~~ written by dmorista ~~
Introduction:
I compared the death rates from Covid-19, in China and other East Asian Countries, as contrasted with the death rates in the U.S. and other major Western Countries, in “China's Covid-Free Policy In Context: & a Consideration of Omicron and the Olympics”, posted here at The Class Struggle on February 4th. While many right wing commentators continue to claim China's statistics are not reliable, most of the professional strata of society and most media outlets, including those on the right such as the Wall Street Journal, have admitted that their total death numbers and death rate figures are essentially accurate. There are several reasons for the far better results of several societies in East Asia, including China, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, S. Korea, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Australia, when contrasted to the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, and Brazil. These seem to be mostly due to the better organization and greater social cohesion of the Asian Societies. Socio-economically, New Zealand and Australia are more similar to the U.S., Canada, Germany, and France than they are to China, Japan, S. Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Nonetheless both New Zealand and Australia used the “Zero-Covid” policy for several months and even after giving in to the Western “Live with Covid” philosophy have maintained far lower death rates than places like the U.S, Canada, Germany, and France have.
There are many other scientific and technological advancements and resultant products and treatments that laboratories and companies all over the Earth have developed over the last 2 years. Covid-19 drew the largest single response by the vaccine and pharmaceutical companies, at least since the HIV and AIDS epoch back in the 1980s. And the response is much greater, in absolute terms, simply because many societies that were still Third World economies back in the 1980s are now major players in science and technology. This article will concentrate on the developments in terms of vaccine technology and some treatment therapy options that have increased over the past 2 years. Further I will discuss the impacts advancing technology has on any serious attempt to eradicate Covid.
A Short Review of the Development of Vaccines Used to Prevent and/or Lessen the Virulence of Covid-19
The status of research and development of vaccines in various laboratories and pharmaceutical companies of the world already was reported: “over 500 vaccines are under development, with over 150 candidates under clinical evaluation and 24 vaccines authorized for emergency use in humans”1 to use for immunization against the Covid-19 virus. Or, as another source noted, as of January 26 of 2021 there were over 170 prospective vaccines in various stages of clinical trials.2 Vaccines in general fall into 4 main categories. Those are 1). Whole virus, 2). Protein subunit, 3). Nucleic, and 4). Viral Vector. There is also a difference between the generally well-known intramuscular vaccines administered with a shot through a needle into one's arm; and mucosal vaccines, a new development, that are administered with a simple nose spray. The question of imparting immunity against the Covid-19 virus is a complex one, and not yet completely understood; but there are indications that Mucosal nasal sprays, that primarily impart immune response to the nasal and lung tissues, might play a major role in combating Covid-19 in the future. This could be either in a stand-alone capacity as the only vaccination, or combined with one of the intramuscular vaccines. The primary advantage of Mucosal vaccines is that they activate the immune system (with its large number of various types of responses) at the site where the virus first enters the body i.e. the mucosal tissues of the nose and lungs. The Mucosal sprays promote immune elements to act on the virus when and where it is present in relatively small numbers before it gets established in the body. This is a major advantage because the immune response is immediate and on-site, rather than waiting for the virus to enter the body and move around in the bloodstream and become active at the target tissues; where the various types of antibodies and immune system cells are able to act on the virus. The problems with Mucosal Spray vaccines is that the immune system response in the nose and the lungs is much less well understood and seems to be more variable and perhaps more transient. These are areas of active research on the frontiers of human knowledge on the subject.3
The most used Covid-19 vaccines in the U.S. over the last year, including the Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson (J & J) vaccines, are all Nucleic Vaccines administered by intramuscular injection. In the case of Pfizer and Moderna those 2 vaccines both used messenger RNA (m-RNA) for the viral element that our immune systems react to. These Nucleic vaccines are the most advanced and challenging types of vaccines to develop and produce. Covid-19 is a rapidly evolving virus, as are all Corona Viruses (the common cold is caused by a CoronaVirus, and evolves so rapidly that it has never been possible to develop a vaccine to use against it). Because the Covid-19 virus evolves so quickly it would require a massive carefully coordinated worldwide vaccination campaign, that also used the standard public health measures, to effectively quash the virus.
The development of the Moderna, Pfizer, and J & J vaccines all followed a well trodden trail for technological projects in the U.S. The U.S. Federal Government and state governments fund the University Laboratories where the basic research on DNA and RNA was done. For a short discussion of the history of how Post-WW 2 Government subsidies for technology companies began see note 2 below.4 The m-RNA that was used to produce the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines was a major subject of such research efforts. The basic science for m-RNA was publicly funded. Then when President Trump launched his “Warp Speed” program to fund vaccine development in the U.S., both Moderna and Pfizer were lavishly subsidized in their work to adapt the basic m-RNA knowledge into a workable vaccine (and we can rest assured that a Democratic Party President would have pushed through some sort of program to subsidize Covid-19 vaccine development work). Then, both Pfizer and Moderna were allowed to take out exclusive patents, and both companies nixed any initiative to produce their vaccines at low-cost vaccine production facilities, in places like India. To expect companies, like Pfizer and Moderna, to not take profit-maximizing actions is naive, that is fundamental to their basic economic interest. This hoarding of knowledge and profits exemplifies how treating potentially life saving technologies as private property to be exploited and profited from, is against the public interest.
