Alright, here's the plan. GOAL! How's it going everybody? Dot to the way here back with some more Dragon Ball Fighters, Rank Matches, this time trying to hit the level 7 transformation with Gohan, while also playing a team of UI Goku and Base Goku. Of course, we are rocking Base Goku B Assist to get us to that magical 7 bars that we need to transform with Gohan. And also, we had done this video before, but that was before the inclusion of Limit Break, which if you aren't aware, is a mechanic in this game that if you have one character left alive, they get a damage boost. So, it's going to make, hopefully, it's going to make level 7 Gohan hit like a truck. That's the goal anyway. But we are going up against the second highest rank, so we gotta be careful here. You know what? Forget being careful. Let me... I regret it saying that pretty quickly.  Back in the corner though, and we got a bar. We're half a bar now that we spent the vanish. I gotta put all my, never mind. I was about to hit him with the manga line. I have to put all my faith in my fist here. But, um... That's plus! Oh, I should have just committed to the roll. That DP Assist is getting me today. Woo! It is just stopping everything. Alright, puts me down in the corner. No! Not the bar builder as well! I was okay with UI Goku dying! No! No, my bar builder! Oh, good... Oh, that is awful! That is actually terrible for us. Alright, hold on. Uh... I don't know what the strat is now, to be honest. We need to buy time for bar building. Oh my god, he just keeps stopping my bar building. Oh... Okay, good. This will buy us some time. Seven bars! We have to... No, we have to transform! No! No! He stopped me with only one bar! This is awful. Did we spark now? We're saving for level three. I think... Okay. People aren't going to like this strat. Okay, no, that's exactly what I wanted. I don't think it's a good strat for me, but... Alright, here is the plan. Wrong plan. Oh, that was sick! Wait! The full auto combo stopped his tech! That was sick. Alright. Um... We have to just let Goku die. We don't... Obviously, we don't want him to die. If we can get one more character with Goku, and then get to level seven, that would be ideal, I think. Nice defense bad defense awful defense. It's only getting worse. My defense is only getting worse with time You can actually visibly see me You can see me visibly start to crack Hi zero bars.  I need to save everything else Actually, actually though. This is really good.  Is he literally gonna just kill me here? I think we're just dying. Oh, no wait wait. I shouldn't have switched in for this. Oh, no I need to get him out of here though. He has to be my anchor. We are switching right away just to get that Limit break. We're already we're full potential and leash. That's fine. We wanted this remember We wanted to reset neutral. I could have got a few hits in but Let's go dude. I can feel the potential Let's go. I could have been so sick if I Would have done something with it level seven going to get stuffed with not enough help to do anything Oh, man, if we combo it off that kick, I would have felt so alive, but okay It does look strong. It looks I'm happy with the way it looks But we just need to get the timing of it better I didn't mean to switch that kind of cost us a little bit there base Goku came in did his thing for a while But messed it up He's probably so confused. He was like, man. He was all over the place that gave I didn't have a second jump That DP assist is still getting me to this day. All right We're gonna go down here. I think we're gonna UI tech. Oh Oh gojita has those Dancers hands.  Oh nice to him I thought I'd go for a flip. I thought I'd go for a flip See if anything was looking out of the ordinary, but you I Goku's going to go down And is this where I switch? I think I switched to well, let's get to level seven first I guess I that's the thing. I just need a clean combo to get to it though. I keep getting stuff Do we see I don't want to spark? This is so much damage the amount of damage you get on the board for that is crazy Let me just spark. All right, it's fine. This is a raw level three So we'll heal this with blue health. The only thing I worried about is getting hit right away We got a lot of bar for that Not do you I goku wake up. I didn't expect it for some reason wasn't even on my mind I think we switch out we go for the anchor play again Oh Switch out Love to see it. Oh that could have gone way better. Oh The GT Goku assist. Oh He was on the other side. I should have known from how Goku was falling. It's fine We just needed oh nice to age really good I was gonna say we just need to get a little more health off the board for gohan Oh, no, we actually took a little health from gohan. Never mind. We're striking back good beautiful Actually, hold on already level seven. Let's save base Goku. Let's actually work with base Goku instead of just going limit broken DPS is don't oh Come on. That was cursed. That's super dash actually hit me. Don't switch me. Oh No, it actually hit me as well. All right, we can still win this. We're just going to have to clutch it out Oh, this is gonna be tough, especially if he super dashes Okay, damn me literal damage though Just keep him back. No, not DP. I meant to do good machine gun punch. No dragon rush my old nemesis Let me go drop it. I don't think it's gonna drop it. No get machine gun punch.  All right, I guess we're heading into the next game This man was able to stop the level seven transform go on I still think if we just if we work on when we get him out, that might be the key if we work on when we get him out Oh, no We've got a rematch on our hands boys. We've got a reap. Was he playing Vegeta before? He wasn't right. What was he playing before? I definitely don't remember Vegeta C assist He was playing a different team before I can't remember what that Wow really putting my bad memory to the test Get off of me. Oh No way he actually countered who would ever do such a thing It's me. I'm the one that would do such a thing go Nice All right, we're gonna try saving our team. Let's save our team. Let's not throw them through the wolves just cuz they're not go on Vanish don't want to get knocked away by the guard cancel, but maybe I'm ready that already Can't block see assist is too slow.  Oh nice moves Dang, we still haven't really gotten a lot of his health off the board and we still need the bar. I'm switching in Yeah, I feel like that was a little obvious, but I was too afraid to do anything else. Will he switch me back in? No, wow Give me that love to see it or a flag you can't reflect from that far. Oh come on. They didn't work What an ex kick wow comes right back at you. All right, um, we're switching out again We're switching out again. We don't need all seven bars now. We already got this We already got one. Come on Goku turn around Turn around. Okay. Nice.  I can't believe it the counter around the world spirit sword again About the combos put me down. I still need a little more help in this though. I Wouldn't be surprised by yeah six emmer drag rush where we're not gonna be surprising options to me Beautiful beautiful Get him. All right. Nice. Whoo All right now. I'm feeling pretty confident. We got six bars. That's pretty much the required amount for us right now There we go. We're going in. We're doing it now Even if he's down on the ground.  He didn't you I go to attack I can't believe it. That was enough time. All right. He's gonna switch us out for us I actually that time I trusted the shockwave from the triple lights I was like auto-cobba will probably stuff this. Why not risk it? Let me go level seven on them. Oh, that was supposed to be DP am I dead? I hope I'm not dead for that. That was supposed to be DP fine five bars. I don't think you kill spark up myself It's like an overhead Nice a lot of damage though, especially we're not even in limit break. That is so crazy All right, what's he what's he gonna do here? I'm No, that was awful by me just jumped into a punishment Goku GT. Peace. Oh It's okay. We could still win this though. I mean we do have UI Goku in the back It's just a matter of not getting hit by a stray flash fist, which is that a circle move I feel like we've gotten hit by the UI Goku can probably counter that with a backflip. Alright, we're gonna try to bait it.   Oh, I remember we're trying to read the dragon flash fist We are still trying to read that. Oh my goodness. I'm scared. I don't know why we're trying to do No, I can't believe it. I can't believe you would do that Please I know we we're not gonna live, but if we can live that'd be great come on. Just hope hope hope No, I wonder how close that was it probably wasn't that close. We were definitely in kill range. Oh Man, I should have expected it to I did it. It wasn't even on my mind I had no idea that was coming. All right final game No, you know what not final game because if we win this then we then we get another game So second to last game. That's right. We already got confidence on display. Oh Never mind. I was about to say I'm retracting my confidence, but I'm not actually that that up tech back dash got me there I was not expecting it. Ooh In the corner again. I do UI tech here. I feel like none of us are expecting you what who would do that? It's me No, not tag. Okay. I just I was I was hitting it too fast. I wanted to get the UI Goku assist Or a base Goku assist. No All right, um Goku UI is looking really damn. He's gonna switch out here. Oh, no He might still do it with supers Really hurts that hurts. It was a little obvious looking back. I can agree. Oh, no, stop that Go ahead switch out. Oh I just happened to be host. Nope. Keep the corner. All right. Get me out of here I am not supposed to be here right now. I'm not going to be able to switch like I wanted to Did you see man? I just keep getting raw level three I was gonna say did you see how high I was able to hit him with my jab? That was actually like a setup I should have switched Okay, wait, we might be able to kill off the specialty drop That one was hard. That one hurt to watch the specialty drop. Hold on Garcancel out there. Nice. Oh, I didn't even didn't even bite didn't even take partial interest in it. Oh Nice, I just mashed there. I definitely just mashed there. All right, we're gonna go for a kill here on GT Goku We've been letting him get away with a lot of blue health He didn't jump in on me. Oh, it doesn't matter. No jumping no problem as I like to say get him out of here Get him out of here. All right. Nice. We have a little bit of a character lead now Not by much of one combo will probably do in any of our characters Oh, I haven't teched a single dragon rush all day. I need to tech one dragon rush to get my confidence, right?  