Nature designs her viruses well. If culling the herd, in a human-being-overpopulated planet, is the goal, she seems to have generated the full cooperation of mankind towards mass self-destruction. For those who arrogantly assume that if they have been exposed to the COVID virus (via asymptomatic infection or manifest infection followed by recovery), they have permanent immunity, I ask: “How do you know that? Are you sure?” There are already cases of double infection. For those who continue to deny its potency, I wish them well but suspect that will not be their fate.
The virus is also mutating – normal for most infectious agents, and most mutations do not negate vaccines against the initial incarnation of the incipient agent. But we are not completely sure. And while the new mRNA genetic synthesis used to generate a viable vaccine only takes days to develop once the genes are properly identified, the required testing process can take months or longer. If the recently developed vaccines need a tweak to respond to the new, much more infectious variant (which seems to have emanated in the UK), that will take more time. If the recently released vaccines prove ineffective or less effective against this new strain, guess what? While we think the vaccines will still work, however, so far there is no clear indication that there are vaccines that will work on children, particularly younger children. Even if kids have some innate resistance to the virus (not all do), they can still continue to carry that infection back into the adult community.
The United States has manhandled the pandemic though a combination of false narratives, denial and massive under-planning combined with massive over-promising. The Trump administration pledged that by the end of 2020, twenty million vaccinations will have been implemented. It will probably be only slightly less than two million, around 10% of what was promised. Pretty impacting only frontline workers and first responders. Germany, where the BionTech-Pfizer vaccine was invented, is already implementing mass vaccinations on a scale that looms as months or more away in the United States. The European Union is on the same track.
While that 40% anti-vax population is fading somewhat, black, Latino, Native American and rural communities remain disproportionately skeptical, and some red states still seem mired in denial over the risk, still unwilling to wear masks or entertain vaccinations. Despite local hospitals running out of beds and ICU capacity as infections and death spike disproportionately where the disease is not taken seriously. These realities have caused some changes in herd immunity targets from the experts most Americans have come to trust.
“Top White House coronavirus adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci has appeared to shift his stance on what percentage of the U.S. population needs to get a COVID-19 vaccine in order for the country to reach herd immunity… Herd immunity is when a large percentage of a specific population becomes immune to a virus; immunity can happen naturally or by way of vaccines to prevent viral infections like the flu and COVID-19.
“The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director told The New York Times in an interview published Thursday [9/24] that between 70% and 90% of the U.S. population would need to get inoculated (or vaccinated) against COVID-19 in order for the country to reach herd immunity. .. Fauci indicated that he based his shifting statements on public polling on the popularity of coronavirus vaccines.” Fox News.com, December 25th.
But all of this may be the tip of the iceberg. If a significant part of the planet does not generate large scale immunity to the COVID virus, the virus will fester, perhaps mutate into vaccine resistant varieties, waiting for an opportunity to cross back into the rest of the world, even if immunized, with a massive new resurgent wave of toxic viral infection. What is happening, what appears to be a rather consistent global theme on a variety of issues, is that the rich get richer, get first crack at the “best available,” leaving the rest to “live with it.” That applies just as readily to nations as it does to individuals.
“The race to vaccinate the world against a once-in-a-century pandemic [we hope] has begun in an all-too-familiar way: every country for itself… Rich nations have gobbled up nearly all the global supply of the two leading COVID-19 vaccines through the end of 2021, leaving many middle-income countries to turn to unproven drugs developed by China and Russia while poorer states face long waits for their first doses.
“‘Richer countries will be able to vaccinate ... their whole populations before vulnerable groups in many developing countries get covered,’ said Suerie Moon , co-director of the Global Health Center at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva… As a result, the pandemic may continue to kill people across much of the world for years, delay a global economic recovery and eventually resurge even in nations that manage to control it through vaccination.
“Experts say the inequities are the predictable result of a global health system in which money often counts more than the public good — and where vaccines are costly commercial products developed and patented by a few huge drug companies… The gap in access has sparked calls for emergency measures that would allow poorer countries to manufacture and import generic versions of COVID-19 vaccines.
“In October, India and South Africa asked the World Trade Organization to waive intellectual property protections for those drugs, just as it did for some medications used to treat HIV — a move credited with saving millions of lives in Africa… Humanitarian groups that support the plan — which they have dubbed ‘the people’s vaccine’ — warn that without it, 9 out of 10 people in dozens of poor countries will miss out on COVID-19 vaccinations next year… ‘If we do nothing, it’s going to be well into late 2022 or early 2023 before even half of the low-income countries are vaccinated,’ said Niko Lusiani, a senior advisor with Oxfam America, the global health charity.
“The proposal is opposed by the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom — wealthy WTO members that helped finance vaccine development and argue that such innovation would be impossible without patent protection.
“The U.S. government provided the vast majority of funding for development of the vaccine made by Moderna and the National Institutes of Health. It also struck purchase agreements with the drugmaker and with Pfizer and BioNTech while their vaccines were still being tested. Those deals reduced risk for the companies and allowed the U.S. to secure 300 million shots.” Shashank Bengali and Kate Linthicum writing for the December 27th Los Angeles Times.
As of Christmas, the world has aggregated 1.75 million deaths, 320 thousand here in the United States. Numbers that are rising too fast. On Christmas day, here in Los Angeles with zero ICU capacity left, there was one death every ten minutes. Given that permanent isolation in a globally interconnected world is not economically or socially viable, what happens on a mass basis anywhere on earth is a threat to the entire planet. We need more here in the United States, which is unjustifiably behind its developed nations peers, and a whole lot more in every corner of the planet.
I’m Peter Dekom, and while big money talks, if it ignores these obvious global anomalies, the blowback will generate some very loud screams of pain.
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