Lovett or Leave It - Liz Cheney, Perfect Hero!

Episode Date: May 8, 2021

Hasan Piker is here to break down the week's news. Lori Wallach of Public Citizen joins for a helpful, fascinating look at the patent waiver issue and what drug companies have to do to get the world vaccinated. And we played an incredible Mother's Day game with Danielle Perez and her mom you won't want to miss. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/lovettorleaveit. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

Welcome to Love It or Leave It. I'm John Lovett. And I'm Fran Lovett. Happy Mother's Day, everybody. It's our Mother's Day episode. It's Vax to the Future. Let's go to the theme song. The orange creature's gone and the country's moving on. It's time for me to get those antibodies in my arm. Now Biden is in power, so we're taking no malarkey. Soon we'll all be maskless as we smash the patriarchy

and still love it's going strong to leave him would be wrong it's back to the future and beyond soon it will be time It's Vax to the future and beyond. Soon it will be time to put down my day wine.

Put on my big boy pants and find my sea some friends offline. It's been a year of torture binging netflix scrolling doom i'm gonna get my jab so i can finally delete zoom and still love it carries on to leave him would be wrong. It's Backs to the Future and Beyond. Cause where we are going, we don't need coronavirus. That incredible song was by Patrick Shesey. If you want to make a Back to the Future theme song, please send it to leaveitatcrooked.com.

Great job. So great. Such a great job, Mom. On the show this week, we have Lauren. What do you want to say? I hope I pronounce his name right. Sheesh like geese. Oh, Sheesh.

Not Sheezy. Okay, Patrick Sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh like geese. Oh, sheesh. Okay, Patrick, sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh. Sheesh. Great song. All right. On the show this week, Laurie Wallach, the director of Global Trade Watch, joins.

Actually, it was a fascinating conversation about the global vaccination effort. I know I've had a lot of questions about this issue of the patent waiver and what's really going on. It will actually speed up the production of vaccines and it was a great conversation. Also, Danielle Perez and her mom joined

to play a game against listeners. We played a version of a Mother's Day game and Fran Lovett's here. Here I am. You're doing so great. Okay. But first, he's a Twitch streamer, political commentator,

and co-host of the podcast Fear and Molding. Please welcome Hasan Piker. What's going on? Hasan, thanks for being here. Oh, thanks for having me, guys. I'm sorry that my hair is very wet, but luckily it's audio mostly, right? I mean, you guys put this stuff on YouTube, too? There'll probably be some video, but I don't think people will care.

Okay. I don't think it's a big deal. I just hopped out of the shower my hair is going in in very different directions i don't know i was just like do i do the hat thing but then i was like this is a podcast and most people will just hear my voice and and not see how terrible i look right now i think you look great and i don't think you should run yourself down i don't think you should run yourself down like this i think you have to be your I don't think you should run yourself down. I don't think you should run yourself down like this. I think you have to be your greatest advocate. Oh, thank you.

I thought I was coming on the political podcast. All right, let's get into it. What a week. Facebook's oversight board, a little fake Supreme Court the company created, ruled that Facebook was right to suspend Donald Trump for encouraging violent insurrectionists, but said that the punishment can't be indefinite. Now Facebook has six months to either make the ban permanent, reinstate Trump's account,

or create a new baby boomer monster so terrible we forget all about it. They have six months. I do not understand why Facebook was like, I know what we can do. Let's create a little mini star chamber to evaluate all our decisions to get out of trouble. But then, of course, that little body now just exists to kick the thing back to Facebook. I think it's just like enforce your rules like you don't need a six month period after the fact. Like the only

reason it's newsy is because they didn't do the right thing all along the way. Oh, yeah, 100 percent. The thing that I will never understand about Facebook is that they'll just straight up participate and play a significant role in, I don't know, doing genocide in Myanmar. And then after that, they'll admit to guilt and then go, oopsie, sorry that that happened, but not a big deal. We'll learn from that. And then they never end up learning from that. But the best part about this facebook story in my opinion always is the conservative reaction to it because i don't have a facebook account i deleted mine like a while ago i just only go on instagram still facebook property but conservatives run that platform especially on the news side like if you look at top 10 posts on facebook it's always like

dan bongino dan bongino, Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro. It's like literally all stacked, like reactionary conservative commentary blows up on that platform, as we already know. And yet conservatives still cry about it all the time. They're like Mark Zuckerberg is a is a is a Jewish space lizard and all this stuff. While that guy is killing it for you. Like it's your it's your passion is your outlet for completely unregulated misinformation. I like that it sometimes goes, you know, Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino, Dan Bongino, straight news story from CNN about some sort of FBI raid. And you realize that that's because people think it's about Q.

Oh, and then it goes like it goes, Dan Bongino, Dan Bongino, Dan Bongino. I never really thought that it would get to a point where I would think to myself like, man, Fox News is like actually better overall than this, like a propaganda outlet created for the Republican Party, which is responsible for so much of that misinformation running rampant on Facebook. But even then, in comparison to what you see on Facebook, it's like, well, at least they're not saying that there are space lasers and forest fires are being caused by that. Fox News is horrible. Facebook is just as horrible, plus some stuff that isn't even allowed on Fox News, which is why like all those surveys come out and like who's the most

hesitant to get the vaccine. Obviously, it's Fox News listeners. But even worse are people who just get their news from conservative social media like that is even fucking worse. Yeah. The people that were like Fox News is not good enough for me. I'm moving. I'm moving my talents to Facebook only. And Newsmax. Yeah. Newsmax. They finally finally there's a conservative option. But they still cry about it. Like, yeah. And they were crying about this board. They were crying about the decision of this board on Facebook, on Fox News. And I was thinking, you're upset, but this board is literally helping you. This board, once again, is basically saying you can't indefinitely suspend someone without giving a reason. So the board technically is still on the side of the conservatives, at least in like creating a more fair process.

Right. And they're still complaining about it. It's also silly because like the board is like, oh, you didn't fill out the proper paperwork to stop global misinformation. So we've got to kick this back. This has to go right back. You have to go to now you're in, you know, you filled out form C to stop a coup, but you actually need form J. So you're going to head back to the back of the line. Yeah. Do this whole thing again. No, it's great. It's liberalism on steroids in a weird way. In the meantime, Trump has launched a website where only he can post. Have you seen the Trump blog? I have not yet. I unfortunately Trump is very visual medium for me. So when he's not like

personally there, like I need to see his body. I need to see the space he occupies to be able to fully appreciate him. So when he's not there, he's just like writing stuff. It's like kind of whack for me. So I don't really look at it, but no. It's basically his own little blog where you can actually click a little heart to like it, but there's no counting. I think it just lights up on your screen. It just makes it a little lit up heart next to it. And I think it's fine for Trump to have a blog, but I do think it's kind of bullshit that you have to scroll through like 10 paragraphs of personal grievances before you get to the actual brownie recipe. Yeah. Wait, this is, he's doing a sub stack. That's crazy. I mean, listen, Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and now Donald Trump, he saw that sub stack was popping off and he's like, I need to be a part of this. This is great. You know, Trump is is the Barry Weiss of Mar-a-Lago in a lot of ways. I think they all make sense together.

Creating fake grievances all the time it is amazing how much of this is based around being silenced but we the only reason we hear about them so much all i do is hear about these silenced people i wish they were silenced like a little bit yeah like can we just silence can it be a little bit right that they're being silenced so that we hear about them like 30 less that's so hard to be fair like i mean this is a hacky bit that I do at this point, but like the silent majority has never been silent. They or ever been the majority.

They are just the can't shut the fuck up minority. But we hear about them all the time. But because they're entertaining and because it's good for ratings, but also because they're like just charismatic and entertaining in their own unique way. I don't know. Maybe I appreciate it too much. I went to a Q anon rally uh it was a cuties rally because uh you know netflix was putting out some french movie or something uh with like young girls right and it's supposed

to be like the personal account of an immigrant from like a muslim background and like the mishmash between you know the the repressive culture from her home country and the the over-the-top sexualization of children in france right you know it's supposed to account for both of those experiences and like criticize it but of course people were just like yeah i don't care which i can't really blame them i mean we should ban all french cinema and brand french people in general but that's uh entirely separate not enough people talking about it so i went to yeah no Not enough people are talking about it. So I went to,

yeah, no, not enough people are. You're right. So I went to this rally and I just, I felt at home like these guys are, they're so wild. They're so interesting to me.

I don't know. I feel like a, like an anthropology. I feel like Jane Goodall with the chimps when I'm around these people. And I love, you know, speaking their language and just like make grievances up around them. And, you know, basically like penetrate their armor.

Because at first they see me with a camera and they're like, wait a minute, is this guy going to make fun of us? I'm like, no, no, brother, you're right. Like, I'm here for George Soros. And then wonderful conversations come out of that. It's very creative. Like what? What are you learning from these people? So one thing that I love doing is I'll talk to them about like I'm like, yes, I am obviously very much anti pedophilia. It's bad. So I'll bring up the most obvious point. I think it's no, I think it's look not again worth saying. I don't know people saying this, but I'll I'll ask them like, OK, so what's up with, you know, child beauty pageants?