The piecemeal, and less than overwhelming, efforts of governments, laboratories, philanthropic organizations, vaccine production facilities, have so far succeeded in vaccinating 4,777,686,997 people or 61.2% of the world population, with at least one dose, 4,105,030,980 people or 52.6% of the world population, who are defined as fully vaccinated, and 927,585,055 people or 11.9% of the world population, with a booster shot. This leaves something like 3.145 billion people completely unvaccinated. This reservoir of 3.145 billion people is certainly large enough to generate several new virus
Graph 1: Total Vaccinations Administered Worldwide
as of January 24, 2022, in Percentages
(Source: “Vaccinations”, data from Our World in Data, displayed at , < https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=how+many+covid+vaccines+are+there+in+the+world >)
variants. Hidden in the overall global statistics is the fact that only 9.8% of the population of the Low Income countries have received at least one dose of vaccine.5
Some commentators point out that India's vaccine production facilities, as well as those in other developing countries, are/were not capable of producing highly advanced vaccines like the m-RNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer. One solution to the problem would be to provide those facilities with access to the advanced vaccine production technology, and with the financial and technological support, to produce those more difficult advanced vaccines. Another approach would be to license the vaccine production facilities, that are located in a variety of poor countries around the world, and allow them to produce the less advanced vaccines that they are/were already capable of producing; and assist them to do so in very large quantities. Whole virus vaccines (similar to the technology of the Polio Vaccine of the 1950s) are certainly within the capabilities of such laboratories and production facilities.
One very promising vaccine of the “Whole Virus” type, is CORBEVA. It is produced using a slight modification of the methods used to produce the Hepatitis B vaccine. This Covid-19 vaccine was produced by a team in Texas led by Peter J. Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazzi. They did not get any support from the high-dollar subsidy programs that paid out for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. And this new vaccine is not patented and is offered free to vaccine production facilities anywhere, including those in the poor parts of the world. Producing it is easy and proper storage is accomplished at regular refrigeration temperature. Also, there is another commercial vaccine (private property) Novavax. It is produced by similar technology to COBREVAX; and Novavax is further ahead in the approval pipeline. It will start to be available in the US in March 2022 and is in emergency use in other countries currently.6 There are quite a number of vaccines available at this point and actions to block or slow down vaccine production, by pharmaceutical companies or governments regardless of where they are located, are intolerable.
A Short Review of the Development Therapeutic Measures for Use in Treating Covid-19
The entire field of therapeutic treatments for Viral diseases has been making major strides in recent years, and there is a wide range of new developments and anti-viral drugs and other therapies. However the 21st Century has seen a high level of virus disease outbreaks: “… there have been more than ten major viral disease epidemics or pandemics in human populations, caused by coronavirus, alphavirus, myxovirus, filovirus, norovirus and flavivirus family members (Fig. 1). In addition, small sporadic outbreaks have originated from henipaviruses, bunyaviruses, arenaviruses and other zoonotic RNA viruses.”7 While Covid was the first viral outbreak to become a global pandemic it was certainly not the first serious viral disease outbreak in the 21st Century. Figure 1 below has a graphical presentation of the major Viral Disease outbreaks this century and suggests that the Outbreaks are becoming more frequent.
Figure 1: Major Viral Disease Outbreaks since 2000
Source: “Developing therapeutic approaches for twenty-first-century emerging infectious viral diseases”, “Fig. 1A: Historic overview of the twenty-first-century viral outbreaks”, Mar, 2021, Rita M. Meganck & Ralph S. Baric, Nature Medicine, V. 27, pgs 401 - 410, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01282-0 >
Some of the main anti-viral drugs and treatments used to treat Covid-19 include the relatively well know remdesivir, as well as the less well known paxlovid (that is a combination of nirmatrelvir tablets and ritonavir tablets and is produced and marketed by Pfizer) and molnupiravir (that is produced and marketed by Merck). Remdesivir, was initially developed for use in treating patients who suffered with the Ebola and hepatitis C viruses.8
Other types of therapies include monoclonal antibodies, but of the several drugs used for that type of treatment only one drug, sotrovimab, is effective against the omicron variant of the Covid-19 virus.9 Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida had claimed that monoclonal antibody treatments were a fine fall-back for people who did not get vaccinated and subsequently sickened with Covid-19. Of course any of the various immunizations costs about $20 - $30; while a course of treatment with monoclonal antibodies costs around $2,000 and requires specialized personnel to monitor the process. When Trump was treated with monoclonal antibodies it was still an experimental treatment and the cost to the Federal Government for his treatment was around $200,000. But by all appearances monoclonal antibodies, including the previously heavily used monoclonal antibodies casirivimab/imdevimab and bamlanivimab/etesevimab combinations are not going to be a major factor in the treatments for the Omicron Variant. Health and Human Services (HHS) has halted distribution of these two agents, and in January 2022 the CDC’s treatment panel recommended against using these treatment combinations for patients infected with omicron.see note 9
Dexamethasone, that has been used for years to treat inflammation from many diseases, has been of some use in treating Covid-19 patents. And what is termed Convalescent Blood Plasma Therapy has been helpful and 500,000 Covid-19 patients were treated using that therapy. The Plasma is produced from the blood of patients who recovered from Covid and provides immune system support to those who are ill. Originally physicians had thought that Convalescent Blood Plasma Therapy would be a stop-gap measure, but the development of anti-viral drugs efficacious against Covid-19 has been slower than what the professionals coping with the pandemic had hoped for.see note 9
The attributes that all the drugs discussed above have in common is that they had all been developed previously and were available for immediate repurposing and use. There was a large amount of research in progress around the world, before the Covid-19 outbreak began, looking ever deeper into the secrets of cellular and intra-cellular level physiology and function. Mobilizing the fruits of research and using them for Clinical Therapeutic use obviously takes longer than using already existing drugs. There are a plethora of possible new therapies that will be made available from the basic research, but there are also daunting problems and complications that must be overcome. One of the main areas of research has been utilizing Messenger RNA (m-RNA) in vaccines and therapeutics. The physiological function of m-RNA is to carry the template for producing proteins, from the DNA in cell nuclei, out to the organelles (organelles are the tiny structures inside cells that carry out various functions) that actually make the proteins.
