If you're not a rich country, we're gonna have to kill you off — Oxford-AstraZeneca gouges South Africa on COVID vaccine price
© 2021 Peter Free
22 January 2021
Who could have foreseen this coming?
COVID plutocrats strike again:
AstraZeneca France told AFP in November that its shots would be capped at €2.50 (around $3) per dose “to provide vaccines to the widest population, with as fair access as possible”.
[Yet,] South Africa will have to buy doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine at a price nearly 2.5 times higher than most European countries, the country’s health ministry has said.
“The explanation we were given for why other high-income countries have a lower price is that they have invested in the [research and development], hence the discount on the price,” [South Africa’s deputy director general of health Anban] Pillay said.
© 2021 Helen Sullivan, South Africa paying more than double EU price for Oxford vaccine, The Guardian (21 January 2021)
Which, of course, goes exactly against Oxford-AstraZeneca's — we're just so honorable and kind — November publicity statement.
Evidently, in Fat Cat Supremacy Land
If you are poor — and probably "black" or "brown" — it is "fair" to charge you two and half times more than richer folks have to pay for having their lives saved.
The moral? — This makes sense (in a world run by Pillaging Avarists)
So much for Oxford University's heavily implied research and public health goals.
Ain't greed grand?