The comparison to the HIV treatment is even more tragic when you consider the vaccine is simply a one-time cost, whereas HIV treatments are for the rest of the patient's life. The US's hoarding of vaccines for people who have to be bribed to get them is shameful.
If Biden announced that Americans only had 2 more weeks to get their first dose, then the rest of the supply would be directed overseas, I think there'd be a spike in interest in getting vaccinated!
"every single vaccine out there does a very very good job against preventing severe disease and death"
Would that include the Chinese vaccine? Wondering because China offered it to Taiwan, and Taiwan refusing it. How effective would that vaccine have been in stopping the current spike?
This is a much more "practical" essay than the NYT version because it focus the solution on producing more vaccines instead of redistributing existing doses. As a species we are real good at science, engineering and industrial production but not so much at equitable distribution. We should go with our strengths and not our weaknesses.
Agreed that we *must* spread vaccine access as widely as possible. Even if only considering self-interest, not doing so is like fire-proofing your house but ignoring the flammability of the row house that shares a wall with yours.
Agreed that much of the inadequacy of the response comes from thinking of one's nation as an island, US government policies forbidding the government from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies, etc.
But a piece of it is that some nations' leaders are just not confronting the situation at all. From Bloomberg Prognosis Coronavirus Daily of May 27, 2021:
"Some nations such as Burkina Faso and Chad have yet to vaccinate any of their citizens, and other countries including Turkmenistan and North Korea have been slow to do so. But at least they have accepted the need for inoculations. Tanzania, Burundi and Eritrea so far haven’t even done that.
"That’s not just a threat to the 75 million people who live in those countries. It’s also a threat to the world. If the virus is allowed to continue to circulate in pockets of population anywhere, it’s likely to mutate. When people travel, they carry it with them, and those mutations can sometimes evade antibodies produced in reaction to vaccines more easily than earlier versions of the virus.
"Already, tests on travelers from Tanzania who arrived in Angola have found what South African genome-sequencing institute Krisp described as the most mutated variant yet."
(I have no way to fact-check this, and certainly don't want to diss other nations whose challenges I don't understand. But we have certainly seen-- & experienced first hand-- national leaders just refusing to acknowledge epidemics. And it does seem like willful refusal is the royal road to mutations that could be beyond our vaccines' efficacy.)
I'm frustrated as hell with the variant threat. Just when we thought we were seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, along comes threat #2. All I hope is that as you say, full vaccination (which we are racing towards as fast as we can) will confer enough protection to render even the variants into nothing more than a few miserable days in bed. As far as vaccinating the world, I have so many conflicting thoughts that range from selfish to selfless. I find myself enraged with incompetent/corrupt governments who predictably need a bailout to save their own citizens. I don't have any confidence that rescue will come from China or Russia, unless strings are attached. And feeling guilty once again for having the luck to have been born in the west, and feeling we should sacrifice something to ensure poorer countries are saved.
1) To my mind, there's a serious case for postponing vaccination of members of lower-risk populations (say, age ≤24, to pick an arbitrary number) in countries where the incidence is already plummeting, presuming (how realistically?) that supplies could be diverted to protect persons at high risk in global hotspots. Thoughts?
2) What is currently thought about the relationship between overdispersion in COVID-19 transmission and the threshold for herd immunity?
Patents may not be the only issue, but it is a big issue. And the reason patents have not been suspended is continuous with why rich countries have done very little to help poorer ones develop vaccines and get them into the population. The pandemic has shown us that public health and capitalism dont mix well. For rich countries and their pharma industries the pandemic is a terrific economic opportunity. And to milk this opportunity to the max does not obviously include stopping the pandemic cold. It means follow the money and make sure the money keeps flowing. This is not so e kind of thoughtless mistake. It is the result of well considered policy. Words to the contrary are occasionally uttered for PR (think the inadequate covaxx program), but the aim is to keep supply tight and send it first to those who can pay top dollar and make sure it does not become cheaply available.
as with climate change, my own belief is that with their vaccine inaction, political leaders in the dominant countries are committing crimes against humanity, and should be tried in the Hague.
It is so very hard to keep people as a group focused on something, particularly when the threat feels like it is abating. Thank you for this, we have to keep our eyes on the spiky ball!
What does this mean for figuring out if or when those who have been vaccinated need boosters? What is the likelihood that highly transmissible variants get a leg up on vaccinated immune systems?
After reading your post I asked my friends in China, Japan and Singapore when they can get vaccines, and they replied October, next year, and June. The higher transmissibility is evoking anxiety in me similar to that at the start of the pandemic. Ahhhh why are we always one step behind? (Just venting, you don't have to answer that question)
I agree with the posts of Keith Danner and Norbert. And have the additional thought- Some people see monopoly capitalism as amoral, but, doesn't a situation like this pandemic and our failure to speed production and distribution to the world's population (along with the ultimately even more important issue of climate change) suggest that the extreme capitalism with which we live today is immoral? As a matter of international law and order, what steps can be taken to grab hold of this problem?
Politics during evolution of this (and a future) pandemic will have to measure up responses that include an entitlement to live out the last 30 years of life in blissful comfort. Such entitlement, challenged by a mortality rate of *only* 1 percent, may respond along the lines of "Well, there were too many of them anyway". If that theme is probed too deeply, in respect of , say, impoverished & unstable African nations, how will the vaccinated of the West respond to a mortality of 10%?
I do not think we have any idea of the kinds of authoritarian attitude that enliven the "specialness" that defines nations of the Anglosphere and the EU, as well as Japan, China & Israel.
