Covid-19 vaccine makers issue rare safety pledge as fears of political pressures swirl

‘A coalition of nine pharmaceutical chief executives issued a joint pledge Tuesday that they will not rush the development of a COVID-19 vaccination for political purposes and will not seek approvals until the vaccines have gone through Phase 3 clinical trials.

‘The unusual joint move from nine industry leaders comes after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified states to be ready to distribute a vaccine to certain groups just two days before the presidential election, stoking concerns that the Trump administration may be putting political pressure on companies and health officials to fast-track vaccine approvals ahead of the November vote.’

Read here (ABC News, Sept 8, 2020) 

CDC tells states how to prepare for Covid-19 vaccine by early November

‘The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has notified public health officials in all 50 states and five large cities to prepare to distribute a coronavirus vaccine to health care workers and other high-risk groups as soon as late October or early November.

‘The new C.D.C. guidance is the latest sign of an accelerating race for a vaccine to ease a pandemic that has killed more than 184,000 Americans. The documents were sent out on the same day that President Trump told the nation in his speech to the Republican National Convention that a vaccine might arrive before the end of the year.’

Read here (New York Times, Sept 2, 2020)

What the 'emergency' blood plasma debacle reveals: If the FDA’s emergency authorisations aren’t used responsibly, they could lose their power

‘The FDA previously came under fire for issuing an EUA for after Trump became fixated on the drug, which the agency later rescinded when the drug proved to be ineffective. With plasma, the agency has again issued an EUA following a loud and public campaign by the president based on little scientific evidence. The Trump administration is reportedly considering using the EUA process to fast-track a COVID-19 vaccine before the November election. “It just seems to be a pattern now,” says Jesse Goodman, a former chief scientist at the FDA now at Georgetown. “I’m very worried that this might happen with vaccines.” A controversial EUA for a vaccine could inflame fears that a vaccine is being rushed out.’

Read here (The Atlantic, August 27, 2020)

Aliens and reptilians: The odd beliefs of Stella Immanuel, doctor in US viral video retweeted by Trump

‘A Houston doctor who praised hydroxychloroquine as a miracle coronavirus cure in a viral video retweeted by President Donald Trump blames gynaecological problems on sex with evil spirits and believes the US government is run by “reptilians”. Stella Immanuel’s viral speech has drawn attention to a little-known group calling themselves “America’s Frontline Doctors” who appear to exist to promote the common antimalarial drug in the fight against Covid-19.’

Read here (South China Morning Post, July 29, 2020)

Donald Trump willing to work with China on coronavirus vaccine for US

‘Remarks comes day after study shows candidate developed by CanSino and China’s military research unit is safe and induces immune response. US president has resumed daily Covid-19 press briefings as US cases continue to climb... Besides declaring support for masks as a way to fight the pandemic, he admonished young people against crowding bars and spreading the disease. It all marked a delayed recognition by Trump that the economic reopening he has been championing since April – and more importantly, his re-election – were imperilled by spiking cases nationwide.‘

Read here (South China Morning Post, July 22, 2020)

Merck CEO Ken Frazier discusses a Covid cure, racism, and why leaders need to walk the talk

‘As chairman and CEO of the leading vaccine producer in the world, pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co., Ken Frazier has one of the highest-profile positions in global business.

‘But Frazier, who is leading one of the firms on a charge to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, is unique in another way: He is just one of four Black CEOs leading a Fortune 500 company. Frazier is also outspoken, having resigned from President Trump’s American Manufacturing Council to make a clear statement against “hatred, bigotry and group supremacy” that surfaced in protests at Charlottesville, Virginia.

‘In the video [with transcript] below, Frazier provides insights into this turbulent period of American history with Tsedal Neeley (@tsedal), the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Topics ranged from corporate America’s role in hiring more African Americans to the experience of being raised just one generation away from slavery.’

View/read here (Harvard Business School, July 13, 2020)

WHO’s Covid-19 inquiry is a shrewd move in a sea of disinformation

‘In the week in which the US formally announced its intention to quit the WHO, the organisation’s announcement of the two figures who will lead its review of the pandemic and its response feels significant.

‘Given Trump’s record of denigrating female leaders, and of racist dog-whistles, it is striking that the review will be chaired by two highly regarded and independent-minded women leaders, one of them from Africa – Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel laureate and the former president of Liberia, and Helen Clark, former prime minister of New Zealand.’

Read here (The Guardian, July 10, 2020)

A plague of willful ignorance

‘We aren’t a nation of know-nothings; many, probably most Americans are willing to listen to experts and act responsibly. But there’s a belligerent faction within our society that refuses to acknowledge inconvenient or uncomfortable facts, preferring to believe that experts are somehow conspiring against them... Trump hasn’t just failed to rise to the policy challenge posed by Covid-19. He has, with his words and actions — notably his refusal to wear a mask — encouraged and empowered America’s anti-rational streak.’

Read here (New York Times, June 22, 2020)

Fact-checking claims coronavirus might have started in August 2019

‘There's been criticism of a study from the US suggesting that the coronavirus could have been present in the Chinese city of Wuhan as early as August last year. The study by Harvard University, which gained significant publicity when it was released earlier this month, has been dismissed by China and had its methodology challenged by independent scientists...

‘The Harvard study has gained a lot of traction in the media, with President Trump, who has been highly critical of China's pandemic response, tweeting a Fox News item highlighting the researchers' findings. The tweet has been viewed more than three million times.’