I hate that, too. And you know, child beauty pageants. I hate that too. And conservatives fucking love child beauty pageants. I do not know why, but like the main host of like this QAnon thing, who's like a, like a white rapper, of course. And it has like a, like a wonderful rap career on the side. He, he loves beauty pageants. He loves child beauty pageants. So like, I'll have a conversation about that. I'm like, so what's up?

You think like the cuties movies, like sexualizing children, but then you said that your cousin like goes to child beauty pageants and you support that. That makes no sense to me. Like, it's just wonderful conversations like that. Oh, and that Tom Hanks is a pedophile.

I don't know why. Because he's famous and they've all heard of him. That's why. Yeah. It doesn't need to be more complicated. Yeah. Also this week, Joe Rogan received backlash for comments about the vaccine and he kind of walked them back, sort of.

He sort of walked them back. And he said he's not anti-vax. He encourages many people to get them. But just to be safe, Pfizer is rolling out a shot aimed at his core audience and it is called Vax Body Spray. Yeah. It's okay. It's okay. This is pretty good. It's good. It's all right. It's all right. Vax Body Spray. Listen, I'm a I watch Joe Rogan. OK, I'm a I used to be a big fan of Joe Rogan. Hung out with him one time like many years ago before he like went down the the Sam Harris,

Jordan Peterson rabbit hole and became like this weird reactionary guy he's just a a guy who's having a conversation who doesn't really know too much and will like willingly admit that he doesn't really know too much but the problem is like he has millions of stands right like k-pop basically, except they're not 14 year old girls. They're like 35 year old adults living in Iowa that now, you know, go and do Brazilian jujitsu. Those people hanging on every word of another guy who's like self-admittedly is an ape. And he literally is, is really weird. It's a very, very weird situation. There's this thing of like, oh, I'm just a guy. I'm just having conversations.

And like, that is something that I think a lot of people who reach a lot of people will fall back to sometimes. I remember even like, you know, Jon Stewart, when he was when he got that, you know, that famous fight with Tucker Carlson, one of his defenses, and I think fairly, I'm not saying it's wrong. It's like, I'm a comedian. You're a serious person, right? You're you're supposed to be an expert.

I'm just making dumb jokes like I come after a puppet show. Um, but with like Joe Rogan, it's like, he's having these conversations and he reaches a ton of people. And it's like, if what you're saying is it's important to expose people to like a lot of ideas and that's all I'm doing. I'm just exposing people to ideas. You kind of recognize like ideas have power. Words have power. And one of the things that goes along with believing that people should hear all kinds of ideas is a baked in assumption that like we respect the freedom of speech because speech is important. It has value. Good ideas can spread. Bad ideas can spread. Like ideas can become viral. Ideas can leave our conversation and reach other people. That's why we believe in the freedom of speech. But if you really do want to have a place where you reach millions of people, take some fucking responsibility. Like, no, you don't get to just say, oh, I'm just having conversations anymore. Because anti-vaccination myths are deadly and they spread beyond your control. And the people listening don't know that you don't take yourself seriously. They think you think ideas matter and you should act like it.

That's just, it's just frustrating. In theory, all ideas are debatable, but unfortunately in the real world, specifically with how much power the status quo and social conditioning, white supremacist, patriarchal constructs, heteronormative constructs, white supremacist patriarchal constructs, heteronormative contracts, like how much power those still have. People can very easily take that stuff one step forward and start radicalizing people like that. And we saw it. We saw it happen already. But the thing I was going to say about Joe Rogan, though, is that he's a very unique dude in the sense that you know who Michael Osterholm is? No. So Michael Osterholm is no so michael osterholm is on joe biden's covid task force he is a epidemiologist a disease expert right joe rogan had this guy on on march

10th of 2020 so this is even before we hit the apex of covid and michael osterholm was warning everyone about how dangerous this is and joe rogan was just sitting there and listening because he's a information sponge basically just just sits there and agrees and you know hypes the the guest up so a guy who was at the forefront of like covid prevention and so early on with like uh with such a smart guest to come and talk about covid is now has now turned into like a QAnon mom with the way that he deals with this pandemic, where he's just constantly complaining about mask wearing and talking about the efficacy of mask wearing this far out. It's nuts. Or now vaccines, pushing for vaccine hesitancy

at a time when it's like, I just want to go back to normal, man. And we are so incredibly spoiled and so incredibly lucky that the American government just hoarded as many vaccines as possible when the rest of the world is like suffering. And they still I mean, look at India. But even if you don't look at India, look at all of these other even Western nations that did not get as many vaccines as we did. And we have an abundance and we have a surplus of vaccines. And now vaccine hesitancy is like a big hurdle that we can't overcome. It's really stupid. It blows my mind how selfish and entitled and spoiled we are as a nation. And like, obviously, like there is tons of research on what is effective to get vaccine hesitant people to get the vaccine. That's not

this conversation. Don't play this for people in your life who are vaccine hesitant. There's such arrogance in it. There's such arrogance. It's like this is a fucking miracle that happened. This is 30 years of basic research. This is the luck of experts with a good idea of finally getting the bat, like it was so fucking plausible that it would be like June of this year and Fauci would be like another minor setback, but we're super excited about 2022. Like science has saved us in so many ways, but the fact is like we will always, I will always remember that over the course of the past year,

the best information, the best science, the best experts could not overcome the kind of like cultural and political rot in our society that like made this last so long and yet so bad. Oh, yeah. It's like thousands and thousands of hours of like brainpower from some of the top minds versus one Facebook meme. Who wins? Well, it's the fucking Facebook meme that wins. That's what it's mind boggling. But it is the way it is. The one thing I will say about the vaccine process is, though, I did get my first vaccine. I got Moderna and then immediately painted my nails blacks. Maybe they have a point. I don't know. Maybe they are forced feminizing everybody.

Oh, I hope they are. Oh, I hope they are. They're so nice. Yeah. So I'm forced feminized already. I haven't even got my second one who knows what will happen but what made me feel very hopeful about the future of america when i was uh getting this vaccine was that i come from turkey we have a national health care system like it's there's private health care as well but there's also public health care uh and that's what i grew up with uh i saw for the first time in my life in the States, a healthcare service provided to everyone unconditionally. And it was wonderful. It was fast. It was effective. You're just in and out, no questions asked, no insurance needed, no money needed. And it was a beautiful thing to see. And I hope that this mass vaccination program, which has touched basically millions of Americans and hopefully 70 percent of the public, if we're lucky, at the very least, will open up a lot of Americans minds to the idea of universal health care, because it can be done.

It's something that other countries do. Other comparable OECD nations do regularly, obviously. that other countries do. Other comparable OECD nations do regularly, obviously. I don't know. It was just like, it was a wonderful moment. I was like, damn, like I don't need to have,

I don't need to be thinking in the back of my mind. Like I didn't have insurance at the time. I had been kicked out of coverage and no questions asked. I got my vaccine and it was beautiful.

And I hope that more people can comprehend that. I hope so too. Because I had funny, I had the same reaction. I was like, oh, there's no form. There's no like proof of income. There's no there's no insurance card. There's nothing. It's just simple and it works. And I do think like that's also carried through in economic response,

right? Like going more to checks as opposed to kind of a more complicated kind of nudged based like a stimulus bill, which is, I think think a lesson that Democrats have learned from the last 10 years. The fact that there's this child allowance that's picking up speed, the fact that like we may be able to at least there's, we're back to at least trying to lower the Medicare eligibility. Like there is a movement towards simpler, cleaner, bigger government help that people can see and feel instantly. And I like given the fact that Joe Manchin is basically standing in the way of HR1, and it's getting harder and harder to imagine

right now, anyway, like how we can get that done, like, well, we have 500 days, we have to either we have to protect the vote, and we have to figure out and make sure people know that Democrats did what they said they were going to do. And hopefully, hopefully, we'll be able to get get some more of that done, because I totally agree. We'll see. I don't know. I think Joe Biden has done a lot of great stuff, but I was suspicious of their interest in even pushing for the public option. And I don't see a lot of that at all. I think that's just like completely dropped at this point. And I feel like the health care industry is very powerful in this country to the degree that like, I don't see the Democratic Party making tremendous leaps in making a more ethical, more compassionate and more efficient health care

system anytime soon. Hopefully I'm wrong, though. I don't think you're wrong. I do think that like you look at Biden's been pretty straightforward. He's like, I want to do infrastructure. I want to do the jobs plan. I don't want to do the family plan. The family plan is about childcare and all these other aspects of, you know, family support. And there was this push to get healthcare as part of that. And they basically were like, we don't think so. I think you can be critical of the moral calculus there, but I think the political calculus is we have one opportunity to do these big popular things. Health care is very hard. And with the slim majority we have, we can't do the kind of big reforms that the left wants.

