hotdogs and marshmallows over the smoldering embers. ♪ this is al jazeera and of these are the headlines. it is really prime minister benjamin netanyahu is touting a great victory in the nation's fourth election in two years. that is despite the latest exit poll suggesting there is no clear winner. the party is expected to win between 31 and 33 seats. more from the party headquarters in west to resolve them. >> still pretty difficult to be conclusive about that. benjamin netanyahu giving that

impression. he tweeted an hour ago the voters had he given the israeli write a comprehensive victory. on one level, that is undeniably true that there is a large majority of right wing, even far-right -- far-right wing parties in the party pitted the question is, do enough of them want him to be prime minister? at the moment, it seems there is a viable coalition in two exit polls giving him the slimmest of margins. 61 seats to 59. >> brazil's supreme court has found the former president was not treated impartially in a series of corruption investigations. it means the court is likely to throughout evidence in cases against him. u.s. president joe biden has responded to a mass shooting in the state of colorado with a call to action for greater gun control.

police have charged a 21-year-old with 10 counts of murder. astrazeneca has promised to share most up-to-date clinical data with the agency overseeing vaccine trials. that is after the data and safety board expressed concerns trial results maybe based on old information. results from the republican of -- from the republic of congo election showed the president will extend his 36 years in power. he received more than 88% of the votes. that is you up-to-date. tuesday with us. inside story is up next. ♪ >> will rich countries lift

their wagers on -- their waivers on patients for covid-19 vaccines? many in the west argue intellectual property should be protected. where does this leave millions still queuing? this is inside story. welcome to the program. poor nations are stepping up their fight for equal access to covid-19 vaccines. they are trying to convince rich nations to support the request for a waiver on patent rights. they say requiring vaccine knowledge could help them boost production. u.s. president joe biden must decide whether to change course and supported the move. the u.s. as one of several

nations read -- resisting the request, arguing it would discourage innovation. the country's about to get control of a patent basically making at the owner of the technology at the heart of several vaccines. those vaccines are built on this technology. producers will have to get licenses from the u.s. to use it once the patent is issued. will the u.s. use the opportunity to pressure drugmakers for more equal access? rights campaigners warn the prospects of billions of people not being vaccinated for years could undermine the fight against the pandemic globally. they say nine out of 10 people in poor countries may not get vaccinated at all this year. only 0.1% of doses worldwide have been administered in the 50 poorest nations. afghanistan has been allocated 300 million doses so far for its population of 1.3 billion people. more than half of the doses have

been allocated to 16% of the global population. wealthy and middle income countries have received 90% of more than 440 million vaccines delivered so far. let's bring in our guests in new haven. a professor of philosophy and political science at ya university and cofounder of inventive's for global health. and a researcher at the oxford group. in london, max is head of inequality policy at oxfam international. welcome to the program. i would like to begin with you, samantha. america is about to receive control of a patent of the technology which is at the heart of several coronavirus vaccines. can you explain that for us and what it might mean? >> i think we have already lost

some opportunities to apply pressure on pharma companies have open licensing. there is a chance that the governments like the u.s. can apply pressure to have more transfer of technology through their ownership of things like this patent. >> this patent is molecular engineering. this is being described as the last best chance we have for equitable access. what do you think, thomas? you think this is the last best chance? will the u.s. use this opportunity to pressure the drugmakers? >> i don't think it is the only chance we have. the key objectives are two. we have to increase production and we have to also equalize the access to the vaccines that are being produced.

this can only be achieved if we really bring on board all the production capacity we have including production capacity in the developing countries. that can be done in several ways. it can be done by trying to open up the ip and also the knowledge and all the ingredients for vaccine production. it can also be done if the pharmaceutical innovators higher that went out the production capacity. they will only do that if they are given incentives to produce in larger quantities. the problem is we have larger poor populations in the world that do not produce meaningful market demand for vaccine. we have to somehow translate their urgent need to be vaccinated into effective market demand. >> max, i would like to bring

you in. everyone seems to be talking about international collaboration, about equitable access to vaccines. it does not seem many are walking the walk. why is that? >> i think rich country leaders are quite rightly concerned about their own populations. they are trying to cover up with a lot of fine talk about the covax mechanism and distributing vaccines equitably. these things are good. they are making a difference. the fact is the vast majority of vaccines have been bought by rich countries for a very high price from pharmaceutical corporations who are making an enormous amount of money from vaccines that were publicly funded. these are public property being translated into private profit. we have seen in the last few weeks the profit predictions for companies like pfizer, moderna,

billions and billions of dollars being made producing these vaccines and selling them almost entirely to rich countries. this is a broken system. the market is not delivering. we are seeing already the taste of the e.u. is getting of their own medicine with significant shortages of vaccines. fights between the e.u. and other nations. leaders in the e.u. our meeting tomorrow and the next day to discuss this. what they should be doing, they should be smashing down the doors of the pharmaceutical corporations and getting those recipes which are public property and then we can mass-produce these vaccines for the world. we can have a people's vaccine instead of a prophet maxing -- profit vaccine. >> you are saying the government could be lobbying or putting pressure on the drug companies. is that just not passing the buck?