Huh? Yeah, because we used it trying to get a kill that didn't work Oh, what a bad way to lose it. All right. No if we're going out. We're going out the correct way Also, that is a lot of damage. You know what? Let's go. We're gonna get a slight power boost here. Not a lot There we go. Just we got we just got one level one But that's fine. We don't want to be out here though.  We don't want this Trying to make this one last a little longer Oh, two h really early if we can build up enough bar to actually do like some crazy go-hot stuff that would be wild Didn't have any bar. That's fine.  Am I gonna regret that? I couldn't do the backwards flip at time He can still kill us. It's gonna take one bar.  I only have one level. I only have one level. Oh god Never mind. All right, we're getting to we're getting to the last game And you know what? It's time for the true potential to be unleashed I'm talking all seven bars as soon as possible We are going to throw it gohan looks in pristine condition after that fight We are going to throw hands right now. This is going to be a clash of titans Do we get the rematch? I'm getting excited. Oh, he he must have heard me through my built-in ps5 controller mic. He must I'm gonna take a drag rush this set too believe it Believe it when I tell you oh, you should have faith You got to trust this fist of mine. Who reads the manga? Let me know in the comments I should have 2h that no I've had enough Build that bar right back. Oh the ex kick is so fast. It is monstrously fast All right, we're gonna try the ui goku tech dragon rush This is a forbidden piece of tech that only works if they respect you It didn't work. It didn't work because he was on wasn't on the ground. That was a different time Dude, I can't believe we're gonna lose a character first man Just we lost the momentum with that one wait. No, it's still hit. Okay We lost the momentum with that one. It's fine We're almost at seven bars and we could build up seven with one assist You don't want to do it too early though because he will um kill us for that rough rough rough go things now We spark here I get so to block that. Are we dead? Oh no to him starter. I always get I always just want to get to it too quick I never wait for my moment. We're alive. We are alive save him for last You thought it wasn't coming to get you Oh no He's only had level one spark. It's gonna run out pretty soon and gohan's in the back They're looking like an absolute monster if he can make it past base goku. He's only just started own level three me Oh, I'm so afraid of getting raw level three It's getting bad dude. My fears are getting bad I'm so afraid with seven bars. He could raw level three me twice, but here comes a real one Nothing I can do here, but wake up and smell the defensive flowers Defense Oh, I try to get out of there try to get No, no, no, I'll take it. You know what compared to where we could have ended up. I'll take this He's gonna have to use a bar. He didn't kill us We're still alive Still got a chance a chance to make an impression on people I don't even I don't even mind it. I made it. I made a choice What I said I was gonna save gohan for last and the choice has to work out The ex kicks Let's go seven bars still, baby dragon ball check. Can I get a dragon ball check? Oh, no, we're not going for that. Nope. I try to do it stat. No, no, no, no, no, no vanish.   You're dealing with that level seven go on Let's go Why is that what you choose to say? We came back We got at the level seven go hot anchor threw everything into it. Ah, man. Come on Ultra it's like really is something yeah I we're gohan's really hyping up his dad for some reason instead of himself. I'll do it That was so sick Hopefully you enjoyed this video if you did let me know down below in the comment section While you're down there make sure to like button and subscribe to the channel If you enjoy videos like this one and want to see more of them other than that You can also check out some more videos that should be on your screen right now But I have been dotted to it and I will see you in the next one


What's up everybody I'm the Mangus you were awesome and predecessor reopened the servers for another closed alpha weekend. The only way you could play is if you were able to get your hands on a key but there were a lot of keys being given out out there. The alpha was generally viewed by the community as a success, I personally had a great deal of fun playing. This time instead of jumping around with different heroes I pretty much just stuck to Narbash and tested out the plethora of new items they added since the last test. Today I'm going to give you my honest opinions on the game. While I was impressed for the most part there were some things that needed to be fixed. So let's go through the good, the bad and the ugly of Predacessor's alpha weekend. Let's start out with the good. Bellicom steel were added in. This is not only exciting for those out there who are fans of the two heroes but also a triumph before I made his balance and testing teams. Success in alpha development is usually marked by what you don't notice and I didn't notice either hero being exceptionally over or underpowered. I'm not saying the entire game is balanced but the addition of new heroes, even an old school paragon usually meant that whatever team had that hero was going to win the game because they were introduced in a woefully overtuned and under tested state. I felt that both steel and bellica were impactful when played skillfully without being oppressive. Props to the balancing team and the testers.  While there were some bullshit item combos and mandatory pickups that I'll get to later, there were many successes in this category. Specifically the crests. These were starter crests that gave benefits to each role in the game. Some roles had multiple crests to choose from. They were cheap enough that you could buy them at the start of the match with some gold left over for potions or wards. Even better, certain crests would evolve once you met the correct conditions. For example, the crest that I used the most on Narbash was called the crooked crest. It gave you some health, mana regen, magic power and .3 gold per second with a passive that gave you stacks every 30 seconds. Damaging a hero would consume a stack and give you 36 gold. To dissuade non-supports from taking the item, the passive only worked if you averaged less than 3 last hits per minute. The UI indicated the progress of your stacks and the stacks were very helpfully indicated on your character model via spinning globes around your character. After getting 500 gold, the crest would evolve into crooked sight which increased the stats given, the gold amount per stack and also gave you an active which allowed for the placement of two shadow wards. Earning 1000 gold evolved further into scoundrel sight which once again had higher stats, more gold per stack and gave you 4 shadow wards to place. 4. I was tossing wards out like a big green Santa tossing candy in a Christmas parade. I had so much vision that I could see the enemy's soul. The other set of evolving crests were for junglers and they either gave regen or extra damage against jungle minions and these crests evolved into a smite based on how many minions you had killed. The numbers for the evolving those crests were a bit high but it's still a cool idea. The crests were probably my favorite update to the game, really well done and helped resolve the starving support problem. As with all of the other tests, the game ran exceptionally smooth. I didn't hear from some people that it didn't run as well for them in previous tests. However, I personally thought it did much better. Each step of the development process for Omeda has been a step up. New additions have served to improve the experience instead of causing unforeseen step backs. There were of course some things I didn't like about the alpha. I'm going to specifically address gameplay when I talk about the bad.  As much as I enjoyed the addition of all the new items and the resulting build diversity, there was an ADC item that I felt was mandatory which is something I don't like. The item in question gives you the increased attack range. I know people say that you don't have to build this item but come on. If you don't take this, you will lose against any other ADC that does have it and can aim at least a little bit. And not taking it means that you won't be able to position in teamfights as well as someone who does have it.  I don't know if these were intended or not, but the end result is some pretty cheap ways to play that I took full advantage of. An example of what I'm talking about is this gaze item that gives you a slow and ability hit. Innocent enough and pretty common in mobas. However, if you build this along with Hellfire, an item that passively radiates ability damage, you end up being able to pulse a constant damaging slow to everyone around you without spending any mana. I was going toe to toe 1v1 with Narbash against mid game junglers without building any damage other than Hellfire. That shouldn't be a thing. I'm sure there are some other silly combos out there, let me know in the comments below what you guys found. The last thing is that I still think early game ADCs are a bit overtuned.  I know many people thought that Kai was also overtuned, however, I personally think he was fine. You just had to pick up one of the many cards you could use to counter him. You can't say someone is overpowered if you do nothing to counter them. Now the ugly which I'll reserve for bugs and technical issues. I didn't find many bugs in the game, however, I did get disconnected once, which was very frustrating because there's no way to reconnect to the game afterwards. I ended up finding out that everyone disconnected in that particular game, so at least I didn't have to feel bad about leaving my team high and dry. It did seem that there were a lot of disconnects though, especially at the loading and character select screen. Unfortunately there's no way to know if people were experiencing a bug or just getting pissed that someone took their hero that they wanted to play and just disconnecting themselves. Also saw Jellynees get a bug where he was unable to select a hero, I'm not sure how common that was, but it's something that needs to be looked into. That's all I have to report for you fine people today. I'm not sure how far out the open beta for this game will be. I don't know how they plan to monetize other than with the badass Murdoch skin that they made and the Scythe skin for Severog. I do know that they plan for eventual console release, however, I don't know when that will be, I just know it's going to be a while. If you enjoyed the video, please leave a like and subscribe for more, but for now this is the Mangoo signing off, you guys, have a good one. Mangooos!


