When Should the War Against Biden's Neoliberalism Begin?

The plague doctor cometh, and he don't cometh cheap.

by Thomas Neuburger

A re-elected Trump will almost certainly be welcomed with a General Strike.
—Yours truly

Cynic that I am, I'm convinced that Biden will betray us the minute he's in office. OK, not the exact minute, but pretty soon thereafter.

His current campaign promises include...

• No ban on fracking.
• No Medicare for All.
• No withdrawal from Afghanistan (or anywhere else we're "at war")
• A "baby steps" Green New Deal that won't hurt his Big Oil donors.
• A return to austerity spending as soon as Covid allows.

...and a host of other travesties, indignities and tortures he plans to force on the plebs from his "practical, centrist" seat at the peak of power.

But the worst of his policies, one that's likely to come the soonest, involves Covid and its soon-to-be-produced vaccine.

In a moral world, the vaccine would be made free to the citizens of any nation with access to it. In a practical world, it would be given to everyone with an arm or hip capable of receiving the needle. How else can the virus be removed from the population, except by universal vaccination? This, for example, was how polio was wiped out — for years, every school child in America of a certain age was vaccinated for free.

The neoliberal world, however — the world of government-protected and government-supplied profit — is not a moral world. It's not even a practical world. Which means that biotech companies will vie with each other to soak the population of as many dollars as they can and withhold the vaccine from any who can't pay.

Gilead Floats a "Deal"

Consider this from Matt Taibbi, in a piece titled, "Big Pharma’s Covid-19 Profiteers: How the race to develop treatments and a vaccine will create a historic windfall for the industry — and everyone else will pay the price."

Daniel O'Day, the CEO of Gilead, makers of remdesivir, an already existing drug with promising Covid treatment possibilities, recently played a one-two game with what it thinks the drug's new pricing ought to be, assuming the approvals come in as expected.

Note the twisted logic he uses to get to his implied price — $48,000 per dose:

In a breezy open letter, Daniel O’Day explained how much his company planned on charging for a course of remdesivir, one of many possible treatments for Covid-19. “In the weeks since we learned of remdesivir’s potential against Covid-19, one topic has attracted more speculation than any other: what price we might set for the medicine,” O’Day wrote, before plunging into a masterpiece of corporate doublespeak.

The CEO noted a study by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health, showing that Covid-19 patients taking remdesivir recovered after 11 days, compared with 15 days for placebo takers. In the U.S., he wrote, “earlier hospital discharge would result in hospital savings of approximately $12,000 per patient.”

The hilarious implication seemed to be that by shortening hospital stays by four days on average, remdesivir was worth $48,000 a dose.

One, Gilead could charge $48,000 for the drug. But two, Gilead was inclined to be generous: "Although 'we can see the value that remdesivir provides' — i.e., we could have charged $48,000 per dose — Day wrote, 'we have decided to price remdesivir well below this value' ... a measly $3,120 per patient."

A great many drugs, new and repurposed, are swirling in the Covid world, some as treatments and some as vaccines. One of the latter, in fact, is Russian (perish the thought!) and according to The Lancet, the premier British medical journal, it may be promising.

If the vaccine proves effective, the Russians, just to piss us off, might even decide to make it available for free. But I don't think any Western-produced vaccine, or treatment, will be offered so generously.

Covid Treatments and Vaccines Should Be Free to the User

Yet it's impossible, on moral or practical grounds, to make the case, that during a global pandemic (a) the price should be a multiple of the cost of manufacture; and (b) any user should spend a single dollar to receive it.

This is a perfect place for government intervention into the "free" market (it's really a captive market) on behalf of the citizens it claims to represent and protect. First, any Covid vaccine or treatment should cost a fraction, not a multiple, above the cost of manufacture — i.e., profits should be kept low. And second, government should be the purchaser of these drugs, not the patient, and should provide them to patients for free.

At least one vaccine of decent effectiveness is likely to come, at latest, sometime next year, perhaps less than six months into Biden's first year in office. Treatments may come sooner than that. (By the way, there's a very promising avenue of treatment — with existing drugs and technology — outlined here.)

What Will a President Biden Do?

With hope in sight, what will a President Biden do? Will he serve his donors and his policy prejudices, as he always has, or serve the people who, however reluctantly, elected him?

Here's one answer. If the former — if he gouges the patient public to enrich drug companies like Gilead — or if he gouges the government and pays "full price" for drugs the government charges patients nothing for — he should be made to feel an amount of pain equivalent to that which he inflicts.

And he should be made to feel this pain even during his so-called "honeymoon," even while he's still celebrating his victory over the monster he replaced, if that's what he deserves.

To be more blunt: If on Day One a President Joe Biden enacts policies that in any way hamper full and complete relief from the suffering this nation has already endured under Trump, he should be welcomed as a second-term Trump will almost certainly be welcomed.

A re-elected Trump will almost certainly be welcomed with a General Strike. A Biden who refuses to heal the public for free should see the same welcome.

When should the war against Biden's neoliberal policies begin? On the first betrayal.
  

Would You Take A Vaccine From Donald Trump?

