Greed is the problem, not the solution, for vaccine woes

‘On the anniversary of the United Kingdom’s first lockdown of the coronavirus pandemic, as candles were lit in doorways and the country mourned 125,000 deaths, the prime minister was in the mood for gloating. “The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed my friends,” Boris Johnson reportedly told Conservative MPs, before pleading “forget I said that”.

‘The AstraZeneca jab was actually developed by scientists from the University of Oxford, a publicly-funded institution, working with scientists from a range of backgrounds, including many educated in state schools. Those scientists had initially wanted to make their vaccine patent-free, before AstraZeneca entered the scene, effectively privatising the research.

‘The vaccines have been brought to market thanks to tens of thousands of trial volunteers who risked their health by putting themselves forward, not out of greed, but out of a desire to end this pandemic and help their families and communities. And the rollout is being managed by the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), a world-class public healthcare system that, despite market-driven reforms in recent years, exists entirely outside the logic of the market.

‘Greed, however, drove Big Pharma companies to privatise vaccines developed with public resources, and patent lifesaving medicines, in an effort to keep a grip on their monopolies. As a result, pharmaceutical giants sold these jabs almost exclusively to rich countries, allowing the UK to secure enough doses to vaccinate its population three times over.’

Read here (Aljazeera, Mar 24, 2021)

March 18, 2020 and beyond: One year with Covid-19 and life under lockdown in Malaysia

‘A year has passed since Malaysia first went into a partial lockdown after the Covid-19 pandemic hit. This saw the public forced into complying with numerous unprecedented measures introduced by the government to contain the virus’ spread. Here is a recap of some of the ups and downs that the nation has survived.’

Read here (Malay Mail, Mar 18, 2020)

Covid: From boom to bust - Why lockdown hasn't led to more babies

‘For those who thought that lockdown would leave couples with little else to do than procreate, there was a surprise - not a baby boom but a baby bust. Research shows that the US is facing the biggest slump in births in a century and in parts of Europe the decline is even steeper. For those who study population the baby bust was not a revelation. "Having seen how bad the pandemic was I'm not surprised," says Philip N Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland. "But it is still just shocking to see something like this happen in real time."

‘In June last year economists at the Brookings Institute in the United States estimated that US births would fall by 300,000 to half a million babies. At the same time a survey of fertility plans in Europe showed 50% of people in Germany and France who had planned to have a child in 2020 were going to postpone it. In Italy 37% said they had abandoned the idea altogether. A US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report indicates an 8% drop in births in the month of December.’

Read here (BBC, Mar 17, 2021)

Malaysia PM Muhyiddin unveils RM20 billion economic stimulus package

‘Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin announced a new economic stimulus package worth RM20 billion (US$4.8 billion) on Wednesday (Mar 17), one year after Malaysia first imposed a lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. This is the sixth package unveiled since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.’

Read here (Channel News Asia, Mar 17, 2020)

After a year of MCO, recovery is in sight

‘On March 18, 2020, the first Movement Control Order (MCO) was imposed and there was much uncertainty among the public and business community over what would happen next. One year on, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has taken 1,177 lives and infected 314,989 people in the country (as at March 10). Despite the grim circumstances, many see light at the end of the tunnel as Malaysia rolls out its National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (NCIP).

‘Speaking to experts, we identify three main areas that beckons attention — healthcare, economy and last but not least politics. Covid-19 is still raging on globally, and the challenge is to vaccinate the community as quickly as possible so as to not allow the more transmissible variants to get a foothold in the community. Meanwhile, vaccine effectiveness is seen as one key driver for economic recovery. When that has effectively been executed, the focus should be on repairing the damage that has been caused by the pandemic.

‘Many also believe that political stability is one challenge Malaysia will face. There is a need to exit from the emergency rule and for the country to be given a clear mandate from a stable government.

‘In the accompanying stories, we take a look at the winners and losers in the post-pandemic era. Will pandemic winners such as the glove and technology players continue to prosper? Will the tourism, retail, hospitality and manufacturing industries as well as small and medium enterprises move away from the dire conditions brought on by Covid-19 anytime soon?