When you want that pig, you want that pig. Ooh! That's a hot mug, guys! Hey guys, this is my review for episode 4 of season 4 of Supernatural Metamorphosis. And no word of a lie, this is actually one of my favorite Monster of the Week episodes, simply because there's actually some very decent development for the guy who turns into a monster, and you come to care for the character. They don't even start the episode off with him, so he doesn't even have as much time to develop. The episode in fact starts with Sam exercising a demon and Dean coming in and seeing it and throwing a hissy fit.  Very reminiscent of what Dean turned into at the end of the show. Being kind of a cartoon, an over-exaggerated baby. I know that the brothers are supposed to be steeped in this whole distrust in this season, and it's gonna grow, and it's gonna get worse. Coming to a point of literally the end of the world being the result. Jensen is definitely trying his best, and Jared's doing his all too in terms of his counters. But the script just for this argument is written for them to bicker for bicker's sake, I feel. Dean could have maybe been a little bit more apprehensive, maybe a little bit more understanding or questioning of the whole situation.   Then we get introduced to Jack, otherwise known as Discount Edward Norton. He is a Rugeroo, and we see that he has quite an appetite. The brothers go out to this area because there's another hunter out there who's got a broken arm, which they use that cast pretty well. He's after Jack because he is the son of a Rugeroo that he hunted 30 years ago, and he's finishing the job that he never started because this was the kid. He didn't think that he would turn into a Rugeroo. And this interweaves with the episode themes of maybe you weren't the monster that you are, maybe you can change as well as making up for past mistakes. Jack doesn't want to become what he is, but he is being pushed by his primal urges. But we see him try to fight what he is becoming.  He's not immediately dismissive. He is trying to understand what is going on while also in denial. It'd be pretty weird to be called a Rugeroo.  The effects for him are super, super good as he is changing that whole weird back thing. Just weirds me out every time. We see him in his hunger, not only for food, but for sustenance, for cravings, for violence, for anger, for power, slowly consume him. And of course it's mirroring what Sam is going through.  And Dean thankfully gets an earful from Sam. And this is the part that makes up for the garbage writing at the beginning of the episode.   He knows that what it looks like is terrible, but he's doing the best he can. And he's hoping that his brother would at least acknowledge that and understand that. Funny enough, how I was bringing up themes of hoping that things wouldn't happen even though you know they would that was in the last episode. That happens in this episode, far more for me. When Jack is confronted by the other hunter, tied up, and the guy says, Yeah, I found out your wife's pregnant, so I'm gonna have to burn her too. He breaks out of his holes to save his wife's life, but the hunger finally consumes him. And when he goes to take in that bite, admittedly I'm always like, Ah, no, don't do it dude.  And he eats him and he slowly turns into the Rugeroo, but he still has enough consciousness to let his wife go.  It looks like some sort of weird Star Trek monster thing. The brothers come in, they both get knocked out, but Sam tries to talk Jack down. He's able to just kind of get to him along enough that he can get the door and burn him alive. And then at the very end of the episode, Sam says that I'm done with the powers. This is my choice. Obviously we know he's not going to keep to that. Oddly reminds me of aspects of the show later on, like demon-deeming over in three episodes. I know it's not the same thing. And I know it's going to come back and it's going to be used properly, but it made me think about that. So in the end, while the beginning of the episode is pretty crap, I enjoy the fact that they humanize the monster. They make up for the crap-ass writing that was the beginning of the episode. And the episode ends on kind of a cliff note. Yet again, that's another cliffhanger kind of ending. Not as, ooh, as the last three have been, but it still keeps you on your toes. It's building, which is a really nice thing to see in Supernatural. Now, admittedly, my rating for this episode is a bit of a conflicted one. In my heart, I feel like it's a five out of seven, but really because of the flaws of the episode, I have to give it a four out of seven. Not to say that this isn't a bad episode. If anything, this is a quintessential monster of the week episode. Jack's writing is fantastic. It's the writing between Dean and Sam that is so goddamn childish for the first half of the episode. If their story arc was as good as Jack's arc, I would probably put this up to a five. But because of how poorly written it is at the beginning, I have to put it here. And now I ask you guys for your comments about this episode, so let's read those off. Man, the good old days. When I felt Supernatural was the greatest, how I've missed it. The episode Metamorphosis is one of the best uses of Monster of the Week in my opinion. Not only does it carry on from this episode, but it actually has weight to it. Seeing Buddy's fall to becoming a Rugeru as tragic and Sam seeing the parallel in himself. Season four to me just hits the hardest for sure. Four bangers in a row. How can you not love this season? It takes me back to the time when Sam using his powers was cool. And Sam seems to have good points about it helping people instead of killing the vessels of the demons. Not to mention being on the fans about Ruby as you haven't seen how Sam gets his powers. And other than being a demon, she seems pretty helpful thus far. Cheers. And obviously I agree with you on those points, but there were some people who had negative thoughts on the episode. Metamorphosis is a meta attempt at telling that monsters are once humans too in some cases. The whole you can't escape your fate deal. The guy is destined to become the monster he doesn't want to become to put his family in jeopardy but does so anyways. Red flags at Sam's possible destiny. Season four is the whole your fate is destined. Season five is the throw out the rules at the game. Nice to watch the flip-flop and dynamic. And he's not the only person who has that opinion. After three great episodes Metamorphosis to me always fell flat. I really didn't like the hammy acting. Yeah, I can agree with that. And the gross monster. Also making the wife pregnant was forced and in the end they abandoned that plot thread. A lackluster episode to say the least and one of the few bad episodes in season four. I wouldn't say it's a bad episode. But I can understand where you're coming from. Metamorphosis is a one big giant foreshadowing of Sam which is to becoming addicted to demon blood in a reasonably an executed way. Dean saying he'd want to hunt his brother if he didn't know him shows how Gordon Walker and other hunters look at Sam. Sam putting down Jack was a perfect representation of Sam's promise. The episode has to really hit home for Jared and the other suffering depression with something that just can't rip out of their lives and try to make something good out of it. The monster of the week episodes are the bread and butter of this show and they were done really well in this one. I can definitely agree with you there. Finally one more. Oh God Metamorphosis. Visual wise it's one of the grossest episodes since the one where they introduced the shapeshifters back in season one. From the man eating raw beef to him chowing down on the hunter. I'm not too sure who plays Jack in this episode but he did a fantastic job. I can't help but love this episode. I definitely agree with that. I found it kind of hilarious when Sam says the line it doesn't matter what you are it only matters what you do. It'd be used for another character named Jack in season 13. I don't know if that's lazy writing or some weird shout out to the other seasons. Honestly I don't think Andrew Depp even realized he was copying and pasting. But he's been doing that his whole career so. Thank you guys for those comments and now we have Monster Movie. This is gonna be a fun wonder review. Make sure to give me your guys's comments about that episode and I'll read those off in the next review. Otherwise guys thank you for watching. Hope you enjoyed this review. If you did leave a like and if you're interested in more subscribe. Otherwise see you guys next week. Thanks for watching the video. My name is Knitz and you might remember me from the animated cult classic TV show Undergrads. It's been a while but I'm happy to say the click is finally getting back together in an all new movie thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign. But we are still asking for your support. To see any and all updates about the upcoming Undergrads movie be sure to check out and like the Bring Back Undergrads Facebook page and with any luck we'll see you guys soon.


