For a few weeks/months we had hope, tradeshows were being held again. And yes, they were more ‘small scale’ than we were used to, and the number of visitors was still smaller than exhibitors were used to. But the visitors that were there were very serious prospects and overall the shows that were being held were really successful for the exhibitors.
Unfortunately we find ourselves in a situation of new lockdowns. Tradeshows in the Netherlands, large parts of Germany are being cancelled or postponed and we are unsure about the ones not cancelled yet, at least those in the next two months.
Corona is there to stay, so we need to find a way to deal with it, to live with it, to control it, and for our industry, participate in tradeshows without too much risk of getting infected or infect others. Looking at the broader situation now we see that the Delta variant is dominant, and the Omicron variant gets dominant.
From what we understand about the virus is that it multiplies itself, or copies itself onto new infected persons, and in doing so deviations take place. The more freely the virus can move from one person to the other, the more deviations/variants occur, and some of those, like the Delta and Omicron variants really cause problems.
And guess what, those variants are coming from countries with a low vaccination degree (at least at the time of origination of the variant). So the lower the degree of vaccination, the less the virus can move freely from one patient to another, the lower the change of dangerous variants originating. The solution seems logical, seems simple, vaccinate the world population and keep them boostered for future dangerous variants.
‘Mopping while the tap is open’
The solution seems so simple that we wonder why it has not been done yet. Well, all national governments are of course focused on their own citizens, and the international organisations like the WHO are merely advisory boards with limited influence. Yet, it seems to the way out, the only real way out, get everybody (well at least a large majority) vaccinated.
Hence this petition in which we ask the European Commission to host a conference, a bit like the yearly COP conferences on climate change, with government leaders, vaccine producers and all that have power and influence in this matter, sit together (well, on a safe distance of course) and draw up a system to change this. Loosen patents, or build vaccine factories around the world, it doesn’t matter how, as long as we get a system in which everybody can get a vaccine and in every country we achieve a high vaccination grade. In The Netherlands we have an expression ‘dweilen met de kraan open’, mopping while the tap is running’. Wouldn’t it be better if we close the tap, the influx of dangerous variants, it is much easier to keep Covid-19 under control. It is still there, but the tap is closed, so with a bit of mopping here and there we can manage it.
Why the European Commission?
Our initial thought was to address this petition to our national Dutch government. However, we are dealing with an outgoing government waiting to be replaced by the incoming one after the latest elections, not the best timing in that sense we figured.
Sign the petition
Last but not least, sign the petition here; https://petities.nl/petitions/vax-the-world-congress. And share it, we need to vax the world