Thread by @amymaxmen

🚨My latest: An in-depth feature tackling global vaccine inequality🧵

1/ This is bigger than Covid. It’s about unsafe policies & practices ensuring that profit & power stays in the Global North.

It’s about what needs to change.

#longreads #CovidVaccine nature.com/immersive/d415…

2/ COVID demonstrated the folly of relying on goodwill & the West.

Nearly 80% of people in rich countries have been vaccinated & fewer than 20% in poor countries. This is cruel AND dumb. Economies are connected. Variants spread. nature.com/immersive/d415…

3/ Covid vaccine inequality is unjust but not surprising.

Years passed before HIV drugs were available in lower income countries. Decades passed before vaccines against pneumonia were available. Cancer treatments, monoclonal antibodies...people die in these delays.

4/ “Reliance on a few companies to supply global public goods is limiting & dangerous” said @Tedros as he launched an mRNA tech transfer hub w/ nodes in 15 nations.

My feature is about this collaborative solution, seeking to upend dependency. nature.com/immersive/d415…

5/ I visited the heart of the Hub in S. Africa #Afrigen, where researchers have developed a vaccine like Moderna’s & are teaching other companies in the global south how to do it.

But making mRNA vaccines turns out to be the easier part of this project…nature.com/immersive/d415…

6/ The truly hard part is overcoming IP barriers & a market tilted in favor of Big Pharma.

It’s not a coincidence that most of these companies are based in the same countries that pushed to expand global IP rules in the 90s. nature.com/immersive/d415…

7/ A hurdle that low&mid-income countries must overcome are IP rules #TRIPS, which S. Africa & India unsuccessfully tried to waive.

@JosephEStiglitz says that TRIPS serves corporate interests at the expense of the poor. Others call it a project in "maintaining global power".

8/ Broad, tightly-held IP may deter the Hub’s 15 companies in the global south.

(Moderna’s vaccine has already earned billions for the company & produced 3 billionaires, even though its development was largely paid for by the public.)

nature.com/immersive/d415…
@_HassanF says...

9/ Emerging companies in the global south will need governments & @gavi to buy their vaccines. It's worth a premium.

As the great @larrybrilliant told me: “Equity is often thought of as a burden, but it is a strategic need in the battle against pandemics”
nature.com/articles/d4158…

10/ An emerging narrative is that there's a surplus of vaccine, that countries don't use em & thus a push for global south manufacturing is moot.

Reader: It is not. For the real story, pls read my #longread, an investigation into global vaccine inequity.
nature.com/immersive/d415…

11/Thanks to ~70 (!) people I spoke with for this investigation; insightful editing & graphics @nature @bmaher @creditdesign; Travel 🙏🏽 to @PulitzerCenter, SA pics @samreinders; Malawi pics by wonderful @thokochikondi; Malawi translation by Prophet Duada (Prophet & Thoko ❤️👇🏽)

PS Thanks for this paper @__emh. I highlighted the crap out of it.