The governor of New York refuses to step down despite calls from the president and one of his many accusers Could he be forced out of office? The governor is not willing to hold himself accountable to the facts Then we have a responsibility to call on assembly speaker Carl Histe to start impeachment And New York City now becomes the first city to issue a vaccine passport could other cities follow suit and Osama bin Laden a family man that was the headline from one of the biggest newspapers in the world and later Move over Mars a new major discovery when it comes to the planet Jupiter all of that and so much more right here on news on And good afternoon and welcome to this edition of news on I'm Miranda Khan Thank you so much for joining us on this Wednesday New York taking center stage today with a number of stories making headlines out of the Empire State including the very latest on the governor there Charlotte Bennett. She is one of multiple women who have now accused Andrew Cuomo of sexual harassment Cuomo forcefully denies the allegations involving 11 women so far and has ignored calls for his resignation among those One of them comes from the president himself Joe Biden So will you now call on him to resign given the investigators said the 11 women were credible stand by that statement? Are you now calling on him to resign? Yes and To New York Democrats US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senator Kristen Gillibrand are also calling on the governor to resign We'll get to that a little bit more and We'll also share what his accuser is saying coming up in just minutes from now also New York City Making history today for becoming the first city in the US to now require proof of a COVID vaccine to do many activities like dining indoors Visiting gyms or even participating in other indoor entertainment We'll get reaction from a fellow New Yorker on that new order in just a minute Plus we're going to discuss the odds of other cities following suit with our panel Meanwhile, you have the Biden administration reportedly now offering COVID vaccines to illegal immigrants Who are continuing to cross the border and record numbers? Of course, this comes in response to Mexico Now barring the US from returning those migrants and their families back across the border because of worsening COVID cases And speaking of the border a federal judge blocking Texas state troopers now from enforcing its governor's order To stop anyone who isn't in law enforcement from transporting migrants along the texas border That remains in effect until august 13th Centers for disease control prevention now issuing a new temporary moratorium on evictions So this order very interesting set to expire October 3rd it covers Counties experiencing high level of COVID-19 spread. It's estimated that it's going to cover 80% of us counties in about 90% of the population That is according to a source. We're going to discuss this more with dr. Wendy patrick This friday are a legal expert Meanwhile, let's talk about the delta variant. It has reached china's wuhan prompting a citywide testing there This is the most that we've seen from the outbreak in months with more than 300 cases detected in more than two dozen cities all across the country Now joining us to talk more about our top stories of the day again all sintering around new york is a fellow new yorker CEO and founder of the stock swoosh melissa armo melissa good to see you as always lot of stories Making headlines real quickly your state Making history your city. I should say making history with this vaccine passport You shared an image With our booker sonny and and it's dead. This is one of the busiest busiest cities in the world Exactly i've taken a bunch of pictures as i've been out and about in the city in the last year and a half of different things that have happened We we were boarded up before the election The city was a mess after the riots every time i think the city is going to come back Something else happens. It's interesting. My father said the blouse was out in a couple of months. That was about a month ago I said dad that's a long way away five months left And now he even wants to put another dagger in businesses in new york city and it's bad for residents too Listen, new york city needs a tax revenue from the wealthy base here They're not going to come back in the fall if they know that these mandates are in place And we're not even sure if they're going to begin with schools reopening full on in person schools too New york city will not survive if the businesses cannot thrive And i'm not sure why they're doing this because about 66 of the new york city residents are vaccinated. What do they want 100%? This is absolutely absurd. It's going to hurt travel industry people coming to the city's the four seasons hotel in midtown has not reopened And i highly doubt that they are going to even reopen at this point this year broadway also has a mandate Yes So I mean this is ridiculous. Why are they doing this? What is the point? They've shown that people are getting Covid even after the vaccine so it's not going to prevent Covid we have to learn to live with this people have to take care of themselves I'd rather wear a mask than have to deal with these mandates I do want to get to the governor, but real quickly. I want to ask you this. I know you say you love your city Do you intend on staying there? I gotta be honest with you. I'm playing it day by day. I'm playing it day by day, and I'm sure I'm not the only person here I'm going month to month in my lease right now. I had looked into several other apartments Let me tell you something. There are people that own Multi-million dollar apartments in this city and they cannot use the gym now without a vaccine in their building There are going to be lawsuits. I guarantee you that I'm on the fly here taking a day by day I love new york.  Why are they mandating this? A lot of good questions a lot of good points that you raised and for the viewers that are watching right now You can always weigh in if you live in new york, whether you visit new york Love to know your thoughts on that. You can always find me at real moranda con hashtag share your voice or running tight on time But I do have to real quickly get your reaction To andrew qualmo 11 women now accusing him One of them we're going to play that for our viewers coming up after the break Going on camera. Do you think he'll be impeached? Yes or no? I definitely don't think he's going to step down This this man has a lot of hubris as far as him being impeached since Nancy Pelosi came out inviting yesterday that I have a feeling it is going to happen. I'm surprised though. He's been he's had a lifelong career In new york state 10 years as governor. What a way to go out if this is the way it goes out Yeah, it'll be interesting to see Melissa armo. Thank you so much for joining us always a pleasure Thanks And still ahead on this edition of news on so you heard what melissa had to say about some of the stories that are making headlines in her state We're going to talk to our bipartisan panel about this. What do they think about this new COVID vaccine passport and should the governor there should he step down? He's saying he's not going to do it


Okay, welcome everyone. Good afternoon or good morning or good evening. Wherever this finds you or wherever you're joining us from. We are about to have our last seminar in the Health Law Institute seminar series for this semester and we're very lucky to have Dr. Marley's Rich Richter joining us from South Africa. Just before I introduce her and turn it over to her, that was her lovely suggestion to have folks enter the space with a music riffing off of Fiona Sock's famous comments around patents and important health interventions. A couple of little logistical items to share with you. First of all, we had a little bit of technical difficulties. That's why we're a couple of minutes late starting and getting the closed caption going. I think it is now underway, although I'm seeing a little bit of conversation to try and that suggests otherwise. So I hope by the time I'm done this little introduction, the captioning will be in place. For those who are not familiar with it, you should be able to sort of turn captioning on through the menu of options in Zoom towards the bottom right, I believe, depending on the kind of browser you're using. So hopefully that will be in place momentarily if it's not already in place right now. The second thing to note is that questions, we welcome them. It will be lovely to have a conversation after the presentation in light of it. The way that that works logistically is to put your questions in the Q&A and then I as the moderator will go through those and put them through towards our speaker so she can engage them and folks can hear both the question and the response. So feel free to put those questions in the Q&A during the chat as they occur during the presentation as they occur to you. And then we'll have some questions to work with by the time Dr. Lifter is concluded her presentation. So I should have said off the stop. My name is Matthew Hurter by the way. I'm the Director of the Health Law Institute here at Dalhousie. We're pleased to have lots of folks joining us for this seminar today. Now about our speaker. Marlies has worked in the health and human rights field for over 20 years. She's served in several key South African civil society organizations and coalitions. She was for instance a researcher at the Project Literacy, the AIDS Law Project, the Treatment Action Campaign, the Reproductive Health and HIV Research Unit, and more recently served as the Head of Policy Development and Advocacy at Sanke Gender Justice. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Honours Degree and Master of Laws Degree from Witts University in South Africa and completed a Masters in International Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame in the United States as a full-bite scholar. In 2013 she graduated with a PhD in Public Health from the International Centre for Reproductive Health at the University of Ghent in Belgium and her focus in terms of that PhD was on sex worker access to healthcare services in sub-Saharan Africa. She's published in academic and popular forums in areas of law, bioethics, gender, migration and public health. She holds a visiting researcher position at the African Centre for Migration and Society at Witts University and currently focuses on research, advocacy and policy change in gender human rights and of course the COVID-19 pandemic with an emphasis on the impact of the criminal law on health access for sex workers as well. Her talk is incredibly timely, that would be true any day for the last several weeks with its focus on just using the title of her talk ARV's COVID-19 Vaccine Equity and Intellectual Property Protection. It's perhaps particularly timely today in Canada where Health Canada are regulated just to prove the Pfizer COVID vaccine, not that I should call it the Pfizer vaccine for children aged 5 to 11. So when other parts of the world are struggling to get their first dose of the vaccine, we have it already being made available for children. So there's a stark perhaps inequity there and I'm sure our speaker will help us to think about that and work through those kinds of questions. So with all of that said, over to you Dr. Richter, we'll have a presentation and then usually by around one o'clock or so start to move into a discussion which I'm really looking forward to. Thanks again for joining us. Thank you very much Matthew. I just would like to check if you can see my screen. We just practice it but I might have clicked the wrong screen. Can people see a full presentation or is it still in presentation mode? It's still in presentation mode more or less. Let's see if I can do it now. Sorry, just give me a sec. I'm going to try and project for my second screen. Perfect. Is that better now? Yeah, I'm glad. Perfect. Thank you very much. Good afternoon everyone. I'm speaking to you from Cape Town in South Africa and it's such a pleasure for me to speak to you about the topic of intellectual poverty. As Matthew pointed out, my background is much more general and especially in the last 15 years I've been focusing much more on sex work, health and human rights and since starting my work at the Health Justice Initiative in January this year, I returned to some of the treatment access work that I started doing when I was very young and perhaps naive when I started working at the Treatment Action Campaign in the AIDS Law Project and some of the work that we did there during the AIDS epidemic. I'm hoping to speak to you a little bit in today's session. Sorry, let me just see if I can move this on. The topic of today's presentation is mainly quite broad strokes around some of the lessons learned during the activism and the advocacy domestically in South Africa but importantly the international partnerships that brought about a radical rethink of intellectual property and how intellectual property would be able to bolster health and human rights specifically and I believe that some of the lessons that we learned during the HIV epidemic are particularly important in the way that we are grappling with the COVID pandemic. A little bit about the Health Justice Initiative so that you have a sense of the context and the disciplines in which we work. The Health Justice Initiative is a very small NGO. We were established in July 2020, I joined this year and we look specifically at the intersection between racial and gender inequality and we focus mainly on COVID TB and HIV and the work that we do always include the lens of health equity. Sorry, I just realized I need to stop here to just check if the live captions, if all of that is sorted and if there's anything that I need to do around that. Okay, I'm going to continue and I assume that everything is in order. What I thought that I would do to start off this discussion and to provide some of the context of more than 20 years ago is to provide a short video around the initial work of the treatment action campaign and the documentary is longer, it's about 20 minutes, but I'm going to only show six minutes of it to talk a little bit about the treatment action campaign's work and then to juxtapose that to some of the issues that the global south especially is experiencing in terms of the COVID pandemic. What I'm going to do is to try play it off my computer as opposed to the PowerPoint and I just want to check if everyone can hear this. Okay, thank you so much for joining us today and I'm going to start off with the first presentation program. We held our first demonstration on the steps of St. George's Cathedral in Cape Town. At first relations with the minister of health at the time, Dr. Tangoza and Azuma were friendly. In 1999, one man's treatment with antiretrovirals would cost between four and 6,000 rents. When most people on the end, less than people. We started organizing branches. Most papers was to educate ourselves about HIV and AIDS. This was the origin of our focus on treatment literacy. It was through education about the scientific, social and political aspects of HIV and AIDS that we could take control of the virus within us and off the pandemic as a whole. In 1999, Tabombegi succeeded. Nelson Mandela is a president of South Africa. Then the unthinkable happened. Tabombegi announced the appointment of a presidential AIDS panel to investigate whether HIV was the cause of AIDS. Some of the people in this room to ask what is the cause. In 2000, South Africa hosted the World AIDS Conference. Welcome to the 30th International World AIDS Conference. The number of people living with HIV in South Africa had increased to nearly 4.5 million in 2000. South Saharan Africa had become the epicenter of the epidemic. Yet antiretroviral treatment was unaccorded for most in our region. The TAC organized a mass march for treatment access. The march mobilized global opinion in support of the call that patients and profits should not be allowed to prevent access to life-saving medicines. In a crucial opening address to the conference, Judge Edwin Cameron placed the issue of access to treatment on the agenda. I'm here. I'm able to be talking to you. I'm able to engage with you. I'm able to speak with you about this important topic because I'm on antiretroviral therapy. There are people throughout Africa, 25 million people in Africa and 34 million people in our whole world who are this moment dying and they're dying because they don't have the privilege that I have of purchasing my health. Where are the drugs? That's where they are. The drugs are where the disease is not. The disease, the disease is where the drugs are not. During her term as Minister of Health, Dr. Zuma tried to introduce the Medicines Act, which allowed for wider access to cheaper generic medicines once the patent had expired. The Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association opposed the Medicines Act. The TAC organized a campaign against the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association in support of the Government and the Medicines Act. We mobilized trade unions, religious leaders and other NGOs to support the campaign. Faced with this opposition, the PMA withdrew. The victory encouraged the growth of the TAC.  You also ask us to reveal our manufacturing costs. Now I have to be upfront with you today and say right now, right here, we can't do that. TAC went to Thailand and brought back a generic version of Pfizer's Flocanozo, a highly effective medicine in the treatment of oral crash. The generic version costs only 58 U.S. cents per tablet, when Pfizer charged the Government $7 per tablet. In 2001, the TAC held I'm just going to play a second short video. This pandemic has brought everybody to the same level, rich, poor, educated, uneducated, all of them crying out for the one little thing that we take from granted, oxygen, air. Breathing seems like a basic human right, but when you have COVID, it's not. First, it was my mum who got infected. I had to go and buy a drip to put it myself because she was in such a bad shape. And when I was there, still missing my mum, I got a phone call that my daughter is sick. I started coughing and I was struggling to breathe. I was isolating myself and my son wanted to come touch me and see me. My husband was also very sick. They are both just saying, we can't breathe, we can't breathe. I mean, in Zimbabwe, we needed an ICU bed, we needed oxygen and there was nothing. Good afternoon, Zimbabwe. I'm one of the specialist physicians on the coast. Today has been a very difficult day. The food is like a bloodbath. Nutriness since morning has been death upon death. Patients who are not vaccinated and their condition progresses unabated until they can't breathe and they come to us very desperate. When my family was almost dying, there was not one single vaccine. It makes me really sad because this has been before and we lost millions of people to HIV. When in the West, people are already living normal lives. For how long are we going to sit and just look at people dying again? Since the pandemic started, we've lost a quarter of these patients and this is the only hospital providing critical care support in Northern Uganda. We have the poorest vaccination status of the whole world. The country is talking about going back to business is normal and WHO has challenged them to stop this vaccine apathy and to stop the boosters until everyone is vaccinated. We want them to share the vaccines, share the recipe so that countries like South Africa can produce vaccines for Africa. India is in the same situation. They can't do it. Breaks my heart. Those stories of people dying in the streets, it's so important that we vaccinate the whole world. I will continue to fight for access to vaccines until my own last press. I just want to check that people could see my screen with the presentation. Just blue background. Thank you. Thanks for all the help. Let me just see if I can do a quick swap around. Is that better? Okay. I'm sorry. I can't seem to get the presentation back onto the second screen. Let me just try once more. Yay. Okay. Thank you very much. So that was a little bit of a roundabout way of giving some context to some of the discussions that we hope to have this afternoon. What I want to start off with specifically is the devastation of the HIV pandemic. In 2000, when I started working for the AIDS Law Project, there were more than 4.2 million people who had HIV. The anti-retrovirals that were available in the global north were completely unaffordable in Africa. You heard the insert on the video from Judge Edwin Caverin who spoke about how he can purchase health because he had a good salary, but that it was completely out of reach for most South Africans. The treatment action campaign used innovative legal advocacy, research, social mobilizations, and social mobilization in public education to really challenge the global conversation on broke pricing and ultimately to increase the access to people with treatment. South Africa, we are proud today to have one of the largest HIV treatment programs in the world. The focus of the treatment action campaign and the AIDS Law Project was specifically the pharmaceutical industry and the abuse of intellectual property protections. There was a reference in the video to the pharmaceutical manufacturing association case, the PMA case, and in South Africa there was an amendment to our medicines act in 1997 where we wanted to increase the ability to have greater access to medicines and the pharmaceutical industry supported by the US government to challenge the