The state of California is embarking on a ground-breaking effort to manufacture and distribute a life-saving drug. The plan also deals a first major blow to private pharmaceutical companies that have long abused the nation's legal system for profit at the expense of the health of the citizenry.

"On my first day in office I signed an Executive Order to put California on a path towards creating our own prescription drugs," Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom declared in a July 7 video posted to Twitter, referencing his inauguration promise in January of 2019. "And now it's happening".

Newsom's statement came in the wake of his approval of a Golden State Budget Proposal that will invest $50 million into development and $50 million more into a State-owned facility that will manufacture and distribute generic (aka biosimilar) insulin to Californians at slightly above cost.

If it succeeds, California, which has the world's 5th largest economy, will not only become the first State, but also the only government, other than Cuba, to embrace the socialized production of generic medications. (Although Cuba develops and manufactures its own generic medications and provides free "preventative medical care, diagnostic tests and medications for hospitalized patients", Pharmacy Times reported, "Cubans pay out-of-pocket for outpatient medications.")

California's progressive Democratic Governor pointed to the extraordinarily high cost of insulin as a form of "market failure" that justifies his embrace of socialized medications. His decision to allow the Golden State to produce its own generic insulin also highlights the immoral manipulation of the nation's patent laws by for-profit drug companies...

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In the short term, the U.S. government can and should compel all citizens, other than those for whom the COVID vaccines may be medically contraindicated, to be vaccinated at the government's expense. It should also insist that the major U.S. pharmaceutical companies contractually waive their right to enforce their COVID vaccine intellectual property rights before a World Trade Organization (WTO) tribunal.

Long term, if we place a greater value on human life than we now do with respect to obscene levels of wealth accumulation by a privileged few, both the U.S. and other governments should renegotiate the TRIPS agreement so as to eliminate intellectual property rights of pharmaceutical companies over life-saving vaccines developed with the aid of public monies.

Alternatively, the U.S. and other governments should take a hard look at whether their respective pharmaceutical industries should be nationalized...

The COVID-19-related tale that the President spun last month, during his lengthy RNC acceptance speech, wasn't even close to the truth. His administration is not "focusing on the science, the facts and the data" in order "to save as many lives as possible." His new "plan" will not permit everyone, other than high-risk Americans, "to safely return to work and to school". (Emphasis added).

To the contrary, with the U.S. COVID death toll already approaching a gruesome 190,000, Trump's Orwellian "plan" is to depict his abject failure to save lives as a smashing success. In addition to recklessly and dangerously claiming to prepare for a Nov. 1 date for the release of a COVID-19 vaccine prior to the completion of clinical trials, the White House has now adopted a pseudo-scientific and lethal strategy that could kill millions of Americans.

It is one thing for epidemiologists, in their medical literature, to describe "herd immunity" as a naturally occurring phenomenon, where, as the result of an epidemic --- as opposed to a safely developed and fully-tested vaccine --- a large number of surviving individuals acquired long-term immunity to a communicable disease. Epidemiological literature tracks instances where the number of naturally immunized survivors reached a "threshold", which, in turn, led to a decline in the incidence of future infections to such a disease, creating an "indirect immunity" for a community at large.

It was an altogether different proposition when the new White House "Covid Health Advisor", Dr. Scott Atlas, recently proposed a strategy to create a naturally occurring "herd immunity" to the deadly COVID-19 virus in the United States. Aside from, somehow, attempting to protect a small group of high-risk individuals --- the elderly, the sick and the immune-compromised --- Atlas' proposed scheme, echoed by the President, would allow the deadly virus to spread quickly to everyone else as they "return to work and to school."

The notion that you can protect a small group of high-risk individuals, while allowing the deadly virus to spread to everyone else, ignores the science of community spread. Children who acquire the virus at school, for example, can serve as a major source of COVID-19 infections for their more vulnerable parents and grandparents. Moreover, while risk levels may differ, coronavirus infections have led to deaths within all age groups. The death toll is not confined only to those with already-compromised immune systems. As Kristin Urquiza said, when tearfully addressing the Democratic National Convention, her previously healthy 63-year old father's "only preexisting condition was believing in Donald Trump."

Atlas is a Senior Fellow from the libertarian Hoover Institution. He is a radiologist, with no professional expertise in epidemiology or in treating infectious diseases. Like many Trump sycophants, he has frequently appeared as a contributor on the President's favorite propaganda outlet, Fox "News".

His proposal to create "herd immunity" was promptly embraced by our science-eschewing President and by his Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, according to The New York Times, which cited a recent appearance on Fox in which Trump moronically averred, "Once you get to a certain number --- we use the word 'herd' --- once you get to a certain number, it's going to go away."

Horrified medical experts were quick to describe the Atlas/Trump "herd immunity" strategy as "dangerous". But it's much worse than that. Given deadly uncertainties and the potential for a genocidal death toll, the Atlas/Trump "herd immunity" strategy is patently insane.

While it may not entail the same deliberate desire to commit mass murder, an effort to create a naturally occurring COVID-19 "herd immunity" is as mad as Adolf Hitler's infamous "Final Solution" --- at least in terms of the massive lethal results.

Yes, it is that insane...