Dear G20 leaders,
When the leaders of the worlds wealthiest nations met at the G7 Summit in June, they collectively announced that 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines would be sent to low- and low-and-middle-income countries to help vaccinate the world. Pharmaceutical companies have pledged almost the same.
Yet, as several nations still dont even have enough vaccines for their own health workers, the world is left asking: Where are the doses?
Of the almost 7 billion doses that have been administered globally, just 3 percent of people in low-income countries have had a jab so far. Where are the rest?
COVAX, the initiative designed to help achieve fair global access to COVID vaccines, has been promised 1.3 billion doses to be donated for the low-income countries it supports, yet it has been able to ship only 150 million - 11.5 percent to date. Where are the rest?
Promises arent translating into vaccines reaching the people that need them.
Among countries represented at the G20, there are a handful with millions of surplus vaccines that are destined to be wasted once they expire. Every discarded dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, when there are the mechanisms to donate them, should outrage us all. Each dose represents a real persona mother, father, daughter, or sonwho could have been protected.
Each of us come from very different places, backgrounds, and life experiences, but we share a common goal: to tackle global inequity.
All year, weve been part of global conversations across health, industry, and civil society to address the vaccine access crisis. Today, we join with others to urge global leaders to end this devastating inequity and end this pandemic once and for all. G20 leaders have the power to accelerate long-promised donations and to commit to breaking the hold that manufacturing countries and pharmaceutical companies currently have over access to the vaccines and how theyre made.
These are public vaccines. Many of the people you represent paid for the research and development of these vaccines. You can join us in saying that access to the vaccine is a fundamental human right.
We must do everything in our power to get doses to as many people who want and need them, as fast as possible, in the right order, and to have the greatest possible impact.
There are countriesmany represented around the G20 tablewith the medical and scientific expertise to be part of the solution, ready to make their own vaccine for their own people and for others. But they are being blocked by avoidable obstacles, including the inability or unwillingness of vaccine producing countries and pharmaceutical firms to share one of the most important public goods in modern history.
Global targets have been set to vaccinate 40 percent of all countries by the end of 2021 and 70 percent by the middle of next year. Decisions made this weekend may make or break those targets.
To achieve the goals in front of us, the following must happen:
Hold pharmaceutical companies to higher transparency standards, including publicly shared monthly production projections and delivery schedules to help countries better plan to receive and share doses.
Share vaccine technology and dismantle vaccine production barriers by supporting a proposal from the scores of countries calling for the waiving of intellectual property constraints in times of global crisis.
We understand that the pandemic recovery is nuanced and deeply complex, but we have a window of opportunity to come together as a global community and meet our humanitarian promises.
By delivering already-pledged doses, helping countries manufacture their own vaccines, and prioritizing vaccines for nations in need, the G20 can help ensure the world delivers on these promises.
We cant simply hope for the pandemic to end on its own. As the virus progresses through unvaccinated populations, we risk new and more deadly strains sweeping the planet. Further, with trillions of dollars already lost and trillions more expected to be lost, economies will never fully recover until the whole world can operate as normal.
There are many crises that you the stewards of our planet must grapple with this weekend: the climate emergency, the state of our global economy, a recommitment to multilateralism. Yet, in many ways, making headway on these priorities depends on whether we can beat this pandemic.
Cooperation of historic proportion is the only solution. Lives literally depend on it.
Thank you,
Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex,
Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex
This open letter is supported by:
Dr Seth Berkley, CEO, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance
Winnie Byanyima, Executive Director of UNAIDS
Chelsea Clinton, DPhil, MPH, Vice Chair, Clinton Foundation.
Hugh Evans, Co-Founder and CEO of Global Citizen
Carolyn Reynolds, Co-founder Pandemic Action Network
Pledge your support
A proposal to repeal Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoots COVID-19 vaccine mandate for city workers was squashed at a last-minute City Council meeting Friday.
The meeting had been called by some conservative members, who were attempting to strike her order that all workers report their vaccination status, get tested twice weekly if not vaccinated, and get inoculated by the end of the year.
The council voted 30 to 13 against the ordinance, keeping the mayors vaccine mandate in place.
Alds. Silvana Tabares, 23rd Ward, and Anthony Napolitano, 41st Ward, wrote the proposed ordinance. They, with 11 other members of the council, called the rare, special meeting to force a vote on their repeal proposal, which would have also required City Council approval for similar mandates in the future.