‘Nonetheless, it has been a fruitful year for local equities since the pandemic outbreak, with healthcare and technology stocks being the top gainers. What can we expect for the rest of the year after stock prices for most sectors rebounded significantly from their lows last year? We speak to heads of research to find out what they think about the market direction.’ 

Get the full story in this week’s issue of The Edge Malaysia.

Read here (The Edge, Mar 13, 2021)

There is no one pandemic anniversary

‘Disaster anniversaries are powerful in part because they’re communal. The bomb went off in an instant. The tornado tore through town in an afternoon. The earthquake rocked the whole region at once. The pandemic, though, did not come to everyone on the same day, or even in the same month, and nor will its anniversary. In this way, as in so many others, this is not an ordinary disaster.

‘For each of the country’s more than 526,000 dead, nine people grieve. Hundreds of thousands have spent time in the ICU, an experience that can bring its own unique trauma. And then there are the smaller losses, the ones that did not threaten lives but still changed them. Today is the day I missed my mother’s funeral. The day I would have gone to prom. Met my grandson. Gotten married.’

Read here (The Atlantic, Mar 12, 2021)

Nobel prize economists Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence call for vaccine equity and debt relief

‘Nobel Prize-winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Michael Spence are spearheading calls for urgent action to help poorer countries recover from the economic ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, including measures to advance vaccine equity, debt relief, and bolstering fiscal resources for cash-strapped nations.

‘The proposals were outlined in a new interim report released on Thursday – the one-year anniversary of the global pandemic – by the Institute for New Economic Thinking’s Commission on Global Economic Transformation, co-chaired by Stiglitz and Spence.‘

Read here (Aljazeera, Mar 11, 2021)\

The pandemic and the economic crisis: A global agenda for urgent action

Read full text here (Institute for New Economic Thinking, March, 2021)

How the US pandemic response went wrong — and what went right — during a year of Covid

‘Among the biggest shocks was that the U.S. fared worse than most other countries, with more than 29 million cases and nearly 530,000 deaths as of this writing. “We absolutely can’t say that we had the most robust response to the pandemic, up till this point, because we have had a higher death rate per capita than so many other places,” says Monica Gandhi, a professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.

‘As the country raced to react to this new and terrifying scourge, mistakes were made that together cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Yet the tireless efforts of health care workers, along with an unprecedented vaccine push, have saved countless others. Scientific American interviewed scientists and public health experts about the biggest mistakes in the U.S.’s response, some of the key successes and the lingering questions that still need to be answered.’

Read here (Scientific American, Mar 11, 2021)

Pandemic: One year - A round-up by Associated Press

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The Associated Press explores the ensuing year of loss, perseverance and hope:

• Faith leaders' year of pandemic: grief, solace, resilience
• As pandemic enters 2nd year, voices of resilience emerge
• AP-NORC poll: People of color bear COVID-19′s economic brunt
• ‘It’s exhausting.’ A year of distance learning wears thin
• As pandemic enters 2nd year, voices of resilience emerge
• AP-NORC poll: People of color bear COVID-19′s economic brunt
• Only on AP: Italian doctor a chronic COVID patient
• One year on: stars’ COVID-19 experiences
• March 11, 2020: The night sports, as we knew them, ended
• AP-NORC poll: 1 in 5 in US lost someone close in pandemic
• A year on, WHO still struggling to manage pandemic response
• Why the pandemic left long-term scars on global job market
• After pandemic year, weary world looks back — and forward
• A homebound year has meant rethinking our rooms, belongings
• And more...

Read here (Associated Press, Mar 11, 2021)

A year on, WHO still struggling to manage pandemic response

‘When the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a pandemic one year ago Thursday, it did so only after weeks of resisting the term and maintaining that the highly infectious virus could still be stopped. A year later, the U.N. agency is still struggling to keep on top of the evolving science of COVID-19, to persuade countries to abandon their nationalistic tendencies and help get vaccines where they’re needed most.

‘The agency made some costly missteps along the way: It advised people against wearing masks for months and asserted that COVID-19 wasn’t widely spread in the air. It also declined to publicly call out countries — particularly China — for mistakes that senior WHO officials grumbled about privately. That created some tricky politics that challenged WHO’s credibility and wedged it between two world powers, setting off vociferous Trump administration criticism that the agency is only now emerging from.’

Read here (APNews, Mar 11, 2021)