Breaking: South Africa’s vaccine roll out yet again in crisis b/c high-inc-based company failed to deliver vaccines. Millions of JNJ vax may have to be tossed out, so no vax for millions of seniors & vulnerable supposed to be vaccinated 2 wks ago. this has to be addressed...
...this is happening b/c USG-funded production of JNJ vax substance at Emergent which failed quality.
Aspen, the SAfrican company, has NOT gotten tech transfer to make the vax, instead they’re filling and finishing substance from JNJ (from Emergent)😞
Aspen can & should be making Vax itself to serve SAfrican needs and region. USG should immediately use its leverage to push companies to actually license their vax and do tech transfer. Plus why is SAfrica suffering from US fail? Immediately need some of that Pfizer doses @POTUS
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@R_H_Ebright@amymaxmen@VanityFair pretty striking to have a once-eminent professor reduced to schoolyard name-calling in defense of problematic journalism... Not sure where that gets you, but ok here's what I read...
@R_H_Ebright@amymaxmen@VanityFair Article quotes trump admin official saying it “smelled like a cover-up” (innuendo). Any evidence of a cover-up? None given. Instead, evidence shows pretty clearly what Trump appointees were pushing didn’t pass basic basic scientific rigor so career experts refused advance it.
@R_H_Ebright@amymaxmen@VanityFair Article questions WHO’s independence because (innuendo) WHO didnt appoint US officials. From a government that had announced withdrawal from the WHO? That’s just silly.
Read 👇 Dear Journalism:Does this pass muster @VanityFair? Innuendo, implications, Eban teases as breaking story. Zero new evidence. Lots of fmr Trump admin people saying there's a cover up, with no evidence. How is this not just spreading misinformation? vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/t…
YES we need more info on #COVID#Origins. Yes a lab leak is a possibility, but as many have said it has not been high on priority b/c there is quite literally no evidence for it. Eban doesn't find any either. But she does fall for all sorts of canards...
For example, Eban falls for the one about how @WHO didn't appoint US officials suggested for the independent expert team. This has been being shopped around by Trump admin folks for months. Eban takes the bait, reports it as if it's a shocking piece of new information. But...
[Stay tuned Monday for a new paper on empirical impacts]
Criminalization of same-sex relationships, drug use, sex work, and HIV exposure remain wide-spread despite clear evidence and global norms against. New UN targets: reduce the orange and yellow bars to 10%. Lots to do.
But there are many protective laws that also need adopting. Strong gender-based violence laws have been adopted by 114 countries, but more work to do on adoption & implementation.
Argument that compelling knowledge sharing= theft=no future innovation simply not credible in context of #COVID19. Asks huge leaps of imagination.
1st: the imagination here is that a GLOBAL monopoly is required to incentivize science. India, SAfrica, US must be one monopoly...
2nd: universities, which have done much of research leading to these vaccines, will stop accepting public funds to research vaccines and such. Not credible.
3rd: $€£ billions of direct funding + adv-market-commit hasn't been what incentivized development of these vaccines? not credible. #COVID19 is the very best example of public-sector funding driving development on a clear, urgent outbreak. US, UK, EU funding drove dev. As planned
Take: on list of important things to sort out during this pandemic, the origins (animal vs lab leak) is in the bottom half. It’s predictably getting attention disproportionate to its value, given politics. Need to stop ignoring instrumentalizing of global health
... I think @amymaxmen gets the story right here. And it’s not a story mostly about “science”
breathtaking. declaring population-based distribution of vaccines to low/middle-income countries unethical but ignoring global allocation & WHY they’re getting 3% now;20% of pops vaccinated in 2021 via covax.
No! This is not an ethics frame work... nytimes.com/2021/05/24/opi…
How can you consider ethics while ignoring rich countries? Authors treat “nations expecting to have extra doses, including the United States and Britain” as arbiters of ethics as they vaccinate young and heathy people, refuse to share doses or knowledge? No....
No. The ethics prob is NOT attempts to avoid a crisis and cover all HCW in LMICs. Show me the ethical framework in which High Income countries hoarding vaccines should decide who needs the left overs they have more... no.