As one of the review articles cited below points out: “There are two fundamental types of antiviral therapeutics, directx-acting and host-factor, which differ by targeting viral orcellular factors (see Table 1 for an overview {that is the same table as the Table 1 posted in this article} ).” Most of the therapeutic treatments in use, including some of
those discussed above, including mono-clonal antibodies, dexamethasone, and convalescent blood plasma therapy, are host-factor medicines; and act by reducing inflammation and damage to the patient by the immune system response itself. Another class of drugs in use act on the virus itself, these include remdesivir, molnupiravir, paxlovid, and interferon.10 However one of these drugs, molnupiravir did not turn out to be as effective as early testing suggested: “full trial data submitted to the FDA suggest that molnupiravir is less effective than originally thought, dampening scientists’ hopes that the relatively cheap and easy-to-administer treatment might change the course of the pandemic”.11
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines used the m-RNA spike of the Covid-19 virus as the factor that the immune system learned to recognize and eliminate the virus, rather than
Table 1 Below: A Number of Common Anti-Viral Drugs
and their Mechanisms of Action Against Viruses
(Source: “Developing therapeutic approaches for twenty-first-century emerging infect-
ious viral diseases”, “Table 1”, pg 405, Mar, 2021, Rita M. Meganck & Ralph S. Baric, Nature
Medicine, V. 27, pgs 401 - 410, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01282-0 >)
the older technology of prompting the immune system to attack the entire virus. The development process for those two vaccines required significant effort to achieve this. Every therapeutic agent using m-RNA as an active site needs to be customized in some manner or the m-RNA will just attach at random to cellular sites. Other similar strictures apply to other interventions at the cellular level. While there is no question that therapeutic anti-viral drugs are contributing a level of medical intervention far more advanced than anything seen previously this does not obviate the need for vigorous Public Health measures.12
The advances in medical therapies aimed at controlling viruses make it possible to use a 3 tier approach in the scientific and therapeutic struggle against contagious viral disease outbreaks. The first tier should be a variety of wide-spectrum anti-viral drugs that work relatively well against most or all viruses. These should be already researched, approved, and widely available. The only real example of such a drug that was available for use when the Covid-19 Pandemic began was remdesivir that was the fruit of the labors of little-known scientists “Remdesivir came about thanks to the prudent forethought of researchers involved in the Antiviral Drug Discovery and Development Center (AD3C), an NIH-backed project launched seven years ago. Its objective is to screen existing drug libraries for inhibitors of influenza, coronaviruses, alphaviruses (such as those responsible for chikungunya), and flaviviruses (the pathogens behind dengue and Zika among others). In 2017, AD3C members demonstrated the anti-coronavirus potential of remdesivir in animal models2. Around the same time, trials that ran during two Ebola outbreaks in Africa showed that the drug was safe in people.”13 The Cubans and the Iranians used the other existing anti-viral drug, the interferon family of anti-virals, they reported some success using interferon in their treatment regimen, but U.S. NIH has reported that interferon is not helpful in treating adults hospitalized with Covid.14
The second tier would be the development of more closely tailored therapeutic anti-viral drugs that were designed to attack the specific viral disease agent itself, as well as other viruses closely related to the specific disease causing virus. These types of therapies would take somewhat longer to develop and prepare for use, but would hopefully become available for use in the medium-term of a few months; during which time the wide spectrum anti-viral drugs would keep an outbreak under some control. Finally the third tier are vaccines. These can be expected to take longer to develop, prepare for use, and license than the anti-viral drugs, but would resolve pandemics like Covid-19 if the vaccines can be administered to enough of the Global Population to eradicate a given virus.
Building a protection system, against viral disease outbreaks, would require serious cooperation from many competing interests, both from the business world and from governments. But it is not a trivial issue. As noted above; so far in the 21 years of this century: “… there have been more than ten major viral disease epidemics or pandemics in human populations”. see note 7 And as human activities move into every ecological niche, particularly in the Tropical Regions where the intensity of evolution is at its highest and even the disease organisms are more highly evolved and deadly and where human populations are still growing, we can expect more disease outbreaks to occur in coming years. In fact humanity, and particularly the rich countries, were lucky that Covid-19 was a relatively mild disease with a mortality rate about 10 times that of the seasonal flu. If a novel disease outbreak (with a mortality rate like Ebola had in its early days when 90% of those who contracted the disease died), were to occur it is unlikely the health care and general socioeconomic structures of the advanced countries would hold up.
The Future and the Struggle by American-Led Finance Capital to Force China to Accept the “Live with Covid” and “Herd Immunity” Approaches to Covid.
