LyrArc Article Gist
How do you setup a vaccine business. Consider Mr. Adar Poonavalla in the city of Pune in India. His company Serum Institute of India, remains family owned. Founded in 1966 by Cyrus Poonavalla, it produces billions of doses of vaccines for measles, polio and other diseases. It is expected to be one of the key sources of vaccines because of its expertise and the stocks of vials and other supplies that it has in stock for the next 2 years of vaccine production. It is working on a separate facility for coronavirus production that could turn out 800 million doses of vaccine at a price of about $13 a dose over 2 years. Serum Institute is working with 3 companies that are doing the research on the vaccine for coronavirus in the U.S. and Europe, and will play a key role in the manufacturing of vaccines. To respond to the question how do you setup a company to produce vaccines for the people of the world. This is what Mr. Poonavalla says- he will only work with ethical long term funds and sovereign funds because he does not want to be in the situation where he has to charge high prices to give them returns. Unlike most countries in the world, India is unique in making certain that most of the basic pharmaceutical drugs are available to over a billion people at a low cost. Serum's goal is low cost quality vaccine production so that over a billion people in Asia can be "protected from the birth onwards." As the U.S. and Europe and large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, face the second vaccine phase of the coronavirus response following difficulties in PPE, Ventilators, and Masks in the first phase, they can have confidence because of companies such as Serum and the research centers in U.S. and Europe like the one at Oxford University. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Justin Lahart of the WSJ says the positive news from the May unemployment report comes as a complete surprise. No one expected the addition of 2.5 million jobs, and the reduction of the unemployment rate from 14.7% to 13.3% for May, as reported by the Labor Department. Lahart says that even though the response rate for the Labor Department survey measuring the jobless rate had only 67%- instead of the usual 82%- it is broadly reliable. About half of the jobs bounceback comes from the leisure and hospitality industry. Some of this from the creative ways restaurants responded by doing an active takeout business and bringing in some of the workers.  Other businesses also responded in creative ways to keep running. As long as the reopening of the economy can be done safely, more people can be back to work. The significant relief from the government for small business could also help these businesses weather the crisis. The Global Vaccine Summit recently opened provided more positive news. Plans are underway for India's Serum Institute to produce 400 million doses of the Oxford vaccine by December, providing more hope for recovery. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
In his farewell speech Boris Johnson, with true British resilient spirit,  says "I will be giving fervent support to Liz Truss and her government every step of the way." Johnson likened his transfer of power to Ms Truss to a relay race. "The baton will be handed over," saying it "unexpectedly turned into a relay race, they changed the rules halfway through." But he expressed no feelings of regret, having come to terms with the arrangement in his own way. More likely Johnson is without saying it still determining the policies and direction of the government, perhaps more so now with Liz Truss and his loyalists the only persons in the cabinet and running the British government. Johnson addressed people's fears about the energy price increases- "the UK would continue to have the strength to give people cash they need to get through this energy crisis that is caused by Putin's vicious war."  He listed his government's achievements- the response to Covid. Some of this is forgotten as the UK not the EU leadership was first to move forward with vaccination plans. Johnson put his government's faith in the vaccine invented at Oxford University and committed early while the EU languished under Merkel and her protege Ursula Von der Leyen. The EU fell behind in providing vaccine leadership as Britain forged ahead early, giving hope to the rest of the world's population including India that adopted the Oxford vaccine. Johnson likened his role to the missions to the planets- "Let me say I am now like one of those booster rockets that has fulfilled its function and I will be re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down invisibly into some remote and obscure corner of the Pacific." Johnson has taken the situation in a truly British way without any rancor and gracefully. With Liz Truss in charge he even gets a break after the difficult period handling the once in a century pandemic, handing over to a younger member of his group, and yet deciding on many of the policies and guiding the government for the term it was elected for to 2024. History will look at him favorably for his handling of the pandemic and vaccination, and for his instincts about the Ukraine war and Britain's unwavering support, and now in guiding Truss to provide Britain with strong support for the cost of living crisis caused by the war. His failings stem partly from his exuberance and optimistic spirit, but nowhere near detract from these achievements. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Latin America has made a huge turnaround through successful vaccination drives. Today more people are vaccinated as a percentage of the population in Latin America at 62% than in the US at 56% or Europe at 60%, according to Our World in Data project at Oxford University. There is little resistance to vaccines in Latin America after successful vaccine campaigns against yellow fever and other diseases. During the first year of the pandemic Latin America had one third of the deaths in the world with 8% of the population. Deaths after vaccination drives have dropped to 8%.  