My Twitter polls aren't scientific-- sort of like Trump's desperation to get a COVID vaccine out before the election, whether ir works, doesn't work-- or kills or maims some of the people who use it. But I enjoy my Twitter polls and the one above is just that. I can't vote in my own own polls but I would have voted for the last choice, like almost everyone else did. Now a recent Gallup poll about the pandemic-- unlike my twitter poll or Trump's decision to force the FDA to release an untested vaccine and approve a bogus treatment-- is scientific. And it shows that more than a third of the country is skeptical about taking a free, FDA-approved vaccine:

Gallup wrote that they have consistently seen that U.S. party preferences play a strong role in Americans' views on COVID-19 and this new poll shows that 81% of Democrats are willing to be vaccinated today comparesd with 59% of independents and just under half of Republicans, 47%. Odd, but presumably Democrats aren't following the dots to Trump's manipulation of science for the sake of his doomed campaign.

As the situation stands today, the nation's influencers -- including health professionals, policymakers and leaders -- who see a vaccine as a way forward may have their work cut out for them in persuading Americans to take advantage of such an option. Policymakers in government, healthcare, industry and education will need to anticipate that a significant proportion of the population will be hesitant to get a vaccine, even at no cost. Some of the most at-risk populations, including non-White and rural Americans, may not only be hesitant but resistant to getting vaccinated. Employers continuing to grapple with new workplace realities must also anticipate that a number of their workers may resist a vaccine.

Such resistance is not unprecedented. When Gallup in 1954 asked U.S. adults who had heard or read about the then-new polio vaccine, "Would you like to take this new polio vaccine (to keep people from getting polio) yourself?" just 60% said they would, while 31% said they would not. So far, willingness to adopt a new vaccine looks similar today. Leaders in favor of a vaccine may be well-served to study what caused the public to ultimately adopt earlier vaccines as they consider how best to influence Americans to take advantage of such an option now.

It isn't going to help public confidence that Trump, who is extremely distrusted-- more so than any other president in living memory-- pressured the FDA to approve a treatment that many scientists claim isn't ready for general use yet. Expect to hear a lot about "convalescent plasma," which has already been in use for treating some COVID-19 patients. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said he is "optimistic" that the treatment may work and cautioned that the FDA will work with researchers "to study the safety and effectiveness of convalescent plasma in treating patients infected with the novel coronavirus."

Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, tweeted yesterday that he's "been optimistic about convalescent plasma as therapy. But optimism isn't science. We need results of adequately powered randomized trials. Issuing an EUA without it would make such trials harder. And erode the credibility of the FDA." The FDA? Didn't Trump call them the "Deep State" trying to sabotage his campaign by withholding a vaccine last week? That probably puts Hahn's and other peoples' lives in danger for real.

Politico reported that the FDA "held off on the decision last week over concerns from government scientists that evidence for the treatment’s effectiveness is thin-- prompting Trump to accuse the FDA of slow-walking the therapy to harm his reelection chances without offering any evidence to support his claim. It is not clear whether the FDA has received additional clinical trial data in the last week that would support the therapy's use." Does Trump's threat count as "additional clinical trial data?"

And that's more-- as in to hell with normal American regulatory standards so Trumpanzee can make some kind of bogus claims that by fast-tracking an experimental coronavirus vaccine from the UK for use in America ahead of the presidential election, he might get more votes. "One option being explored to speed up the availability of a vaccine," reported the Financial Times would involve the US Food and Drug Administration awarding 'emergency use authorization' in October to a vaccine being developed in a partnership between AstraZeneca and Oxford university, based on the results from a relatively small UK study if it is successful."





This has disaster writ large all over it. And I think there are numerous people in the U.S.-- at least according to this new CBS New/YouGov poll who aren't getting anywhere near the front line for any vaccines that smack of a Trump stunt.

Don't Blame The Pandemic On Trump-- Blame It On Trump And The Republican Party

A new poll from CNN found that almost 70% of Americans now know someone personally who has been diagnosed with COVID-19 and about the same number (69%) of Americans say the U.S. response to the coronavirus outbreak makes them feel embarrassed. About 8 in 10 (79%) say they are angry about the way things are going in the country today, including a horrifying-- for GOP candidates-- 51% who say they are very angry. Only 12% of voters say they are not angry at all. Anger can be a strong motivator at election time-- both for turn out and for decisions up and down the ballot. 58% of voters say they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the pandemic.

Despite Trump's nonsensical babbling about how the pandemic will just disappear, 55% of voters say they know the worst is yet to come. They're right, too-- and the 43% who say they believe that economic conditions caused by the pandemic are worsening, are also right.

