Covax, the organization behind this global initiative to push for
worldwide Covid vaccination is in a lot of trouble.
Turns out that this global organization has run out of money.
And this is not only a disaster when it comes to really combating and
getting past Covid.
It's also a disaster because it shows the vulnerabilities in place when we rely on a
charity driven model. As opposed to really rethinking
the prophet model behind vaccinations and
behind pharmaceutical companies. So Seth Berkley,
who is the chief executive of Gavi, that is the vaccine alliance that helped
form Covax. So that Covax will no longer be able to accept new dose donations.
That come with sarin come without syringes or other components.
Because it doesn't have the cash
left to afford such items,
which donor countries often do
not provide. Asked how much money the project has left.
Berkeley answered bluntly none.
And how much money does Covax need to operate?
How much money do they need in order to fulfill their objective of getting
the low-income countries fully vaccinated?
Well, Berkley said that Covax will need a whopping $5.2 billion
dollars to fund its vaccination efforts this year.
As the world continues to fight the highly transmissible omicron variant and
looks ahead to potential new mutations in the future.
Now, in order to really understand the point that I'm trying to make with this
story.
I think it's important to see how it is that wealthier countries across the globe
are needlessly making this pandemic last longer than it needs to. And how they're
essentially hoarding vaccines,
how are they able to do it? A lot of
it has to do with the money that wealthy countries are willing to pay upfront.
In the form of research and development
and also in the form of purchasing mass quantities of the vaccine ahead of time.
They essentially get to
jump ahead of the line. And this video explains in greater detail
how that happens. >> By January 2021 96% of the pfizer
Biontech vaccine doses that were scheduled to be produced by the end of the year had
already been bought and 100% of Moderna's. Countries representing
16% of the global population held over half of the doses from the most
promising vaccine developers. Basically rich countries got vaccines.
Poor countries didn't,
>> Most countries can't afford to make
multiple high risk investments early on. So they wait until the vaccine
is further along in the approval process. And by then they're already at the back of
a very long line. Peru for example,
made a bilateral deal with AstraZeneca. But won't
see those doses until at least September. >> Those that purchase first or
made the biggest orders or invested into the research and development are standing
at the front of the line. Which is why the us has gotten 240 million
doses of vaccine so far at least. And most of the poor countries in
the world don't have 240 million doses combined.
>> So that video is a little outdated.
So, when you hear the figures,
they're just understand that it's a video that Vax had put out in April of 2021.
But it did a good job explaining in detail
how this process works. Why it is that wealthier countries
are able to jump ahead of the line. And get access to these vaccines before
low-income countries are able to do so. It is because of these deals
that they make with pharmaceutical companies while providing a significant
portion of the funding for research and development for the vaccines.
And it also has to do with the fact that
they have the resources necessary to buy mass quantities of the vaccines ahead of
time in these deals. Now, Covax came along, right?
Covax formed in response to
the inequality that we're seeing in regard to vaccine distribution.
And I wanna be clear, look,
Covax failing in its objective. But that's not to say that the individuals
behind it or bad people. But it is to critique how we can't rely on
the whims of charity or goodwill by private institutions or
private companies to do the right thing. We need to actually have a system
in place that puts people over profits. And
unless we deal with that systemic issue, really we're gonna keep running
into the same problem over and over again. And if you happen to be someone who is
not concerned about the inequality that impacts low income countries and
you're only concerned about yourself. Well, think about the fact that this
leads to future mutations. This leads to coronavirus continuing to
thrive and it really doesn't matter what happens within the borders of your own
country. This is a global pandemic and
we need all hands on deck to ensure that we combat it in the most equal but
more importantly, effective way possible, right?
Now, with that said, it's important to understand what Covax tried to do and then
we'll explain why it failed, let's watch. >> One program underway is designed to
work as a sort of middleman between countries and
the drug companies making vaccines. It's
called Covax. It's an initiative formed by three global
health groups, including the World Health Organization.
And its main objective is to provide
vaccines to 92 middle and low income countries that were shut out for
making their own deals. It does this using a two part system.
The first part allows high
income countries to buy into and access multiple vaccines at once.