And so they're focusing on the jobs, infrastructure, economy plan. They're focused on the family plan. No, Build Back Better is great. It's watered down Green New Deal. Like, listen, obviously there's areas of improvement like more funding is a necessity for certain uh parts of it but like i'm not gonna sit around and complain too much about it i i understand it i understand the calculation that they're engaging in i just i wish there was more uh more of an effort into uh communicating the message on health care and

its importance as well but look it's just it is what it is yeah i don't think you're wrong sorry i know this is supposed to be funny i'm like i i feel like i'm not being funny at all dude shit you're doing hey hey i'm gonna crank it up again once again keep running yourself down all right and that's not what this okay that's what this space is about okay all right uh the official cause of prince philip's death was revealed on wednesday according to the final death certificate the duke of edinburgh died of old age the The cover-up continues. I was shocked. The good ones always die young. It's crazy.

He had so much ahead of him. He was so vibrant. Yeah. He definitely never looked like a walking corpse at all over the course of the past years. The crazy thing is he survived a car crash.

He was driving a car recently and got into a car accident and still survived. This dude was... They have him on the best adrenochrome. I don't know what these rich people are doing. I don't know how he survived that long. Got so much adrenochrome. Too much time for you at those QAnon rallies.

Oh, hell yeah. No, yeah, absolutely. On Monday, Bill and Melinda Gates announced that they would be divorcing, but they sat down with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and made it clear that it wasn't their fault, that even though they don't love each other, they still love the foundation the same amount. And the foundation was like, two fucking Christmases, bitches. This is awesome. I'm excited. Melinda, hit me up. You know, I'm single, ready to mingle. Mackenzie Bezos, Bezos, you can you can hit my line, too. You know, my DMs are open, please.

It's an it's a dating app, but it's just those two. Yeah, they just get a million options. They just get to swipe through. They just wanted to let their freak flag fly. You know what I'm saying? They were just like kind of hard. I assume at that level you're just like you're probably having like an open relationship to a certain degree i mean we know jeff bezos was i don't know how open it was for mckenzie there but i'm just looking forward

to their divorced dad arcs like let's see uh how much of how how closely they resemble peter theale by the end of this year when they're like victims of family court, which is the number one Republican aggregator. That's the number one thing that turns men into Republicans. Men's rights. Men's rights. Yeah. Let's see. Oh, Caitlyn Jenner.

Oh, God. Talked to Sean Hannity about why she's running for governor. The dumbest fucking shit. But she talked about one conversation she had that really explains her motivations. Let's listen to the clip. My friends are leaving California. Actually, they weren't my hanger. The guy across, right in front of me,

he was packing up his hanger. I said, where are you going? And he says, I'm moving to Sedona, Arizona. I can't take it anymore. I can't walk down the streets and see the homeless. So Caitlyn Jenner is like, just one example of, my private jet is next to this other guy's private jet. And he's moving as a donut because his eyeballs saw homeless people and seeing them seeing the homeless.

Yeah, that they hit his eyeballs was enough. He had to get much too much. Famously, no homeless people in Arizona. So that's also good. It is a big problem. It is certainly a big problem. Luckily, I'll be voting for Caitlyn Jenner for governor, of course. So I'm very excited to see what her proposals are to combat the the homelessness crisis that is facing everywhere around the country.

I'm sure she has plenty of you know, she's probably pro public housing, that sort of stuff. So we'll see. I think she I'm looking forward to her platform. I haven't seen anything on her website. She hasn't posted anything. She's going off the very successful Donald Trump method of just like being famous and getting a lot of media attention for no reason whatsoever. But who knows what will happen? Look, if you want to be elected governor of California, the first place you go is Sean Hannity show. Yeah, that's where you need to be to reach the majority of people in this state. The Biden administration announced that they're backing a proposal to waive the intellectual property protections for COVID vaccines, which is great news for humanity. Absolutely. With the big

vaccine brewers, like you kind of know what you're getting. But like, I want to I want to craft vaccine that has like a little paragraph on the side that tells me the story of the husband and wife that were sick of the boring corporate vaccines and always dreamed of creating their own vaccine that reminded them of summer nights in Oregon. Yeah, that's what we're looking for here. I think Bill Gates is having the worst week of his life. First, he got the divorce. Now, the Joe Biden administration said they're waiving the patents right after he came out

on Sky News and was like, oh, we just can't waive the patents. He literally told Oxford that you should not do that. You should not open up the IP for everyone. And that's the reason why the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine was limited in its distribution. So he's just one after the other. I don't really get it. Like, everybody should listen. Like today, in this episode, I talked to Lori Wallach, who is is an expert on trade and patents around pharmaceuticals. And it was a great conversation.

But talking to her, it really is stunning how bad the arguments are against waiving the patents. And so many of the arguments around supply chain, around how they won't be able to do it, they just fall apart. And so I understand why Pfizer and a big pharmaceutical company would make that argument. I don't totally understand why Bill Gates is making that argument. It's not like I don't I don't get it. Like, I don't know what he's afraid of. I get it. Because if you if you waive the if you waive

the intellectual property of something and point to a crisis, especially something that is like, you know, controlled by the big pharma monopolies or oligopolies. Who's to say that one day down the line, Microsoft's patents are not going to be waived? Like, that's the way they operate, I think, because it is the class solidarity that is demonstrated by billionaires, millionaires, and the wealthy quite regularly, quite frequently. And that is why I just could not wrap my head around like why, for example, the tourism the patents on these vaccines because that way we can immediately get back to work and, you know, we can return to normal and people can consume again. And it was in their best interest to say that, but they never really advocated for it because

everybody understands once you start waiving patents, once you start, you know, opening up patents, then all IP law might go out the door or whatever. And that's I think that's the legitimate fear. That is the reason why people don't say anything about it. Yeah, it is really interesting because it is just a few big corporations. This isn't it is a few big corporations putting the financial interest of virtually every other industry at risk. That's like absolute and human being and human beings well that's that's like well yes obviously but but what but like this idea of like well if you if you allow if you waive the patents you may prevent innovation and then one day we might need the innovation to save several billion lives and we won't have it but that day's now it's the we're doing it yeah this

is the moment we need it right now. It's never been like, this is a once in a generation, once in a hundred years moment to deploy a technology that is owned by a privileged few to save literally billions of people. Yeah, no, I love that argument. It's like, well, is this a new technology, the mRNA vaccine? What if they crack the code? And what if someone else is able to... The real scare there is if the mRNA vaccine process, because it's relatively new as far as medical tech goes, what if they innovate?

What if some guy literally finds the cure for cancer or something? And it's like, oh, no, dude. What if someone finds the cure for cancer and that someone is not Pfizer? I will be so devastated. Like, try to explain that to normal human beings, please. And that's precisely why they have to fucking talk about, like, the logistical hurdles or make up fake problems like, oh, well, vaccine manufacturing in India is not up to standard for the rest of the world when they literally are producing the vaccines for the rest of the planet at the moment right now. And certainly it is a fixable problem with like literally the snap of a finger, especially when someone is as powerful as Bill Gates and has that much money. They could straight up build a factory like in four days and make sure that it's up to code.

Well, it's just sort of like you want it to. OK you say it's we, you know, the experts say it's the waivers. You say it's the supply chain. Well, here's what we can do. We'll get rid of the waivers and then prove us right. Like, yeah. Oh, you're saying it may take a few months to ramp up at some of these new facilities. OK, you yourselves, your your Pfizer just did a whole fucking thing that sent the news

into a tailspin about the fact that you think there's going to be a booster business. Yeah. Basically, indefinitely, there will be more pandemics. We are chopping down trees with crazy animals in them all the time. Yeah. Don't worry. So it's like, yeah, so there's going to be more. We need the facilities. Yeah. And finally, this week, the effort to oust evil Serpico, Liz Cheney from the Republican leadership continues. Elise Stefanik, who was supposed to be some sort of new young Republican with ideas, but then went full MAGA and was all in on the coup, has emerged as the front runner to replace

Cheney as the GOP conference chair. Stefanik is only 36 years old, and it's very exciting to watch her career unfold. Like she could really be the first woman to successfully commit a coup in the United States. You know, like that is possible. We may finally get there. Yeah. As girl boss, Slay Queen stuff. I'm fully on board with that.

I love that. You know, the other up and comer in the Republican Party, unfortunately, was victim to the corrupt FBI investigation started under the Donald Trump administration. I'm, of course, talking about Matt Gaetz, victim to the real pedophiles of the FBI doing inappropriate investigations to white hat pedophiles like, potentially, of course, allegedly, like Matt Gaetz. Very, very concerning what they're doing there. Of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene does not care about Matt Gaetz's potential sex trafficking of a minor that is currently being investigated by the FBI. She's still hyping him up, even though they are QAnon.

It just shows you where their priorities are, which is just making sure that everybody knows that Will Ferrell and Tom Hanks are pedophiles and not the actual people that allegedly and potentially sex trafficking 17 year olds. The previous Republican speaker of the House went to jail for being a fucking pedophile. Dennis Hastert. You're talking about Dennis Hastert, right? Yeah, of course. I thought that he was the record holder for the longest speaker of the House. I think that might be right.

