Activists dumped a pile of fake human bones near the home of President Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, to protest a failure to scale up coronavirus-vaccine production for the rest of the world.
The protesters, who are veterans of AIDS protests at the National Institutes of Health more than 30 years ago, took the odd and drastic step after private phone calls to the government went nowhere, according to The New York Times.
The pile of bones was made by a New York set designer and deposited in a driveway in front of a next-door neighbor’s driveway to avoid a confrontation with Secret Service agents, the newspaper said.
The Biden administration says it’s done more than any other nation to help vaccinate other countries, pledging to buy and donate more than 1 billion doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine.
Activists say more sweeping efforts are needed to help poor countries that have struggled to get their vaccine campaigns going after richer nations snapped up doses.
Mr. Biden endorsed a plan to waive patents, though European allies were cool to the idea of swiping intellectual property.
The debate shifted to direct assistance but activists say efforts amount to a drop in the bucket.
Gregg Gonsalves, a Yale University epidemiologist, told The Times that “nobody wants to be here in front of Ron Klain’s house, protesting a president that most of us all voted for. But we’ve tried everything else.”
“What is it — 4 million deaths, 6 million deaths, 10 million deaths — where we can show up on somebody’s lawn and hold them accountable?” Mr. Gonsalves said.
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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