China is the last holdout for a strict Zero-Covid Strategy. They have built up an impressive capability to implement the 7 Part Covid-Free Methodology (see Note 15 below for a detailed description of the 7 Part Covid-Free Methodology).15 The Chinese population is not overjoyed by the continued implementation of the strategy after two long years of the Pandemic. Though in general the Chinese people still seem to realize that the Covid-Free Strategy has kept the number of deaths from Covid in China down to a remarkably low level, while other places that once used the Zero-Covid Strategy who have shifted over the the “Live With Covid” and “Herd Immunity” approaches have had great increases in the infection and the death rates.16
The Chinese efforts to combat Covid are not perfect. In fact, the main flaw with the Chinese approach is that, as long as the rest of the world does not use a similar set of strategies to control the virus, new variants will continue to evolve in the “rest of the world”. Those variants have been responsible for an increasing proportion of the Covid-19 outbreaks that have occurred in China. The latest variant, Omicron, is measurably more contagious and poses significant challenges to even China's highly organized and technologically advanced control methodology. The place that these variants evolve is among the 3.145 billion unvaccinated people, who are mostly located in the poorest societies on Earth. There are several million anti-vaxxers, in the Western Developed countries who have not been immunized and they do provide an analogous, though much smaller, reservoir of susceptible people in which new variants continue to evolve. Nonetheless the poor parts of the world were the locus where the major new variants, the Delta variant was first identified in India and the Omicron variant was first identified in South Africa, and those areas are the most likely places where those variants actually did evolve (the Alpha Variant was first identified in the U.K.); and we can only expect more new variants to evolve in that 3+ billion person population in the future. The Urban and Rural living conditions of the poor in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Latin America are appalling and include extremely high urban population densities, and frequently a serious lack of access to clean water and proper sewage. Current estimates are that around 1 billion people in the poor countries on the Earth live in slums: “This includes 62% of the urban population of Sub-Saharan Africa, 35% in Southern Asia, 24% in Latin America and the Caribbean, and 13% in North Africa”.17
One Proposal to Integrate the Latest Technological Advances with Basic Public Health Measures on a Global Scale
Three prominent Academics and Public Health Experts from Australia have recommended a modification of the Covid-Free Policies pursued by China that are more flexible and somewhat less harsh, but that would use the developing new technologies and would also emphasize the public health aspects of this struggle and the need to continue using quarantines, contact tracing, and other measures. Their article, written in clear non-technical language that is accessible to the general public, is so important that I have excerpted a large amount of its text here. They point out that:
“We propose here a 'vaccine plus' strategy that is based on three pillars – current and new tools, embracing the central importance of preventing airborne transmission and a major shift in attitude to equity.
“There is a widespread view that extensive transmission of the currently dominant Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 will bring an end to the pandemic by harmlessly inducing herd immunity. This is unjustified and dangerous thinking. It does not provide a sound basis for immediate or long-term pandemic management. ….
“With very high numbers of people contracting COVID-19, even relatively uncommon bad outcomes (death or permanent disability) will occur in large numbers, including in people without underlying health conditions. This is why, right now, hospital systems the world over are overwhelmed. ….
“ …. there have been four waves of COVID-19 over two years. Reinfection is known to occur and there is evidence that neither natural infection with SARS-CoV-2 nor vaccination leads to sustained protection against COVID-19. Hence, long-term protective herd immunity cannot be achieved by 'letting it rip'. Over time the community will again become susceptible to the next wave.
“There are two secondary issues here. Some infections, or vaccinations, such as measles, chickenpox, and polio, do induce long-lived immunity but others, like influenza, the common cold virus and SARS-CoV-2 do not. ….
“Natural selection, the biological basis of evolution, means that variants that are 'successful' will be even more transmissible than the current dominant strains. Whenever uncontrolled transmission is occurring somewhere in the world, new SARS-CoV-2 variants that can escape from existing immunity and cause a further global wave of COVID-19 disease will continue to arise across the world.
“The only sustainable solution is to reduce the number of people getting COVID-19 and to do it everywhere. ….
“COVID-19 cannot be eradicated, but we can stop sustained community transmission. This status is known as 'elimination'. In this situation outbreaks may still occur, but they do not become overwhelming. We have achieved this with measles. ….
“Clearly, the backbone of the response needs to be effective, equitable and acceptable vaccination regimens. Work will need to be done to optimize vaccine effectiveness and to overcome major barriers to distribution, including supply, cost and acceptance. It is worth noting that humanity lived with smallpox for centuries. Only a concerted global effort to vaccinate the world resulted in smallpox eradication and that took 20 years to achieve.
“ …. measures include universal use of well-fitted N95 masks indoors and in close-contact outdoor environments, effective ventilation and filtration of indoor environments, and effective implementation of testing, tracing, isolation and quarantine (TTIQ) procedures using sophisticated AI-enabled tools. …. two years into the pandemic, these simple and effective non-pharmaceutical interventions, and other actions to promote safe indoor air, still have not been universally adopted.”18
Current Developments in the West and China
However, in the United States, the last few weeks have seen the exact opposite of what Marks et. al. recommended in their article. Several large U.S. states have basically ended any serious efforts at contact tracing and the CDC has ended the requirement that hospitals report their Covid-19 death numbers daily and is allowing them to only report on the number of Covid-19 deaths once a week. Furthermore the CDC cut the mandatory isolation time for people with Covid-19 in half, from 10 days to 5 days. As an article posted recently at the WorldWide Socialist Website noted: “The White House has seized upon the Omicron variant to claim that nothing can be done to stop the spread of COVID-19, claiming that 'everyone' will get infected, in the words of FDA Director Janet Woodcock.” And at the same time several European countries, including the U.K., France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Italy, are reducing their restrictions on gatherings and ending mandates for mask wearing, citing the less severe nature of the Omicron variants infections.19 At the recent Munich Security Conference meetings Herd Immunity advocate: “billionaire Bill Gates, the fourth-richest man in the world, told the world’s preeminent military affairs conference that mass infection with the Omicron variant was a 'type of vaccine' against COVID-19.
“ 'The virus itself, particularly the variant called Omicron, is a type of vaccine, that is it creates both B-cell and T-cell immunity, and it’s done a better job of getting out to the world’s population than we have with vaccines,' Gates said”.20
It would appear that at least one major opportunity to decisively defeat Covid was allowed to slip away; because Human Society on the Earth could not take the best aspects and strong points from the different cultures and technologies the various societies scientists developed and combine them into a winning strategy. The U.S. and other societies in the West were able to develop the most advanced vaccines and are still producing a large volume of innovative tests and other pharmaceutical intervention agents. But the West, that is largely under control of Finance Capitalists and groaning under a Neo-Liberal austerity socio-economic regime, has nearly insoluble problems with producing enough of any given tools or material to make them affordable to the bottom 80% of the population. Shortages of key materials resulted and price gouging was rampant from the earliest days on to the present.