Brazil with 617,000 deaths from coronavirus was second only to the US with 800,000 deaths. Brazil is now back to normal after a successful vaccination drive that has 66% of the population fully vaccinated, and 80% with one dose, some of the highest rates in the world, according to Our World in Data at Oxford University. In Colombia with 50 million population about 50% of people are fully vaccinated. Cases have dropped from 30,000 in June to 2000 a day and deaths from 700 daily that month to 50 a day in December 2021. In Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital, 83% of three million population are fully vaccinated, 14% have received a booster. Buenos Aires city health minister says Argentine society has an affinity for vaccination campaigns. "They rapidly accepted receiving them," he says. Yet from the point of view of new variants emerging there is a different situation in rural areas. In industrial states such as Sao Paulo 78% are fully vaccinated, yet less than 40% are fully vaccinated in poor Amazon state of Roraima.   We make it a point to honor the brave reporters in these countries who provide the reports in the WSJ, as we did earlier for NYT Stephanie Nolan's reports from South Africa and Zambia about frontline workers against Omicron in Africa.  Luciana Magalhaes in Sao Paulo, Jenny Carolina Gonzalez in Bogota, and Sylvina Frydlewsky in Buenos Aires and Kejal Vyas writing this report from San Salvador. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Angela Merkel of Germany and other EU leaders decided to back "global supply chains" and declined to support the EU Commission in Brussels at a virtual summit attended by 27 leaders of the EU states. It was also attended briefly by Joe Biden. Ursula von Leyen said 21 million doses of vaccine had been shipped from EU to Britain, of which 1 million were from Astra Zeneca and the rest from Pfizer and other makers of vaccines. A total of 77 million doses made in the EU wer shipped to 33 countries since 1 December 2020. Governments of Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and Sweden were not in favor of blocking shipments from the UK because of the effect on supply chains. Pfizer is strongly opposed to the move to block shipments. Merkel emphasized the need to respect the global supply chains while making efforts to ensure EU countries get a fair share of vaccine supplies. The problems of UK vs Britain on vaccine supplies comes from the yield problems at a Belgium plant of Astra Zeneca and the company's refusal to divert supplies from the UK. Of the 120 million promised only 30 million could be delivered to EU. The UK's contract with Astra Zeneca states that supplies from its plants in Oxford and Staffordshire must be delivered to Britain first. The UK is facing an acute shortage of second doses even though it has given 31 million jabs. At this time 45 out of 100 people in the UK have jabs, compared with 13 out of 100 in the EU.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Editorial Board of the WSJ questions the lack of debate on the frequent lockdowns and the quashing by public health officials Fauci and Collins of an alternative point of view on lockdowns. That point of view by epidemiologists at three universities Oxford, Harvard and Stanford favored a policy of "focused protection" of high risk populations instead of snap response of blanket lockdowns. It cites statement by Dr. Fauci that people who criticize him are "really criticizing science, because I represent science. That's dangerous." And questions the idea that one man can by himself represent science, saying scientific debate over pandemic policy was and still is in the public interest. In some ways the Biden administration has adopted some of these ideas on a new pandemic policy that does respond with focused and selective lockdowns. Today shuttered businesses, lost livelihoods, untreated illnesses, mental illness, isolation effects are all taken into account in decisions throughout the US, and other countries in Europe, in Asia and the rest of the world. Some of the emails mentioned in this WSJ editorial were in October 2020 at the height of the first wave and second waves before the vaccination drive in 2021, when the fear of the coronavirus was the dominant response. Yet a spirited public scientific debate could have prevented some of the rancor and division that has led to high vaccine resistance in the US with fully vaccinated stalling at about 62% of the American population at the beginning of 2022. It did'nt have to be that way. America could have done a lot better with sincere scientific and public debate. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Warnings to governments and leaders in industry and pharmaceutical research about epidemic preparedness by Bill Gates were ignored. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars to develop new vaccines and create disease tracking systems. But only governments could tackle this problem. He tells the WSJ in an interview that he feels terrible and that he wishes he had done more. His fear that a once in a century pandemic has come true. Governments did respond to the public health preparation needs as reported in France 24 to both SARS and the H1N1, both in Britain and France. It was the disbanding of this effort in the period of the global financial crisis and the eurozone financial crisis that led to the level of unpreparedness that Western Europe finds itself in today. This was caused by irresponsible banking practices. The response was austerity measures in Britain, France, Germany and Spain that led to leaving public health system investment being neglected, without fixing the original source of the problem. Misallocation of capital and lopsided priorities continued through most of the period leading up to the pandemic. There is a lot that Gates and other public spirited leaders could do now do in the new reordering of priorities and shifting the allocation of capital to public services and investments in infrastructure, and supply chain renewal to safeguard national interests. Today he is working with pharmaceutical executives and governments to produce billions of doses of vaccines while they are being tested. His foundation has reserved space in a manufacturing plant so that production can begin quickly once an effective vaccine is found. He says nobody has made 7 billion vaccines so that it will need all the help that it can get and international cooperation.  In an earlier interview with WSJ he told the interviewer in November 2014 that the world as a whole did not have preparedness. France and Britain prepared and then abandoned the effort for epidemic response by 2012 following the global financial and eurozone financial crises. Gates repeated the warning to 2016 presidential candidates in the U.S.  In 2017 at the Munich Security Conference he reminded people- "getting ready for a global pandemic is every bit as important as nuclear deterrence and avoiding a climate catastrophe." One focus of Gates was to come up with faster ways to a vaccine by using ready made components and then customizing it. This is an approach being adopted today by Oxford scientists and by Quidel Corp. in the U.S.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Johnson & Johnson begins a 60,000 person clinical trial on 3 continents in the final stage of testing. It could learn vital results in early next year which if positive would lead to government authorization for emergency use soon after. J&J will test whether a single dose of vaccine will work. It is also doing work separately with the UK government for a separate phase three study to test whether a 2 dose vaccine will work.

Other companies in final stage of testing are Moderna and Pfizer with studies results expected in October and Astra Zeneca working with Oxford expecting results by the end of 2020.

LyrArc Article Gist
Some of the concern about the economy comes from the economic damage done by the coronavirus. The longer the shutdowns continue the more the damage. About 17 million have filed claims for unemployment benefits. The WSJ consensus of 57 economists is that 14.4 million jobs will be lost in coming months, and the unemployment rate will rise to a record 13% in June, from a 50 year low of 3.5% in February. The earliest the economy could go back to the level in February 2020 is 27 months says the WSJ economist survey. The brighter side of this comes in two aspects of this pandemic recovery curve. By flattening the curve and strict testing, contact tracing and isolation till the vaccine is developed about half the jobs lost can be recovered by the end of summer, says Moody's Analytics. The vaccine a year from now or in 9 months by November 2020 would allow the economy to recover faster. A more optimistic view comes from Daiwa Capital Markets which predicts many of people laid off will be recalled quickly allowing the labor market to recover in 6 months by September or October 2020. Only finance and real estate might take longer but most of the industries where the vast majority of jobs are could be back on their feet. The credible evidence supporting this perspective of a rebound comes from Colorado and Washington which require large employers to specify whether layoffs are temporary or permanent, 70% this year are temporary. Compare this to the prior 2009 recession where this figure was less than 1%- as reported by WSJ. The big push in this direction will be the $2 trillion that the Trump administration and U.S. Congress have committed to this task. Even more so is the determination of president Trump to protect American workers at all costs, that every job counts, and that businesses without exception to get the money have to show that workers are retained. The very success of the aid is being judged by how quickly people are back to work. Now for a look at where the situation is today- Oxford Economics, a UK based forecasting and consulting firm, projects 27.9 million jobs lost with industries other than those ordered to close making up 8 to 10 million of that number. It projects April's report will will capture late March layoffs. It will show cuts to 3.4 million business services workers, including lawyers, software groups, architects and consultants, advertising professionals, in addition to 1.5 million non-essential healthcare workers, 100,000 information workers. One conclusion of this report is that the virus does not discriminate across business groups and business service workers are also affected. Many companies that were hiring will cancel that move and many will cut hours worked. Many of these business services are not a priority. Hospitals are affected too, as they cut elective surgical procedures and routine care that are major revenue sources. Some are now charging for telemedicine visits to maintain some revenue stream. State and local governments employ 20 million workers. As tax receipts decline these local governments will face choices of cutting payrolls and services without enough federal government relief. In a way laying off workers and having them take unemployment benefits shifts that burden to the federal government so that services for overtime to police and paramedics, retention and deployment of nurses in schools.    ...