I think that might be right. Well, regardless, he was the speaker of the house. I think that might be right. I think that might be right. Well, regardless, he was the leader of that party and he was a pedophile on their myths and they do not, it is not of concern to them. you know, Jim Jordan, like he himself,

uh, didn't do anything, but, uh, is famous for, uh, covering up sexual abuse that happened literally under his watch. So they don't,

they don't care. I mean, they wanted to vote for, they wanted to vote for the guy in Alabama, Roy Moore. I mean, so fucking care. They don't fucking care. Of So they don't, they don't care. I mean, they wanted to vote for, they wanted to vote for the guy in Alabama, Roy Moore. I mean, so. They don't fucking care. They don't fucking care. Yeah, of course they don't. Just like, and this is going back to the same conversation we were having earlier, Mitch McConnell yesterday literally said, we are 100% going to do obstruction no matter what. Like my entire goal is to, you know, stop the Joe Biden agenda. You still have this like willingness to

compromise with these demons. I don't know where it's coming from. At this point, it's like, come on. In the words of George W. Bush, you know, fool me once. Shame on you. Fool me twice. You won't fool me again, except the Democratic Party is getting fooled again for some reason. Well, yeah, it's well, the fucking the problem is 30 Democrats can get it and 20 can't. And it doesn't matter because we need every single one of them. We need every fucking one of them in the Senate. And the last one we the last one we need is Joe Manchin. And all he wants to do is have bipartisan parties on his houseboat.

They should be threatening committee positions. They should be applying a lot more pressure from the top down. I'm sure that you have more Democratic Party people that listen to this podcast and my Twitch streams, I assume. So, you know, this is an opportunity for all the for all the DNC operatives listening in. Put some pressure, like do the thing that Kamala Harris originally did and Joe Biden originally did and put some fucking pressure on Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin mansion it's ridiculous that that's not happening every single fucking day they should have sat down in the joint session and straight up in like joe

mansion i'm looking right at you motherfucker put your pocketbook down put your pocketbook down and listen to me jack you got to cut the malarkey cut the malarkey you you hear that exactly the dnc operatives hassan thinks is at the core of this audience. Hey, DNC operatives. Walking their dogs on Saturdays. I don't know. Maybe they're just unwinding and listening to you guys. I just assume.

Maybe you have DNC operatives, all right? I doubt it. No, you don't know. They'd be into some kinky stuff. They're listening in to what I have to say about them on a regular basis but listen like i like i said it's just it's crazy there is no reason for kirsten cinema to behave the way that she does on a regular basis when mark kelly is right there and he is more successful and more liked in arizona so it's uh maybe not that the nc operatives but like the the the media the the more liberal adjacent media not addressing that

reality is also mind-boggling all the time where they talk about like kirsten cinema is though like she has honest intentions i think what's like really so upsetting about it obviously it's for all the for all the obvious reasons. But people work so fucking hard to eke out this majority. They worked so hard, like millions of people worked so hard to put Democrats in power. We have this one fucking chance. We have this one chance to earn it. Democrats are likely to lose the House if historical trends hold, right? The president in power loses seats. And that's before you get to redistricting. That's before you get to voter suppression. We have one opportunity

right now to actually do some big things. And if we can't do it because Kyrsten Sinema was persuaded by some bullshit Morning Joe argument about the filibuster, she personally is going to put that above all these activists, all these people that are fighting so hard. We have this majority. We have all three parts we have both houses and we have the presidency we're not going to take advantage of it it's fucking infuriating yeah no she's my favorite personally because she used to be like ancom or something she was she used to be like uh like america needs to be uh dismantled like you know know, decolonize America, KKK type leftist. And then now she's like literally the worst person in Congress.

It's just fucking insane. Such a grifter. Have you played Returnal yet? I have not, no. I have been obsessed playing Subnautica. I have a gigantic fear of the ocean, which I should never have told my audience. So now they forced me to play this game that literally features a vast ocean alien planet.

I played it. I didn't like it. It was too much swimming. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's right. It is. There is a lot of it. Apparently, there's a word for it.

It's called phasylophobia, the fear of the ocean or something. It's not like an actual DSM-5 designation for phobia, it's a reddit phobia that people came up with but like i'm deathly afraid of the ocean there's so much we don't know about it there are so many demon-like creatures down there i feel like yeah for sure moment i dip my toes in there i'm walking into someone else's home and they're just gonna suck me down and murder me uh in an environment that i'm not supposed to be in now No, I'm just playing that right now. It's been taking up a lot of my time. Have you played Returnal?

I'm playing Returnal right now. I just started. I really like it. Though it's been buggy. It's been buggy. Not a huge fan of this trend of, we release the games and then you tell us if they work. Yeah.

You know, like, hey, give this a shot. That's the Bethesda model. And then we'll fix it. That's literally how Bethesda makes games, except like, you know, they used to make like super compelling story focused games. So I didn't really care about it. But now every game does that. The other thing that's really annoying in the gaming industry is also they'll like release

a half game and they'd be like, get the DLCs to unlock the full game. It's like, well, I just pay $60 for this. Why am I paying another $20 for just more of the same game. It's like, well, I just pay $60 for this. Why am I paying another $20 for just more of the same game? It's very annoying. I'm a completionist. And so when I see this option to buy like the gold package,

like my hands shake to not do it, but I won't do it because I don't want to reward this fucking shit. Like make the game. And if I like the game and you make a DLC, like I'll give that a chance. But I hate the like, get an extra thing to buy the full thing before you fit. It's very, um, yeah, it's very greedy. Yeah, no,

it's terrible. I still do it is, you know, I'm an idiot. I'm a sucker. I complain about the gaming industry. And it's like, hyper capitalist, exploitative, straight up corrupt way of like, bastardizing an industry that i used to love and i still do but uh i still end up buying that garbage every day i can't wait for grand theft auto 5 to be released for like the 11th time on a new fucking console i have a playstation 5 it's basically just a 500 router that is just sitting it's a not even a router it's just it looks like a router it's just a paperweight currently. Also, and I'll let you thank you

if you've been here for longer than we were supposed to be, but the fucking dumb stand for the PS5, what is that? Yeah. What is that circle? It's very weird. What is that dumb circle?

It's weird. I mean, I'm happy. As long as it doesn't turn this machine into a jet engine like all the other previous ones because dust gets caught in the dust cover, and then it turns into this incredibly loud and incredibly hot thing in the room, I'm happy with it. I'm a huge Sony fanboy.

Me too. It sucks. Even though I did recently get into Nintendo, and I'm a huge fan of the Nintendo games and stuff too now. I love those baby games. And my last complaint is I use this PlayStation five. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy to play games and watch things. I definitely don't use it to click on giant ads in the middle of the screen.

Like why is the, why is half the fucking thing in the very, what is that? The whole middle? I don't know. The interface is their interface is stupid. You like keeping up with your trophies? Yeah, the interface has always been pretty terrible on Sony.

I haven't even spent enough time on it, to be honest. But I did play Resident Evil, the demo, and it's coming out, I think, tomorrow. I'm very excited for that. There's a giant vampire mommy. It's really cool. Small features that are new on the new controller like uh the the haptics uh on the triggers like it's awesome it's just like that truly feels like next gen in some ways uh so that's exciting no it is it's cool and no loading times either for

the ssd that was on the demon souls re-release it was amazing oh yeah yeah hasan biker thank you so much it was so good to talk to you. When we come back, what are we going to do, Mom? Celebrate Mother's Day? I'll play the Mother's Day game. Yes, we'll play the Mother's Day game. Am I playing? No. You were here. You saw it happen. You came in after. Well, I just got off

the airport. I mean, okay. You're doing great. All right. Thank you. I didn't expect to do this. Did not ask. Did not ask. Did not ask. You just came in, and I'm making a record thing. This is my Mother's Day present. This is what I, right? Yeah, sure.

No, I got you a present. You did? Oh, how sweet. Oh, Jonathan's so sweet. Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love It or Leave It coming up. And we're back. This Sunday is Mother's Day.

Did you remember? Did you call? Do you think it's a little weird that we have holidays based around relationships that aren't always great, but we don't talk about that? Oh, I'm sorry. That was for Father's Day. That's for a different segment. Back to Mother's Day. They say moms know best, but do you know best about mom?

Let's find out in a segment we're calling the newly moms game here to play. We have, uh, Lucas and his mom, Sean. Hi Lucas. Hi Sean. Nice to see you. Great to be here. That's very sweet. That was a very sweet. Even that moment was sweet and I really enjoyed it. And they will be competing against standup actress, writer, returning champion, Danielle Perez and her mom, Maria. Hi, Danielle. Hi, Maria. Hi. Welcome back. So here's how this works. You each have some paper and pen in front of you. I'm going to ask you a question. You'll each write down an answer, and whichever duo both presents the same answer wins the round, okay? So hide it from each other. Yeah, you have to hide it from each other. This

is based on trust. First question. Are you both ready? Yes. Yes. Where was your worst family vacation? Lucas and Sean went right to writing as did Danielle Maria with a quizzical expression not writing anything down you can't look to Danielle for the answer you can't look at each other oh we can't look at each other mom

you can't I mean you can look but you can't seek out the answers I'm a slow one here you're doing great. You got this, mom. Oh, OK. You got it, you got it. OK.

