Just up the road, at the Loons Club, hundreds of hard-working Kiwis are getting vaccinated with the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. And I am very pleased with this - I, myself, have gotten one dose of Pfizer - waiting on the second! But, look at the situation New Zealand is in. We have had no cases of COVID-19 for over a year. I'm greatly happy that we've had a government that has kept the virus out and kept New Zealanders safe, but we are one of the most privileged countries in the world.

Compare this to Guinea, the origin of the 2014 Ebola outbreak. They currently have over 1800 cases of COVID-19. As of the start of this mont, 346 Guineans have unfortunately died from the virus. They have a GDP per capita of $2,390 - compare that to New Zealand's GDP per capita of $44,226. Guinea is a poor nation which, despite having over double our population, has a much smaller GDP, and they clearly have been deeply stricken by the outbreak of COVID-19. By almost any metric, Guineans should be getting the vaccine before us Kiwis.

But they're not. While we're getting close to two-thirds of New Zealanders with at least one dose, Guinea just crossed 9% first-dose. This is by no means an outlier, either! Neighbouring Sierra Leone, also deeply effected by COVID-19? 2.4% first dose. Liberia, with over 2,500 active cases? 2.1%. In fact, New Zealand has more of its population who've recieved the first dose than any country in the entirety of Africa, with the most vaccinated African nation being Morocco, who have had 60% of their population recieve one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Now, part of this is that nations who can afford more get more, for obvious reasons. But why is there a supply strain? Well, it's because only the vaccine companies can make their vaccines. Only Pfizer can make the Pfizer vaccine, only Moderna can make the Moderna vaccine, etcetera. Obviously these companies have limits, which makes sense. But surely, other companies or governments would be able to step in?

But, no, they can't. Why, you ask? Because of pharmaceutical patents. These patents mean that only Pfizer can make their vaccine, and no-one else can. Other companies, who might be able to mass-produce these vaccines at a cheaper price for smaller countries, are blocked out. Now, this is ridiculous. Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson - they have all made more than enough profit as companies from their vaccines.

And I'm going to say something controversial now - even if these companies were still in the red, it doesn't matter. These are life-saving vaccines. We should be producing as many of these, as quickly as we can. To artifically restrict its production to one company is, honestly, plain evil, especially when you consider that it disproportionately effects poorer countries which are likely to have worse outbreaks of COVID-19.

But even though these companies are going to make a tidy profit from the pandemic, like a child who's just got a Hot Wheels race track for Christmas, they are refusing to share or waive their patents. And this isn't just a problem with COVID-19 vaccines - hundreds, thousands of life-saving medicines are made artificially expensive because one company has a monopoly. It's not only that it's evil, but it's anti-freedom. If these pharmaceutical giants can't survive competition, then they should go out of business! That's what capitalism is all about, at the end of the day.

This is why the Pirate Party is committed to ENDING pharmaceutical patents. No longer should these greedy big pharma companies be able to hog profits at the expense of human life. Let's force them to compete, because at the end of the day, when the demand is the entirety of humanity, more supply will do nothing but help us to get out of this pandemic, globally, much quicker.