Vaccine news is positive in most wealthy nations, but it’s going to take ages to vaccinate the whole world. That’s a huge problem.
💉 Vaccines! Who’s doing what, and why equitable access should be imperative
1. 😁 Those that try
French pharmaceutical company Sanofi tried to develop a vaccine with Britain’s GlaxoSmithKline. And merde, it failed. So now Sanofi will help Pfizer-BioNTech produce their blockbuster mRNA jabs.
Switzerland’s Novartis, which did not get into the vaccine race, have also signed on to expand production capacity for Pfizer-BioNTech, even as they further their attempt at a treatment against Covid-19.
It matters in part because Pfizer-BioNTech have committed to providing equitable access to their vaccine, after being pushed on their “prohibitive cost.” They’ve promised 50 million doses to Africa in 2021, a woefully inadequate supply for the continent’s 1.216 billion population. Not great, granted, they could’ve done worse — they could’ve gone Moderna.
In other news, Germany’s Bayer agreed to help out CureVac, based in the same country, with their production. CureVac are developing their own mRNA vaccine, which they say can be stored 3 months at 5 degrees Celsius (41F). Provided their results are good, this could be a game-changer because CureVac have been collaborating with Elon Musk (I can hear some of you rolling your eyes all the way from here — I knooow, but this is a get-the-money-where-you-can situation) to create “micro-factories” for fast and easy production of doses.
2. 😡 Those that won’t
As I was implying before, U.S. Moderna will send zero jabs to Africa. Last summer they told the U.S. Congress they would not sell the doses at cost as they fully intend to make a profit, despite the fact that they received taxpayer money to develop their vaccine. The result is that the developing world probably won’t be able to afford them. This has Yale Epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves more than a little ticked off:
Read his piece in The Atlantic.
British-Swedish AstraZeneca said they’ve got nothing for Africa this year, but told the African Union to check if their Indian manufacturer would rustle up anything for them, essentially a “mmmnoooo, but good luck with that.”
3. 💰 Selfishly, this should enrage you.
I won’t ramble on about how giving everyone equal access to vaccines is the right thing to do. You already know this. It is the reason to do it, yet it is also the least likely to change a thing.
So let me take the self-interested angle:
if the virus continues to run wild, all of us are in danger. Or did anyone seriously think the South African/Brazilian/U.K. variants would ask permission to travel to new shores? Should we really give this virus a few more rounds around the globe to see how much more deadly it can get?
Global economies are interdependent. If the developing world isn’t spending, your ability to have or keep your job or make any money gets seriously impaired.
It will cost each wealthy nation far more to prolong the global economic crisis caused by this virus than it will to help other nations protect themselves.
Read this interview from The New Yorker, about a study led by economists in the U.S. and in Turkey.
How to use this: call your elected officials, wherever you are. Ask them about a policy to support developing nations in immunising themselves. If you’re in the U.S., ask them if there is a way to pressure companies subsidised by your tax dollars into selling their shots at cost. The World Health Organisation already have a mechanism in place to accelerate vaccine distribution in countries that need help, called COVAX, which all wealthy nations can harness. We can no longer afford to wait.
🧑🔧 Open-source vax?
Thanks to Felipe for flagging this one. This guy wrote about trying to make a vaccine based on a freely shared RaDVaC (Rapid Development Vaccine Collaborative) design. He and his girlfriend took it, and are now waiting to see what happens:
So, we’ll do (up to) two more blood tests. The first will be two weeks after our third (weekly) dose; that one is the “optimistic” test, in case three doses is more-than-enough already. That one is optimistic for another reason as well: synthesis/delivery of three of the nine peptides was delayed, so our first three doses will only use six of them. If the optimistic test comes back positive, great, we’re done.
RaDVaC’s goal is to remedy some of the issues mentioned above. What if a vaccine design weren’t patented, and were instead well-explained, accessible, cheap, and effective?
RaDVaC’s solution comes in the form of a nasal spray.
How to use this: this is FYI only. Don’t try this at home. But those of you with a hacking free-the-people spirit may be interested to know about efforts to democratise access to vaccines.
⏰ 🦠 Could Long Covid Have Birthed New Variants?
Scientists in Britain are now wondering whether the new variant appeared in a single patient, whose immune system kept fighting the virus. This would’ve allowed it to replicate over a long period of time, changing along the way to outsmart defences. Sounds wild? There are documented cases of people testing positive more than 100 days after infection, including a woman who lived with it for four months.
There are multiple documented cases of patients with chronic Covid-19 infections that last several months or more. With his colleagues at the University of Michigan, Lauring documented the infection of one man who had harboured the replicating virus for at least 119 days. By analysing the genomes of virus samples taken at different points during the patient’s infection, Lauring could see the virus steadily accumulating genetic changes – a microcosm of how Sars-CoV2-2 mutates within the global population, but this time all happening within one human host.
How to use this: avoid infection. Avoid infection. Avoid infection. Avoid infection.