Yeah, but don't say it, mom. Write it. While Maria is writing down her answer, let's go to Lucas and Sean. Lucas, I'll start with you. What was your worst family vacation? I wrote NYC. I was really hungry the whole time.

And it made me really grumpy. You were really hungry. New York City, famously a hard place to get something to eat. Let's go to you, Sean. Yeah, it was so annoying. We came home. I'm like, why were you such a grump the whole time? He's like, I'm hungry. I'm like, just grab pizza every minute. Yeah, that's on Lucas. Sean, what was your answer? We don't match. I said Florida Joy Luck restaurant, which is also food centric. They have the worst food in America at Joy Luck, a restaurant in Florida. Wow. That is, that is a very specific tough hit on one place. So tough luck for them. They've lost this one. Danielle, what was your pitch for the worst?

Mom, are you done writing? Okay. My mom. Okay. So my answer is Lake Havasu. I don't know if that's how you spell it. Maria looks shocked. She's just discovering that you didn't like it. No, okay, look. We got lost. We were in the desert. This was Thomas Guide years. Our crayons melted in the back of our Volvo.

The hotel had lights that were half off and hanging in the hallway. And it was spring break, and we were kids. And they wouldn't let hanging in the hallway and it was spring break and we were kids and they wouldn't let us in the pool all those hot teens too many hot teens yeah maria what was your answer it came back i said arizona it was the same trip and uh something about the air that wasn't working like she said that you know the crayons melted and then we couldn't go up the river to go gambling because they were under age and we got lost we took a terrible vacation they wouldn't let my kids gamble all right we got lost because we were on the california side as opposed to the other side of the lake i i don't know you got got it right. You got it right. You did it.

You did it. You certainly built the suspense too, but you got it. Second question. Danielle and Lucas, when you call mom, what are they most likely to be in the middle of doing?

Oh my God. Goodness. It's not an either or. All right. Again, due to the fact that maria is still writing uh we're gonna start with lucas and sean uh sean i'll start with you what are you most likely to be doing well i believe that during especially during covet i've been very loud and i'm always very loud but usually i'll be yelling at someone uh related to union business. I am the union president of our school's

teachers association. I wrote, yelling at school board members or negotiating. Wow. That is amazing. That's great. That was a really bad high five.

Honestly, honestly, what's happening over there is just so loving and adorable. Over to you. It works. Danielle and Maria, more of a suspenseful approach to the game. Maria, what is it that you're most likely to be doing when Danielle comes?

I don't know. I just put in the garage or the garden. Two answers. Let's see what happens. Kind of, let's say it's a dodge. It's a dodge. Danielle, what do you got? There's more?

Working in the garage. What do you got? Mom, if you would only have just gone with the garden! Oh, man! It was the other option. It was the garage or the garden. And I went with the garden because you had the garden longer. The garage is more...

I have to say, for that round, we're going with Lucas and Sean. They did great, but that was a clear win. Third question for all of you. Here we go. Who is mom's celebrity crush? This is delightful. Oh, gosh. You're not going to pick the same thing.

Let's find out. I can't think. Oh, my goodness. We're going to start. I want to see Danielle's first before we see Maria's. Danielle, who is your mom's celebrity crush? I mean, I really just threw a Hail Mary. Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods. Wow.

I was an avid player for 17 years. Wow. Yeah. So was he. You know what I mean? So two players. Maria, what do you got? I't know it kind of show it show it I went with the boss I went with music you know my generation the boss the boss you love the boss you got it you get you got it do you like I just got a good idea the boss all rightas who is your mom celebrity crush i went with obama same birthday oh that's so true i have a song mr obama and i share a birthday that oh my god we're friends but i forgot of him as a celebrity i crossed out aquafkwafina. Oh, you wrote Awkwafina and they crossed it out and wrote Bono. And then Bono because she came up with music. But actually, Obama is the he knows

better than I do. I'm sorry. I'm still reeling from that song. Emotionally kind of devastated. No points awarded. No points on the board for that one. I very very good answers very good answers all right moms same questions to you who is your child's celebrity crush okay I mean I can't know this. I haven't spent so much time on this. I know, but that's what I'm trying to remember the name. I know. I can't remember, but I have a close enough approximation of who it is.

There's going to be some heinous description of a person. I'm very excited about that. We're going to go to that one last. Maria. This is not a male. I went with Mariah because she's so into the music. That's all I hear about, you know, from back in the day. I have no idea who the male crush would be.

I have no clue. Okay. Okay. Well, I think it's not. Probably not. All right. Well, we have Mariah. Danielle, what did you say?

Well, Mariah and Carrie can very much get it. I with jonathan taylor tom that honestly is like fucking chilling no idea that is chilling as as simba i was on awakening i went to see the lion King in theaters. Oh, I'm going Tom and Huck. Sean, it is over to you. I figured it out. What was yours? It's that sweater guy, Harry Styles, because we made the Harry Styles sweater. We did the TikTok sweater together. I'm like, is it there? I can't see your paper.

Did you also say Harry Styles? I also said Harry Styles. Oh! Because we made the sweater. We made the sweater. Much better. High five. Oh, wow. So we made the sweater. We made the sweater. Much better. High five.

I mean, Danielle and Maria, what are we going to do with Sean and Lucas? What are we going to do? They are adorable. They're making sweaters together. It's adorable. So the points go to them for that one. Next question. What TV show did you enjoy watching together the most growing up? Well, grown, growing up.

I've heard it down. God, you know, so many decades ago, I'm like. So many decades ago. Danielle's sitting right there. She's a young, vibrant person. So many decades ago, Danielle's sitting right there. She's a young, vibrant person. So many decades ago. I remember what we watched. It was the Dick Cavett show.

That's too long ago. That's my era. All right, let's start. Lucas, what is the show? I went with SpongeBob. Oh, darn. I do love that. But I was going classic.

Gilligan's Island. Gilligan's Island. Oh. Nick and Knight. Nick and Knight. All right. No points there. Danielle, what do you got?

I put Family Matters. Family Matters. Family Matters. Maria, what did you put? I can't think back that far. You can't remember a TV. So that's blank. She only knows a time where streaming is happening.

No, no, no. You don't remember anything. You live in a post-Bridgerton world. There's only Bridgerton. That's it. She knows Netflix and that's it. She uses my account. She loves it.

She can't look back. Those are the dark ages. Maria and Sean, what is something Danielle and Lucas did as teenagers that they should apologize for right now? Oh, as teenagers? As teenagers? I think it is.

I mean, I hope you don't mind. I'm so excited. Maria had a look on her face that was like, where do I begin? How do I think of mom to write down? Just one thing as a teenager, mom. What's like the worst thing I did as a teenager that I should apologize for? Just one. Lucas and Sean all...

Alright, let's start with Sean. I'm gonna say not coming out earlier. I already knew! Why are you gonna make me do this? Wow. I also did the same thing. It's because I used to play ABBA on the way to school.

Yeah. He played ABBA on the way to school. Yeah. I think. Yeah, he played ABBA on the way to school. Like, come on, you're killing me. Can you just do the thing? I'm not doing this for you. Maria, what do you got? I don't know. This is so much stuff.

She moved in with her dad. And then came the... Then came... Then came... Wow! And then came the dad. Then came. Then came. Wow. I just got dragged.

Then came all of that. What you want to talk about. Wow. That is so fucking funny. That is. Brutal. That is so brutal. All this came with a KO. That is so brutal.

All this cake with a KO. I just just like sneaking out to a rave and lying about it. Not on my time. She's like, that's because you moved in with your dad. That is the fucking funniest thing.

That is the funniest thing. Lucas and Sean are like, you should have talked to me earlier. That was incredible. Honestly, I'm sorry, Lucas and Sean. No points for you. That was too sweet. All points to Maria.

That was an incredible, incredible answer. I fucking loved it. It was the truest answer. It was correct. All right. It was real. And I applaud you for it. Thank you. Final question. Final question. Lucas and Danielle, what is your mom's favorite quality? Mom, write down what you think their answer will be. Their favorite quality in

us? Yeah. What is their favorite quality about you? This one. What do they like most about me? What I like about me? No, what you like most about your mom? This one? What do they like most about me? What I like about me? No, what you like most about your mom. I don't care what you like most about you. It's Mother's Day, not Lucas Day. Maria, let's start with you. Following through. Oh.

Following through. Yeah, I make sure that, you know, things start, you finish. Things happen. She takes care of business. I like that. I like that. Danielle, what was your answer? I thought that she's so creative. Oh She takes care of business. I like that. I like that. Danielle, what was your answer? I put that she's so creative.

Oh, that's so sweet. Two points on your side. I really like that. I really like that. Sean, what did you think? I think that he thinks my best quality is my aggressive stance towards injustice. Oh, okay. I wrote speaks mine and advocates for others.

That's so sweet. That's so sweet. I think just different enough to not count. Incredible job on the game. You're all winners. There's no way to decide. You did an incredible job. Incredible job. What? Happy Mother's Day, Maria. Happy Mother's Day, Sean. Thanks, everybody, for playing. When we come. Thank you so much. It was so nice to meet you all. So this is so fun. When we come back, I talk to Lori Wallach about patents.

