Is science a public service, and are scientists public servants?
By Max Lawson Sometimes Davos has a way of creating moments of great theatre; where the elites who run the world can be in some ways held to account, or at least called out. On a panel this week at Davos, my boss, Gabriela Bucher…
Profiting from Pain
By Max Lawson We are living through extraordinary times. Extraordinarily bad for the vast majority of humanity. Extraordinarily good if you are one of the richest people in the world. Normally they meet in January at Davos, but that face-to-face meeting was postponed, due to…
Beating back the Billionaire Variant
By Anthony Kamande In the informal settlement area of Kawangware in Nairobi, my friend Joe, a nurse, is quarantining in his small room after getting COVID-19 for the second time. He’s less concerned about the virus than his finances, which have deteriorated severely in the…
The Inequality Epidemic in Brazil
By Jefferson Nascimento When the covid-19 pandemic hit Brazil, it resulted in a social, economic and sanitary crisis as the country was vulnerable in different dimensions, a scenario that has been worsening since 2015 and interrupted the trend of income inequality reduction (since early 2000s)….
Extreme inequality is economic violence
By Deepak Xavier and Victoria Harnett How did we get here? How did we end up in a reality where the vast majority of the most vulnerable have little hope of feeling safe from the virus when it’s more than a year since the first…
COVID-19 Impact on Inequality: What does the Latest Analysis Show Us?
By Max Lawson Coronavirus and inequality; what is the latest? Last year at the Annual Meetings of the World Bank and IMF there was a lot of talk about the impact of Coronavirus on inequality levels; in short a widespread agreement that the likelihood was…
G7 Farce and Failure; Jeff Bezos Staying in Space
By Max Lawson Dear Friends, I hope this finds you well. G7 Farce and Failure It was a summers day in Rostock, a small, rather dilapidated town on the Baltic coast north of Berlin, and all hell was breaking loose. The march had started peacefully,…
Creating Vaccine Billionaires instead of Vaccinating Billions
By Anthony Kamande The wealth of nine new COVID-19 vaccine billionaires would be enough to vaccinate everyone in all low-income countries or all of sub-Saharan Africa. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Moderna, BioNTech and CanSino, the makers of successful Covid-19 vaccines, have created…
India and the Inequality of Measuring and Remembering
By Max Lawson The first wave of the 1918-19 influenza pandemic did not have much impact in India; it was the second wave that was the most devastating. It is now thought that 12 million people died in India during the flu pandemic, the equivalent…
IS RACISM SHAPING THE GLOBAL VACCINE RESPONSE? – With Priti Krishtel, Tahir Amin and Asia Russell
By Elizabeth Njambi We’re asking: is racism silently shaping the global vaccine response? And what could President Biden’s recent huge decision to take on vaccine monopolies mean for people around the world? We also do a special round of “big pharma bingo”, examining the key…