On Tuesday, there were a quarter of a million new cases worldwide, bringing the total worldwide number of confirmed cases to 22,297,453, along with 783,519 deaths. In Western Europe, where a second wave appears to be starting, countries that looked like they had tamed the beast through strict social distancing and masking mandates are now starting to see serious increases of new cases again. The reports from Monday, ---> Tuesday, ---> Wednesday and ---> Thursday augur poorly for the U.S., where the mandates have been much more lax almost everywhere-- the Trump states primarily. The worst hit western European countries this week (and cases per million residents as of Thursday):

• Spain +1,833 ---> 2,128 ---> +3,715 ---> 3,349 (8,645 per million residents)
• Germany +1,689 ---> 1,419 ---> +664 ---> +1,584 (2,759 cases per million residents)
• U.K. +713 ---> +1,089 ---> +812 ---> +1,182 (4,744 cases per million residents)
• France +493 ---> +2,238 ---> 3,776 ---> 4,771 (3,520 cases per million residents)
• Netherlands +482 ---> +489 ---> +552 ---> +529 (3,795 per million residents)
• Belgium +454 ---> +211---> +363 ---> +582 (6,854 per million residents)
• Italy +320 ---> +401 ---> +642 ---> +840 (4,237 per million residents)

It's far worse in the U.S. and we're still riding out Wave One. The Trump governors are causing unnecessary sickness and deaths in their states and each of them has far, far worse situations than even the worst-hit European countries. These are the worst of the Trumpist governors with their new cases Tuesday, ---> Wednesday and ---> Thursday and the number of cases per million residents in their states. Notice how that last crucial statistic compares to countries like Italy, Spain and Belgium, the countries that were so badly devastated by Wave One and are getting hit again now.

• Ron DeSantis (FL) +3,838 ---> +4,115 ---> +4,555 (27,405 cases per million residents)
• Doug Ducey (AZ) +915 ---> +637 ---> +723 (26,966 cases per million residents)
• Tate Reeves (MS) +795 ---> +1,348 ---> +894 (25,351 cases per million residents)
• Brian Kemp (GA) +2,816 ---> +2,305 ---> 2,759 (23,239 cases per million residents)
• Kay Ivey (AL) +1,357 ---> +1,117 ---> +971 (22,934 cases per million residents)
• Henry McMaster (SC) +719 ---> +739 ---> 909 (21,232 cases per million residents)
• Bill Lee (TN) +1,034 ---> +2,002 ---> 1,375 (20,379 cases per million residents)
• Greg Abbott (TX) +7,872 ---> +5,965 ---> 5,184 (20,370 cases per million residents)
• Mike Parson (MO) +1,185 ---> +960 ---> 1,125 (11,837 cases per million residents)

On Wednesday, Wall Street Journal reporters Allison Prang and Talal Ansari noted that colleges "have felt the impact of the virus on the start of the new school year. The University of Notre Dame moved in-person classes online for at least two weeks after seeing an increase in coronavirus cases. 'The virus is a formidable foe,' University of Notre Dame President Rev. John Jenkins said in a statement on Tuesday. 'For the past week, it has been winning. Let us as the Fighting Irish join together to contain it,' he added. The South Bend, Indiana college reported an additional 82 positive cases of 420 people tested Monday, the highest number of cases the school has reported and of tests completed in a single day by far. An additional 73 positive cases were reported on Tuesday, bringing the total to 222, according to a publicly available tracking system set up by the university. The cases have been linked to two off-campus parties on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, according to university officials. The majority of students testing positive are seniors, mostly male." And Notre Dame is certainly not the only college filled with idiots.

Opposition Research by Nancy Ohanian

Michigan State University President Samuel Stanley Jr. said the school would hold all fall semester classes online, citing safety concerns for students and staff. That comes a day after University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said it was moving undergraduate classes online starting Wednesday, after a series of Covid-19 outbreaks on and around campus since starting classes last week.

Public schools in several states, including Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Georgia, closed to in-person learning this month after students and staffers tested positive for Covid-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, sending thousands into quarantine and remote learning. Several superintendents working to reopen schools also tested positive, and at least one died.

Thomas Tsai, an assistant professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Department of Health Policy and Management, said colleges and universities have put a lot of thought into testing for the virus, and he hasn’t seen that level of discussion for school districts on a national level.

“There’s one opportunity to do this well because once you open you want the schools to stay open as much as possible,” he said on a press call Wednesday.

In New York City, where the school year is scheduled to start next month, Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city’s positivity rate for the virus was 0.24%, the lowest since the pandemic started, but that the city is “nowhere near” herd immunity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines herd immunity as when “a sufficient proportion of a population is immune to an infectious disease” to make it unlikely to spread among people.

Mr. de Blasio also said he didn’t have an estimate of how many New Yorkers have permanently left the city because of the pandemic. “It is way too soon to know what the long term” effect will be, he said.

The city’s seven-day average of new cases was 320. The mayor said 16 cases in Borough Park in Brooklyn were tied to a big wedding.

And Thursday morning, the Washington Post reported that evidence is growing that children are playing a larger role in transmission than originally believed. A study released yesterday by the Journal of Pediatrics confirms two other credible stdies that offer insights about children and COVID-19 transmission, namely that children younger than 5 with mild or moderate illness have much higher levels of virus in the nose compared to older children and adults. But "because children tend to exhibit mild symptoms or none at all, they were largely ignored in the early part of the outbreak and not tested. But they may have been acting as silent spreaders all along."

Among the other preliminary findings: Age did not impact viral load (or amount of virus present) and that viral load appeared especially high about two days into the infection.

