiribati government confirmed it was opening the protected zone citing the huge economic cost to Kiribati, a developing nation, of the ban.

“Similar to any Government, our decisions, as we make them, put the livelihoods of our people at the fore and have been carefully considered and agreed to as a Government,” it said. “Our decision as a sovereign country and Government is people-centric and commensurate with holistic options for marine protection and management, economic diversification, sustainable tourism and fisheries, to promote the growth of Kiribati’s blue economy, and uplift the lives of all I-Kiribati.”

The Kiribati government said that when it established PIPA it was assured it would be able to recoup the revenues lost from fishing licences, which make up more than 70% of Kiribati’s total annual revenue, but that this had not eventuated. The government said years after PIPA’s inception it was not sufficient to meet the present need of the people of Kiribati and the country’s future development needs. The government said that since PIPA’s closure to commercial fishing, there had been an 8% decline in demand for fishing in Kiribati’s EEZ translating to a loss in revenue of up to USD$146m from 2015 to the present.

Kiribati to open one of world’s largest marine protected areas to commercial fishing | Kiribati | The Guardian