So instead of one country giving $2
billion directly to AstraZeneca. They'd give the money to Covax which would
use it to fund several different vaccines. This way if one or
two of them failed early on,
it wouldn't be a total loss. The other vaccines
in the portfolio would make up for it. It's a multilateral system that's much
lower risk for those countries than a bilateral one.
The idea is that Covax could use that
larger purchasing power to negotiate deals with manufacturers and
developers on a global scale. Which would drive the cost down and
fund vaccine development.
The second part buys vaccines for lower-income countries.
It's funded by donations from wealthier governments and charities.
The US alone has pledged $4 billion dollars to this fund.
That $4 billion was clearly not enough as I mention earlier on this story. Covax is
now broke and does not have the funding necessary to continue
on with it's mission of purchasing vaccines on behalf
of low income countries and then distributing them.
So this is a huge issue and there are solutions to this.
One of the solutions our president Joe Biden purported to be in favor of and then
he did absolutely nothing about. We need to wave vaccine patents to
share that technology with low
income countries that are seeking
to manufacture it on their own. That
is a simple solution to it. But as we know,
there is a very aggressive lobbying effort to prevent that from happening.
Not just here in the United States, but
also in several wealthy European countries as well.
As an epidemiologist from Yale says in
this tweet. This is why the charity model of vaccine
delivery cannot work. We hoarded doses, made big promises and
yet shared that technology now for mRNA Covid 19 vaccines.
Pfizer and
moderna are prolonging this pandemic with their greed and
that's absolutely true. And again, let me just reiterate,
Biden supports waiving the vaccine patents rhetorically.
I mean he put the language out there but
he needs to do more than that. Is he willing to go further to ensure that
he actually follows through. And this actually happens well.
Despite benefiting massively from public
funding, the corporations have refused to share their vaccine recipes with
the world. And the Biden administration has thus far
declined to use its legal authority to force their hands.
Again, saying that you support waiving
the vaccine patents is very different from actually using the power you
have to make it happen. And Biden has not made it happen.
And of course there's also been pushback
from wealthy European countries as well. Now there are other issues with Covax and
I wanted to get into that. Since its inception in 2020 the vaccine
delivery effort has been hindered by internal dysfunction as well as
pharmaceutical companies not living up to their contractual obligations.
Leaving Covax with fewer doses than
expected. And
doses also frequently arrived in recipient countries later than planned or
close to their expiration dates leading to significant waste.
It seems like there's a far more efficient way to do this.
Let me continue.
And if you wanna take a look at how much this inequality,
vaccine inequality impacts low income countries.
To date just 9.7% of people in low income countries have received at least one,
just one coronavirus vaccine dose according to our world in data.
One recent analysis estimated that the world needs around 22
billion additional mRNA doses to end the global pandemic.
It's just so abundantly clear that what's standing in the way of dealing with
this pandemic effectively is the profit motive that's been in place for a while.
We've all experienced it on a personal level.
When we have a medical emergency, when someone in our family needs
a pharmaceutical drug to stay alive and they can't afford it.
We've all experienced it on a personal level.
Now for the first time in a very long time in this country.
We're dealing with it on a mass scale and it's not just about this country,
it's about the globe.
When you put profits over human lives, this is what you're gonna get again and
again.
You're gonna have a shortage of hospital beds because it just doesn't make
sense profit wise to have hospital beds that typically sit empty for for
several years on end, okay.
You're going to have a system in place where some people have an abundance
of access to vaccines and other countries have no access at all.
You're gonna have a situation where a pandemic could be dealt with effectively.
But is needlessly prolonged because there is a profit
motive in place that makes it so that is the real problem.
This is not a negative commentary on the good intentions of Covax.
But it is to show that when we just sit back and rely on charities to handle
things, we're gonna see failure and we're gonna see people die.
And so the next time you hear someone whining about how Covid just won't end.
Let them know about what's really going on. Let them know about how this is a
easily transmittable and easily transmittable virus. Something that is
impacting not just this country, but the world. And the profit motive and
the systemic issues that we have
in place is preventing us from getting past it.