amendments to our domestic legislation, arguing that it was violating trips and will return to trips quite soon. The major concern of the pharmaceutical association is that this new legal framework would allow for parallel importation. The treatment action campaign joined the case and they made the argument around how the domestic amendments would dramatically increase the ability of people with HIV and AIDS to access medicines. The organizations were joined with demonstrations around the world. There was great global solidarity. During the hearing of the case, there were more than 5,000 people who marched to the court and there was engagement of activists in South Africa and globally around the issue of this case. The PMA eventually withdrew their case and some of the analysis of the campaign and the strategies around it point towards the synergies around litigation, mobilization and education and especially how activists, networks were able to share resources, knowledge and strategies to hold the pharmaceutical industry to account. And those are many of the networks that are still existing today and that are working on the issues of the COVID pandemic. Some of the visuals that you saw in the video was around the AIDS conference in Durban in 2000 and it was at this point that President Tobin Becky's AIDS denialism and especially his skepticism around antiretrovirals came to the fore. So the treatment action campaign and treatment activists had to negotiate the great difficulties of an anti-science policy approach in South Africa. In 1999 it was the start of the prevention of Mother to Child Transmission case where civil society organizations challenged the South African government's AIDS denialist policy and rejection of antiretrovirals and this case eventually landed up in our highest court, the constitutional court, that came out resoundingly in support of the case that was brought by the treatment action campaign and provided for the provision of navirapino, other antiretrovirals to prevent HIV to unborn children. This also led to momentum in our national ARV rollout in April 2004. In 2002 we used the competition law and especially our competition commission to fail a complaint against GlaxoSmithKlan and Buyinga Engelheim, arguing that they violated competition law by abusing their dominance in the market and charging excessive prices for ARVs. The pharmaceutical companies reached the settlement in 2003 and that dramatically cut ARV prices. Against the background of these events, it's important to be in mind the broader global framework around trade and intellectual property. So you might know that the WTA adopted trips in 1995, 1994 and it makes provision for the safeguarding of intellectual property for a wide range of products for up to 20 years. As I've noted before, it had a big impact on addressing the AIDS epidemic. Countries from the global south fought for the DOA declaration that focused on the public health consequences of trips and provided specific safeguards. So the DOA declaration in 2001 were unequivocal that the trips agreement should not and does not prevent members from taking measures to protect public health and they confirmed that the agreement should be interpreted in a supportive manner to give substance to the right to protect public health and in particular to promote access to medicines for all. Yet it's regrettable that many of the DOA declaration flexibilities have not been used. There's immense political pressure not to use the flexibilities. For example, although the US agreed to the DOA declaration, the US trade policy never changed and the US often imposed significant pressures on countries not to use the trip's flexibilities and to increase or extend the highest levels of intellectual property protection. Governments who seek to use trips are singled out. They often even placed on a watch list and pushing new trade agreements, the US also seeks to extend IP protections beyond the level mandated by trips. South Africa to our shame has not really used the DOA declaration. We haven't even once issued a compulsory license which points to the importance of road by domestic legislation in intellectual property and health, public health issues. I want to move from HIV to COVID and I'm aware that there's only 18 minutes left. And I want to situate these these figures are perhaps something that you are very familiar with. This is from the WHO dashboard. The figures from yesterday or two days ago showed that they were over 250 million cases confirmed of COVID leading to more than five million deaths and that they have been a number of significant, thank you I just saw the note, a significant number of vaccine doses that have been administered. So where are all these vaccines going? As of two days ago, at least just over half of the world population had to receive at least one dose of the COVID vaccine. As we've noticed, there's been five billion doses that have been administered globally and that there's almost 30 million that are administered each day. But yet only less than 5% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose. So this is a map that gets updated daily from our world and data and you can see from from the legend there that Africa is definitely not the dark continent. It is very pale in comparison to other countries and the coverage of vaccines. We ran a webinar recently entitled the 5% continent to highlight the fact that so few people in Africa have been vaccinated and I'll speak a little bit about that in a minute. So this is another graph that shows the vaccines administered by continent and perhaps because you haven't seen it, it's a little sliver at the top that depicts Africa's proportion. So this brings us to the issue of vaccine equity of course, the fact that there is massive disparities between the global north and the global south. The WHO director general speaks about the world being on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure and that this may failure will be paid with the lives and livelihoods of the world's poorest countries. If we want to repeat COVID-19 as a planet, vaccine equity is absolutely key and vaccine equity is essentially about the equitable distribution of vaccines worldwide. I want you to just briefly speak about global public goods and I draw here on Neva Deter Shaksina's work on global public goods. A good in this sense is a product or an issue that can be either good or bad. Some people argue that national defence, peace, security and even global warming can be seen as a public good. In the health context it refers to programmes, policies and services that have a truly global impact on health. Usually it refers to something that's beneficial. Often a global public good is seen as non-rival risk and non-excludable and Shaksina says in multi-lateral negotiations these efforts have been accompanied by calls to designate the vaccine of global public good. Lacking formal legal definition of the phrase signals a commitment to ensure equitable access for all countries. Many of leading candidates of the vaccines when she was writing this was developed in research centres and universities in the global north but despite that even before it can be proved that these vaccines have already been patented by pharmaceutical companies which means that they have a monopoly over the vaccine and they can decide where the vaccine goes and at what price. This basically means that through patent rights pharmaceutical companies control and know how of manufacturing these vaccines and this gives rise to artificial scarcity. So it's very important to note that the research centres in the human universities are funded by public money. So much of the vaccines development the research and development that brought about successful and even unsuccessful vaccines have come from the public purse. In the beginning of the pandemic there was an innovative suggestion by Costa Rica to create CTAB the COVID-19 technology access pool through this mechanism pharmaceutical companies would be invited to voluntarily share COVID-19 related knowledge IP and data. It's not one major pharmaceutical company with a WHO approved vaccine has contributed to CTAB. This is despite the fact that we know that there's been more than five million deaths and two hundred and fifty million cases. So this brings us to to the trips waiver and as I've noted before it's about how the agreement how most countries in the world deal with patents and intellectual intellectual property rights and the DOA declaration softening some of some of the the provisions of trips and trips provided an opportunity to to flex some of the the muscle of the DOA declaration. In October 2020 South Africa and India presented a trips waiver proposal. The proposal specifically speaks to temporarily suspending IP rights so that COVID-19 vaccines and other new technologies are accessible for countries and it helps countries to override monopolies at that point until herd immunity is is reached. There's some discussion about whether herd immunity not herd immunity whether herd immunity is still a useful concept and more than a hundred countries have supported the waiver except if you look at this graph you can see that the countries designated in in red are countries that are opposing the waiver. The countries in green are supporting it or co-sponsoring it and you can see that your country in Canada it's not clear what what the position is at at the moment or at least by the 16th of November when Mids and Sons Frontiers did this infographic. So there's a very neat plot plot and a neat plot of countries that have a lot of vaccines and those who who have pharmaceutical companies manufacturing vaccines and resistance to to the trips waiver. This is a graph from from earlier this year this is in in January 2021 and it shows how different countries had already purchased doses of the vaccine and how many times over people in those countries would be able to to vaccinate their populations. The EU had had already bought 3.5 doses per person the US 3.7 Canada was 9.6 so I think that's been downgraded now to to six times as much vaccines as as the population and that all in comparison to the African Union which at that point was at 0.2%. It also goes to the issue of stockpiling. Many countries in the global north are stockpiling vaccines. A proportion of them are expiring and in this BBC insert in September they're asking whether many of these doses might be might go to waste which means no one benefits from it. It has of course given rise to a very strong resistance from activists world over and some of the the clips that I've played to you are from the the free the vaccine campaign as well as the the people's vaccine campaign who are are doing important work in shining a light on these inequalities and leveraging and putting a lot of pressure on the World