The "arms race" for the Covid-19 vaccine
Mission Truth
Apr 20 · 9 min read
The WHO has been leading a global effort since March to analyze the efficacy of treatments and trials for the Covid-19 vaccine. Photo: Reference
The global race to find an effective vaccine against Covid-19 is in full fury as the multifactorial effects of the pandemic make the future of global society increasingly indeterminate.
To date, the only effective measure that authorities and experts have found against the global pandemic is social distancing, in addition to strict hygiene measures.
The spread of the disease is unstoppable because this is the mobility of the human population throughout the planet, in addition, the occupation patterns of the territory spread it because the majority live crowded in cities, exposed to the risk of air pollution and Access to public services is limited and highly commercialized.
Route and panorama of an urgent vaccine
After Chinese scientists published the genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19, on January 11, in mid-March the World Health Organization (WHO) was already leading a global effort to analyze the efficacy of treatments and trials of the Covid-19 vaccine.
Its CEO, Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus announced that “Multiple small trials with different methodologies may not give us the clear and solid evidence we need on what treatments help save lives.
Therefore, the WHO and its partners are organizing a study in many countries in which some of these unproven treatments will be compared with each other ”
The international study seeks to generate solid data and demonstrate which treatments are the most effective. Countries such as Argentina, Bahrain, Canada, France, Iran, Norway, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland and Thailand participate in it. Gebreyesus said, “We have called this study the Solidarity Trial.
This trial provides simplified treatments to allow even overburdened hospitals to participate. ” Until then, the Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund had raised more than $ 43 million from more than 173,000 individuals and organizations, just days after its launch.
Although public information on the SARS-CoV-2 specific antigens used in vaccine development is limited, it is known that most of the candidates for which information is available aim to induce neutralizing antibodies against the spike or spike protein of the virus ( called protein S).
Experience in fields such as oncology allows for faster development and manufacturing speed, and some vaccine platforms could be better adapted to specific population subtypes (such as the elderly, children, pregnant women, etc.).
The journal Nature published a database of reported vaccine development programs through a licensed and updated WHO list, along with other projects identified from publicly available sources.
As of April 8, 2020, the global research and development (R&D) landscape of the Covid-19 vaccine included 115 candidate vaccines, of which 78 were confirmed to be active.
Number of candidate vaccines against Covid-19 according to the technological platform. Photo: Nature Reviews
Of the 78 confirmed active projects, 73 are currently in exploratory stages.
The most advanced candidates have recently moved into clinical development, including tmRNA-1273 from Moderna (United States), Ad5-nCoV from CanSino Biologicals (China), INO-4800 from Inovio (United States), LV-SMENP-DC and a pathogen-specific APC from the Geno-Immune Medical Institute of Shenzhen, China.
Many other vaccine developers have stated plans to start human testing in 2020.
Lurking in Shock: Markets vs. Health
One of the most heated debates in the scientific and health environment is about the trade in medicines, including vaccines, the levels of violation of the right to life due to the commercialization and integral sovereignty threatened by transnational companies.
Because the Covid-19 vaccine would not be available to the public until the end of 2021, it becomes vital for many governments to ensure the production and availability of drugs to treat severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). .
However, as in other cases, there is the threat of some measures that intellectual property intervene in favor of the commercialization of the vaccine.
Different trials for Covid-19 drugs move private corporations and their servile governments to find ways to maximize profits. Photo: RT
Some existing drugs, and applied against other diseases, have been successful in treating the disease and their production costs are essentially low, however there is a speculative process based on patents and monopolies by the pharmaceutical companies.
An article in the Journal of Virus Eradication , led by Dr. Andrew Hill of the University of Liverpool Department of Translational Medicine, explored the cost of mass-producing various drugs that have shown great promise in the global fight against the new coronavirus, finding that:
The two-week antimalarial treatments for chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, promoted by Trump and produced by one of his companies, could be produced for just $ 0.30 and $ 1, but the former has a retail price of $ 93 in the United States.
A two-week treatment of Sofosbuvir / Daclatasvir sells in Pakistan for $ 6, the transnational Gilead charges for up to $ 18,610 in the United States.
The two-week treatment of Truvada, an HIV drug whose effectiveness against Covid-19 is being tested in 4,000 patients, costs $ 2, Gilead charges Americans about $ 2,000 per month, earning a gross profit of about 28 thousand percent.
These times of pandemic allow us to see in the first row how corporations use the public resources of the countries for their capitalist expansion.
The journalist Alan Macleod, of the Mintpress media , says that the most surprising thing of all is that Truvada was developed with public funds for 50 million dollars in R&D, however it is sold to US taxpayers almost 300 times more than the price that even developed countries like Australia pay for it.