The ordinance had earlier this week been sent to the councils Rules Committee where legislation can languish indefinitely prompting its proponents to call for the meeting. While not required, nearly all council members showed up Friday, many of them to vote the ordinance down.
I appreciate the passion thats being expressed today, said Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th Ward. But we need to put those passions aside and we need to use patience, we need to think long-term.
We cant be so reactive to people, just because they dont like the messenger of a particular policy, Hadden said, referring to a standoff between the Fraternal Order of Police, which opposes the mandate, and Lightfoot.
Most city employees have complied with the current order to report their vaccination status with 32 of 34 city departments having at least 92 percent of employees in compliance. But first responders compliance continues to lag.
About 72 percent of the police force and 87 percent of the fire department are in compliance. The policy is also facing a lawsuit from more than 100 Chicago firefighters.
Those who do not comply with the order to report their status or get tested if theyre not vaccinated are gradually being put on no-pay status. About 30 Chicago police officers are currently off the beat as a result, according to the mayors office. More than 3,000 of them have still not reported their vaccination status, meaning theyre still at risk of being put on no-pay status.
Aldermen pushing for the mandates repeal repeated concerns Friday that the lagging compliance among first responders will lead to a public safety crisis.
I am fully vaccinated, but that said I believe this mandate has created a public safety blind spot, said Ald. Matt OShea, 19th Ward.
Proponents of the mandate expressed public safety concerns on a different front, saying first responders must be vaccinated to ensure the health of Chicago residents.
How can we feel safe sending people to respond to emergencies without knowing they can keep others safe against COVID?, said Ald. Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez, 33rd Ward.
Aldermen also debated the role the council should play in negotiations with the unions that represent the employees affected by the policy. Tabares urged aldermen to vote in favor of repealing the mandate as a check on the executive branch.
Opposing this measure means you are OK with staying in the dark. You are OK with whatever happens. This vote asks us if we want to roll up our sleeves, or wash our hands of the matter, she said.
Rodriguez Sanchez, who during her two years in office has fought for more decision-making power among the council, responded to that appeal, saying vaccine policy is not the place for a power struggle.
I am down to fight for independence from the executive I think (the) mandate is not the thing we use, she said.
Other aldermen who voted against the repeal ordinance said they believe the measure is an overstep of the councils power and would infringe on the bargaining power of unions, many of which negotiated with Lightfoot for months over the details of the mandate.
Mariah Woelfel covers city government at WBEZ. You can follow her on Twitter at @MariahWoelfel.
As we hear more about booster shots in Canada, not everywhere in the world is even close to being in the same place. Some countries are still struggling to get first and second doses for their citizens. As Katherine Ward explains, experts say until there is global vaccine equity, the pandemic will not be over.
CDC safety meme.
Our pseudonymous Twitter correspondent Benjamin Braddock wrote a thought-provoking post about the parallels between the federal governments restriction of civil liberties post-9/11 and the current pressure to require proof of vaccination. Weve posted it in full below. First, a quick update on a COVID vaccine maker that reappeared among our top names on Thursday.
Regular readers may recall that our systemgauges stock and options market sentiment each trading day and uses that to rank the thousands of securities in our universe by their potential returns over the next six months.The COVID vaccine maker and Pfizer (PFE) partner BioNTech (BNTX) first appearedhit our top ten on May 13th.
Screen capture viaPortfolio Armoron 5/13/2021.
BioNTech has pulled back sharply from its highs in early August, and has now been outpaced by the crypto bank Silverlake Capital (SI), which we wrote about recently (Silverlake Soars) and Laredo Petroleum (LPI), which we also wrote about recently (Gold versus Black Gold). Nevertheless, it was still up more than 36% since May 13th as of Thursdays close.
And on Thursday, BioNTech appeared in our top ten again.
Screen capture via Portfolio Armor on 10/7/2021.
So, were bullish on BioNTech again. But were not too bullish on the prospects for our civil liberties, unless people in power take the steps Benjamin Braddock suggests below.
Authored by Benjamin Braddock at American Greatness
There are many lessons to draw from the governments response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. One of them is that temporary government measures have a way of turning into permanent features of our lives. One feature of these temporary measures is that theyre usually little more than knee-jerk reactions to eventsreactions that dont do much to accomplish anything other than to brutalize and humiliate normal people. Take the example of the Transportation Security Administration.
