The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites

Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine Producers Plan Technology Transfers to Developing Countries

April 22, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare

Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine Producers Plan Technology Transfers to Developing Countries

April 21 (EIRNS)— Zheng Zhongwei, director of the Development Center for Medical Science and Technology of China’s National Health Commission, raised the problem yesterday that some 5 billion people in the world outside China threatened by the COVID-19 pandemic have no access to vaccines, “while another 1.2 billion people in places where the epidemic is serious—including the U.S., U.K. and Europe—do have vaccines.” Zheng was addressing the session on COVID-19 at this year’s Boao Forum for Asia.

The two top executives of China’s Sinovac and CanSinoBIO vaccine producers told the session that to address that disparity, they are “mulling” how to transfer at least some part of the technology needed for vaccine production to developing countries, Global Times reports.

CanSinoBIO CEO Yu Xuefeng said the company is considering technology transfer to some qualified countries like Mexico and Pakistan, so that countries in South America and Central Asia can get vaccines more conveniently. The company already exports semi-finished vaccine products to Brazil and Mexico, where they are packaged locally. (“Packaging” a vaccine is not like packaging tablets or capsules, but requires special technology and trained personnel.)

Sinovac Biotech CEO Yin Weidong was more decisive, announcing that his company plans “to select 10 countries for technology transfer as soon as possible” to break the bottleneck, Reuters reports. Sinovac Biotech has already supplied over 60% of the 260 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine which it has produced to countries outside China, he reported, and is producing more than 6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine per day. According to Zheng, China plans now to produce over 3 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines this year, but hopes to build up its capacity so as to produce some 5 billion doses. China is in the midst of its own vaccination program, and there have been places in the country where a vaccine shortage has meant that some people could not get their second shots in time. Zheng told Global Times yesterday that current production increases should ease the scarcity by June, so that China can provide doses to more people internationally through multilateral and bilateral measures.

Dr. Osterholm: Coronavirus a “Category 5 Hurricane Status” Globally

April 6, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Healthcare

Dr. Osterholm: Coronavirus Has a “Category 5 Hurricane Status” Globally

April 5 (EIRNS)–Speaking on Fox News Sunday and Meet the Press April 4, epidemiologist Michael Osterholm, an adviser to President Biden on the COVID-19 pandemic, made the obvious point in terms of the global nature of the coronavirus pandemic and warned that people had better pay attention. Overall, he said, “we’re in a category 5 hurricane status with regard to the rest of the world. We’ll see in the next two weeks the highest number of cases reported globally, since the beginning of the pandemic. As for the United States, we’re just at the beginning of the surge.” Osterholm, who runs the Minnesota-based Center for Infectious Disease and Research Policy (CIDRAP), said he agreed with the remarks made last week by Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to the effect that the situation in the United States was not at all under control–she reported she felt a sense of “impending doom”–adding that Americans weren’t being realistic about the spike in new cases nationwide. Moreover, he warned, that spike was being driven by the COVID variant B.1.1.7, the British strain.

Dr. Osterholm elaborated: “We are the only country in the world right now experiencing this increasing number of cases due to this variant, and at the same time opening up, not closing down. The two basically are going to collide, and we are going to see substantially increased numbers of cases.” He especially warned that the variant is now hitting children much harder than previous strains. “It infects kids very readily.” More broadly, he pointed to reports of surging cases around the country, especially in the Upper Midwest where “they’re just beginning to start the fourth surge.” Look at what happened on April 3 in Michigan where there were a record number of 8,400 cases in one day. “That should have been a wakeup call to everyone.” It’s also the case, he pointed out, that there are more people between the ages of 30 and 50 who are being hospitalized and seen in ICUs

Other states with similar reports of increased cases include Ohio, Minnesota, Nebraska and Pennsylvania. Dr. Bruce Vanderhoff, head of Ohio’s Health Department, warned that “Ohio remains in a race against a virus that is now more contagious and right back on our heels.”

Epidemiologists’ `Math’ Says Vaccinate More Before Any Boosters

August 22, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Healthcare, Healthcare

Epidemiologists’ `Math’ Says Vaccinate More Before Any Boosters–

Aug. 22 (EIRNS) — A low-key op-ed by two epidemiologists, “Boosters won’t stop the Delta variant: Here’s the math”, was published back on Aug. 15 in the Washington Post. While focused on the United States, if applied to the entire world’s population it appears to provide substantiation for focusing all available and contracted vaccine supplies on the basic vaccination of citizens before giving any booster shots. The premise of their analysis: “Many vaccinated people are asking whether it’s time to get a booster dose. But the math behind the spread of infectious diseases like COVID-19 can help us see that it’s not.”

