Podcasts about covax

Join hosts Marla Dalton, PE, CAE, and William Schaffner, MD, for an engaging conversation with Seth F. Berkley, MD, a global health pioneer and champion of equitable access to vaccines. He shares insights from his notable career, including his impactful work in Uganda rebuilding the immunization program and developing the national AIDS control program, his work with Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, and his trailblazing leadership of COVAX, which helped deliver more than 2 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines globally to 146 countries.Show notesAn infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, Berkley led Gavi for 12 years, raising more than $33 billion and substantially increasing coverage of routine immunization in lower-income countries. He previously founded the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative to develop an AIDS vaccine for developing countries and now serves as a senior advisor for the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health. Always up for an adventure, Berkley has been featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine, listed by Fortune as one of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders, and has been recognized by TIME as one of the World's Most Influential People. His TED talks have been viewed by more than 2.5 million. In recognition of his work to help protect the most vulnerable populations across the globe, NFID will honor him with the 2024 Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Humanitarian Award in September2024.

Cruz Roja Polanco reanuda aplicación de vacuna contra Covid el 4 de enero Concluyó el programa de distribución de vacunas COVAX Suspenden Paseo Dominical Muévete en Bici

Caravana migrante rechaza cifras de AMLO Termina Programa de Vacunas COVAX Rusia lanza 150 misiles a Ucrania

Dr. Peter Hotez is a veritable force. He has been the tip of the spear among physicians and scientists for taking on anti-science and has put himself and his family at serious risk.Along with Dr. Maria Bottazzi, he developed the Corbevax Covid vaccine —without a patent— that has already been given to over 10 million people, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Here an uninhibited, casual and extended conversation about his career, tangling with the likes of RFK Jr, Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, and an organized, funded, anti-science mob, along with related topics.Today is publication day for his new book, The Deadly Rise of Anti-Science.Transcript (AI generated)Eric Topol (00:00):Hello, this is Eric Topol with Ground Truths, and I'm with my friend and colleague who's an extraordinary fellow, Dr. Peter Hotez. He's the founding dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and University professor at Baylor, also at Texas Children's founding editor of the Public Library Science and Neglected Tropical Disease Journal. and I think this is Peter, your fifth book.Peter Hotez (00:28):That's my fifth single author book. That's right, that's right.Eric Topol (00:32):Fifth book. So that's pretty amazing. Peter's welcome and it's great to have a chance to have this conversation with you.Peter Hotez (00:39):Oh, it's great to be here and great to be with you, Eric, and you know, I've learned so much from you during this pandemic, and my only regret is not getting to know you before the pandemic. My life would've been far richer. AndPeter Hotez (00:53):I think, I think I first got to really know about you. You were are my medical school, Baylor College of Medicine, awarded you an honorary doctorate, and that's when I began reading about it. Oh. I said, holy cow. Why didn't, why haven't I been with this guy before? SoEric Topol (01:08):It's, oh my gosh. So you must have been there that year. And I came to the graduation.Peter Hotez (01:12):No, I actually was speaking at another graduation. That's why I couldn't be there, . Ah,Eric Topol (01:18):Right. As you typically do. Right. Well, you know, it's kind of amazing to track your career besides, you know, your baccalaureate at Yale and PhD at Rockefeller and MD at Cornell. But you started off, I, I think deep into hookworm. Is that where you kind of got your start?Peter Hotez (01:36):Yeah, and I'm still, and I'm still there actually, the hookworm vaccine that I started working on as an MD-PhD student at Rockefeller and Cornell is now in phase 2 clinical trials. Wow. So, which is, I tell people, is about the average timeframe --about 40 years-- is about a, not an unusual timeframe. These parasites are obviously very tough targets. oh man. And then we have AOIs vaccine and clinical trials and a Chagas disease vaccine. That's always been my lifelong passion is making vaccines for these neglected parasitic infections. And the story with Covid was I had a collaboration with Dr. Sarah Lustig at the New York Blood Center, who, when we were working on a river blindness vaccine, and she said, Hey, I want you to meet these two scientists, New York Blood Center. They're working on something called coronaviruses vaccines.