Another eye-opening finding involves immune receptors known as ACE2 that the virus uses to invade the body. Scientists had hypothesized that because children may have lower numbers of the receptors, they may be less likely to be infected or to transmit the virus. The data confirmed that younger children do have lower numbers of receptors than older children and adults-- but that this did not seem to be related to viral load.

One more thing-- and I hope all DWT readers had already figured this out on their own: Russia's claims of a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine are "bogus," according to Fauci... and everyone else who understands what's going on with the vaccines being experimented with now. On Putin's spurious claims, Fauci said "It's not bogus because he has a vaccine, what's bogus is to say you have a vaccine that's safe and effective. There's a big difference between having a vaccine and proving in trials, that are really well-designed, randomized placebo-controlled trials, that when you're starting to give it widely to hundreds of millions of people, that you're giving a safe and effective vaccine. The Russians, to my knowledge and I'm pretty sure I'm correct, have not been studying this intensively in very large, randomized, placebo-controlled trials."




And that same CNN poll referenced above asked respondents "If a vaccine to prevent coronavirus infection were widely available at a low cost, would you, personally, try to get that vaccine, or not?" 40% answered "NO." They were also asked "How confident are you that the ongoing trials for a vaccine to prevent coronavirus are properly balancing speed and safety as they move toward making a vaccine available to the public?" 37% said they are not confident, almost half of whom are aggressively not confident. Perhaps that will change once Trump is out of the White House and adults start filling important positions in government. If not... we're in big trouble. The immunization program won't work if 40% of the population refuses to participate.

Would You Trust A Trump-Endorsed Vaccine In October?

What would Trump not do to win? After all, he's obsessed with the idea of going down in the history books as the first American president to go to prison. If he loses in November, it may happen-- not likely, but possible. Even a worthless corporate shill like Biden has publicly pledged to not pardon him. I suppose Señor T could try pardoning himself but that might not stand up. Or he could make a deal with Pence at some time between tomorrow and Wednesday, January 20, 2021-- exactly 24 weeks from today-- when Biden is inaugurated, and resign so that Pence will be able to say he was once president and so that Trump and his family have iron-clad presidential pardons.

Reporting for Raw Story yesterday, clinical psychologists John Gartner and Alan Blotcky wrote that Trump is becoming increasingly dangerous and mentally unhinged. "Trump," they wrote, "is a malignant narcissist, a diagnosis introduced by the famed analyst Erich Fromm, a refugee from Nazi Germany, to explain the psychology of Hitler, Stalin  and other grandiose destructive dictators throughout history. It has four components: narcissism, paranoia, psychopathy and sadism. Malignant narcissists enjoy destroying their real and imagined enemies. It makes them feel powerful, they enjoy inflicting pain, and it is an effective gangster’s tool to intimidate others to do their bidding. If they have been publicly humiliated, made to look weak, they must exact revenge viciously, fiercely, dramatically and preferably publicly. Trump’s philosophy: 'When somebody screws you, you screw them back in spades... You’ve gotta hit people hard. And it’s not so much for that person. It’s other people watch.' Since June 1, Trump’s polls have plummeted, he has been widely mocked and jeered for his dishonest and  ineffective response to the pandemic, protestors have continued in the streets, and his humiliation has continued. His response has been to bring Lafayette Park to scale. Unmarked military have abducted protestors off the streets of Portland despite the outrage of local and state officials. Trump has signaled an intent to send troops to Albuquerque, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore-- none of whom want them-- arguing he must 'dominate' US cities."

When a malignant narcissist like Trump says “Make America Great Again,” what he really means is make ME great-- or else. Malignant narcissists will demonize and destroy anyone who gets in their way, and the list of enemies always grows both because they are paranoid, and because their behavior provokes real opposition. Staffs are purged over and over for disloyalty. And the categories of people in the population who are enemies grows. First, we were defending the border from “infestations” by immigrants, sadistically taking away their children and putting them into concentration camps in the desert. Now those same Border Patrol agents-- who have shown their willingness to commit crimes against humanity for Trump-- are being drafted into service as Trump’s personal Republican Guard to attack our citizens in our streets.

...[W]with Trump, we have a Reichstag fire every night, as we watch a similar process take place in slow motion.

How bad can it get if Trump feels power slipping away? When Hitler knew his war was lost, he too went into a bunker. Before he committed suicide, he issued an order known as the “Nero Decree” calling for “scorched earth.” “All military transport and communication facilities, industrial establishments and supply depots, as well as anything else of value within Reich territory…will be destroyed.” Hitler told Speers, “It is not necessary to worry about what the German people will need for elemental survival…it is best for us to destroy even these things” because “only those who are inferior will remain after this struggle, for the good have already been killed.”

In other words, they failed to make Hitler great, and so the surviving Germans deserved to perish alongside him. Like a homicidal abusive spouse, he was determined that if he couldn’t have Germany then nobody would.

Trump is not Hitler. But like Hitler, he is a malignant narcissist. If we don’t make Trump great, he will predictably use his power to punish us. And if we don’t submit–he may just try to destroy us. Tear gas in the streets and one hundred and fifty thousand dead would suggest that he has already begun.