Private airport security was abolished after the attacks and replaced with this central federal agency assigned with securing Americas air transportation infrastructure. But Congress motivation for establishing the new agency was less about securing air travel and more about rescuing the airlines from civil lawsuits.
Fact is, there werenoairport security breaches at any of the airports on 9/11federal regulations at the time permitted air passengers to carry on box cutters. If Congress had actually been moved to prevent similar acts of terror, it would have taken on the FBI, which ignored reports that some devout Muslims were paying cash to flight schools to learn how to fly airplanes but not to land them.
Well, 20 years later we still go through the security rituals every time we fly. Standing in long lines. Taking off shoes (risking fungal infection in the process). Getting irradiated by imaging machines. Getting yelled at for such offenses as having a sealed bottle of water in your bag. And thats the best case scenario.
More serious abuses also occur, like in the case of theDenver TSA scandal, where one TSA agent would signal to an accomplice operating the security scanner when an attractive male passenger would enter; his accomplice would then input that the passenger was female, triggering the security system to identify an anomaly with the passengers genitals, which then allowed him to to carry out a hands-on grope-down search of the passengers genitals. Or like the case at LaGuardia Airport, where a TSA agent took a 19-year-old foreign exchange student to a restroom for a screening where he thensexually assaulted her.
Is this indignity the price we pay for safe air travel? No, because we dont even get security out of the arrangements.
Year after year, the Department of Homeland Security has found that undercover agents were able to get explosives and loaded weapons through TSA checkpoints undetected, with detection failure rates reachingas high as 95 percent. The bureaucracy knows. The politicians know. The media knows.Weknow. And nothing happens. The beast rumbles on, consuming government dollars and molesting American passengers, by force of sheer inertia, because thats just the way things are now, and there are no powerful special interests groups with a vested interest in changing it. There is no mass public outcry because the public has simply gotten used to it.
I had gotten somewhat used to it myself, until I began traveling outside of the United States in places like Colombia and Brazil. Airport security checkpoints in those countries are typically unobtrusive and take no more than a few minutes. You can leave your shoes on and your dignity intact. Air travel there retains the feeling of leisure and adventure. Now when I fly in America, the difference is palpable. The atmosphere of the airports here is tense and heavy. Travel becomes something to beendured, not something toenjoy. If in 2001, we had peered into the future and foresaw what effect our panic response would have, things may well have been different.
Time is a flat circle. We are once again locked in crisis mode, this time for a crisis of much longer duration, and a new set of knee-jerk reactions are leading to more temporary-but-actually-permanent policies doomed to failure. Only this time they are even more ineffective and invasive. Joe Biden says that his patience is wearing thin. Mine ran out a long time ago.
The public-health establishment has continued to utterly fail in every decision theyve made to address a problem they created, doing nothing but repeating failed short-term interventions while ignoring the solutions that could actually crush this disease. The sane approach would be a two-pronged onesecuring access to safe and effective early treatments to minimize deaths in the short term, while finally taking seriously the problem of chronic disease and obesity to make our population more healthy and resilient in the long term.
Nearly two years in and we have yet to hear the first thing from the government or media about the importance of getting in shape or cleaning up our toxic food supply. Instead, there is a near-total reliance on gimmicks, safety theater, and questionable pharmaceuticals. The only systemic effect these have is to boost the profits of drug companies and increase the power of those who seek to control and enslave. The latest of these is vaccine passports and mandates, the only effect of which has been to create a large population of vaccinated super-spreaders that put others at risk of infection.
The pandemic is nowworse than before the vaccinewas available, with more cases, hospitalizations, and deaths than at this point last year. High caseloads in southern states over the summer was not a function of low vaccination rates but of seasonality. As winter approaches, the spread has moved northward, with surges now underway in Michigan and heavily vaccinated Vermont. It could be a dark winter indeed.
Even worse, theselection pressureon the virus created by these flawed and often harmful vaccines has driven the evolution of ever more infectious and aggressive variants. Because the vaccines do not prevent infection and transmission, requiring vaccination to eat out, attend a concert, or go to work will not have any positive impact on the actual pandemic other than to remove those with natural immunity who would otherwise mitigate the spread by breaking the chain of transmission.
The practical outcome of vaccine passports and mandates will be that youll have to show a vaccine record every time you enter a restaurant, grocery store, movie theater, or any other public establishment for the rest of your life. A TSA experience at every coffee shop. Your HR department will have a foothold into your personal medical records. It will be yet another tool for bureaucrats to harass you.