could the governments be putting forward the money necessary to vaccinate notches there populations but poor nations as well? >> if you look at the prices being paid, there are vaccines for tetanus and diphtheria that are produced and regularly given in the developing world at nine cents a dose. moderna is charging $15 a dose. if rich countries only put forward more money to pay those kinds of prices, the costs is astronomical and completely unnecessary. the key point is rich country should be funding the vaccination of the world but the primary thing they can do is open up production because that will drive down prices. it will make vaccines much more affordable, which is much more sustainable in the long run. if we are going to have to fight this disease for many years, we have to have vaccines that are cheap, effective, safe and

available in every nation on earth. if i get coronavirus in kenya, i have a save as i am here in london. >> india, south africa and 55 other countries have gone to the wto to argue for access to covid-19 patents. what are the chances of so far none of the big heady here -- big heavy hitters have agreed to it, what are the chances this will work? >> the richer countries are blocking this move. it is not looking likely that will change at the wto level. what i do see is a scenario that access will be opened up. it is a question of how quickly this can happen. if we look at antiretrovirals for hiv-aids, we don't want to be in situation where access to those kind of drugs take decades and years and years. i am hopeful covid-19 vaccines will become more widely available but it is the speed we

need to be putting pressure on. >> if speed is the issue, we had these vaccines that are already in place. if speed is the issue, is there a danger we don't get the vaccine out enough, it will mutate and these vaccines may not be as efficacious anymore? >> definitely. this is the major worry that a slow rollout will encourage more variants and vaccines will not work anymore and we will have to be looking at new boosters and new vaccines. we don't want to have this endless cycle. >> it is incredible of humanity is at play and yet the world cannot seem to agree on getting this vaccine to everyone. the country is -- the countries blocking the wto approval, the ones that are blocking it say it will impact innovation if they were to open up the patents to

everyone, it would impact the ability to innovate. do they have a point? >> they may have a point it would reduce incentives in the next pandemic. that is certainly a concern, but it does not take away from the moral imperative at place here. if rich countries insist on blocking ip and they think they have a good argument for that, they have to find another way to solve the problem. for the reasons we have given, we have to vaccinate the world as part -- as fast as we possibly can. one way of doing that is to do this technology transfer. whatever the poor countries have demanded. another way of doing that if the rich countries absolutely do not want to do that is to offer a fixed price per dose of vaccine and by the number of vaccines you need for immunizing the world.

something like $15 as max suggested. even that, the cost is not astronomical. the cost for 4 billion doses at 15 dollars and the united states alone has just passed a stimulus package of 1900 billion dollars. the vaccine cost is a rounding error compared to the damage this pandemic is doing worldwide. >> if we are talking about cost, the vatican, which has observer status at the wto, has made the economic argument any loss of profit to the drug companies would be easily offset by the economic ounce back were the entire world vaccinated and everyone could return to work. does that argument not hold any weight with the heavy witter -- heavy hitters, the looks of the

u.s. and the u.k.? >> i think it is an preferably behind-the-scenes, the airlines, the industries with big supply chains in developing countries will all be lobbying hard the biden administration and others to say why are you putting the profits of this one industry ahead of the economic recovery that will drive jobs not just in developing countries but in the u.s.? the numbers are staggering. the cost of not vaccinating the rld is estimated to be $9 trillion, which would translate to over a trillion dollars for the u.s. economy. that means even if the u.s. economy -- every single adult in the u.s. is vaccinated, they will still face the economic loss because of the trading implications. given we are talking about the wto, the strongest arguments against payton's friend actually trade arguments in favor of the rest of the economy.

it is a no-brainer financially. i would not want to underestimate the cost for poor countries. what is a tiny amount of money for the french government is a huge amount for a government like the government of uganda where they are spending more buying banks in and getting into further debt than they currently spend on health for the entire year. they are priced way beyond the means of almost every nation on earth because of these monopolies. >> i want to come back to you, samantha. getting these vaccines to poorer nations even when the vaccines do get there, for example, the first shipment of covax, those vaccines have gone to ghana. now they are having trouble getting into people's arms because people do not trust the vaccine. today, we had oxford astrazeneca, we have had questions come out around the

data perhaps that it may have been using outdated information from its trials. although everyone still says this vaccine is safe. even that discussion even that narrative impacts the way people see these vaccines. are we talking too much about getting vaccines to everyone and not enough about making sure ople want them? >> this certainly has to be part of it. we have learned from past mistakes time and time again with vaccine campaigns. you have to bring the public on board. you have to give clear communication. otherwise it will not work. we are already seeing that on many fronts. it cannot just be about the vaccine and the technology itself. it is about the adoption, also what kind of implementation systems have you got i place and i think also to add to the

point thomas was making about access and manufacturing being part and parcel with this issue, we can take smaller steps now that do not require wto amendments and agreements. encouraging the pharma companies to collaborate with each other as we have seen with pfizer and snuffy joining forces. also on the access front, the donations coming from which are countries that are at the moment part of surplus vaccines and we can encourage countries to be committing to a proportion of the vaccines they are signing up to rather than giving away a surplus kid >> talking about giving vaccines away, that raises the issue of faxing diplomacy. several countries are offering up doses to poorer countries. i am taking of china and russia. does that have any negative

consequences? there is the old saying nothing comes for free. is this something that those countries may be paying for down the line? >> they may well be having to pay for this down the line. this is in some cases not very well moderated. in some cases, there is also an altruistic motivation as well where a country is trying to practice solidarity in the developing worlds. i would not say all these efforts are automatically geopolitically motivated by power play and trying to make friends in the developing world. it is a mixture of moderations and in some cases more than one can say for the rest of the countries who have done very little to help overcome these vaccine shortages in the poor countries. >> how much money are drug companies actually making out of the coronavirus pandemic? >> let's take one.

