HIV activists have a history of outrageous energy. COVID protesters hope to match it
They wore white coats and gave a press conference, standing next to a 12-foot-tall pile of fake bones. The 15 or so doctors and scientists from Harvard Medical School staged this protest in front of the Boston home of Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel. The bones, they said, symbolized unnecessary COVID deaths.
The U.S. biotech company is one of two in the world that have come up with an mRNA vaccine against COVID-19. Of the World Health Organization-approved vaccines, these mRNA vaccines show the highest efficacy rates against COVID.
For their Sept. 29 demonstration, the protesters had a simple demand: Share your vaccines — and your vaccine formula.
They're part of a small group of health workers and other activists who are calling for global vaccine equity – a goal that's a long way off in a world where well-to-do countries are hitting vaccination rates of 50% and up while just 3.1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.
Protesters have also demonstrated at Johnson & Johnson's New Jersey headquarters, accusing the company of "pandemic profiteering" with its COVID vaccine. And they've stood outside the home of President Biden's chief of staff, calling on the U.S. government to spearhead a more ambitious global vaccine distribution program.
Some of, founder of Health Equity Action Leadership Initiative, is one of about 20 doctors who've declared they will defer their boosters until the end of the year, calling on all health-care workers who support vaccine equity to do the same. The group hopes that if the public sees that doctors constantly at risk of being exposed to COVID are willing to defer vaccines in the name of getting supplies to lower-income countries, then the issue of global vaccine equity must be critical.