Worst of all, it will desensitize the public to the construction of a system of massive social control and coercion that will be like Chinas social credit system, but somehow more fake and ridiculous. The precedent is terrifying. If they can coerce you to take one pharma product, after all, they can coerce you to take any pharma product. From here its a quick jump to mandatory flu vaccines, then who knows what else? Is there a pandemic of toxic masculinity? Why not mandatory estrogen injections for those deemed to be suffering from it?
This is not hyperbolea Pennsylvania legislator just introduced a bill to require all inseminators to undergo vasectomies within six weeks of having their third child or 40th birthday, whichever comes first. The slippery slope is not a logical fallacy, its how policy in America works. But we dont even have to look to the future to see the hell that these policies are unleashing, the price is being paid here and now, not in dollars but in peoples lives.
People like Jessica Berg Wilson, a 37 year old mother of two who died of COVID-19 vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia. From herobituary:
She had been vehemently opposed to taking the vaccine, knowing she was in good health and of a young age and thus not at risk for serious illness. In her mind, the known and unknown risks of the unproven vaccine were more of a threat. But, slowly, day by day, her freedom to choose was stripped away. Her passion to be actively involved in her childrens educationwhich included being a Room Momwas, once again, blocked by government mandate. Ultimately, those who closed doors and separated mothers from their children prevailed. It cost Jessica her life. It cost her children the loving embrace of their caring mother. And it cost her husband the sacred love of his devoted wife. It cost Gods Kingdom on earth a very special soul who was just making her love felt in the hearts of so many.
Some of the most pernicious mandates are those targeted towards young people whose risk of dying from COVID is minimal, like the one put in place by California Governor Gavin Newsom, whichrequires all California schoolchildrento be vaccinated as soon as it is approved for their age group by the FDA. Other school districts around the country are moving forward with plans toforce student athletesto get vaccinated in order to participate in sports. This will only lead to more tragic cases like that ofRoy Butler, a young Irishman who died of a hemorrhagic stroke just three days after taking the Johnson & Johnson vaccine so that he could travel with his soccer team.
And the human cost of these mandates is not just limited to the risks from the vaccine itself, but to the strain it puts on our healthcare system, which was already short-staffed. We are in the midst of a severe shortage of nurses, and tens of thousands are being fired for not taking the vaccine. People who were hailed as frontline heroes last year are treated like dirt today, along with hospital support staff, paramedics, firefighters, police, and the essential workers our supply chains depend on.
There is no question about whether or not vaccine mandates are acceptable. Theyre not. There is no question about whether vaccines pass the risk/benefit test for low-risk groups or those with natural immunity. They dont. There is no question about whether or not our leaders are acting in good faith. They arent.
The only question that remains is, what are we going to do about it?
People all over the world are standing up courageously. Theyre sacrificing their careers and comfort to take a stand. Its a tough thing to do, something that is unfeasible for many. And its not just those who are unvaccinated, some who are vaccinated are taking a stand for freedom too and are refusing to comply. In Italy, vaccinated protestors have beenburning their vaccine passportsin solidarity.
But as strong as this popular movement is, we need support from those in a position to rally mass strikes and acts of civil disobedience, people with huge followings like President Trump or Joe Rogan. And politically, we need those in positions of power to leverage that power to shut down the mandates. The most proximate levers of power to accomplish this are the spending bills and debt ceiling increases in Congress. My message to Senate Republicans is simple: your stated opposition to the vaccine mandates is not enough; get rid of them by any means necessaryincluding sovereign defaultor be prepared to lose your next primary.
https://slopeofhope.com/2021/10/corona-doom-2-0-vaccine-passports.html
Corona Doom 2.0: Vaccine Passports
October 22, 2021 - 6:50pm
To: All residentsFrom: Steve Dunn, First SelectmanCOVID CASES IN BROOKFIELDBrookfield continues to keep a check on the Corona Virus. Our Case rate for the past two weeks is 9.3 per 100,000, the same as last week. The positivity rate on tests given is 2.3%, again the same as last week.
The mask mandate remains lifted.
NEW CLINICS WILL START UP AT TOWN HALL FOR BOOSTER SHOTS
Brookfield will be offering Booster Shot clinics at Town Hall starting on October 26th. They will be held at Town Hall on Tuesdays from 10am to 1pm and Thursdays from 3pm to 6pm. There will be no clinics held on Nov 2nd, 11th or 24th. We plan to hold clinics as long as there is demand and into December. We will be offering both the Moderna and J and J doses.