pfizer. they estimate they will make $15 billion of revenue this year alone. this is going to become their biggest selling product should they will make an enormous amount of money. moderna are making a huge amount of money. not every company -- astrazeneca has said they will not make a profit during the pandemic. johnson & johnson are not charging as high a price. they are all going to make a lot of from this and their shareholders, we are going to see shareholder meetings the next month. we will see enormous payouts of billions of dollars to shareholders for vaccines that were funded by public money. these are publicly owned property and we are handing this over to a profit making industry. i think it is clear we can see from the widespread shortages no one company -- even astrazeneca which has gone -- which has done some good deals, no one company

is up to the job. they are not up to the job of vaccinating the world. we need to think of this from a security perspective. do we want the lives of humidity, the choice over who lives and who dies to be a choice made by someone in an office in pharmaceutical company or do we want that to be made by governments together? at the moment, the ceo of pfizer gets to decide who lives and who dies around the world. that is not sustainable in the long run. we have seen commentators like tony blair come out and say this is a classic example of market failure. that we need to invest in domestic manufacturing in developing countries all over the world so we have government owned, government-controlled ability to reproduce vaccines rapidly. we have these amazing new technologies. that is one of the big success stories with emr in vaccines.

they enable vaccines to be produced much more rapidly. let's invest in strategic global system for keeping us safe instead of relying on a broken system that puts profits, that up until now have put more money into researching viagra then malaria. these are not companies we should put faith in in terms of human safety and security. >> i wonder if we have missed the bus. you are talking about governments investing lots of money into getting these vaccines developed. we remember the announcements about the amounts of money going into these programs. cement, couldn't governments have put contractual caveats into these deals at the time en they were putting money into these drug companies which were doing the development? have we already missed the bus on that -- the bus on that? >> under the conditions, this is not something the government has

ended up doing. under the pressure to change the pharmaceutical system. was probably too much of a task. it does not mean things cannot be done for now on. i do not think we have this the boat completely. >> thomas, should we be questioning the extent of control patent holders for covid-19 vaccine holders have? >> i think what we should first question is the system that gives these companies patents in the first place. rewarding pharmaceutical innovation through monopoly patents is not a very good way of doing it. >> what is the alternative? >> the alternative is what i've been proposing for many years, that you offer pharmaceutical companies rewards based on the health impact of any new pharmaceutical they put on the

market. so here, it does not matter with her the patients are rich or poor. you get the same reward for the same amount of health impact. if you have that sort of a system, it would be very lucrative to vaccinate the whole world including the poorest. that is what we need to achieve if we want to get rid of this pandemic before it breeds new mutations. >> almost like when you go into a new job and you have to sit down with your boss and create goals to achieve. if you did that with the drug companies at the start and make it based on health outcomes, they are going to have the incentive to make people healthy. max, so that is a completely different system. before we move on from the concept -- not the concept move on from patents, what impact would undermining these patents

or giving free access to these patents -- what impact would that have on future research? >> i think we already have a broken system. we could question the validity of the system as a whole. even if we see this as an exceptional moment and this is once in a century human experience. as the head of the who has said about the issue, if not now, when. we suspended patents for hiv-aids. that did not destroy the patent system. it kept many people alive. myself, i would like to see wider reform of the patent system. it is a system that rewards investment in viagra over malaria. it is a system that has been broken for many years. i think that remains true. even if you don't accept that, you have to accept this as an exaordinary moment in human history it seems crazy when these are publicly funded, that

which countries are willing to stand up at the wto and say we are happily vaccinating all of our population. you cannot vaccinate yours because innovation must be protected in the long run. i think it is absolutely morally unsustainable. we also have to remember these leaders are self-interested. they are driven by their citizens. it is not just the fact that within months, my mother had a vaccine two or three weeks ago in the u.k. the safety, the security, the freedom from fear that vaccine brings, it will only be a few months before someone like my mother gets sick again from covid-19 because the vaccine longer works. >> we are going to have to leave it there. my apologies. we appreciate all of you joining us here on inside story. a big thank you for watching. we had samantha, researcher at

oxford vaccine group. thomas, professor of philosophy and max, professor -- oxfam international. for further discuson, go to our facebook page. you can join the conversation on twitter. for the whole team here, goodbye for now. ♪

[music playing] wes avilla: end goal once i saw that i can pay my own rent was get a restaurant. like, i didn't want a food truck. at that point, food trucks were dead. when i got ru