Edgardo Lander

1. With the pandemic, debates that had already been taking place from a wide political spectrum of questioning neoliberal globalization are accelerating. The fragility of the productive chains long established with the aim of maximizing short-term corporate profits has fallen to bare in their extraordinary vulnerability. What happens in one link in the chain can have global consequences. Dependence on imports for materials is as critical as basic health equipment and food. This situation has placed in political debate the need for higher levels of self-sufficiency or sovereignty in many different countries of the world. The pandemic has stripped the world like never before. While richer countries are grabbing vaccines for their population and refuse to relax the rules on protection of intellectual property controlled by pharmaceutical corporations developed thanks to massive public funding, many countries in the South will not have widespread access to vaccines until 2022, according to estimates by the People’s Vaccine Alliance[1].