China proved far more adept at applying its organizational abilities in a massive socioeconomic effort to bring the Pandemic under control. China has a population of some 300 million elders; that massive population of older Chinese citizens were mobilized to work at the entry doors of every building, taking temperatures, looking at cell phones of people suspected to be infected to start the contact tracing procedures, and otherwise enforcing the rules of the Covid-Free policy. The greater respect for older people in China, than is typical in the West particularly the U.S., made this a very effective strategy. China also mobilized massive resources to use high technology contact tracing, testing of millions of people in the various outbreak areas, and also strictly enforced quarantines for anybody entering China from the outside world. Concerning the testing regime, China had a policy that every inhabitant of a locked down urban area, where an outbreak was occurring, was tested as quickly as possible. Urban areas of 5 million people or less had to test every inhabitant in 2 days; and in larger urban areas, those with over 5 million inhabitants, every person living there had to be tested in 3 -5 days. They were able to provide the needed personnel, materials, and equipment to places battling the virus. It took the Chinese longer to develop a vaccine, and it used an older technology, that of the Intact Disabled Virus.
Suspicion and political intrigue from the various players kept the rich countries (including China) from utilizing the Indian Vaccine Industry, and other vaccine production facilities in the Global South, to produce a vaccine or vaccines, in sufficient quantities to expeditiously immunize the huge populations of the Poor Countries. Either the rich countries and companies could have provided assistance to the Indian and other vaccine production facilities to produce the high tech m-RNA vaccines, and/or to produce the traditional vaccines in massive amounts This population includes 3.145 billion people, who have still not been vaccinated at all, 2 years after Covid-19 emerged. One traditional Disabled Whole Virus vaccine was developed by Peter Hotez and Maria Elena Bottazz. Hotez wondered out loud if the emergence of both the Delta and Omicron variants might have been averted, if the traditional vaccine that the two of them tried to promote and that they freely provided without any patent protection, had been produced in high enough quantities much earlier than was the case.see note 6 If that had occurred, enough vaccines might have been produced to immunize the 7 billion inhabitants of the Third World sooner; and that likely would have averted providing a massive site for evolution of the virus in the mass of the poor of humanity. What this all amounts to is that a significant opportunity to defeat Covid was squandered. But that does not mean that all is lost, but it is a fact that the opportunity to defeat the virus with the vaccines developed early on in the Pandemic was not utilized properly.
The “vaccine plus” strategy proposed by Marks, Crabb & MacIntyre would continue the “Covid-Free” policies utilized by China (and previously by Taiwan, Hong Kong, S. Korea, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand) but would take a global perspective to root out the reservoirs of virus mutation and evolution. Basically the “vaccine plus” strategy consists of the main public health elements of the Chinese “Covid-Free” strategy, the lockdown aspects of it toned down somewhat, combined with the use of emerging technologies such as the emerging anti-viral medicines and ever more specific and quickly developed modern vaccines. However the populations, particularly of the developed nations of the world have lost patience with the public health measures and significant political opposition now exists to resist cooperation. During the just finished Olympic Games, mainland China clearly seems to have avoided a major outbreak of the omicron variant, with only 437 Covid infections reported among the Olympic participants and the Chinese working closely with them. Meanwhile Hong Kong is suffering its largest and most severe outbreak of Covid-19, of the Omicron Variant, so far during the pandemic.21
The Lost Opportunity and Future Prospects: Can we Exterminate Covid Worldwide?
Certainly one of the best sources for criticism of Capitalist actions and machinations during the Covid-19 Pandemic, in a non-specialist scientific outlet, is the long series of articles published on the World Socialist Website. This series looked at the subject of Covid and the contrast between the ineffective responses of the U.S., other Capitalist Societies, and the highly effective responses taken in China; WSWS takes a fairly dim overall view of China btw.22 One of the most important issues is that the populations of the world, particularly in the developed nations of the West, have lost patience with the sorts of public health measures that would be needed as a major component of a serious Smallpox and Polio type attempt to eradicate Covid globally. The best chance for a straightforward attempt to do this passed with the first two years of the pandemic. Between the suspicious and paranoid nature of international relations, the machinations of powerful economic players like Moderna and Pfizer among others, the ineffectual actions by the World Health Organization, and the mobilization of far-right anti-science organizing efforts; any sort of concerted action became impossible. If humanity can use some variation of the vaccine-plus strategy proposed by Australian Epidemiologists (or other types of suggested action programs I have not yet become aware of), we might be able to exterminate the Covid virus.
The more difficult challenge of mobilizing to such a global effort, the often justifiably suspicious and incalcitrant populations in the developed world, could be made easier by the use of the many promising new technological methods that laboratories around the world are working on. The Capitalist ruling classes, particularly of the West, are clearly not capable of achieving such a feat requiring such a combination of scientific, organizational and political prowess. The Chinese and other East Asian ruling classes are closer but fall short as well. Perhaps the working people of the Earth might demand such actions, they are the only constituency vulnerable enough to a continuation of current policies, and able to stop the functioning of the global economic system by strikes and other workplace actions, for long enough to make such a political, scientific and organizational program look like the best option to the ruling classes.