So what would Trump do to win? Anything. And one he is sure to try is announcing, perhaps distributing, some partially safe-- which means partially unsafe-- vaccine. The NY Times had a team of reporters-- Sharon LaFraniere, Katie Thomas, Noah Weiland, Peter Baker and Annie Karni-- look into it over the weekend. Trump has something called Operation Warp Speed whose goal is to develop a vaccine, something that usually takes 2 years, in October, in time for the election. The quintet wrote that "The ensuing race for a vaccine-- in the middle of a campaign in which the president’s handling of the pandemic is the key issue after he has spent his time in office undermining science and the expertise of the federal bureaucracy-- is now testing the system set up to ensure safe and effective drugs to a degree never before seen. Under constant pressure from a White House anxious for good news and a public desperate for a silver bullet to end the crisis, the government’s researchers are fearful of political intervention in the coming months and are struggling to ensure that the government maintains the right balance between speed and rigorous regulation, according to interviews with administration officials, federal scientists and outside experts. Even in a less politically charged environment, there would be a fraught debate about how much to accelerate the process of trials and approval. The longer that vaccines are tested before being released, the likelier they are to be safe and effective... [E]xperts inside and outside the government still say they fear the White House will push the Food and Drug Administration to overlook insufficient data and give at least limited emergency approval to a vaccine, perhaps for use by specific groups like front-line health care workers, before the vote on Nov. 3."




Trump will stop at nothing. And neither will Kushner-in-law, who is also more than a little concerned about a blanket pardon before Biden takes over.

“There are a lot of people on the inside of this process who are very nervous about whether the administration is going to reach their hand into the Warp Speed bucket, pull out one or two or three vaccines, and say, ‘We’ve tested it on a few thousand people, it looks safe, and now we are going to roll it out,’” said Dr. Paul A. Offit of the University of Pennsylvania, who is a member of the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee.

“They are really worried about that,” he added. “And they should be.”

Mr. Trump relentlessly touts progress toward a vaccine, raising hopes of quick approval. Touring a North Carolina biotechnology lab last week, he vowed to “deliver a vaccine in record time.” In a tweet last month, he explicitly tied vaccines to his re-election hopes.

On a campaign call with supporters in Pennsylvania on Sunday evening, Mr. Trump said the “F.D.A. has been great, at my instruction,” and he again raised hopes of rapid progress.

“We expect to have a vaccine available very, very early before the end of the year, far ahead of schedule,” he said. “We’re very close to having that finalized.”

The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, who is helping to steer the re-election campaign from the White House, is a regular participant in meetings of a board formed to oversee the vaccine effort.

...White House officials said that Mr. Trump would not distort the vaccine review process to help his campaign. “The rapid research, development, trials and eventual distribution of a Covid-19 vaccine is emblematic of President Trump’s highest priority: the health and safety of the American people,” said Judd Deere, a White House spokesman. “It has nothing to do with politics.”

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told lawmakers on Friday that he remained “cautiously optimistic that we will have a vaccine by the end of this year and as we go into 2021.”

Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, has not ruled out emergency approval of a vaccine.

“We would consider using an emergency use authorization if we felt that the risks associated with the vaccine were much lower than the risks of not having a vaccine,” he told the Journal of the American Medical Association in an online interview.

...Kushner, Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the White House coronavirus coordinator, and others interviewed Dr. Moncef Slaoui, a pharmaceutical industry veteran, and orchestrated his appointment as chief scientific adviser despite concerns within the Food and Drug Administration about conflicts of interest because of his financial ties to two companies that are developing a vaccine. Rather than being bothered by the conflict, Mr. Kushner and others reasoned that it took someone with such industry experience to oversee the effort.

Dr. Slaoui resigned from the board of Moderna, which has received nearly $1 billion in federal support to develop a vaccine. But as of May he still had nearly $10 million of stock in GlaxoSmithKline, a partner with the French drugmaker Sanofi, which last week signed a $2.1 billion agreement to produce 100 million doses. Dr. Slaoui, who is working on a $1 contract, cleared an ethics review by the Department of Health and Human Services and has said he is determined to avoid any conflict.

Shortly after Dr. Slaoui’s appointment, Dr. Marks resigned from the project he conceived and returned full-time to his post as a senior regulator at the Food and Drug Administration, where he will be the key decision maker on whether a vaccine merits approval.

The administration has conducted the vaccine hunt with a focus lacking in much of the rest of its pandemic response. Contracts have been executed at a brisk pace. Mobile trailers have been speedily delivered for experimental doses to be administered. When a company was short on needles, the Pentagon dispatched planes to deliver supplies within 48 hours.

The pharmaceutical companies are reporting the results of their trials at regular intervals, accelerating the review process. With the government paying much of the cost, the companies are beginning the process of manufacturing millions of doses of vaccine essentially on spec so that they can be distributed quickly if they secure approval.

The process has moved at a remarkable clip. Two vaccine candidates, one developed by Moderna in conjunction with Dr. Fauci’s institute and another by Pfizer, last week began Phase 3 trials, the final stage of clinical experimentation. Others are expected soon.

