Borders
There is a scathing article about f-ups by the company which runs the international border quarantine program, saying that oversight of people in quarantine is ah weak.
Vaccines
The US is going to distribute its 60M doses of AZ to other countries. I don’t know how they are going to work around the clause in their contract which says they can’t give it away or sell it. Maybe they will just ignore it? (AstraZeneca Inc. would look pretty bad if they tried to stop them.) Maybe they will call it a loan and then just “forget” to get the doses back?
This is an interesting article about India’s over-estimate about how much vax it could supply. India prided itself on delivering 60% of global vaccines — without stopping to notice that it was for childhood vaccines, which don’t lend themselves well to switching over. They do not make a lot of influenza vax, which does lend itself well to switching over.
Many people are calling for companies to release their patents on IP. This thread argues that IP is not the problem, it’s manufacturing capacity. She points out that Moderna and AZ are basically patent-free right now. Bill Gates also says that IP is not the issue.
Our public health team likes to say, “take the first vaccine you are offered”. Um, no: if you are offered the Sputnik V vaccine, do not take it. TL;DR: the trial was tiny and messed up, they don’t have data on adverse events, and the Brazilian regulators found replicating adenovirus in every lot that they tested, where the adenovirus is supposed to be non-replicating. I mean, it’s holy shit bad.
Measures
This article uses a specific incidence of refusing to wear a mask as a starting point for an explanation of why anti-vaxxers get so violent. I had always thought that they were afraid of the virus but didn’t want to be afraid, so redirected their fear into anger. This article contains the suggestion that the find it a status challenge. They think they are high-status, and for someone low-status (e.g. young workers (possibly of colour) at a low-wage job) tells them what to do, it’s a threat to their place in the status hierarchy.