The argument: The basic reproductive number R0 or the original virus in this pandemic — the number of people likely to be infected by each infectious person if there is no immunity in the population — was 3; of the Delta variant, it is estimated at 6-9. Re is the effective reproductive number, which is R0 multiplied by the share of the population which is susceptible to the disease, and which must be kept at 1 or lower to keep the epidemic from spreading. The susceptible portion of the population can be expressed by [1-xv], where 1 is the whole population (or adult population), x is the percentage of people fully vaccinated and v is the vaccines’ effectiveness. Then the effective reproductive number of the virus, Re, is R0 times [1-xv]. This Re is a direct measure of how fast and how far the Delta variant infections, hospitalizations and deaths spread.

Taking the Delta variant’s R0 as 8 and the vaccine effectiveness as 85%, Re would be just 1.2 if the entire target population were fully vaccinated. At 52% fully vaccinated (where the United States is now), Re for Delta is about 4, worse than the original virus variant when no one at all was immune. If a booster shot is assumed to raise vaccine effectiveness to 95%, then Re with the currently vaccinated population, if they were all to be boosted, is still about 4.

But if 75% of the target population were to become fully vaccinated, the Re number drops below 3. If 85% were vaccinated, with no boosters, Re would be about 2.4, even having assumed an R0 value which is near the top of the range for the Delta variant.

In other words, there is a huge field for increasing x, the proportion of people vaccinated; relative to the small range for increasing v, the vaccines’ effectiveness, by booster shots; and this determines how the spread of the Delta variant of COVID can be arrested. It would seem to apply to the population of all the world’s nations, as well as to that of Americans.

The authors are Prof. Eleanor Murray, Boston Univ. School of Public Health; and her doctoral student Ruby Barnard-Mayers.

Implement LaRouche’s 2010 Rebuilding Program in Haiti Now: The 2021 Earthquake Can Not Be Allowed To Be A Further Descent into Hell!

August 18, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in Economic development updates, General, General updates, Geopolitics updates, Global Diplomacy, Haiti, New Silk Road / BRI updates, Our initiatives (petitions, etc), The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, United States, World Land-Bridge updates

Had American statesman Lyndon LaRouche’s program to rebuild Haiti been implemented, in response to the devastating Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake, which killed between 250,000 and 300,000 people, this impoverished nation would not be suffering the level of death and destruction so far wrought by the August 14 earthquake that measured 7.2 on the Richter scale. And the carnage will become much greater as a series of tropical storms hit, which are expected to be rolling in, perhaps one after another.

As of August 17, reports are that 1,900 people are dead, 10,000 injured, and 37,000 homes have been destroyed. Homes, schools, supermarkets, and roads were leveled in the southern and western parts of the country. People are terrified. They have once again been abandoned by the United States and its international partners, left to perish in extreme poverty, disease, and misery.

Lyndon LaRouche immediately responded to the 2010 earthquake by calling for an emergency reconstruction program for Haiti, to which, he said, the U.S. had a special responsibility. He called on the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to first deploy to rescue and relocate up to 1 million homeless Haitians from Port-au-Prince to higher ground before the rainy season arrived and unleashed a dangerous health and sanitation crisis for these destitute citizens; he then proposed a comprehensive program to focus on building infrastructure—for sanitation, water management, irrigation, earthquake-proof housing, transportation, agriculture, etc.

LaRouche also recommended that the U.S. sign a 25-year treaty with Haiti, “a treaty agreement to reestablish the efficient sovereignty of the nation of Haiti, after the destructive effect of this and preceding difficulties. We make a contract with the government, as a treaty agreement, between the United States and Haiti, to assure the rebuilding of their country, in a form in which it will actually be a functioning country which can survive.” Those proposals are available here.

President Barack Obama rejected LaRouche’s proposals, and instead removed crucial economic and military aid, encouraging what became known as the “Republic of NGOs” — a large unwieldy network of foreign NGOs that had a lot of money to throw around but did nothing of any real substance.