It's a really interesting conversation. Stick around. Don't go anywhere. This is Love It or Leave It. And there's more on the way. And we're back. She is the director of Global Trade Watch for the Consumer Rights Advocacy Group and think tank Public Citizen.

Please welcome Lori Wallach. Lori, thanks for being here. Thank you. So I want to start with the news that just came out moments before we started talking, which you already you asked me if I saw the news, and I'm very glad that I did. Otherwise, it would have been embarrassed. The U.S. trade representative, which said that the U.S. will support waiving IP protections for COVID-19 vaccines and will negotiate at the WTO about what that actually entails.

You wrote in The Post recently that the failure to do this sooner was wrong and foolish. Can you talk a little bit about your reaction to this decision? Well, the first thing I would say is, woohoo. I mean, it's super important that the U.S. has reversed what was a self-defeating, boneheaded position by the Trump administration to block a hundred countries initiative that they thought was essential to boosting the production of COVID-19 vaccines, diagnostic tests, medicines. And so I think the first thing I would say is thank you, President Biden and USTR tie, because they've just prioritized saving human lives and livelihoods and cutting through all the big pharma lies to fight for the speediest end to the COVID pandemic. And that's exactly the right way to go.

So one thing you talked about before this decision came out is that this would be an important first step. I want to get to some of the practical hurdles that can't be solved with with at the WTO. of the practical hurdles that can't be solved at the WTO. But I want to start with, what are some of the other steps that the pharmaceutical companies should be taking in terms of licensing, in terms of partnership, that would help speed this process along before we get to some of the practical hurdles that they've been using as an excuse? So the first thing is just about the WTO itself. So this announcement is terrific. It rejoins the United States to the world as a leader in the right direction, etc. However, there still needs to be a negotiation. And it's really important that the scope of what this waiver encompasses is broad enough to really make a difference and that it's speedy enough to make a difference. So that still remains to play out. And we are, and our partners around the world and in Congress are certainly going to be on top of that. But where you were going with that question actually is kind of how we got to where we are, which is

the pharmaceutical corporations have painted themselves into this damn situation. They have had the opportunity to be able to make voluntary arrangements to have more production. So the bottom line is super clear. 10 to 15 billion doses are needed in 2021 to get to herd immunity, which is what we need to end the pandemic. And right now, under the current production paradigm, there are about 1.3 billion doses made between when they started and May 1st. So they're like on track for the end of 2021 to have like 6 billion doses, a disaster. Why? Because when numerous qualified manufacturers all around the world, there's one in Canada, but a lot of them that make generic vaccine in the developing world have asked the US, particularly mRNA vaccine makers, the best of the best, please hire us to make this for you. We will be what's called a contract manufacturer. They don't get any rights to the IP. Or if you're willing to give us a voluntary license to the IP, we'd love to buy a license. Either way, they get paid, but let us make more. And the US companies just said, ixnay, not having it. Why is that? J&J made one contract with the South

African firm, but made them send 90% of what they made to Europe to fulfill contracts. Moderna and Pfizer just said no. Why is that, though? I mean, look, you said it's a disaster. It's a miracle, too, right? It is a miracle that we will have at the end of this year any vaccine whatsoever. It was completely realistic that we will have at the end of this year, any vaccine whatsoever. It was completely realistic that we had doctors and experts saying we did our best. We're hopeful for 2022. We're hopeful for 2023. Instead, we have this moment of a vaccine that can save us a genuine cure. And then to your point, like, you know, the pharmaceutical companies say, oh, we just there's no way to do this. It's raw materials. But then, you know, even The Wall Street Journal, which in their editorial page is calling this

a heist, they're reporting that there's a facility in Bangladesh that could do 350 million doses, a facility in Canada that could do 50 million doses. What is their reason for saying no? Is it just about controlling even the materials that go into the vaccines? I don't get it. I think it's more cynical than that, actually. But the way I've come to the conclusion of what it's really about is actually by the extremely interesting, not, reading of

Pfizer's quarterly earnings and investor reports, which is if you look at the fourth quarter 2021 and you listen to their briefings of the first quarter of this year, what they're basically talking about is the enormous profit opportunities that they see in the future, assuming that this is an endemic disease. And in the rich countries, everyone will pay much higher prices for annual boosters. And in their business model, and literally you can go online, it's public, Pfizer's fourth quarter report, they talk about how the epidemic conditions mean this negotiated price of less than $20 per vaccine is not normal. Normal prices, they say, that they anticipate for 2022 are between $150 and $175 a shot. And they talk about the enormous profitability of annually selling boosters at that kind of much higher price in countries that can pay. So very practically, I suspect their report doesn't say this. So you've just heard what the report said. Now you're going to hear what Lori't want generic competition of other companies that can make

the same boosters. And then the global price for boosters for those who can pay will not be 15 pirates ransoms, but certainly it's going to be more than the negotiated $20. They want this extreme monopoly price that they can control basically the making of things on this particular platform. That's what I think they're up to. And it's really short-sighted. It's almost like having endemic COVID is a business opportunity. Because this is, you know, Fauci keeps saying this, everyone keeps saying this.

This is a race between vaccines and variants. If we want to have constant new version of this that everyone has to hide in their house for three months until the new vaccine comes out, and then maybe we can emerge again, and we want that all over the world indefinitely, then we don't get enough vaccine out to get herd immunity around the world. You want a situation where you just have little pockets that you can flatten. But otherwise, this is a permanent situation, which may be very profitable for a few companies if they have a monopoly, but sucks for the whole rest of the business world. It's not good for them either. They're being held hostage

by one industry. So in another way, this does seem short-sighted in that rather than doing deals, rather than doing licensing, they've now put the World Trade Organization, they've put the United States under pressure from groups like yours, from the left of the party, to say, all right, well, if you won't do licensing, well, you'll put us in a position of forcing waivers, forcing us to break the patent. But I want to be cynical for a second, too, which is, you know, in some ways saying we support waiving the patent and we will enter negotiations are actually intention, right? Because in practice, going into negotiations saying we will keep the patents but want them to be weakened and going into negotiations saying we will waive the patent but want some

protections like those can ultimately amount to the same thing, right? Like IP is it's thing, right? Like, IP is, it's abstract, right? Like what it actually means to retain or not retain the patent ends up boiling down to like, who's making money, who has permission to use it, and all those other kinds of practical realities. So what do you hope to see now that the US sort of theoretically, philosophically supports waiving the patent, but then now goes into the negotiation? Right? Well, it's not so much what I expect to see at WTO. It's what I would be advising as a lawyer, these pharmaceutical companies, these few vaccine makers that have been so recalcitrant and have gotten themselves into this situation, which just as an aside,

when India and South Africa started this waiver idea in October of last year, they have 30 countries that supported it. And at this point, they have over 100. And that includes countries that are always with the US in favor of the WTO and in favor of protecting IP. And I put them like into the Basta I've had it, these companies will not be reasonable category. So countries like Colombia and Costa Rica that, you know, are not anti-capitalist havens, but rather are just beside themselves, that these companies will not make a voluntary arrangement to get paid to make more volume. So what, if I were, you know, if I were advising the companies, I'd basically say,

you now have two options. This is how it's going to be. You just lost the option that is, we ain't making any more tough luck for you all. You now have make a voluntary arrangement and have more control over how much you're paid and some control over what part is sold in what place, or you're going to have a compulsory situation. You're still going to get paid. Just to clarify, because farmers confuse this. Countries have what are called statutory compulsory license rates of royalty. And what that means practically is even if it's a compulsory forced license, say for a medicine, there's still a formula for what you get back. And it's typically proved costs plus 4% profit.

what you get back. And it's typically proved costs plus 4% profit. The last time India compulsorily licensed medicine, they start out with 6%. The company went to court, they got 7% profit on top of costs. So they're going to get paid no matter what, but they could get paid a lot more if they're not asshats about it. And also, as you pointed out, they're going to go a lot faster, right? So if it is a forced compulsory license, the stuff that's already on file in the dossiers that they had to register at other countries' equivalents of the Food and Drug Administration and other countries' equivalents, the Patent and Trademark Office, that stuff is there under WTO rules. The governments are handcuffed into do not let anyone look at that for 20 years. So once the government start to release that stuff, there's still going to be a

chunk that is the know-how. I mean, there are thickets of patents and copyrights and industrial designs and trade secrets, but there's still a slice of it. That is the stuff that if there's a voluntary arrangement, the company is going to go and walk you through it and talk you through it and tell you, you know, on paper, it says this, and that's what we filed the industrial design for. But it turns out you also have to do the hokey pokey before you hit the button. I mean, just stuff that you'd have to learn before. It's know-how. It's sophisticated. And that will make it a lot faster. Right. And so some of it's like, here's the machine you need. Here's the guy you call.

Here's the supplier's number. Here's how you ship. Like there's like real technical expertise here. Well, it's technical expertise. I mean, when I jokingly say it's the hokey pokey, it's like things you learn. Like there is, here's the machine. Like who has not experienced this in their life with their own office copying machine? Here's what the manual says.