The best way to get an appointment is to use the VAMS system. The VAMS system will be open for residents to make appointments at 7 PM tonight. We will also be allowing walk-ins but you may not be able to get a booster shot if the appointment schedule is full. You must bring proof of your primary vaccination series to the clinic in order to get the booster shot.
More details are available on the Town website.
Booster dose recommendations:
Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 Booster Doses:
** Important to note that the booster dose for the Pfizer vaccine is the same dosage as the primary series. The booster dose for the Moderna vaccine is half the dose of the primary series. Mixing and Matching vaccines for the booster dose after a primary series is permitted.
J & J COVID-19 Booster Doses:
VRBPAC & FDA voted unanimously to recommend authorization of a booster dose of the J&J vaccine for everyone 18 and older who got the primary dose of J&J COVID vaccine at least 2 months ago.
This press release was produced by the Town of Brookfield. The views expressed here are the author's own.
COVID-19 Vaccine - Delaware's Coronavirus Official Website
Should I get a booster shot? Learn who is eligible and where to get it. More Info
The State of Delaware is working with pharmacies, medical providers, hospital systems, employers, and organizations to distribute COVID-19 vaccines.
We have answers to your frequently asked questions, information on where to call if you have more specific questions, and resources for you to explore.
The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine is currently the only vaccine authorized for use in those under age 18. Learn more about the importance and safety of vaccines for those ages 12-17, and see answers to frequently asked questions about the vaccine and safety, fertility and more.
Visit the Vaccine specific frequently asked questions page to find the answers you are looking for.Vaccine FAQ COVID-19 FAQ
Learn more about Delawares commitment to providing vaccines for all, and resources to help you understand your rights to access the vaccine.
The COVID-19 vaccines available in the US Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are incredibly safe and effective in preventing infection from the virus and in preventing severe illness, hospitalization and death. If you are uncertain about vaccination, talk with your health care provider or watch these videos from Delaware providers across the state.
Now that youve been fully vaccinated, you still have to wear a face mask in public, but may not need to wear one in certain situations when you have friends or family visiting you, or you are visiting them. Weve broken it down for you in easy to understand language.
Instructions on how to search for your immunization records information can be found here: https://www.dhss.delaware.gov/dhss/dph/ipp/portalflyer.pdf. DPH does not replace lost vaccine cards, but Delawareans can find and print their (or their childs) vaccination record. Anyone who has difficulty finding their record can call 1-800-282-8672, or email DelVAX@delaware.gov. Responses to emails and calls received after regular business hours or on weekends may take up to 48 hours.
For more data on Delaware COVID cases, testing and outcomes, including demographic breakdowns, go to My Healthy Community
Related Topics:COVID-19 Vaccine, Vaccine
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Ahmednagar District Hospital 0241-2430119
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We're breaking down the trends and relaying information from across the state.
ATLANTA We're breaking down the trends and relaying information from across the state of Georgia as it comes in, bringing perspective to the data and context to the trends.
Visit the 11Alive coronavirus page for comprehensive coverage, find out what you need to know about Georgia specifically, learn more about the symptoms, and keep tabs on the cases around the world.
State and federal officials with the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are continually monitoring the spread of the virus. They are also working hand-in-hand with the World Health Organization to track the spread around the world and to stop it.
Chattahoochee 5155 14
Gwinnett 111682 1359
Non-GA Resident/Unknown State 33678 724
Whitfield 19201 312
Confirmed cases of COVID-19 have passed 244 million globally, according to Johns Hopkins University. The number of confirmed deaths stands at more than 4.95 million. More than 6.88 billion vaccination doses have been administered globally, according to Our World in Data.
Moderna has announced that its COVID-19 vaccine generated a strong immune response in children aged six to 11 years old. It plans to submit data to global regulators soon.
Confirmed COVID-19 infections in Spain have passed five million, according to health ministry data.
The Biden Administration has announced plans to invest $70 million to increase the availability and lower the cost of rapid, over-the-counter COVID-19 tests in the US.
The Dutch could introduce new COVID-19 restrictions to reduce the pressure on hospitals struggling to cope with a growing number of COVID-19 patients.
Public schools and universities have reopened in Venezuela. It sees more than 11 million students return to in-person learning.