...Scientists have argued that it would be unwise to cut corners on a vaccine that is to be injected into some 300 million Americans, adding that a failed effort would fuel public distrust of vaccines generally.

...It is not clear that a vaccine approval shortly before the election would be an “October surprise” sufficient to alter the outcome of the vote. An announcement could give Americans hope that the end is in sight. But some Republican strategists said that it might not help Mr. Trump because his opponent, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee, would surely continue the vaccine process if elected.

“Does it turn everything around for him politically? I don’t know,” said Sarah Longwell, a conservative strategist and prominent Republican opponent of Mr. Trump who regularly conducts focus groups and has found that public attention is more focused on government relief checks and school reopenings.

“If the vaccine is an October surprise, there’s a lot of other things that are cutting against” it as a game-changer, she said.

The drug companies find themselves caught in the middle. While eager to bring products to market as quickly as possible, they face risks in moving too quickly in order to fit an election calendar, analysts said.

“They are acutely aware of the political dynamic here,” said Rob Smith, the director of Capital Alpha Partners, a research firm. A vaccine that flopped would jeopardize their broader business, he said, and it would not make sense “to take a huge reputational risk not just for your vaccine but for all the products across your portfolio to benefit the president politically.”

Dr. Fauci has expressed confidence that the system will hold.

“Historically, the F.D.A. has based their decisions on science,” he told a House committee last week. “They will do so this time also, I am certain.”

I'll wait a little and see-- like another six months or so after Trump, who has never cared much about "reputational risk," is gone.

What Is "Herd Immunity"? Not What You Think It Is.

A simple graphic illustration of "flattening the curve," spreading out the incidence of disease in an attempt to not overwhelm a country's medical care facilities. "Protective measures" means social distancing, frequent hand-washing, quarantine of known cases and the like. It does not mean vaccination. (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

The phrase "herd immunity" is being used a lot these days to describe how our species will deal with the ravages of disease caused by COVID-19. Most people, I'm afraid, think of "herd immunity" as a process by which "the herd" — us humans — will catch the disease from others, develop the antibodies needed to ward it off in the future, and go on our way knowing we can't catch it again or transmit it to others. Thus, as this immunity spreads society protects itself.

For people who think this way, the main COVID-19 problem is how to "flatten the curve" — to make the spike in serious cases as low and spread out as possible so that our medical care facilities are not overwhelmed while the rest of us become immune. The graph at the top illustrates this concept.

The assumption in this thinking is that the immunity of the bulk of the population will eventually protect the most vulnerable, the one's most likely to become seriously ill and possibly die. Seen in this way, developing "herd immunity" as quickly as is reasonable is our best shield against COVID-19.

Great Britain, under the leadership of Boris Johnson, is banking on just that. As Umair Haque writes, "According to Robert Peston, one of the UK’s top journalists, Britain’s leaders’ brilliant idea is … 'to allow the virus to pass through the entire population so that we acquire herd immunity.' Other journalists have noted the same thing." Summarizing, he adds that "they think that everyone getting sick ... confers resistance on a nation."

In short, according to this thinking, everyone getting sick is a good thing for the country.

Herd Immunity Depends on Vaccination

Unfortunately, this isn't how "herd immunity" works. It actually works this way:

Herd immunity describes how a population is protected from a disease after vaccination by stopping the germ responsible for the infection being transmitted between people. In this way even people who cannot be vaccinated can be protected. For example, the bacteria meningococcus and pneumococcus can cause blood poisoning (septicaemia) and meningitis. In most people the bacteria live harmlessly in the throat and do not causes disease, but sometimes they get into the bloodstream leading to these severe infections. They can live harmlessly in the throat of one person but if they spread to someone who is particularly susceptible (such as a young baby) they can cause severe disease. By being vaccinated an individual is not only protected from being infected themselves but they then also cannot pass this infection onto other people, where it may cause severe disease. However, for herd immunity to work a large proportion of the population need to be vaccinated. [emphasis added]

The following diagram illustrates how a communicable disease passes through an unvaccinated population versus a vaccinated one:

People are shown as circles. Infectious agents (germs) spread between the people in orange, although they do not get severe disease. When the infection reaches people who are highly susceptible (red) they get the disease and can be very sick or die.

In the lower panel, the people in green have been vaccinated. This now protects those in yellow as well, who had previously got the infection and possibly the disease. Although the figure only shows a few people being vaccinated, in reality many people have to be vaccinated for herd immunity to work.

There's another useful diagram here.

In short, many people getting sick doesn't prevent the rest, including most vulnerable, from also getting sick; only vaccination does that. For some diseases, the percentage of population that needs to be vaccinated is large; for others, the percentage of vaccinations can be smaller:

The more contagious it is then the more people need to be vaccinated for herd immunity to work. For example, measles is very contagious. Before the use of the measles vaccine, every person with measles would infect another 10-15 people and so the disease would spread very quickly. To achieve herd immunity for measles at least 90-95% of the population need to be vaccinated. A disease like polio is less contagious, and 80-85% of the population would need to be vaccinated for herd immunity to work. Although this is lower it is still a very high proportion, especially given that some people cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons. [emphasis added]

For many diseases — tetanus, for example — vaccination protects only the vaccinated individual, since tetanus is harbored in the soil and can be "caught" by anyone. Fortunately, COVID-19 is not this type of infection.