But everyone knows if you take off your shoe and hit it in the side, it actually does the thing that it's supposed to do. It's that stuff that you're not going to register as part of your industrial design. That's the difference between, I mean, in a technical sense, it's not literally, folks, there's no hitting of machines in mRNA manufacturing, but it's the difference between having to reverse engineer that last piece and try it 10 different ways, 100 different ways before you get what you want versus having the company that already went through trying it 100 ways and figured out the right way

and speeds up the process. So I- There's no hitting the machine, but you just drop the 5G chip in right before they close it. But here's the thing. Please, God, like from your mouth to God's ears, that this gets done quicker. But I have to tell you, these companies have been entirely boneheaded about this. I mean, skip the like helping save humanity. We're facing a zombie apocalypse, you have the cure, we're all going to die. That stuff is like not worked. And they've gotten it from everyone,

like literally, like, from the Pope on down to the World Health Organization, the WTO Director General, numerous heads of states, particularly Pfizer, and Moderna have just been unwilling to budge. So in a way, they painted themselves into this corner. Are they going to realize now, like, folks, you don't want to actually wait to the end of these negotiations when the compulsory two by four is coming upside your head. If you guys are thinking straight, start negotiating now. It's going to come out better for you. And then we'll have the vaccines faster. Is there any part of this, and I want to come out better for you. And then we'll have the vaccines faster. Is there any part of this, and I want to move on because I don't really care that much about

their motivations, to be honest, it doesn't really matter. But this is an extraordinary circumstance. There's never been a ramp up to produce vaccines at this scale, in this speed, in human history. It is one of the great achievements. Is there any part of this that for all of their cynical motivations, for all of their cynical motivations, for all of their sort of financial motivations, these companies are made of people, they are struggling to ramp up themselves and simply have not had the bandwidth

to also figure out these other problems because the best people they have are trying to figure out how to get the supplies they need, how to get the ingredients they need, that sort of thing. I don't know the answer to that because I'm not sitting around the water cooler. So I would like to believe that that is part of the problem. If one takes a detailed tour through the five quarterly reports, one may doubt that theory because it seems fairly rapacious, honestly.

That's not to say everyone is in the money grubber Uber all this category, but those reports and the investor briefings. There is online a Barclays conference where the Pfizer vice president for investor relations says things that you just look at it and say, okay, actually, I'm not being too paranoid about what these companies are. Yeah, investor relations, not public relations. Yes. But here's the thing to think about with this. It is a miracle that this happens, but also if there has ever been, it's like the, if not now, when? Because number one, I use the zombie apocalypse, but it's like, whenever have we been in this kind of situation

where not just everyone's lives, but the global economy is, you know, on the knife's edge. We're not past that yet. And even for us, we're not going to be safe here, even if we're 100% vaccinated. If some vaccine resistant variant gets brewed and we start out from scratch again. So the thing about this mRNA technology is it's been a global project. Like it's new in the sense that we have these new vaccines. But the research actually started in the 80s.

And interestingly, because there's a lot of like, ooh, pharmacists, China and Russia will steal our RNA technology. And the reality of it is, again, trade lawyer, but I've had to learn a lot about this technology to understand what the landscape of the legal intellectual property rules are and how it relates to the trade rules. It turns out it was a Hungarian scientist who came up with the idea of basically programming RNA. And the people who actually hold the patent on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are two Turkish migrants to Germany. And at this very moment, separately, because all this work's been done cooperatively and largely government funded, not just the NIH, because the NIH holds key patents

that both the Pfizer vaccine, but also Moderna use, but also the EU has funded it, but all around the world and a lot of developing countries. The reason why there really is the capacity to make mRNA vaccine all over is there's been research on mRNA vaccines and how other health cancer, HIV AIDS applications. So this is a breakthrough that's super exciting. And you're right. It's amazing how quick it was done, but you know why it was so quick? Because there was 30 years of research government funded that got us to this point from an idea from a Hungarian person in 1980. So thank God we had it when we needed it. But it is not a US technology per se, even though the US and US geniuses had a huge part

of it, but so did people all around the world. So it seems a very justified, without being like a mushy internationalist, I am an internationalist, but it seems like a very justified time to have the world benefit, given scientists around the world created this, and governments and we as taxpayers help fund those innovations. I feel like I'm learning a great deal from talking to you. So thank you. One thing I did want to touch on before we let you go and thank you for your time is Bill Gates helped spearhead COVAX. It's with the WHO. Their goal is to develop and distribute 2 billion doses to the world's poorest countries for the end of 2021. You point out in your piece, they delivered about 38 million to 100 countries as the U.S.

is hitting 3 million doses a day. What happened in the COVAX program and what role did the pharmaceutical companies play in slowing it down? So the shortcomings of the COVAX program, which, you know, had a relatively modest goal, it only sought to be able to deliver vaccine for 20% of the most at-risk populations, so the elderly healthcare workers in developing countries. So it was never even the program for herd immunity. It was the first tier. It was the 1A and 1B tiers of vaccines. And the problem is related to the problem that's plaguing the entire

world right now, which is there just isn't supply. So that now has money, including more money from the Biden administration. As part of the excellent job the Biden administration has been doing, getting us all vaccinated, they sent more money to COVAX. The problem is COVAX can't buy supply because it ain't there. Again, we need someplace between 10 and 15 billion doses to get herd immunity globally. So ideally that many in 2021. The industry promised they could make 10 billion doses this year. Now, if they were on track to do that, they'd be someplace around 3 billion doses. On May 1st, they hit 1.3 billion, including everything they made in 2020. So there needs to be more production. And as you hinted, the waiver certainly is a key piece of it,

because you have to create legal certainty. You can't have investors thinking like, oh my God, I'm going to get sued by the 14 people with the patents, the six people with the copyrights. Here come the industrial design monopoly guys. You need them to just be able to say, demand, I got money. We need this for this pandemic. There's going to be a future pandemic. I'm making the Southeast Asian vaccine thing that the WHO helped me fund, and we just need to do it. They can't be thinking about the legal uncertainty. But it's also going to take more money. Yeah. So it is the case. And we saw this in the early 2000s, when the United States actually invested at that point, it wasn't billions, it was hundreds of millions, in helping the World Health Organization set up six regional production hubs, not for mRNA, it wasn't commercialized then, but for vaccines for influenza that we thought was going to become a disaster. And we helped create some of these world-class producers 20 years ago that right now are the producers that are not getting the

voluntary agreements. The ambassador of South Africa and India were on a high level dialogue on Monday from Geneva. And they said that just from the unused capacity that they've identified, a lot of those being companies that the US helped create for pandemics, that probably a billion more doses could be brought online just from the unused capacity before you had to build up more capacity. Because it's a little field of dreamsy, like if they build it, they will come. So all that supply chain that everyone's worried about, that a lot of that is also under intellectual property monopoly. See, this is the thing the pharmaceutical companies did.

In 2001, the WTO did a waiver like this for HIV AIDS. I am old enough that I was in that fight. Okay, it was like three days after my bat mitzvah. No, I'm kidding. I was already a lawyer by then. And so I was in that fight in Geneva. And the waiver was just for patents, because at that point, it was anti retrovirals. And the idea was, he got a patent waiver, you could have a compulsory license,

and everyone could have HIV AIDS drugs, right away, the pharmaceutical companies tried to undo that what they call flexibility. So first, they started doing thickets of patents, instead of just the patent on the medicine, they made like the patent on the precursor for the medicine, and the patent on the special machine that makes the medicine and the patent on the stirring stick that you need to do this, and also for the special injector and blah, blah, blah. So they might have literally 20 patents for one medicine. But then they got really evilly genius. And they thought, and then we improved that machine that already someone else had patented. So let's register what's called an industrial design, which is like what you get if it's not original, but you

improved it. So you get the monopoly on the improvement, not the underlying thing. Let's do an industrial design on that machine that we fixed up. Oh, and let's get a copyright on the computer program that runs the machine. And then let's get a copyright in the instructions of how to store the stuff we just made. Ooh, and we can get an industrial design right on the syringe that we made slightly differently from the standard syringe. And we can get an undisclosed data trade secrets exclusivity on the test data. Ooh, but also on the fact you have to do the hokey pokey before you hit the machine. So they now have on some of these like mRNA, if you map it, it looks like a total shit show.