Read here (BBC, June 15, 2020)

Trump said he would terminate the US relationship with the WHO. Here's what that means

‘The impacts wouldn’t be felt just abroad. Were the U.S. to leave the WHO, scientists and public health officials in the states would suddenly find themselves cut off from some of the most important global health communication channels. You don’t need to look too far into the past to see how this might play out: In the early days of COVID-19, “not all of the data from China was public. It was shared among the WHO member states initially before it was put out in public bulletins,” says Amanda Glassman, executive vice president of the Center for Global Development, a nonprofit think tank, That information, in theory, should have enabled U.S. health infrastructure to rapidly spring into action, and take steps to mitigate the worst viral outcomes. It didn’t of course, but that failure can hardly be pinned on the WHO.’

Read here (Time Magazine, June 4, 2020)

Trump terminates US relationship with WHO

US President Donald Trump has announced that he is terminating the country's relationship with the World Health Organization (WHO). The president has accused the WHO of failing to hold Beijing to account over the coronavirus pandemic. "China has total control over the World Health Organization," the president said while announcing measures aimed at punishing Beijing.

Read here (BBC, May 30, 2020)

Trump threatens to permanently pull funding from WHO and 'reconsider' US membership

‘President Donald Trump is escalating his threats against the World Health Organization, telling the agency he will permanently pull US funding if it does not "commit to major substantive improvements in the next 30 days."

‘Trump's letter -- in which he included a false description of when information about the virus was published in The Lancet, prompting the prestigious medical journal to publicly dispute his claims on Tuesday -- is the latest action he's taken against the WHO following his decision last month to temporarily halt US funding to the group.’

Read here (CNN, May 19, 2020)

Read response by The Lancet here (Twitter, May 19, 2020)

What are President Trump's charges against the WHO? A fact check

‘US President Donald Trump says the World Health Organization (WHO) has mismanaged and helped to cover up the spread of the coronavirus after it emerged in China. But the WHO has defended its handling of the early stages of the pandemic. We've been looking at some of the charges President Trump has levelled against the WHO...’

Read here (BBC, May 18, 2020)

US ‘Warp Speed’ vaccine effort comes out of the shadows

‘Conventional wisdom is that a vaccine for COVID-19 is at least 1 year away, but the organizers of a U.S. government push called Operation Warp Speed have little use for conventional wisdom. The project, vaguely described to date but likely to be formally announced by the White House in the coming days, will pick a diverse set of vaccine candidates and pour essentially limitless resources into unprecedented comparative studies in animals, fast-tracked human trials, and manufacturing. Eschewing international cooperation—and any vaccine candidates from China—it hopes to have 300 million doses by January 2021 of a proven product, reserved for Americans.’

Read here (Science Magazine, May 15, 2020)

It’s no accident Britain and America are the world's biggest coronavirus losers

‘When the business of government becomes limited to populist set pieces, its ranks are purged of doers and populated instead with cheerleaders. This is how we ended up with the current cast of dazed-in-headlights Tory cabinet members. In the US, the very notion of an “administration” has been worn away. As the New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen puts it, “There is no White House. Not in the sense that journalists have always used that term. It’s just Trump – and people who work in the building”.’

Read here (The Guardian, May 10, 2020)

Trump’s ‘Operation Warp Speed’ aims to rush coronavirus vaccine

‘The Trump administration is organising a Manhattan Project-style effort to drastically cut the time needed to develop a coronavirus vaccine, with a goal of making enough doses for most Americans by year’s end.

‘Called “Operation Warp Speed,” the program will pull together private pharmaceutical companies, government agencies and the military to try to cut the development time for a vaccine by as much as eight months, according to two people familiar with the matter.’

Read here (Bloomberg, April 30, 2020)

Trump unveils testing blueprint

As part of a plan to open up America, President Trump has unveiled a “Testing Blueprint” with the stated goal of performing 2 million tests per week by the end of May. According to the plan, state, tribal, and local governments are largely responsible for procuring tests and “overcom[ing] barriers to efficient testing”; however, the federal government will “act as a supplier of last resort” and coordinate with private sector suppliers to increase production and testing capacity. A number of private sector companies announced plans to increase testing capacity to support these efforts.

Download here (Whitehouse, April 2020)

Stiglitz: US coronavirus response is like 'third world' country

“The numbers turning to food banks are just enormous and beyond the capacity of them to supply. It is like a third world country. The public social safety net is not working.”

Stiglitz, a long-term critic of Trump, said 14% of the population was dependent on food stamps and predicted the social infrastructure could not cope with an unemployment rate that could hit 30% in the coming months.

Read here (The Guardian, April 22, 2020)

Give me liberty and give me death: Paul Krugman

‘…But Trump being Trump, he’s disavowing any responsibility, instead pressuring states to ignore the health risks and abandon the social distancing that has blunted the pandemic.

‘If you ask me, this isn’t just cruel, it’s politically stupid. As we’ve just seen, viruses move fast. A few days ago we were starting to see signs that Covid-19 might be peaking. But relax our vigilance, even a bit, and a second, bigger wave of deaths could easily happen well before the election.

‘But Trump and his allies don’t seem able to wrap their minds around the idea that it’s their job to solve problems, not shift the blame. And I don’t know about you, but I’m getting even more scared than I was.’

Read here (New York Times, April 21, 2020)

Trump fans protests against Democrat governors

‘Groups rallied in at least six states this week, and protests are planned in four more in coming days. On Friday, President Trump encouraged protesters in Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia who this week violated stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines to march against Democratic governors.

‘LIBERATE MICHIGAN!’ Trump tweeted. ‘LIBERATE MINNESOTA,’ he continued. ‘LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!’

Read here (Washington Post, April 17, 2020)