Regarding patents, some governments are expected to ignore them and invest funds to analyze any treatment against the new coronavirus, although pharmaceutical companies maintain that strict patent laws prevent theft of intellectual property and that they are the only way in which the Research and innovation can continue, the reality is that they have done almost no research and development on the coronavirus and the drugs are only being taken and applied to the disease, it is a complete possibility if they succeed or fail.
Shaping global health governance
Hence, it is not uncommon for the links between imperialism, business elites, public health and health institutions to intensify in the midst of a global pandemic through various key mediating institutions such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
Corporate globalization was intensified with the imposition of a regime of liberalization, deregulation and privatization making the governance of world health:
It systematically eliminated or compromised national ministries of health through "public-private partnerships" and similar schemes.
He touted "emerging infections" as inevitable and potentially catastrophic in order to soften resistance against imperialist health interventions.
It was part of the broader “security” speech that emerged in the wake of September 11, thereafter the global alarm on bioterrorism provided an opportunity to link health and national security.
It justifies imperial interventions in the health field in the same terms as “humanitarian” military interventions.
The global alarm on bioterrorism provided an opportunity to link health and national security and justify imperial interventions. Photo: Daily Star
Elites in their labyrinth Cooperation or competition?
Vaccine-producing companies belong to the intertwined Big Pharma controlled directly or indirectly by a few businesses and a power elite, and they have increasingly intertwined through shared directors and common institutional investors.
In 2004, a team of Swiss system theorists , using a database of 37 million companies and investors worldwide, studied share ownership that links more than 43,000 transnational corporations.
They found that 1,318 core companies, accounting for 20 percent of global operating revenue, owned 60 percent of the world's revenue, and that the property network in turn belonged to 147 companies that controlled 40 percent of wealth. total network.
Indeed, less than 1 percent of companies were able to control 40 percent of the entire network, and most were financial institutions such as Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.
This business elite is closely linked to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), America's elite foreign policy and international affairs expert who heads the Rockefeller Studies Program and brings together government officials, global business leaders and prominent members of the intelligence and foreign policy community to debate international issues and make recommendations to the presidential administration and the diplomatic community.
Sylvia Mathews Burwell is a member of the CFR, was secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the presidency of Barack Obama and is a member of the BMGF, a foundation linked to magnate Bill Gates that will finance at least seven projects that strive to find the Covid-19 vaccine so as not to “waste time” in the search for a vaccine and thus, when the best candidate is found, have the infrastructures already in place to test and mass-manufacture it in about 18 months .
The largest development activity for the Covid-19 vaccine is found in North America, with 36 (46%) developers of confirmed active vaccine candidates compared to 14 (18%) in China, 14 (18%) in the rest of Asia and Australia, and 14 (18%) in Europe.
COVID-19 Vaccine Developers Profile by Type and Geographic Location. For associations, the location is that of the lead developer. Photo: Nature Reviews
In the three months since the virus began its spread, China, Europe and the United States have set out to become the first to produce a vaccine, the contest has reached levels of arms race . Some acts:
Donald Trump has spoken in meetings with pharmaceutical executives about making sure a vaccine is produced on American soil, so that the United States can control its supplies.
German authorities said they believed Trump tried to lure a German company, CureVac, to do its research and production in the United States.
Trump's approach to CureVac prompted the European Commission to pledge another $ 85 million to the company, which already had the support of a European vaccine consortium.
The same day, a Chinese company offered $ 133.3 million for a stake and other consideration from another German firm, BioNTech.
In China, a thousand scientists work on a vaccine. Researchers affiliated with the Academy of Military Medical Sciences have developed what is considered to be the country's top successful candidate and are recruiting volunteers for clinical trials.
The main developers of active candidates for the Covid-19 vaccine are distributed in 19 countries that constitute more than three quarters of the world population, there is no public information on the development of vaccines in Africa or Latin America, although in these regions there are regulatory frameworks and vaccine manufacturing capacity.
Seth Berkley, GAVI Executive Director stated: "If countries say, 'Let's try to keep stocks so we can protect our populations,' then it can be challenging to get the vaccine to places where it can make a huge difference from the point of view of epidemiological view ”.
Of the confirmed active candidate vaccines, 56 (72%) are being developed by private / industrial, and the remaining 22 (28%) projects are led by academic, public sector and other non-profit organizations.
However, while there is cooperation at many levels, even between companies that are generally competing, the threat of a nationalistic approach persists that could allow the winner to favor his own population and have an advantage in dealing with the economic and geostrategic consequences of the crisis.
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