I follow the New York Times and the Washington Post daily. I watch the Covid news especially closely because the virus could kill me and anyone I know. Today I blundered across a major Covid news story on an alternative new site that the major papers, NPR and other outlets have not covered. Why?
On December 28, two doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital announced that they have developed and tested a new Covid-19 vaccine that works well will be available world-wide at very low cost to developing countries. Dr. Peter Hotez and Dr. Maria Elane Bottazzi developed the vaccine as a “gift to the world.”
Branded Corbevax, the new vaccine uses traditional recombinant protein-based technology, long used for developing other vaccines. This method differs from the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine technologies (messenger RNA vaccines) and won’t require deep refrigeration as those vaccines do. Thus, it can be manufactured cheaply and distributed widely. Already 150 million doses have been made and distributed and they plan to make 100 million per month going forward. This is more vaccine that the US has donated to the world to date.
Does this sound like a story the New York Times should be covering on page 1? No mention. Likewise, the Washington Post. Zip. These are the papers-of-record for the US.
The Corbevax vaccine was developed in the US, will be available in the US and was funded by US and Indian sources. Yet international news outlets like the BBC talk about it as an Indian vaccine, because the first manufacturing contracts were signed there. It is licensed to Biological E Limited, a Baylor University subsidiary.
Further, the developers plan to offer the technology and recipe to developing countries all over the world patent-free so they can ramp up manufacture quickly. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was a key funder of the research along with the Indian government. Already the vaccine has emergency use approval in India where it will be manufactured on a massive scale.
To date 48% of the world population (7.9 billion people and rising) has been vaccinated. But in developing and underdeveloped countries, the percentages are far lower. The unvaccinated population offer the Covid virus abundant opportunities to mutate and emerge as new dangerous variants as we now know from Omnicom that is ravaging the world after mutating in southern Africa.
Rich countries like the US and countries in Europe have a high vaccination rate but these countries will continue to be vulnerable to deadly variants as long as large numbers of humans elsewhere are unvaccinated. The Corbevax vaccine will spread widely and help protect everyone.
In the US, far right and other misinformed people refuse to get vaccinated. Thirty percent of the US population rejects vaccines. These people are clogging our health care system and exhausting health care workers. They are filling the morgues and enriching the funeral industry. Efforts by President Biden to mandate vaccines to quash the pandemic domestically have been challenged by republicans who fear the Trump base or are part of the Trump base, slowing our exit from the pandemic and continuing widespread economic damage including inflation.
Tom Ribe