Like you couldn't literally do a compulsory license. Well, a Canadian firm found out the hard way trying to compulsory license J&J, which isn't even an mRNA, to be able to export to developing countries. They've made these thickets of impenetrable intellectual property barriers. So to get to your question, if the waiver helps get rid of it, because it's the precursors, that means some small company in Pittsburgh and some small company in Bangalore and some company in Buenos Aires will start saying, oh, look at this. There's going to be a lot more mRNA. We're going to get into the lipids production. I mean, there isn't the super shortage

of that you hear about if you actually read the trade press, which is actually an incredibly good sleep aid when it comes to this. I'm glad that you're reading the trade press on our behalf. good sleep aid when it comes to this. I'm glad that you're reading the trade press on our behalf. There's more supply, but all these new entrants, if they have the legal security, their butts are not going to get sued, are going to start making all this stuff, you know, bioreactor bags. This is not rocket science, but someone needs to feel safe making the investment. So first the waiver, then the money. They say don't do a waiver. There's a supply chain issue. But the supply chain issue is caused by the lack of a waiver, which has not actually been in a lot of the coverage. It's really fascinating. One last question. So you talked about how the Biden administration has kind of been playing

catch up in some of the good decisions they made that this waiver is something that should have been done during the Trump administration to kind of get ahead of things. And we've dealt with this domestically in the sense that there was no plan to distribute the vaccine. There really just wasn't much of a plan. It just give it to the states and we'll see what happens. If we had had a Democratic administration or a competent administration, same thing. There would have been two big questions, right? How do we get to 300 million Americans and how do we get to 7 billion people? Right. Those are the two things we have to do.

And it seems like nobody inside of the Trump administration was really focused on either question, certainly not the latter question. What should the Biden administration do now to make up for that? What is it? Forget getting rid of these bad decisions, the waiver. What are the proactive steps you would want to see this administration take to get us to 7 billion vaccinated people as quickly as humanly possible? So number one is to not filibuster out lengthy negotiations,

the WTO to get that waiver going. I think they actually are in good faith about it. I'm not saying that I anticipate that they're doing this as a screw job and a bait and switch. But it's these negotiations, the WTO is frequently a place, ideas go to die. So they're going to need to actually move it along. It's going to have to be broader, the waiver than just vaccines. It needs to be diagnostic tests. It needs to be the treatments that people need who are already suffering under the raging outbreaks around the world. So that needs to go fast, as fast as possible, number one. Number two, the US needs to help put the strong arm on the companies to see that their opportunity to have a voluntary option is closing fast. And as well as

other forces around the world making that point, to the extent that there's a billion dose unused capacity, that quickly or more quickly could be taking advantage of a waiver, and also the small molecule drugs that aren't the fancy vaccines, but are literally the other drugs for treating or the diagnostics, that stuff can get going a lot faster. So the way some of that needs to happen is literally a combination of jawboning and smoothing, but not just the US, the US engaging its other allies. I mean, the very first thing that has to happen, probably it won't take a lot of work. But Trump basically recruited the European Union, the UK, Australia, Norway, Switzerland, and they were all kind of hiding behind the US like, oh,

they say we shouldn't do these negotiations. And then you would say, me too. So the first thing that has to happen is the US just has to say, let's all get out of the way and get with the program and get this going. But then talking to some of these allies also, given a bunch of these firms are spread between the US and Europe, for instance, to try and start putting the squeeze on of basically preview of coming attractions, firms that have been unwilling to share, you can get forced and you are really going to hate that. But that is your future. Or you can get your act together and start doing the voluntary contracts. The third thing is money. So Public Citizen has a plan for how with $25 billion of investment, we could get billions of doses made between scaling up production here. And like we

did during the flu pandemic in the 2000s, helping make sure that production is scaled up in hubs, that the World Health Organization is starting to identify, you know, where there are clusters of the supply chain already, because in a bunch of those super world class, like not just the Serum Institute in India, they are the world's largest makers of vaccines worldwide, bigger than Pfizer, etc. But there are some other sizable ones in the developing world. And then they have around them sort of the ecosystem of the different supply chains. And so how do we basically, thinking about that, think about how most efficiently we help make sure there are hubs. And I'm all about investing in make it in America. We need ourselves to invest in a lot more capacity.

We have offshored so much of our active pharmaceutical industry and pharmaceutical manufacturing. But also, as all of these firms have been in merger mania, it's about the globalization, hyper globalization, brittle supply chain problem. But it's also a merger mania problem. So these guys keep buying each other and then they shut down the redundant production. So we have no resilience. So the money, the 25 billion is a big investment for domestic capacity, which we need. Like we can't be in a situation for vaccines for the next pandemic, but for all of the other medicines, I mean, you know, everyone was suddenly saying, wait a minute, what do you mean we can't make whatever it was, the sterilization stuff that we can't make that anymore. So we need to get our investment and then we need to also help with other countries, get these centers of production around the world.

And it's for this, but it's also for the next because it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. But it's also for the next because it's not a matter of if it's a matter of when. I mean, that is the nature of invading many species, jungle territories and disrupting the climate. There are going to be more of these episodic switchovers into human disease, and we need to scale up. Even putting that aside, as you said, there may be boosters. We are always especially for a, we were going to be in need of vigilance in the face of variants and what have you. Lori Wallach, thank you so much.

It was so good talking to you. I learned a lot. I think people listening learned a lot because this is a, you know, this was a tough issue. And I think it's, there's a lot of noise about it. And this was really helpful. So thank you for the time. Thank you for having me on. The trade agreements are written in GATTs. The intellectual property rules are like, there's nothing worse in law school except the tax course. And so it is super important for folks to just have the service of, say, your show, knowing this ain't as complicated

as some people want to make it. There are vaccines we need. There is a way to make them. And then there are some very special interests that would prefer we didn't. If you think about just economically, I'm sure there are a lot of other industries breathing a sigh of relief that they're not going to be held hostage by pharma, and not even all of pharma, a little bit of pharma, so that we can get the economy back if we get people's health back. Lori Wallach, thank you so much.

Thank you. When we come back, we will end on a high note. And we're back. Because we all need it this week, here it is, the high note. Hi, this is Jessica from Salt Lake City, Utah. I am calling for my high note this week on Friday, May 7th. After 20 years, I finally am graduating with my bachelor's degree. I began college when I was 15, almost exactly 20 years ago, because I turned 36 this month. I originally went to be a sign language interpreter, and after I moved to Utah from Southern California,

I discovered that I have hearing loss, which made it impossible. So after, you know, an early life crisis, I tried to find my place in the world. After, you know, losing my father to suicide when I was 16, you know, surviving my own attempts, alcoholism, homelessness, I am finally doing it. I'm graduating this Friday, and I couldn't be more proud of myself, and I'm so excited to be able to continue my efforts in suicide prevention, and I'm so grateful for all you do. Thanks so much. Hey, Clement. This is Kelly from the Board Keys calling with my high note for the week. I, after several very long years working in a toxic work environment,

have finally been offered another job, and I'm so excited. I've learned a lot about what I like and I don't like over the past few years, and I've gained some friends and names from enemies. I'm so excited for this new opportunity and it wouldn't have been possible without my work wife Kayla. Listen to your show. So I hope you'll play to Kayla. I love you and thank you for bringing all this joy into my life

and making it possible for me to secure this new position. Thank you to the Lovett and the Crooked team for making this show possible. It's really the highlight of my week and will continue to be. Thanks for all you do. Hi, John. This is Laura from New Hampshire, and I'm calling in to share my high note of the week.

I've been waiting for so long to be able to call this in. I was on your show in August for a game, and you talked with me afterwards about my PhD research in math. Well, this week I defended my thesis and passed. I've been working towards this for a long time, and it was honestly a high note of my year or the past couple of years, not just my week. But something that really made it a high note was something I didn't expect and was really meaningful and special was the ability to have my defense on Zoom. I was able to have people from all over the country that are really special to me and helped me get to this point, whether from my undergrad or from research jobs I had in the summer. And in non-COVID times, I wouldn't have been able to have that happen. And it just meant a lot to me to see all of those faces,

and it really calmed me down. Anyway, thank you and I hope you have a great day. I love it. This is Kyle. I live in San Francisco, but I'm calling today after having spent a weekend in my home state, the state of lovers of the filibuster and lovers of very strong bipartisanship, West Virginia. I was able, because I got my Johnson & Johnson one-and-done vaccine in mid-April, I was able to fly back to see my niece, Amanda McGovern, and all of her amazing compatriots at Wheeling Park High School do their senior musical, Shrek the Musical. And Mandy did play the female lead, Princess Fiona, and she was an absolute

star. And we're all so proud of her. I hope you remember that name, because someday Amanda McGovern is going to be on everyone's lips she's an amazing girl and her friends and she all did a wonderful job that's my high note man thanks so much for all you do take care if you want to leave us a message about something that gave you hope

you can call 213-262-4427 where are you going? we're still in the middle of recording you're not done we have to do the thank yous 262-4427. Where are you going? We're still in the middle of recording. Oh, I thought I was done. You're not done. We have to do the thank yous. Okay, sorry.

Thank you to Hassan Piker, Lori Wallach, and Danielle, and Maria Perez, and to Sean and Lucas. That was so much fun. And everybody who called in. There are 549 days until the 2022 midterm election. Have a great weekend, everybody. Happy Mother's Day. Thank you, Joan. So happy to see you.

Love It or Leave It is a Crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett, Ryan Woodruff, and Lee Eisenberg. Jocelyn Kaufman, Pola Viganolin, and Peter Miller are the writers. Our associate producer is Brian Semel. Bill Lance is our editor. And Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Our theme song is written and performed by Sure Sure. Thanks to our designers, Jesse McLean and Jamie Skeel,

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