(02:27):They were making vaccines for severe acute respiratory syndrome and SARS and ultimately MERS. And so we, we plugged their, their, some of their discoveries into our vaccine development machine. And they had found that if you were using the receptor binding domain of the, of the spike protein of SARS and ultimately MERS it produced an equivalent protective immune response neutralizing antibodies without the immune enhancement. And that's what we wrote to the NIT to do. And they supported us with a $6 million grant back in 2012 to make SARS and MERS vaccines. And, and then when Covid 19 hit, when the sequence came online and BioXriv in like early 2020, we just pivoted our program to Covid and, and we were able to hit the ground running and it worked. Everything just clicked and worked really well. And stars aligned and we were then transferred that technology.(03:26):We did it with no patent minimizing strings attached to India, Indonesia, Bangladesh. any place that we felt had the ability to scale up and produce it, India went the furthest. They developed it into Corbevax, which has reached 75 million kids in India. And another 10 million as their, for their primary immunization. Another 10 million is adult booster. And then Indonesia developed their own version of our, of our technology called IndoVac. And, and that's also reaching millions of, of people. And now they're using it as a, also as a booster for Pfizer, because I think it may be a superior booster. So it was really exciting to s you know, after working in parasitic disease vaccines, which are tough targets and decades to get it through the clinical trials because the pressure was on to move quickly goes to show you when people prioritize it. And also the fact that I think viruses are more straightforward targets than complex parasites. And well, so that in all about a hundred million doses have been administered andEric Topol (04:33):Yeah, no, it's just a spectacular story, Corbevax and these other named of the vaccine that, that you and Maria Bottazzi put together and without a patent at incredibly low cost and not in the us, which is so remarkable because as we exchanged recently, the us the companies, and that's three Moderna, Pfizer, and Novavax are going to charge well over $110 per booster of the, the new booster updated XBB.1.5. And you've got one that could be $2 or $4 that's,Peter Hotez (05:11):And it's getting, so we're making, we're making the XBB recombinant protein booster of ours. And part of it's the technology, you can, you know, it's done through microbial fermentation in yeast, and it's been in a big bioreactor. And it's an older technology that's been around a couple of decades, and there's no limit to the amount you could scale. The yields are really high. So we can do this for two to $3 a dose, and it'd even be less, it wasn't for the cost of the adjuvant. The C P G, the nucleotide is probably the most expensive component, but the antigen is, you know, probably pennies to, to, you know, when you're doing it at that scale. And, and so that, that's really meaningful. I'd like to get our XBB booster into the us It's,Eric Topol (05:55):Yeah, it's just no respect from,Peter Hotez (05:58):We're not a pharma company, so we don't, we didn't get support from Operation Warp Speed, and so we didn't get any US subsidies for that. And it's just very hard to get on the radar screen of BARDA and those agencies and, 'cause that's, they're all set up to work with pharma companies.Eric Topol (06:16):Yeah, I know. It's, it's just not right. And who pays for this is the people, the public, because they, you know, the affordability is going to have a big influence on who gets boosters and is drivingPeter Hotez (06:27):. Yeah. So, so what I say is we, we provide, you know, the anti-vaccine guys, like the call me a Shill for pharma, not knowing what they're talking about. We've done the opposite, right? We've provided a path that shows you don't need to go to big pharma all the time. And, and so they should be embracing what we're doing. So we, we've, you know, have this new model for how you can get low cost vaccines out there. Not, not to demonize the pharma companies either. They, they do what they do and they do a lot of important innovation. But, but there are other pathways, especially for resource coordination. So we'd love to get this vaccine in, in the us I think it's looking a little work just, just as well, it's, you know, butEric Topol (07:12):You, yeah, I mean, it's not, I don't want ot demonize the vaccine companies either, but to raise the price fivefold just because it's not getting governed subsidy and the billions that have been provided by the government through taxpayer monies. Yeah.Peter Hotez (07:28):Well, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported that they did an analysis that, that pharma, I think it was Pfizer and Moderna got 25 to 30 billion Yeah. Dollars in US subsidies, either for development costs for Moderna. I