The poorest countries can't afford vaccines, while Big Pharma rakes in the profits.

We all know the drill. Big pharmaceutical companies claim they have to hike up the prices on life-saving medicines to compensate them for all the costs of research and experimentation required to come up with these treatments in the first place. And it's no different with the COVID-19 vaccines, manufactured by giant international conglomerates like Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, and Johnson & Johnson.

It's a controversial argument in the best of times, given that these corporations rake in multiple billions of dollars every single year. But now, during COVID-19 — a pandemic that has taken more than 2.3 million lives worldwide, in which pharmaceutical remedies are absolute must-haves to prevent more death — Big Pharma's insistence on profiteering is even more difficult to swallow.

It's especially hard for poorer countries that simply cannot compete with wealthy, industrialized nations in the race to accrue as many vaccines for their people as possible. But preserving human life shouldn't be a competition. 

Sign the petition to demand that Big Pharma corporations like Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson commit to not price-gauge poorer countries! They must provide life-saving COVID vaccines to these countries at-cost.

This is the scenario right now: COVID-19 is running rampant. In some nations on earth, it's hard enough to come by clean drinking water, let alone clean personal protective equipment like masks and gloves.

Now, giant multinational corporations are literally dangling a miracle inoculation over the heads of citizens in these countries. And they're saying "pay up — or else."

Healthcare should be about HEALTH. And helping people to survive. It is massively messed up that these corporations can use a murderous pandemic as a ripe opportunity to extort the world's most vulnerable, impoverished people — folks who can't afford to pay, even though none of us can afford to not pay. We all need to access these vaccines. It's literally life or death.

Tell Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and AstraZeneca to do the right thing by providing poorer countries with vaccines at-cost — with no profit-gauging.