Magical Thinking

The conclusion we should draw from all this is that the "wait it out" strategy — get the disease as late as possible so that, if you get really sick, there will be a hospital bed for you — is not much protection at all.

If you get really sick, health care will obviously help, but there really is no cure for COVID-19 at the moment. Health care will keep you from dying of secondary causes — additional diseases you might come down with if your immune system is compromised, for example — but if COVID-19 wants you, the only prevention is to not get sick with it in the first place.

Placing one's hopes, or a society's hopes, in a misunderstood version of "herd immunity" is an exercise in magical thinking. If you're in charge of a society's response and this version of herd immunity is your answer, it's an exercise in malicious thinking.

Vaccine Availability

The second conclusion applies to society as a whole. Allowing COVID-19 to spread through a population in the absence of a vaccine is a death sentence for many individuals; if a person is likely to die if they get it early, they're just as likely die if they get it late. This puts a premium on the speed at which a vaccine is developed — and made available. (A vaccine is no good if it's not available, for cost reasons, for example.)

Which leads to a corollary: There is no neoliberal solution to this problem. The profit system is exactly the wrong way to deal with the threat posed by COVID-19. The minute testing and vaccination is subject to profit constraints, the solution begins to fail, since people are less likely to be tested and vaccinated. That puts everyone — the whole herd, as it were — at risk.

The best solution to this problem is also the most moral — test everyone for free; vaccinate everyone for free. Do it fast and do it now.

The privatizers will try, of course, to get their profit-seeking hands on both the tests and the vaccine. They may even succeed. But if they do, COVID karma, unlike climate karma, will be instant. Deaths won't just rise in a decade or two, or in their grandchildren's generation; they'll rise in earnest immediately, and the dead will have the names of their killers written on their foreheads for everyone else to see — "Thank you, Biologics.com. I died for you."
 

Putin's Successful Bio-Warfare Against America

The Pentagon has spent billions of dollars to prevent a Russian germ warfare attack against out country. (See Season 4, episode 1 of The Americans for proof.) But Putin outsmarted them by putting a crazy anti-vaxxer behind the bully pulpit. The Soviet Union and Russia have or had 7 major biological warfare programs that we know of:

• Biopreparat (18 labs and production centers, including the Sverdlovsk bioweapons production facility for weaponized anthrax)
• Institute of Virus Preparations
• Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services
• Vozrozhdeniya
• Project Bonfire
• Project Factor
• Project Trumpanzee

Trump's been spreading doubt about vaccines since 2012 These tweets are about 25% of the tweets online with him ranting about vaccinations. We're in the early stages of a measles epidemic thanks to Trump and his insane followers. About one year ago Andrew Buncombe, reporting for The Independent, wrote that "If there is one thing pro-vaccine campaigners and their opponents probably agree on, it is that Donald Trump has provided a major boost to the anti-vaccine cause." There in no link between autism and vaccines; Trump just heard it somewhere and had embellished on the story for almost 8 years. Experts at the Centers for Disease Control, run by the Department of Health and Human Services, say that what Trump is spreading is just not true.

Prior the election, Mr Trump met with four prominent anti-vaccine campaigners at a fundraiser in Florida-- disbarred British doctor Andrew Wakefield, Mark Blaxill, editor-at-large of the Age of Autism website, Gary Kompothecras, a chiropractor and Trump donor from Sarasota, and Jennifer Larson, an entrepreneur who has campaigned against the use of vaccines in her home state of Minnesota.

  ...“CDC, the Federal Drug Administration, and the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices, regularly review data to ensure that vaccine recommendations are based on the latest available science to provide safe and effective protection against serious diseases. Concerned parents should be reassured that recommended childhood vaccines have a strong safety record.”

It added: “For the general population, maintaining high vaccination levels is important not only for the individual person but also to protect potentially deadly diseases from spreading to the most vulnerable among us, such as patients with weakened immune systems and newborn children who are too young to be vaccinated.” 

A now a few words about Trump's sponsors in Moscow:

Can The Republican War On Science Actually Kill Us?

Tara Haelle's new book, Vaccination investigation made her a natural for the TED talk above, which focuses on the vaccine hesitancy and vaccine refusal that has been increasingly erupting into unpredictable disease outbreaks that are difficult to contain. her goal was to explain what underlies the irrational fear, that is being adopted by the anti-Science Party (AKA- the Republicans). Trump, for example, likes to carry on in public about crazy and disproven conspiracy theories linking vaccinations to autism.