Notes and References:
1). “Intranasal COVID-19 vaccines: From bench to bed”, Feb 2022, Aqu Alu et. al., The Lancet, Vol 76, {eBioMedicine 2022; 76: 103841}, at < https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(22)00025-1/fulltext >
2). “Trying to Block SARS-CoV-2 Transmission With Intranasal Vaccines”, Oct 14, 2021, Rita Rubin, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), V.326(17):1661-1663, at < https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785303 >
3). “There are four types of COVID-19 vaccines: here’s how they work”, Jan, 2021, anon, GAVI, at < https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/there-are-four-types-covid-19-vaccines-heres-how-they-work >: “Trying to Block SARS-CoV-2 Transmission With Intranasal Vaccines”, Oct 14, 2021, Rita Rubin, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), V.326(17):1661-1663, at < https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785303 >: “Intranasal COVID-19 vaccines: From bench to bed”, Feb 2022, Aqu Alu et. al., The Lancet, Vol 76, {eBioMedicine 2022;76: 103841}, at < https://www.thelancet.com/journals/ebiom/article/PIIS2352-3964(22)00025-1/fulltext >: “COVID research: a year of scientific milestones”, May 5, 2021, anon, Nature, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00502-w >: “Nasal Covid Vaccines in the Works May Prove Stronger Boosters Than Shots”, Feb. 5, 2022, Apoorva Mandavilli, New York TImes: “Research and Development on Therapeutic Agents and Vaccines for COVID-19 and Related Human Coronavirus Diseases”, March 12, 2020, Cynthia Liu et. al., ACS Central Science,V. 6 No. 3, pgs 315–331, at < https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.0c00272 >: “The origin, transmission and clinical therapies on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak – an update on the status”, Mar 13, 2020, Yan-Rong Guo et. al., Military Medical Research, V. 7, Article number: 11, at < https://mmrjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40779-020-00240-0 >).
4). The archetype for the support given to American Corporations by the Federal Government in the Post WW-2 period is the relationship between the Boeing Company and the Department of Defense in the development of the B-47. Boeing won the contract to develop a new jet powered, swept wing heavy bomber. The costs to develop and manufacture this aircraft were, of course, borne by the American population in general by the use of their taxes. When one looks at the Boeing 707 one is struck by the marked resemblance to the B-47. The B-47 program took place in the mid-1940s immediately after WW 2. The first prototype of the B-47 flew in 1947 and by 1951 Boeing began to produce the new bomber. The B-47 was a path breaking design and introduced swept back wings and pylon mounted jet engines, among other innovations, into American designs for the first time. The first prototype of the Boeing 707 flew in 1954 and the plane was in production by 1957. Boeing had to use all of its financial capabilities and obtain as much loan funding as possible, to develop and produce the 707. And these were mostly details, the major technological problems had been dealt with using governmental monies in the development of the B-47.
5). “Vaccinations”, data from Our World in Data, displayed at https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=how+many+covid+vaccines+are+there+in+the+world: and Coronavirus (COVID-19) Vaccinations”, Hannah Ritchie et. al., (2020) - "Coronavirus Pandemic (COVID-19)". Published online at OurWorldInData.org. Retrieved from: 'https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus' [Online Resource]
6). “A COVID Vaccine for All”, Dec 30, 2021, Hotez & Bottazzi, Scientific American, at < https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-covid-vaccine-for-all/ >: and “It’s cheap, easy to make and in demand overseas. So why can’t this Texas-born COVID-19 vaccine break into the U.S. market?”, Oct. 19, 2021, Karen Brooks Harper, Texas Tribune, at < https://www.texastribune.org/2021/10/19/texas-covid-19-vaccine-peter-hotez/ >: “The Novavax vaccine against COVID-19: What you need to know”, Dec 21, 2021, anon, World Health Organization, at < https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-novavax-vaccine-against-covid-19-what-you-need-to-know >.
7). “Developing therapeutic approaches for twenty-first-century emerging infectious viral diseases”, Mar, 2021, Rita M. Meganck & Ralph S. Baric, Nature Medicine, V. 27, pgs 401 - 410, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01282-0 >
8). “Is COVID-19 Treatable?”, Updated Feb 17, 2022, Paul Gisbert Auwaerter & Arturo Casadevall, HopkinsMedicine.org, at < https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-treatment-whats-in-development >: “What's New in the Guidelines”, Updated Feb 1, 2022, The COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel, NIH - COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines, at < https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/about-the-guidelines/whats-new/ >: “The race for antiviral drugs to beat COVID — and the next pandemic”, April 14, 2021, Elie Dolgin, Nature, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00958-4 >.
9). “Omicron overpowers key COVID antibody treatments in early tests”, Dec 21, 2021, Max Kozlov, Nature, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03829-0 >:
“Is COVID-19 Treatable?”, Updated Feb 17, 2022, Paul Gisbert Auwaerter & Arturo Casadevall, HopkinsMedicine.org, at < https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-treatment-whats-in-development >:
10). “Developing therapeutic approaches for twenty-first-century emerging infectious viral diseases”, Mar, 2021, Rita M. Meganck & Ralph S. Baric, Nature Medicine, V. 27, pgs 401 – 410, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01282-0 >: “Mechanism of SARS-CoV-2 polymerase stalling by remdesivir”, Jan 12, 2021, Goran Kokic et al., Nature, Nature Communications, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-20542-0 >: “Mechanism of molnupiravir-induced SARS-CoV-2 mutagenesis”, Aug 11, 2021, Florian Kabinger et al., Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, V. 28, pgs 740–746, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/s41594-021-00651-0 >: “Supervised Molecular Dynamics (SuMD) Insights into the mechanism of action of SARS-CoV-2 main protease inhibitor PF-07321332”, Jul 21, 2021, Matteo Pavan et al., Journal of Enzyme Inhibition and Medicinal Chemistry; V. 36(1): pgs 1646–1650 at < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8300928/ >.
11). “Merck’s COVID pill loses its lustre: what that means for the pandemic”, Dec 13, 2021, Max Kozlov, Nature, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03667-0 >.
