“People are dying, Joe”: Critics call Biden’s vaccine sharing plan “woefully inadequate” – By Kenny Stancil (Salon) / June 7 2021
“The U.S. contribution to global vaccine access has been woefully inadequate to date”
The White House announced Thursday its plan to donate 25 million excess Covid-19 vaccine doses to other nations—a plan progressives described as an “inadequate” response to the ongoing pandemic, urging the Biden administration to invest $25 billion to ramp-up global vaccine manufacturing.
According to he Associated Press, the U.S. “aims to share 80 million doses globally by the end of June, most through COVAX,” the United Nations-backed program for global vaccine sharing. “Of the first tranche of 25 million doses, the White House said about 19 million will go to COVAX,” with the remaining 6 million directed to “U.S. allies and partners.”
“The donation of these few doses is welcome but deeply insufficient, and no substitute for a plan of scale and urgency to end the pandemic,” Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Access to Medicines program, said in a statement. “The U.S. needs to do more, much more.”
PrEP4All, an organization of people who have been personally affected by the HIV epidemic and are fighting for universal access to life-saving medications, reminded President Joe Biden that “people are dying.”
