From FAIR <[email protected]>
Subject 'It's in the Interest of Everyone in the US to Vaccinate the World as Quickly as Possible'
Date April 8, 2021 6:39 PM
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'It's in the Interest of Everyone in the US to Vaccinate the World as Quickly as Possible' Janine Jackson ([link removed])


Janine Jackson interviewed Public Citizen's Peter Maybarduk about global vaccination for the April 2, 2021, episode ([link removed]) of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Janine Jackson: The availability ([link removed]) of Covid vaccines at corner drugstores, here in New York City and elsewhere, reports that nursing homes in the US are seeing steep declines ([link removed]) in new Covid cases after being prioritized for vaccines, and maybe just the arrival of spring, have many folks hopeful ([link removed]) that we're nearing the end of the worst of the coronavirus pandemic. But, as ever, we have to ask, who’s “we,”exactly?

UN Secretary General António Guterres was among those complaining ([link removed]) in February that 10 countries have monopolized 75% of the world's Covid-19 vaccines; meanwhile, people in more than 130 countries were yet to receive a single dose.

For many people, the pandemic was undeniable evidence of what is always true: that we are interdependent, physically as well as societally; that while problems can be global, protections are not; and that when profit making and public health collide ([link removed]) , you need to pick a side.

What stands in the way of our using that awareness to shape global access to vaccines? Joining us now by phone is Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen’s Global Access to Medicines Program ([link removed]) . Welcome back ([link removed]) to CounterSpin, Peter Maybarduk.

Peter Maybarduk: Great to be with you.
Public Citizen: A Plan for the People's Vaccine

Public Citizen (12/8/20 ([link removed]) )

JJ: Let's talk about what's possible, and compare it with what's happening. You produced research ([link removed]) showing how the US could basically get everyone on the planet vaccinated with targeted investment. And, obviously, doing that now is better than any time other than now. It wasn't a moral appeal, though that's entirely appropriate; it was a plan of how this could actually happen, right?

PM: Absolutely. So we think an investment of $25 billion would be sufficient to produce 8 billion doses of mRNA Covid vaccine in a little more than a year's time, which is timely to shorten the pandemic, because many people in low- and middle-income countries are potentially going to be waiting ([link removed]) until 2024 for a vaccine. And it's actually not entirely clear that we're on track ([link removed]) to vaccinate everyone in the world, ever, as opposed to just run into a long-term problem of boosters with endemic Covid ([link removed]) .

So we think that there is a need to inject ambition, and set up new production lines with a small capital investment--we think about $2 billion to do that--and for the Biden administration to call on drug makers and other world leaders, and say: We can do this. We can actually produce more than we currently have planned to produce, if we share vaccine recipes, if we pool the available facilities, if we put what really is a very modest amount of money in, compared to the economic cost of the pandemic.

JJ: Yeah, $25 billion—I'll just note: the 2020 military budget ([link removed]) was $721 billion. And then, we're talking about something that would pay for itself. And we're not talking about charity, you know?

Let me just draw you out: What are the global dynamics, or relationships, in play? We have wealthy countries sitting on vaccines ([link removed]) , or the recipe for vaccines? And then, that “wealthy versus less wealthy countries” is also interlaced with a tension between private profit and public health ([link removed]) . What's going on there?
Peter Maybarduk

Peter Maybarduk: "If we don't ramp up manufacturing quickly, with some new investments and some high-level political leadership now, a million more people will die."

PM: It's true that wealthy countries are sitting both on doses ([link removed]) and on recipes ([link removed]) . Donations are going to become a very big issue in the United States shortly, because we're actually, amazingly, going to have a surplus ([link removed]) of vaccines in the United States at some point over the summer, and there will be a discussion of what to do with those excess doses.

And we think they should be equitably allocated to people in low- and middle-income countries in the COVAX ([link removed] is co-led by,every country in the world.) initiative. However, it's very important to note that that, on its own, will not be anywhere near enough to meet the scale of global need. And if we don't ramp up manufacturing quickly, with some new investments and some high-level political leadership now, a million more people will die than would otherwise be the case, and trillions of dollars ([link removed]) will be lost. So it's critically important.