Trade Organization discussions to to be able to to push the trips waiver through. I want to spend a little bit of time to to speak to some of the the gist of of the lessons learned from from two decades ago and some of the the lessons that I'm going to to include in a video by my colleague Fatima Hassan have to do with some of the the harder some of the harder things we we learned during the AIDS pandemic and the importance of analytical framework of exposing issues of power and control especially the the type partnerships between governments and and pharmaceutical companies. The cynicism or the the critical engagement around donations and volunteerism where where many people are rejecting the trips waiver because they say there's there's a lot of donations that are coming in terms of of vaccines to to the global south and I think the slogan we want justice not charity is an important one during HIV we've seen we've seen a lot of promises about donations that that didn't materialize the issue about domestic laws to issue compulsory licenses and the importance of mobilizing internationally. One of the one of the the suggested readings that that are included for today's seminar is a piece in the the British Medical Journal where Fatima and colleagues speak about the importance of a sustainable way forward is to globalize manufacturing so that this advantage countries no longer rely on on charity and how this was achieved in HIV and how poorer countries require the relaxation of intellectual property rights technological transfer and being able to rapidly establish regional vaccine manufacturing hubs. So what I would like to do is to to play a clip from from this webinar in which Fatima speaks to some of these these issues and I'm also playing the clip because I'm I'm aware that FIFA was earlier a lecturer in this course and to share some of their thoughts around the the lessons learned so I'm going to try and do my take again by seeing if I can play the the video and have you watched it at the same time. So much of this is very you because some of both what Peter have said and Kamran has just talked about reminded me and you know they said it very clearly that we've been through this before you know so much of this is very reminiscent of the the struggle for HIV meds and you mentioned you know this notion that we couldn't take our medication on time what was the point there was the you know the fact that Nelson Mandela's administration was sued by 38 or 40 pharmaceutical companies with the support of the US government and Europeans so I wanted to give you an opportunity to talk about that you know in the moments where we feel very depressed and we think that we're not going to win this battle you know what are the lessons that you can bring us from that time because I know that you despite the fact that you look very useful we're in in that battle as well back then and anything else that you'd like to add or respond to to what Eddie of the other panelists have said. Thanks so I mean I think you know just to echo what Kamran and Peter and Tifa have said in many ways the the way in which this pandemic has been managed has been worse right from the age of age right it's because we thought we wouldn't have a repeat of that I mean thought we wouldn't have a repeat of the creed and the hoarding and the refusal to share knowledge in the middle of a pandemic where you have a life-saving intervention so you know Kamran and Peter have talked about how remarkably we've got these vaccines multiples of vaccines that are considered safe and effective they have been made to use authorization and what happened all of the supplies was allocated to the global north very little targets for the global south where black and brown people have to live which is why you know I'm going to go back to the point about racism because for me this just feels like the racism wasn't even disguised you know in HIV AIDS it was initially whereas in this case we thought it would be so different it would be that solidarity the clearing of knowledge and that did happen so you know the lesson from HIV AIDS I think that just became clearer last night when we had a panel discussion with David Casca who was in charge of the Biden White House team on the COVID-19 response and you know incredulously in October 2021 we're having the same discussions we should have had you know what I've imagined a year ago where we're a government like the U.S. which is considered to be so powerful that has put a lot of funding into particularly Pfizer, Johnson, Johnson and Moderna's vaccine is saying to us that they are still negotiating with the CEOs and the boards of these pharmaceutical companies they are still having a conversation about manufacturing and sharing of knowledge and so you know I don't know if any of you heard the conversation last night because it was really disheartening because I think it goes to what Kamran and Peter talked about and that is financial grief there is so much interest in extracting profit and extracting wealth and extracting you know there's this number of overnight billionaires are believed in people who have been vaccinated and reported on this that they that they even in low income countries which is really really I think a political embarrassment and economic embarrassment social embarrassment that even with those low figures and codex cutting its own focus and saying we simply don't have supplies right that that companies are still sitting around the table and having these conversations with elected leaders who are saying to them share the tax and they're like no this month maybe next week no maybe nature only with that company not on these certain conditions no you can't export yes you can't export so so the question goes to can we have so much self-interest in money and extracting profit that you are willing to withhold a life-saving technology to millions and millions of people around the world and so I think I agree with Peter what are the boards of these pharmaceutical companies doing they have a fiduciary duty how can the chairperson of the board of Moderna refuse to share the technology um with the rest of the world be celebrated and get an award for leadership how can this be the leadership the CEO of Pfizer who said that the reason why Africans are not getting all vaccines because they vaccine has existed and that you know it will take some time for people in Africa to be convinced and really says but you know countless other things which we share and I'm trying to address he also said that Africa is not the hardest continent which is not exactly true so how can you have a situation that CEOs of pharmaceutical companies have more power than the DG of the WHO than elected leaders and I think it goes to the fact that these elected leaders particularly Boris Johnson you know formerly Angela Merkel a lot of these governments have actually propped up these pharmaceutical companies and we saw that for the HIV AIDS it's that you cannot exercise so much power and control unless you have the political support of those closest to you and we've seen that with the trips waiver the countries that are blocking the trips waiver are countries that are fundamentally led by people who are political parties that are heavily funded by the pharmaceutical lobby all those companies I hate to say the fact that the German government cannot force bio intact to share its technology with the rest of the world the fact that the Biden administration is still having nice conversations with you know three leading companies that could actually take office has been very much faster tells you I think the levels of greed that we have been working with and also the levels of power which is obviously very reminiscent and similar to the HIV AIDS presence in some respects these are the same companies but none of us ever thought last year when we gave the warning bells around never trust volunteerism never trust benevolence never trust donations because we've learned from the HIV AIDS fact none of us thought that it would still take so long for world leaders in this pandemic because it's to be so interconnected to this pandemic the variant circulating with you know potential additional ways and Peter said what comes after Delta I think Cameron said what comes after Delta none of us thought that political leaders would be so scared and and I mean you know let's also just lay a little bit of blame in African leaders right so you know the South African government told you would face maybe laws to be ready to issue compulsory licenses why are we so scared of taking on pharmaceutical companies I mean we know why we know the trade pressure but if you're not going to use those powers I think it's what you know the DG of the WHO said last week why have provisions in the tropes agreement on a tropes waiver if you're not going to use it if you're not going to use it in this pandemic we never we never did it so unfortunately Peter is right what turned the tide on HIV AIDS was that all of us basically mobilized to force the drug companies to issue multiple licenses to increase the number of manufacturers until then we didn't have a turning point and so when people see our response to Madonna by the Johnson Johnson it's not because we are anti private companies or anti the pharmaceutical industry it's because we know that time is in essence people are getting sick and dying we don't force these companies through public pressure and public activism because governments and companies we have to increase the public pressure on these pharmaceutical companies and they would actually do the right thing and right now to stand up manufacturing participate in the mRNA house and stop diverting supplies to richer countries that already have thank you on that on that note and the special emphasis that fighting my place a lot of people wonder when's the right time to get tested did you get an STD test right away or is it better to on the note of the importance of mobilization and especially to force pharmaceutical companies to to share their recipes and I think I'm going to to conclude that thank you very much thank you my least powerful bringing together of a lot of experiences through HIV AIDS to the current pandemic a lot of parallels obviously so I just want to remind folks that we'd love to get a bit of a discussion going we have some time we typically go until about 20 after the hour so please do feel free to put some questions into the Q&A and then I'll repeat those for the people as a whole just to start the discussion off I guess I enjoyed seeing how you brought together a lot of different people in the field that have been you know working both historically and at present to improve the supply essentially and access globally to COVID vaccines that I was curious if you wanted to sort of situate your own experience having worked