World leaders join to pledge $8 billion for vaccine, but the U.S. sits out.

A fund-raising conference on Monday organized by the European Union brought pledges from countries around the world — including Japan, Canada, Australia and Norway — to fund laboratories that have promising leads in developing and producing a vaccine.

Prime ministers, a king, a prince and Madonna all chipped in to an $8 billion pot to fund a coronavirus vaccine, but President Trump skipped the chance to contribute. Officials in his administration noted that the United States is pouring billions of dollars into its own research efforts.

For more than three hours, one by one, global leaders said a few words over video link and offered their nations’ contribution, small or large, whatever they could muster. For Romania, it was $200,000. For Canada, $850 million. The biggest contributors were the European Union and Norway, with each pledging one billion euros, or $1.1 billion.

The details of how the money raised will be distributed remain to be sorted out. The European Commission, the executive branch of the European Union that spearheaded the initiative, said the money would be spent over the next two years to support promising initiatives around the globe. The ultimate goal is to deliver universal and affordable access to medication to fight Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

The multilateral effort stood in sharp contrast to the solo road the United States is on as scientists everywhere scramble to develop a vaccine to stop the virus that has ravaged most parts of the globe, leaving 250,000 dead so far.

In Washington on Monday, senior Trump administration officials sought to talk up American contributions to coronavirus vaccine efforts worldwide, but did not explain the United States’ absence at the European-organized conference.

The U.S. government has spent money on vaccine research and development, including $2.6 billion through the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, an arm of the Health and Human Services Department. Jim Richardson, the State Department’s director of foreign assistance, said American companies had also provided $7 billion so far toward a coronavirus vaccine and treatment.

And the United States was not the world’s only major power to be absent from the teleconference. Russia, too, did not participate.

China, where the virus originated, was represented by its ambassador to the European Union and made no financial pledge.

Leaders in China are desperate to protect their people and deflect growing international criticism of how it has handled the coronavirus, wants to come out on top in the race to find a coronavirus vaccine — and by some measures it is doing so.

The country has slashed red tape and offered resources to drug companies in a bid to empower the country’s vaccine industry. Four Chinese companies have begun testing their vaccine candidates on humans, more than the United States and Britain combined.

source; https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/world/coronavirus-news.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes

All Trump and his people want is for them to discover the antidote and sell it to all the countries in the world. So they better stand on their own and discover and take credit plus the money than a joint effort which to some extent will not give them complete control over how it is sell and distributed.

I hope Nigeria is not on that list.
We are looking for people to borrow us instead.

Better you chop your own food for house than to go chop winch outside.

Flyingngel:
All Trump and his people want is for them to discover the antidote and sell it to all the countries in the world. So they better stand on their own and discover and take credit plus the money than a joint effort which to some extent will not give them complete control over how it is sell and distributed.

I think it's more about integrity and security. They want to fund the enemy.

I want to cone tree boot 10bill dollars on behave of federal republic of north.