12). “Developing therapeutic approaches for twenty-first-century emerging infectious viral diseases”, Mar, 2021, Rita M. Meganck & Ralph S. Baric, Nature Medicine, V. 27, pgs 401 - 410, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01282-0 >: “Is COVID-19 Treatable?”, Updated Feb 17, 2022, Paul Gisbert Auwaerter & Arturo Casadevall, HopkinsMedicine.org, at < https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/coronavirus/coronavirus-treatment-whats-in-development >: “What's New in the Guidelines”, Updated Feb 1, 2022, The COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel, NIH - COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines, at < https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/about-the-guidelines/whats-new/ >: “An oral SARS-CoV-2 Mpro inhibitor clinical candidate for the treatment of COVID-19”, Nov 2, 2021, Dafydd R. Owen et. al., Science Vol 374, Issue 6575 • pp. 1586-1593, at < https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl4784 >: “COVID research: a year of scientific milestones”, May 5, 2021, anon, Nature, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00502-w >: “Advances in the treatment of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) with Western medicine and traditional Chinese medicine: a narrative review”, Oct 2020, Abdulbaset Al-Romaima et al., Journal of Thoracic Disease; 12(10): 6054–6069, at < https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7656369/ >: “Research and Development on Therapeutic Agents and Vaccines for COVID-19 and Related Human Coronavirus Diseases”, March 12, 2020, Cynthia Liu et. al., ACS Central Science,V. 6 No. 3, pgs 315–331, at < https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.0c00272 >: “The origin, transmission and clinical therapies on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak – an update on the status”, Mar 13, 2020, Yan-Rong Guo et. al., Military Medical Research, V. 7, Article number: 11, at < https://mmrjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40779-020-00240-0 >
13). “The race for antiviral drugs to beat COVID — and the next pandemic”, April 14, 2021, Elie Dolgin, Nature, at < https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00958-4 >.
14). “Therapeutic Effectiveness of Interferon-α2b Against COVID-19: The Cuban Experience”, Sep 17, 2020, Ricardo Pereda et al., Journal of Interferon & Cytokine Research, V 40, No. 9, at < https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/jir.2020.0124 >: “Cuba’s response to COVID-19: lessons for the future”, Mar 11, 2021, Lana L. Wylie, Journal of Tourism Futures, V. 7, no. 3, at < https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/JTF-10-2020-0187/full/html >: “Role of interferon therapy in severe COVID-19: the COVIFERON randomized controlled trial”, Apr 13, 2021, Ilad Alavi Darazam et al., Nature: Scientific Reports, V. 11, 8059 at < https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-86859-y#citeas >: “Interferon does not improve outcomes for hospitalized adults with COVID-19”, Oct 18, 2021, NIH News Release, at < https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/interferon-does-not-improve-outcomes-hospitalized-adults-covid-19 >.
15). The Seven Part Covid-Free Methodology
1). Immediately closing their borders to places known to be already sites of infection and eventually, in relatively short order, general border closures. Currently in China people entering the country have to stay in quarantine for 3 weeks, after being provisionally admitted to enter the country. For Olympics visitors there is no quarantine for athletes, coaches, staff, and media personnel, who have proof of vaccination, upon entering China. However, if they test positive for Covid while in China they are subject to a quarantine in their hotel rooms or will be taken in for treatment if they are sick. The Athletes, coaches and press people are tested every day. So far members of the Press have by far the greatest positive Covid test rates.
2). Rapid and comprehensive testing for the virus;
3). Quarantine rules that are/were rigorously enforced;
4). Contact tracing using current day communications technologies to the fullest extent;
5). Lockdowns of areas where there are/were confirmed outbreaks that are/were large enough that contact tracing alone was not sufficient to control the outbreak. These lockdowns are/were maintained until the outbreak had been quelled;
6). The distribution and widespread use of top quality masks;
7). And finally, later when the vaccines became available, widespread vaccination campaigns (though by the time vaccines were available only China still maintained the strict Zero-Covid policy).
16). “China Holds the Line on ‘Zero Covid,’ but Some Wonder for How Long”, Jan. 21, 2022, Amy Qin & Amy Chang Chien, New York TImes, at < https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/world/asia/china-zero-covid-policy.html >: "The misunderstood—and misrepresented—Zero COVID policy in China", Dec 13, 2021, a scientist, World Socialist Web Site, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/12/13/chin-d13.html >: "China’s Zero COVID policy proves that the elimination of COVID-19 is possible", Perspective, Dec 13, 2021, Joseph Kishore, World Socialist Web Site, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/12/14/hluo-d14.html >: “The West’s Failure on Covid is Even More Staggering Than You Think: If the West Had Acted Like the East, 97% of Half a Million People Wouldn’t Have Died”, Nov 13, 2020, Umair Haque, Medium, at < https://eand.co/the-wests-failure-on-covid-is-even-more-staggering-than-you-think-77332f0cc5c2 >: "Covid Policy Shift Creates Whiplash for Australians", Feb. 4, 2022, Yan Zhuang, New York TImes, p. A7(L): "Hong Kong doubles down on Covid restrictions to fall into line with mainland China; Carrie Lam appears willing to sacrifice city's reputation as an international business centre to please Beijing's push for zero Covid", Oct 28, 2021, Helen Davidson, The Guardian: "China's Drive for 'Zero Covid' ", Nov 10, 2021, Jonathan Wolfe, New York TImes, p. A2(L): “From 'herd immunity' to 'endemic': The ruling class policy of perpetual mass death”, Feb 10, 2022, Evan Blake, World Socialist Web Site, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/10/pers-f10.html >: “The collapse of the 'mitigation' strategy exposes the class issues in the fight against the pandemic”, Feb 12, 2022, Joseph Kishore, World Socialist Web Site, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/12/pers-f12.html >: "Hong Kong is clinging to 'zero covid' and extreme quarantine. Talent is leaving in droves", Dec 27, 2021, Theodora Yu & Shibani Mahtani, Washington Post)