One of the greatest public health/private profit tensions ([link removed]) in this story is the value of “vaccine recipes ([link removed]) ” and vaccine technology. A company like Moderna isn't thinking only about the value of its mRNA vaccine—which is actually an NIH, a publicly developed ([link removed]) vaccine, in partnership with Moderna, paid for by taxpayers over many years already. But they're thinking ([link removed]) about the value of future products: They're thinking that their recipes and their techniques, their production techniques, the specifics of their platform technologies—that's the long-term value
plan for the company, and so they don't want to share with the world, openly, how that is done.

But there are solutions to that, including paying ([link removed]) the companies appropriate compensation for disclosure of that technology, essentially buying out the know-how. We can afford, at this moment in time, collectively, to pay some appropriate amount to companies and investors that are truly making innovation happen. But what we can't afford is commercial secrecy, fragmenting of a supply ecosystem, limiting how far we can scale up vaccine access—and that's what's happening today.
Intercept: Drugmakers Promise Investors They’ll Soon Hike Covid-19 Vaccine Prices

Intercept (3/18/21 ([link removed]) )

JJ: I would refer folks to Lee Fang’s reporting ([link removed]) for the Intercept, where he has Pfizer CFO Frank D’Amelio saying, “As this shifts from pandemic to endemic, we think there’s an opportunity here for us,” and the Johnson & Johnson executive VP Joseph Wolk is telling investors that they'll “reevaluate the vaccine for ‘pricing that's much more in line with a commercial opportunity’ when the pandemic is over.” It's important to note that they think they're in charge of saying when the pandemic is over.

When we talked ([link removed]) last, I think, we were talking about Donald Trump; he’s a sociopath, straight-up saying ([link removed]) , "to heck with COVAX; us for us!" That's not the tone or the message, certainly, in the new White House, but do you think that in terms of actions, that Biden might still be thinking too small, too domestic?

PM: So far, that's a concern. Let me put it a little differently: We do think we need to see some signs of greater ambition ([link removed]) from the White House. To be clear, I think we, and a great many people, are very grateful to see the turnaround from the White House in dealing with the pandemic in the United States, and grateful to see the renewed support for multilateralism, and recognizing that the world is in this together.

JJ: Absolutely.

PM: But we need a lot more ambition and upfront investment on the global problem now, recognizing the unique capabilities of the United States government to organize production for the world, and to set standards for other world leaders, and for drug companies, and say here's how we're going to get this done. If the US government doesn't step into that role, we're just going to lose a lot of lives needlessly, because there isn't another player to fill that void.

And right now, there's production happening, but we are letting the companies dictate far too much of it. And there isn't a pooling of resources, or scale, to make up the difference in those billions of doses that are needed to vaccinate everyone.

JJ: Let me just pull you back to the science of it. I think sometimes—and this comes through in the media—it's as though we can make this a political issue ([link removed]) , we can enforce a political template onto what is not, inherently, political. If we wait too long ([link removed]) to get vaccines to people, then isn't it true that those vaccines might no longer be effective if the virus mutates? So it’s not just immoral ([link removed]) ; it's not just uneconomic ([link removed]) ; it's also kind of stupid to wait too long, and to enforce a kind of unequal immunity ([link removed]) on the globe?

PM: We definitely think it's in the interest of everyone living in the United States to vaccinate the world as quickly as possible, and take some of the wind out of the sails of the variants of the mutations ([link removed]) . If the world is not going to do a good job of getting the pandemic under control, then we'll have a worse problem of variant spreading; it'll be something that we all have to worry about quite a bit more in the future.

Notably, it's also going to be harder to restart the global economy ([link removed]) . We've got global supply chains ([link removed]) ; we're going to have parts of the world shut down ([link removed]) , communities devastated ([link removed]) for the foreseeable future, unless we get it under control. So an investment now, in order to protect the future, seems quite sound to us.

JJ: We've been speaking with Peter Maybarduk, director of the Global Access to Medicines Program ([link removed]) at Public Citizen, online at Citizen.org ([link removed]) . Peter Maybarduk, thanks once again for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

PM: So good to be with you.


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