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This week on CounterSpin: Between two and a half and three million people have died from Covid-19. That’s just what is reported. And we know the toll is so much greater, beyond even the more than 128 million people who have been infected by the virus, many with long-lasting and poorly understood repercussions.

That’s why a year after the WHO declared coronavirus a pandemic, protests demanding global access to vaccines were held around the world. At this point, media could ask how the global economy can recover if only parts of the globe are vaccinated…. But what if they went deeper and wondered: If we don’t learn from this pandemic that none of us can be healthy unless all of us are healthy, how many chances will we get? We’ll talk about global vaccination and what’s in the way of it with Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program.

      CounterSpin210402Maybarduk.mp3

Blocks representing tech companiesAlso on the show: There are more congressional hearings for Big Tech companies coming up—about their role in spreading misinformation about Covid along with, you know, racism and violent insurrection and stuff. We’ll see the congressional debate, assuming there is one, play out in the press. What we won’t necessarily see is how Big Tech companies are furiously working—by which I mean spending—behind the scenes to tilt things in their favor. We’ll talk about that part with Jane Chung, Big Tech accountability advocate at Public Citizen and author of a new report on the subject.

      CounterSpin210402Chung.mp3

Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at past coverage of police murder trials.

Citations

[1] CounterSpin ➤ https://fair.org/feed/podcast/[2] Access to Medicine - Learn More - Public Citizen ➤ https://www.citizen.org/article/access-to-medicine-learn-more/[3] Big Tech, Big Cash: Washington’s New Power Players - Public Citizen ➤ https://www.citizen.org/article/big-tech-lobbying-update/