17). “Boston University epidemiologist Dr. Eleanor Murray speaks on COVID-19 and endemicity” Part 1, Feb 7, 2022, Benjamin Mateus, World Socialist Web Site, at < htpps://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/08/murr-f08.html >: “Boston University epidemiologist Dr. Eleanor Murray speaks on COVID-19 and endemicity” Part 2, Feb 8, 2022, Benjamin Mateus, World Socialist Web Site, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/09/murr-f09.html >: “COVID-19: endemic doesn’t mean harmless”, Jan 24, 2022, Aris Katzourakis, Nature, at < https://www.nature.co/articles/d41586-022-00155-x >: Africa's Cities: Opening Doors to the World, “Chapter 1: Crowded with People not Dense with Capital”, pgs 29 - 62, 2017, Anon, World Bank: “Slum decay in Sub-Saharan Africa: Context, environmental pollution challenges, and impact on dweller’s health”, Jun 2021, A. Kofi Amegah, Environmental Epidemiology: Volume 5 - Issue 3 - p e158, at < https://journals.lww.com/environepidem/Fulltext/2021/06000/Slum_decay_in_Sub_Saharan_Africa__Context,.9.aspx >
18). “Backed by Science: Here’s How We Can Eliminate COVID-19”, Jan 23, 2022, Guy Marks, Brendan Crabb & Raina MacIntyre, Health Policy Watch, at < https://healthpolicy-watch.news/93258-2/ >: Australian epidemiologists call for global action to eliminate COVID-19, Jan 25, 2022, Richard Phillips, WSWS, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/26/mark-j26.html >: “ 'Inequality kills': Capitalism and the COVID-19 pandemic”, Jan 19, 2022, Kevin Reed, WSWS, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/19/pers-j19.html >: “Inequality kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19”, Jan 17, 2022, Nabil Ahmed et. al., Oxfam, at < https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/inequality-kills >
19). “New York, Michigan and Ohio end contact tracing”, Jan 30, 2022, Andre Damon, WSWS, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/31/cont-j31.html >: “CDC backs corporate demands to force the sick back to work”, Dec 29, 2021, Andre Damon, WSWS, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/12/29/pers-d29.html >: “With 900,000 dead from COVID-19, US capitalism doubles down on mass infection”, Jan 29, 2022, Andre Damon, WSWS, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/01/29/pers-j29.html >: “Covid-19 Curbs Eased Further in Europe as New Version of Omicron Spreads in Places; U.S. Covid-19 deaths at highest levels since February but cases and hospitalizations continue to fall”, Jan 27, 2022, Benoit Bertrand & Denise Roland, Wall Street Journal (Online): “New Covid Variant: What We Know About the BA.2 Omicron Strain; At least 40 countries, including Denmark, India and the U.K., have detected the variant”, Jan 28, 2022, Benoit Bertrand & Denise Roland, Wall Street Journal (Online)
20). “War plotters at Munich Security Conference hear call for surrender to COVID-19”, Feb 20, 2022, Andre Damon, WSWS, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/21/gate-f21.html >.
21). “Beijing Olympics Concludes But No Finish Line for Omicron Outbreak in Sight”, Feb 18, 2022, HKTDC Research, HKTDC Research, at < https://research.hktdc.com/en/article/OTg2NzY2MzM5 >: “No Covid cases were detected on Wednesday, a first for the Games”, Feb 17, 2022, Daniel Victor, New York Times, at < https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/sports/olympics/covid-cases-beijing-olympics.html >. “What the World Can Learn from China’s COVID-19 Rules at the Winter Olympics”, Feb 21, 2022, Chad de Guzman, Time, at < https://time.com/6149800/beijing-2022-covid-19-olympics/ >: “Don't Expect China to Ease Its Zero-COVID Policy After the Beijing Olympics”, Jan 20, 2022, Chad de Guzman, Time, at < https://time.com/6139772/china-zero-covid-policy/ >: “Hong Kong in "all-out combat" to contain COVID outbreak with China support”, Feb20, 2022, James Pomfret, Reuters, at < https://www.reuters.com/world/china/hong-kong-ramps-up-isolation-facilities-including-cruise-terminal-battle-covid-2022-02-20/ >: “Analysis: Hong Kong's 'zero-COVID' success now worsens strains of Omicron spike”, Feb 18, 2022, Farah Master, Reuters, at < https://www.reuters.com/world/china/hong-kongs-zero-covid-success-now-worsens-strains-omicron-spike-2022-02-19/ >: “Hong Kong Hospital Wards Overflow as Omicron Defies Zero-Covid Policies; Officials take over apartments, hotels to isolate new cases as city faces its biggest outbreak yet”, Feb 15, 2022, Dan Stumpf, Wall Street Journal (Online): “Hong Kong "Overwhelmed" By Omicron Wave: City Leader”, updated Feb 14, 2022, anon, NDTV (originally from Agence France-Presse), at < https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-hong-kong-overwhelmed-by-omicron-wave-says-city-leader-2767051 >: “Omicron surge exposes tension at heart of Hong Kong’s virus strategy: Beijing worries a failure of territory’s zero-Covid approach will jeopardise mainland”, Feb 17, 2022, Primrose Riordan, Chan Ho-him & Tom Mitchell, Financial Times, at < https://www.ft.com/content/79bd3e9b-74cf-4f3f-8cff-d940d16021a7 >.
22). “The coronavirus pandemic”, WSWS, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/topics/event/coronavirus >.
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