Can we really blame this new threat on the GOP? You better believe it! Arthur Allen reported for Politico yesterday evening that "most Republicans are rejecting Democrat-led state bills to tighten childhood immunization laws in the midst of the worst measles outbreak in two decades, alarming public health experts who fear the nation could become as divided over vaccines as it is over global warming. Democrats in six states-- Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey, Washington, New York and Maine-- have authored or co-sponsored bills to make it harder for parents to avoid vaccinating their school-age children, and mostly faced GOP opposition. Meanwhile in West Virginia and Mississippi, states with some of the nation’s strictest vaccination laws, Republican lawmakers have introduced measures to expand vaccine exemptions, although it’s not yet clear how much traction they have." A handful of Republican physicians are trying to combat this lunacy-- including Bill Cassidy (LA), Phil Roe (TN) Michael Burgess (TX) and Brad Wenstrup (OH), but they're not getting anywhere.

All states have mandatory vaccination laws, but they vary in how liberally they dispense exemptions on religious or philosophical grounds. That’s getting scrutiny as measles spreads.

Democrats present bills tightening the loopholes as science-based and necessary to fight disease, while sometimes demeaning their foes as misguided or selfish “anti-vaxxers.“ Republicans portray themselves as equally enthusiastic about the life-saving virtues of vaccines, but many are loath to diminish the right of parental control over their children’s bodies, and yield that power to the government.

...Fed by major epidemics in Israel and in Europe, measles has punctured the U.S. barrier of immunity at multiple points of entry in what’s shaping up to be the worst year for the disease since 1993, with 555 cases through early April. Outbreaks in six states include hundreds of cases in ultra-Orthodox communities in Brooklyn and Rockland County, N.Y. And the numbers are growing.

“What if God forbid someone dies?” said Jeff Dinowitz, a Bronx assemblyman whose bill to limit religious exemptions has nine Democratic co-sponsors-- but no Republican backers-- in the New York Assembly.

Andrew Raia, ranking Republican on the New York Assembly’s health committee, said he wouldn't support the bill. While not totally convinced by constituents who link their children’s autism on vaccines, and unaware of any real religious injunction against vaccination, he said, “I’m not a religious leader, and I’m not a scientist either, so it’s my job to weigh both sides.”

...Since becoming president, Trump has dropped the subject and scrapped a plan to create a commission led by Kennedy Jr. to investigate a supposed coverup of vaccine’s supposed harms by public health officials.

But officials worry they are “three Trump tweets away” from an even more polarized situation, noted MIT political scientist Adam Berinsky, who has studied communication around politicized public health and scientific issues.

In Texas, the Tea Party and related groups created an anti-vax PAC in 2015. It hasn’t yet gotten its chosen candidates elected, but the very existence of a vaccine-oriented political action committee shows the political salience is growing. Influential voices on the right, including Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, have all raised suspicions about vaccines.

“There’s a credulity gap between the parties in regard to science that wasn’t there 25 years ago,” Berinsky said. And Trump could easily inflame the vaccine skepticism, should he weigh in. For a large share of the highly polarized U.S. population, “at the end of the day it’s not the arguments people are making, but who is making them,” Berinksy said.

...A century of vaccination laws has shown that states with the strictest ones have lower burdens of vaccine-preventable disease. Scourges including smallpox, polio and diphtheria have been eliminated.

Rules generally get tighter following big outbreaks of disease, and groups like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have used the measles outbreak to push for an end to state laws that allow people to refuse vaccination of their kids on religious or philosophical grounds.

In 1972, during a measles epidemic in Los Angeles, public health authorities kept 50,000 children out of school until their parents could prove they were vaccinated. The success of that effort led to a nationwide push for stricter laws and more enforcement.

After 89 people, mostly children, died in a 1990 measles epidemic, millions of dollars were poured into expanding vaccine availability for the poor, and in 2000, the disease stopped circulating in the United States. Since then, every case has been linked to visitors from overseas-- although the virus has then spread here among the growing pockets of vaccine shunners.

So obviously the Republican war against Science isn't just about vaccines and medicine. Please watch the incredible animated video above-- a message from the future by Grandma AOC. And... let me add a little random context from this morning's New York Times, written after the redacted Mueller report was finally released: "The White House that emerges from more than 400 pages of Mr. Mueller’s report is a hotbed of conflict infused by a culture of dishonesty-- defined by a president who lies to the public and his own staff, then tries to get his aides to lie for him."

Weaponizing the Presidency by Nancy Ohanian

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Unfortunately there's no vaccine for stupid.

Our society is getting dumber by the day and the intelligence level started out pretty low to begin with. Around the world, anti-vaxxers are continuing to push their fake science, Russian-driven and otherwise, through social media and, here in New York, by literally knocking on doors and handing out fliers on street corners like religious kooks. The result is that we have pockets of measles epidemics spreading across not just the city but the country. Perhaps the wrong kids are being forcibly separated from their parents?

On Tuesday, New York City declared a public health emergency and has already discussed the closing of some harder hit schools and fines for parents who refuse to get their children vaccinated. The city government has now ordered mandatory vaccinations for some neighborhoods. Naturally, the conservatives who walk among us have pointed at "Socialist" Mayor Bill de Blasio and screamed about "government over-reach," meddling, and, of course, "left wing tyranny." Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to just dump the family human waste out in the middle of the street so we and have the "freedom" of cholera for all.

I can hardly wait 'til crowds at Trump rallies start chanting "Bring Back Polio! Bring Back Polio!"