Years later, in 2017, when China’s Southwest Engineering Municipal Design Research Institute joined with the Haitian firm Bayti Ayiti to propose a $30 billion program to completely rebuild Haiti, with $4.7 billion to rebuild the capital, Port-au-Prince, with sanitation infrastructure, housing, and transportation, the IMF reportedly stepped in—EIR was told at the time—to make sure the proposal went nowhere.

On March 10, 2010, EIR published a 20-page package which detailed the programmatic solutions Haiti required and identified those monetarist political forces committed to keeping in place the Malthusian economic policies that had made Haiti so vulnerable to disaster, and which remain in effect today. That package is available here.

Video of Doctor Susan Moore While Dying from Mistreatment

March 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in General updates, Healthcare, Our conferences, The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites

March 30, 2021 –During the Q & A session of Panel 4: “The Challenge of Famine and Pandemics — The Coincidence of Opposites or Mass Extinction?” at the the recent Schiller Institute conference, there was an extensive discussion of triage and the treatment of poor and non-white patients, which have been exacerbated under conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dr. Shirley Evers-Manly, who had described the mounting cases of mistreatment and triage taking place in hospitals and elsewhere in the US against poor and minority patients during this pandemic, subsequently referenced the following video made by a black medical doctor, Dr. Susan Moore, in an Indiana hospital. Suffering from Covid-19, Dr. Moore describes how she was denied medicine, and told to go home despite being severely ill — even that she was to be sent home at night. Dr. Moore makes a passionate appeal, not simply for herself but for all those who “don’t know how to fight for themselves.” Dr. Moore died a few days after making this video. Twitter coverage and video.

Media Starts Catching on to Biden’s Ridiculous Vaccine Hoarding

March 31, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, General updates, Healthcare

Mar. 29 (EIRNS)–For two months, the Biden administration COVID-19 vaccine policy has been to grab as many vaccines as possible and turn away any and all requests for help. Then in March, various statements, either from President Biden or his White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, made clear that America would consider requests after every American is taken care of. It’s been left unclear whether that’s every adult who would roll up their sleeve (around 200 million) or, literally, every American (330 million) or somewhere in between. However, this last week has seen several articles beginning to question the ugly and counterproductive stance. One can pretend that viruses don’t mutate and create new strains that will outflank one’s vaccines, but it is a silly conceit.
One of them, for example, an Axios’s article by Dave Lawler, used vaccine production figures from Airfinity, and compared production vs. export of vaccines: the United States produced 27% of the world’s vaccines and exported 0% of their production; China, 33% and 62% of that exported. (With this week’s plan to ship 4 million doses to Mexico and Canada, the U.S. climbs to about 1.5%.) India and Russia also had significant export figures. Biden’s prime tool has been to invoke the Defense Production Act to keep our ammunition away from allies and foe alike. One European diplomat expressed surprise that there was so little domestic opposition to Biden’s ‘Americans first’ approach. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, summed it up: “The question really is, what is the threshold that’s going to satisfy the administration enough to allow the exporting of those doses?”

Video: COVID-19 & Triage: A Slippery Slope

March 30, 2021by David Dobrodt in The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites

A discussion of the “Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites” concerning the policy of triage in face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Brazil COVID Crisis Careens Out of Control

March 29, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Healthcare

Brazil COVID Crisis Careens Out of Control

March 28 (EIRNS) – Numerous Brazilian medical and other authorities are sounding the alarm that the COVID pandemic in Brazil is careening out of the control, threatening not only the country but the entire planet. At present, one in every four COVID deaths worldwide is occurring in Brazil. “Before, the risk factor to dying from Covid-19 was being older, having some co-morbidity,” said Domingos Alves, a professor of medicine who’s part of a national monitoring group. “Now, the risk is being Brazilian,” Bloomberg reported.

The mortality rate in Brazil has risen from 2% at the end of last year to 3.1% in mid March, according to Fiocruz, one of the country’s leading R&D centers in epidemiology. That is more than a 50% increase in less than three months. Only 7% of the population have received a vaccine shot; 2% are fully vaccinated. More than 300,000 Brazilians have died of Covid to date; some experts expect the half-million mark to be hit by June, and for Brazil to surpass the U.S. in deaths by the end of the year – a grim achievement.