as we talked about early on in the introduction in a range of different advocacy organizations because in some ways you know what we're hearing or what you shared with us was that there's a lot of similarities between what happened with HIV AIDS and the current pandemic and and yet here we are again right so in some ways it's kind of a very depressing note around corporate power and the ineffectiveness of advocacy to alter that or push back against it so I wondered if you're coming from perhaps adjacent spaces in public health different organizations if you had any reflections about what's new here or what aren't we doing what should we be doing just either at a personal level in terms of you're moving into this space coming from outside of it. Thanks Matthew that's a great question and it makes me think about about being in spaces that always had public health and access to medicines issues but probably a bit more tangentially so I noted that most of my work in the last while has been around law reform on sex work specifically and the decriminalization of sex work and the work that I've been involved in around there has been access to health care services and the importance of having enabling health contexts to to speak to spot particularly more modernized people and the work that I've been doing in gender-based violence more broadly it's also been around policy and law reform to acknowledge the impact of gender-based violence on levels of safety and well-being and health in South Africa but of course broader much broader than that and I think that the issue of the difficulties within the health sector and especially because of the emphasis placed on profits and often on money and the way that profit margins as well as the stigma that often attaches to particularly marginalized groups how those reinforce each other to force the people who often need health care services the most how they get forced even more to the margins and I think Paul Farmer spoke very eloquently about the fault lines of epidemics and how they track the marginalized populations and reinforce some of that structural violence. I think something that that struck me in the comparison of the work that we did early on in HIV and now in COVID in a match spanner form is the social solidarity that the global solidarity and I think that that's something that's very important to point out how the networks of activists who came together with HIV and how it was truly a global response how many of those people are still working very strongly in issues of intellectual property and access to medicines and have been able to reactivate in working in tandem with people all over the world especially the advocacy around the trips waiver the trust and the relationships that have been forged over many years how activists could pick that up and just run with those and I think those are those are important lessons in in terms of how I would say capitalism has has become even more robust in in the last the last few decades the consolidation of pharmaceutical power and political power specifically but that there's been such a coordinated and important pushback by human rights activists academics and and advocates. Yeah no that's that's very thoughtful I mean I think in some ways it's it's amazing to see this pushback coalesce quickly and in full force and bring out those lessons and try and mobilize I guess the the sort of challenge that occurs to me at the same time is how to sustain that between pandemics when you know there is this you know obvious stark inequality that you can point to to to build public support and support across organizations when that's less easy to do that's how these sort of structures seem to be reproduced again but I really appreciate that response we have we have a question from the audience thank you for your inspiring presentation marlies countries companies and countries adopt different approaches about the exclusivities on different types of co vid medical countermeasures I think using that broadly to capture drugs vaccines and other things like you know testing devices for example the US supported the trips waiver in relation to co vid 19 vaccines but not necessarily in relation to other countermeasures and Pfizer although I think this might need to be merc didn't contribute to any technology pool on vaccines recently announced that will issue voluntary license licensing of its oral antiviral therapy to the medicines patent pool I think that's mark my father but I forgot the details what do you think underpins the shifts in approaches and strategies thanks Matthew I think thank you for that question and I'm going to start off with a important point that Matthew made in an article earlier this year around how vaccine manufacturers have strong incentives to to keep the pandemic going right I think Matthew talked about it as being a durable franchise and I think that pharmaceutical companies have have held on to that power that they that they are still holding on to that power at all costs and that what what I think where where there's been some some minor concessions and those have been probably precipitated by the the the moral arguments and the the global push by activists where citizens within within countries in the global north have said no more that countries that are blocking the the trips waiver need to to stop doing so and that there's been a lot of push on on pharmaceutical companies hopefully through their shareholders hopefully through their boards but also through the general public to make those to make some of those concessions I don't think there's been a major shift at all I do think that that the this approach while it is is heartening that you that you refer to is by no means the no means the extent of what we would want and what we need in terms of of the changes that would be brought about by the the trips waiver and that would essentially be around the transfer of know-how for people to make their own vaccines and for for some of the some of the materials that are needed to to make some of the vaccines that are are held still in countries that that manufacture manufacture the vaccine so you need to be able to do the transfer of of of know-how in a in a much more robust way to to radically increase the supply of vaccines and other medicines so I do think there is some chipping away and that this is a good example of it but it's by no means it's by no means what we what we really need in some ways it might distract from the bigger questions around it and the fact if we don't use the trips waiver and the the COVID-19 pandemic when when will be when will we ever use it well said another question from the audience are there or any organizations in particular that you think are doing good advocacy work on the on the patent issue during COVID-19 in particular? Thanks Uzi that's a that's a great question I'm mostly in touch with with some of the the organizations that that we work with and they are generally grouped together under the People's Vaccine Campaign and some of the links at the the end of my presentation some of the really creative videos I don't think there will be time to to show the the athletes video at the end of my presentation that I think is really innovative the People's Vaccine Campaign bring together a large number of international NGOs and and as well as academic organizations that have a very clear advocacy ask around the the trips waiver and putting pressure on the World Trade Organization so my entry point would be the People's Vaccine Initiative and they have sparked a lot of regional and country specific country specific splinter cells these are people with teen campaign in South Africa these are African wide People's Vaccine Movement and that looks specifically at issues and within Africa and they all tie together globally through the through the the global network so that would be my my key entry point and then second would be Doctors Without Borders the MSF Access Campaign is really robust and it is situated in a lot of expertise on intellectual property and academic research and it's it's worthwhile mentioning public citizen in the US and also knowledge ecology international that are doing a lot of a lot of academic work as well as as research to bring out some of the some of the particularly disturbing aspects around non-disclosure agreements around the the profits that pharmaceutical companies make and how that play out on a on a global scale then the last one that I particularly like is called the Free the Vaccine Campaign that's uh yeah that's been forged by a number of of activists world over and and led by the Center for Autistic Activism in New York that uses creative advocacy techniques um to uh and the arts and especially uh especially theater um to to challenge people's um challenge people's views and to do so in a in a creative way um so those would be my my key my key organizations thank you there is hope I guess in some ways around the the mobilization and the sort of growth of civil society I just hope we can sustain their actions long beyond the pandemic as crucial as they are right now yeah um uh we're just about out of time so unless there are other questions in the Q&A I just wanted to close by thanking Dr. Richter but before I do that I'll just one housekeeping point to share with folks um so as uh long-time followers know of the series as much as we're privileged to have guests come from afar sometimes in person outside of the present context um we've been operating online for some time uh through COVID the tentative plan which we are very fortunate to be able to work towards is that we will be back in person next semester so this is our last seminar of the current semester speaking in very university oriented terms there but in January we're hopeful that we will be able to get together in person and uh in the future be able to host uh speakers speakers like Dr. Richter to come and attend and bring our audience back together so just wanted to make a note for our attendees that um we'll tentatively be planning to be back in person in January so stay tuned for more details in the year uh with that housekeeping notes said um I hope everyone join me in giving a big virtual round of applause for uh Marlies for joining us it's especially late in South Africa today uh or at least well into the evening on a Friday night so we appreciate it for that reason as well but obviously these issues are front and center we applaud the work uh that you and others in civil society are doing so I cannot thank you enough for sharing the experience and perspective and bringing uh to the fore that history around antiretrovirals as well um so on that note I think we unless you wanted to any offer any parting words Dr. Richter I just wanted to say thank you again thank you everyone for joining us and we'll see you hopefully soon okay