US President Joe Biden has signed an order introducing new vaccine requirements for most foreign national air travellers and lifting severe travel restrictions on China, India and much of Europe from 8 November.
Regions across Russia are introducing new restrictions in an effort to slow the spread of the pandemic. Russia reported its highest single-day rise in COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic yesterday.
The European Union's Drugs Regulator has announced that Moderna's COVID-19 vaccine booster shot can be given the those aged 18 years and older, at least six months after the second dose.
The Philippines will start testing a combination of COVID-19 vaccines this week or early in November, a cabinet official said yesterday.
Daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in selected countries.
Image: Our World in Data
The African Union (AU) has announced a deal to buy up to 110 million Moderna COVID-19 vaccine doses, officials told Reuters.
The arrangement was brokered in part by the White House and will see the delivery of some doses intended for the United States deferred in order to facilitate the deal.
The AU's doses will be delivered over the coming months, with 15 million arriving before the end of 2021, 35 million in the first quarter of next year and up to 60 million in the second quarter.
"This is important as it allows us to increase the number of vaccines available immediately," AU coronavirus envoy Strive Masiyiwa said in an email. "We urge other vaccine producing countries to follow the lead of the [US government] and give us similar access to buy this and other vaccines."
South Korea has unveiled a three-phase plan to return to normal, with all COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings and distancing gone by February. The announcement came after it achieved its goal of vaccinating 70% of the population.
In the first phase of the plan, all operating-hour curbs on restaurants, cafes and other businesses will be dropped, though nightclubs will still have to close by midnight.
Visitors to high-risk venues, such as indoor gyms, saunas and karaoke bars will have to be fully vaccinated, while private gatherings in the capital, Seoul, and surrounding areas can include up to 10 people regardless of vaccination status.
Currently, gatherings of up to eight people are allowed if a group includes four fully vaccinated people. Authorities will also focus on weekly hospitalization and mortality rates rather than on daily new COVID-19 cases and people with only mild symptoms will be allowed to treat themselves at home.
The COVID Response Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship is a coalition of 85 global leaders, hosted by the World Economic Forum. Its mission: Join hands in support of social entrepreneurs everywhere as vital first responders to the pandemic and as pioneers of a green, inclusive economic reality.
Its COVID Social Enterprise Action Agenda, outlines 25 concrete recommendations for key stakeholder groups, including funders and philanthropists, investors, government institutions, support organizations, and corporations. In January of 2021, its members launched its 2021 Roadmap through which its members will roll out an ambitious set of 21 action projects in 10 areas of work. Including corporate access and policy change in support of a social economy.
For more information see the Alliance website or its impact story here.
Written by
Joe Myers, Writer, Formative Content
The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.
It took 11 months to get from the first genetic sequence of the pandemic-causing coronavirus to vaccines that could stop infections. Some of those vaccines used traditional approaches, such as fragments of the virus that could stimulate an immune response. Others, called mRNA vaccines, used new technology to get the bodys own cells to make those virus fragments. The shots have now gone into hundreds of millions of arms and have shown remarkable effectiveness.
But those 11 months were frantic, and involved acomplex and often fraught combination of low-profile scientists, big drug companies, regulatory agencies, andin the U.S.a White House desperate to show progress against COVID. In a book published today, The First Shots (Mariner Books), journalist Brendan Borrell goes behind the scenes to show how these different and often competing forces came together to make vaccines in record time. He spoke to 150 people involved in the effort, and learned about the initial scientific breakthroughs, arguments about the best ways to test the new vaccines, and how the U.S. government got behind the big vaccine push. Borrell talked withScientific Americanabout thesechallenges.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
Companies such as Pfizer and Moderna are getting lots of credit for vaccines. But didnt you find that a lot of the groundbreaking work started in university and government labs?
Yes. Several years ago, Barney Graham, deputy director of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health, was working on respiratory syncytial virus, which affects infants and the elderly, and it was his real passion. Jason McLellan, a structural biologist, was working with him on the viral proteins. These viruses have proteins on their surfaces, spike proteins or something similar, that allow them to attach to cells. These proteins change shape, which is a problem for your immune system. McClellan and Graham came up with a strategy to produce spikes that would be stuck in one position, kind of like a mannequin, that that your body can learn to attack them.
