Why aren’t the vaccinations free and available to everyone on the planet?

Riccardo Petrella is one of the most important public intellectuals and European officials to be demanding that Covid-19 vaccines be available to everybody. Petrella is a renowned scholar, and has honorary degrees from eight universities. He is the president of Institut European de Recherche sur la Politique de l’Eau (IERPE) in Brussels (www.ierpe.eu). He has written extensively, from a very nuanced position, on the militaristic approach to the pandemic, and about the ongoing competition that makes scientists from various countries compete, rather than collaborate.
On this edition of our show we discuss the necessity of free and available vaccines, and how the privatization of knowledge leads to a situation where cooperation and progress are replaced by competition and stagnation. We invite you to a very challenging discussion of the various ways that the privatization of knowledge is the ultimate form of privatization, since symbolic goods, such as patents, articles, and scientific results, can be sold and resold forever. We explore how this world of privatized information is handling the current pandemic.