An alarming new trend is a sharp rise in the number and proportion of younger Brazilians who are getting sick and dying from Covid – this in a country that is largely young. According to official statistics, from Jan. 1 to mid March the rate of new cases among those aged 30 to 59 rose by nearly twice the national average of 316%. Deaths in those age groups jumped by at least 317%, compared with 223% for Brazil as a whole.

Scientists are still trying to figure out why that is happening. One theory is that younger patients wait longer to seek health care and are sicker when they arrive at the hospital. Another factor may relate to the new variants appearing in Brazil. Bloomberg cited Jaques Sztajnbok, who helps run the ICU at Sao Paulo’s Emílio Ribas hospital, one of Brazil’s main facilities for infectious diseases, saying that patients are largely getting sick with the variant that first appeared in the Amazonian city of Manaus or the U.K. one, both of which are more contagious than the original strain.

“Fernando Brum, a director at Sorocaba’s Santa Casa hospital [near Sao Paulo], said the mutation of the virus into a much more contagious version with a viral load that makes people sick in a faster and more aggressive way has meant young people have gone from mostly asymptomatic cases to being gravely affected… `The intensive care unit is constantly and uninterruptedly occupied,’ he [Brum] said. Patients in their 30s make up at least half of those beds, and their average time spent in the hospital has tripled from last year. It has come down recently for a grim reason — patients are dying more quickly.”

The country’s health system is on the brink of total collapse. Miguel Nicolelis, professor of Neurobiology at Duke University who advised several Brazilian governors and mayors on pandemic control, told AP: “We have surpassed levels never imagined for a country with a public health care system, a history of efficient immunization campaigns and health workers who are second to none in the world. The next stage is the health system collapse.”

Brazil’s state-run science and technology institute, Fiocruz, on Tuesday called for a 14-day lockdown to reduce transmission by 40%. “We need to open our eyes and understand this is no joke,” Rio’s Mayor Eduardo Paes said in a recorded message on the eve of a 10-day shutdown in that city. “People are dying and, if everything continues as is, nothing is done, God only knows what could happen. No one knows this disease’s limit. No one knows how many variants could emerge.”

China Announces Two Billion COVID-19 Vaccines to Be Exported in 2021

August 8, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in China, COVID-19, Economic development updates, General updates, Global Diplomacy, Healthcare, Healthcare

China Announces Two Billion COVID-19 Vaccines to Be Exported in 2021—

Aug. 6 (EIRNS)–President Xi Jinping announced today that China will export two billion COVID-19 vaccines in 2021. The massive expansion of production capacity this year has allowed China to export between 600 to 750 million doses so far, while also applying over 1.7 billion doses within China. The track record of Sinovac and Sinopharm so far indicates that they will produce almost 5 billion doses this year, and Tao Lina, a vaccine expert in Shanghai confirms this. Otherwise, China is presently vaccinating their population at the rate of 17.9 million shots a day, which is seven times the rate of the European Union, and 30 times that of the United States.

President Xi sent a written message today to the International Forum on Covid-19 Vaccine Cooperation, hosted by China Central Television and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang-Yi. He described the vaccine as a “global public good,” and stressed common action on world health as part of building a community with a shared future for mankind. He recognized the problem with the resurgences of the coronavirus allowing for the proliferation of mutations and variant strains. Besides exporting vaccines, he described China’s work with countries to develop and produce vaccines, with joint production already begun in the UAE, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Brazil, Turkey, Pakistan and Mexico — a new capacity of over 200 million doses, which needs further expansion.

World Health Organization: COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout To Accelerate in Africa

August 6, 2021by Mary Jane Freeman in COVID-19, General updates, Healthcare, Healthcare

World Health Organization: COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout To Accelerate in Africa—

Aug. 5, 2021 (EIRNS) – A World Health Organization article published in Consortium News July 30 reports on the 520 million vaccine doses that will be shipped to Africa by the end of 2021 by COVAX. Can they be administered in that 4-plus-month time frame by the public health systems of the African countries? That is a vital question.

Ethiopian biologist Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization, said that poorer countries worldwide have administered, on average, 1.5 shots per 100 people, while developed countries have administered 100 shots for 100 people, on average.

Up to the present, only 79 million COVID doses have arrived in Africa, and 21 million people, or just (1.6 percent) of Africa’s population are fully vaccinated.

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