Jason went off to work at University of Texas, and then when this new coronavirus broke out Barney called and kind of said Hey, lets get the band together again. As soon as the viruss sequence was published online on January 10, McLellans lab started examining the spike protein with electron cryomicroscopy, and got an image when it was stuck in that one vulnerable position. And that gave them a sense their vaccine strategy was going to work. And Moderna, which had been partnering with NIH, used the design and built an mRNA vaccine around it. Moderna has since said they independently came up with a similar design.
And this was before anyone had much data indicating the strategy was going to work, right?
Yes, and thats where Kizzy Corbett, an immunologist who was in Grahams lab, became a hugely important scientist. Everyone was racing to develop these spike proteins, and Moderna was racing to make them into vaccines, and they needed animal data to show they worked and what a good dose was. So, they get maybe a shipment of 400 mice, and they have to go down and vaccinate all of them, until their fingers were sore, and churn out this torrent of papers.
But her public profile went beyond what she was doing in the lab. Shes a Black woman who grow up in a small town in North Carolina. She has this Twitter personality, and she started spreading the word about vaccine safety and reducing hesitancy in the Black community, where there were medical travesties in the past. As they were going into later trials, Corbett was getting out and giving talks, trying to spread the word that, hey, this was made by Black scientists and we did this right.
How did this effort turn into Operation Warp Speed? The Trump administration was generally against government aid to big businesses. Yet here they offered billions of dollars and other help.
There is a great irony there. There was a crisis around the April 2020 time period [as the virus was spreading]. Moderna was making some investments, but other drugmakers were saying that to do this in a profitable way we cant just throw all of our money into this vaccine. So, things were moving slowly. And if you rewind to that time period, even scientists such as Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx on the White House coronavirus task force are saying, hey, if we keep up social distancing measures, maybe were not going to have another peak of the virus, maybe itll come back in the winter. Yet elements of the Trump administration started to reject the closing of the country and wanted to reopen. So, these public health measures were no longer going to work. And a vaccine was kind of the only option that we had left.
What pushed vaccine development into a higher gear?
The administration wanted a quick fix, so the pressure was building. Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Peter Marks, director of the FDAs Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, wanted to put more money into vaccines, and they saw this opening. So did the health secretary, Alex Azar, who had basically been forced out of the coronavirus task force. But now he had the chance to bring Operation Warp Speed to the administration and sell it to them. It was a confluence of factors.
But not everyone agreed on how to test those vaccines on people, right?
As things were coming together in the spring of 2020, there was quite a tug of war. One of the first issues was that Peter Marks had wanted to run whats called a master protocol. The idea was that all the vaccine candidates would be compared head-to-head against a single placebo group. Then youd be able to say this vaccine is the best ever in the whole country, we should spend all of our money on this one. But some of the folks at NIH felt that that if you did one big trial but a safety problem emerged with one vaccine, then the whole trial would come to halt. So, they wanted to have semi-independent trials. If one vaccine had an issue it wouldn't hold the whole thing up. They called these harmonized trials. The tests would have approximately the same rules, the same protocol, and be on different yet comparable groups of people. That became the compromise.
Was it hard to get a diversity of people into those trials?
That became another hard issue. When Moderna first started their clinical trials, the representation of Black people and Hispanic people was perhaps half what it is in the overall U.S. population. Yet one of the cases that NIH made was that COVID had not struck the nation equally. It affected Black communities more severely. So, they wanted the trials to be more inclusive. (Pfizer did not have as much of a diversity shortfall in their trial because it was larger and had a big international footprint, so they got different types of people.)
But Moderna, and officials in Operation Warp Speed, wanted to recruit people quickly because this was a crisis. They were using commercial clinical trial sites that were good at recruiting people fast. [But these operations did not emphasize diversity.] NIH, though, had a history of involving local communities through more academic sites. Those sites were slower, however. But NIHs point was that it would be a better, more representative trial if those sites were involved. They embarked on a pressure campaign, with some bigwigs basically shaming the company on this point. Eventually they won that battle.
Young children, however, were not in the initial trials. Why not? Today the FDA is considering authorizing the Pfizer vaccine for children aged five through 11.
For Operation Warp Speed, getting kids into the trials was not an initial concern. They were more worried about the elderly who were getting really ill. And the thing about children is that they are not small adults. Their immune systems are different. So you have to be very careful as you move down the age range. You run all the basic dosing experiments again. The FDA decided to slow down the approval of the childhood vaccines because they wanted six months of safety data instead of two months. This is definitely a day lots of parents have been waiting for.