The comparison to the HIV treatment is even more tragic when you consider the vaccine is simply a one-time cost, whereas HIV treatments are for the rest of the patient's life. The US's hoarding of vaccines for people who have to be bribed to get them is shameful.
If Biden announced that Americans only had 2 more weeks to get their first dose, then the rest of the supply would be directed overseas, I think there'd be a spike in interest in getting vaccinated!
"every single vaccine out there does a very very good job against preventing severe disease and death"
Would that include the Chinese vaccine? Wondering because China offered it to Taiwan, and Taiwan refusing it. How effective would that vaccine have been in stopping the current spike?
This is a much more "practical" essay than the NYT version because it focus the solution on producing more vaccines instead of redistributing existing doses. As a species we are real good at science, engineering and industrial production but not so much at equitable distribution. We should go with our strengths and not our weaknesses.
Agreed that we *must* spread vaccine access as widely as possible. Even if only considering self-interest, not doing so is like fire-proofing your house but ignoring the flammability of the row house that shares a wall with yours.
Agreed that much of the inadequacy of the response comes from thinking of one's nation as an island, US government policies forbidding the government from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies, etc.
But a piece of it is that some nations' leaders are just not confronting the situation at all. From Bloomberg Prognosis Coronavirus Daily of May 27, 2021:
"Some nations such as Burkina Faso and Chad have yet to vaccinate any of their citizens, and other countries including Turkmenistan and North Korea have been slow to do so. But at least they have accepted the need for inoculations. Tanzania, Burundi and Eritrea so far haven’t even done that.
"That’s not just a threat to the 75 million people who live in those countries. It’s also a threat to the world. If the virus is allowed to continue to circulate in pockets of population anywhere, it’s likely to mutate. When people travel, they carry it with them, and those mutations can sometimes evade antibodies produced in reaction to vaccines more easily than earlier versions of the virus.
"Already, tests on travelers from Tanzania who arrived in Angola have found what South African genome-sequencing institute Krisp described as the most mutated variant yet."
(I have no way to fact-check this, and certainly don't want to diss other nations whose challenges I don't understand. But we have certainly seen-- & experienced first hand-- national leaders just refusing to acknowledge epidemics. And it does seem like willful refusal is the royal road to mutations that could be beyond our vaccines' efficacy.)
I'm frustrated as hell with the variant threat. Just when we thought we were seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, along comes threat #2. All I hope is that as you say, full vaccination (which we are racing towards as fast as we can) will confer enough protection to render even the variants into nothing more than a few miserable days in bed. As far as vaccinating the world, I have so many conflicting thoughts that range from selfish to selfless. I find myself enraged with incompetent/corrupt governments who predictably need a bailout to save their own citizens. I don't have any confidence that rescue will come from China or Russia, unless strings are attached. And feeling guilty once again for having the luck to have been born in the west, and feeling we should sacrifice something to ensure poorer countries are saved.
Sobering, thank you.
1) To my mind, there's a serious case for postponing vaccination of members of lower-risk populations (say, age ≤24, to pick an arbitrary number) in countries where the incidence is already plummeting, presuming (how realistically?) that supplies could be diverted to protect persons at high risk in global hotspots. Thoughts?
2) What is currently thought about the relationship between overdispersion in COVID-19 transmission and the threshold for herd immunity?
Patents may not be the only issue, but it is a big issue. And the reason patents have not been suspended is continuous with why rich countries have done very little to help poorer ones develop vaccines and get them into the population. The pandemic has shown us that public health and capitalism dont mix well. For rich countries and their pharma industries the pandemic is a terrific economic opportunity. And to milk this opportunity to the max does not obviously include stopping the pandemic cold. It means follow the money and make sure the money keeps flowing. This is not so e kind of thoughtless mistake. It is the result of well considered policy. Words to the contrary are occasionally uttered for PR (think the inadequate covaxx program), but the aim is to keep supply tight and send it first to those who can pay top dollar and make sure it does not become cheaply available.
as with climate change, my own belief is that with their vaccine inaction, political leaders in the dominant countries are committing crimes against humanity, and should be tried in the Hague.
It is so very hard to keep people as a group focused on something, particularly when the threat feels like it is abating. Thank you for this, we have to keep our eyes on the spiky ball!
That was an especially sober read. Don't see any fault in your reasoning, but a gloomy outlook indeed.
What does this mean for figuring out if or when those who have been vaccinated need boosters? What is the likelihood that highly transmissible variants get a leg up on vaccinated immune systems?
After reading your post I asked my friends in China, Japan and Singapore when they can get vaccines, and they replied October, next year, and June. The higher transmissibility is evoking anxiety in me similar to that at the start of the pandemic. Ahhhh why are we always one step behind? (Just venting, you don't have to answer that question)
I agree with the posts of Keith Danner and Norbert. And have the additional thought- Some people see monopoly capitalism as amoral, but, doesn't a situation like this pandemic and our failure to speed production and distribution to the world's population (along with the ultimately even more important issue of climate change) suggest that the extreme capitalism with which we live today is immoral? As a matter of international law and order, what steps can be taken to grab hold of this problem?
Politics during evolution of this (and a future) pandemic will have to measure up responses that include an entitlement to live out the last 30 years of life in blissful comfort. Such entitlement, challenged by a mortality rate of *only* 1 percent, may respond along the lines of "Well, there were too many of them anyway". If that theme is probed too deeply, in respect of , say, impoverished & unstable African nations, how will the vaccinated of the West respond to a mortality of 10%?
I do not think we have any idea of the kinds of authoritarian attitude that enliven the "specialness" that defines nations of the Anglosphere and the EU, as well as Japan, China & Israel.