Vaccine Apartheid

The promising science of nasal spray vaccines. — The covid vaccine picture is awfully confusing. The current vaccines are doing a great job of preventing serious illness (at least, for people who are boosted), but they’re not nearly so effective at preventing infection and transmission. …

The real vaccine denial is coming from inside the house — Has the omicron variant — and the prospect of more variants to come, with attendant lockdowns, shutdowns, cancellations and, of course, mass deaths — got you furious? Yeah, me too. And like the saying goes, this is a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” Every time a virus reproduces in a human…

But Karan Menon has their number. — The world is experiencing a “pandemic of the unvaccinated,” but the largest pool unvaccinated people isn’t to be found among vaccine deniers of the rich world. Rather, these vulnerable people — whose infections might spawn new, vaccine-bypassing, more-lethal variants — are the 2.5b …

Omicron, vaccine apartheid, WTO TRIPS waivers and the false hope of viruses “gentling” themselves. — Are you low-key freaking out about omicron? Yeah, me too. Can’t we catch a break? Maybe. Step one to preventing new, scarier mutant strains is to reduce the number of infected people, which require a mix of ventilation, masking, distancing, and, of course, vaccinations. These days, the “vaccine controversy” is…

Although wealthy countries are now administering COVID-19 booster shots, most lower income countries have a vaccination rate of 1%. But having an unvaccinated majority has been pivotal for the emergence of new variants. …

The worldwide effort to fight COVID-19 has been a collaborative effort of wealthy nations working together to ensure that vaccine profits are distributed equitably and fairly amongst the 9 new billionaires created during this pandemic. In an inspiring act of neocolonialism, the European Union has donated 200 million doses of…

The WTO was always a scam. — The world’s 125 poorest countries (2.5b people) have received zero covid vaccine doses to date. The 85 poorest countries project vaccination in 2023/24. This is vaccine apartheid. https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/21/wait-your-turn/#vaccine-apartheid It’s not that poor countries can’t make their own vaccines. The Global South has a lot of vaccine production capacity. The problem…

“Wait your turn” is not epidemiologically sound — The Biden administration’s (carefully worded) support for a WTO IP waiver on vaccines may not be the full-throated support the issue warrants, but it was still a complete reversal of decades of subservience to Big Pharma, and the industry is waging all-out war. The arguments against allowing poor countries to…

Socializing risk and privatizing gain for fun and profit. — A key idea from sf is “all laws are local, and no law knows how local it is.” …