think Pfizer didn't accept development costs, but they both took advanced purchase money, so $30 billion. And you know, that's not how you show gratitude to the American people byEric Topol (07:55):JackingPeter Hotez (07:56):Up the price times for, I think I said, guys, you know, have some situational awareness. I mean, do you want people to hate you? Yeah.Eric Topol (08:04):That's what it looks like. Well, speaking of before I get to kind of the anti-science, the, THE DEADLY RISE OF ANTI-SCIENCE, your new book, I do want to set it up that, you know, you spent a lot of your career besides working on these tropical diseases, challenging diseases, you know, Leischmania, and you know, Chagas, and the ones you've mentioned. You've also stood up quite a bit for the low middle income countries with books that you've written previously about forgotten people, Blue Marble Health. And so, I, I, before I, I don't want to dismiss that 'cause it's really important and it ties in with what the work you've done with the, the Covax or Covid vaccine. Now, what I really want to get into is the book that you wrote that kind of ushered in your very deep personal in anti-science and anti-vax, which I'm going in a minute ask you to differentiate. But your daughter, Rachel, you wrote a book about her and about vaccines not causing autism. So can you tell us about that?Peter Hotez (09:11):Yeah. So as you point out, my first two books were about these, what I would call forgotten diseases of Forgotten people. In fact, that's what the first book was called, forgotten People, forgotten Diseases, which my kids used to call Dad's Forgotten book on Forgotten people, Forgotten Diseases, all the, all the, now it's in his third edition. So, but it talks about, you know, the, how important these conditions are. It's just that they're widely prevalent. It's just that they're occurring among people who live in extreme poverty, including people in poverty in the United States. That's why we set up our School of Tropical Medicine on the US Gulf Coast. I didn't do it for the summer weather which is these days in this heat dome. It's like, well, living on planet Mercury right now, in here, here in Texas.(09:58):But then, so that, that's what, that's how I started learning how to advocate, you know, for people and for diseases through neglected diseases. But, you know, when we came to Texas, we saw this very aggressive anti-vaccine movement, and they were making false claims that vaccines cause autism. And, and I said, look, I'm, you know, I'm a vaccine scientist here in Texas. I have a daughter with autism, Rachel, with an, an intellectual disabilities. And so if I don't say something who does, and, and then wrote the book, vaccines did not cause Rachel's Autism, which unfortunately made me public enemy number one or two with anti-vaccine groups. but you know, it, it, it does a deep dive explaining the science, showing there's absolutely no link between vaccines and autism, but also an absence of plausibility because what we know about autism, how it begins in early fetal brain development through the action of autism genes.(10:54):And we actually did whole exome genomic sequencing on, on Rachel and my wife Ann and I, and we found Rachel's autism gene, which is like many of them in, involved in early neuronal communication and connections. It was actually a neuronal cytoskeleton gene, as are many, in this case, a neuronal spectrum. And that one hadn't been reported before, but other neuronal cytoskeleton genes had been reported by the Broad Institute at Harvard, m i t and others. And, and that was important to have that alternative narrative because the refrain from always was, okay, doc, if vaccines don't do it, what does cause autism? And, and being able to have that other side of the story, I think is very compelling.Eric Topol (11:37):What was it, the, the fabricated paper by Andrew Wakefield and the Lancet that, that got all this started? Or did it really annotate the ? There wasPeter Hotez (11:47):Something before in the eighties about the DPT, the diptheria, pertussis tetanus vaccine claiming it caused, you know, seizures and then could lead to neurodevelopmental difficulties. But it really took off with the Wakefield paper in 1998, published in The Lancet. And that claimed that the MMR vaccine, a live virus vaccine, had the ability to replicate in the colon of kids. And somehow that led to pervasive developmental disorder. That was the term used back then. And I was Rachel's diagnosis. And it never made sense to me how something, 'cause the reason it's pervasive is it's, it's global in, in the central nervous system in, in the brain. And how, how could something postnatally do something like that? I mean, there is, there are epigenetic underpinnings of autism as well, and that's fun. Eric, you ever talk to, ever try to talk to lay audience about epigenetics? That's a tough one. That's, that's a tough one. You start talking about microRNAs and DNA methylation, histone modification. The, the lights go out pretty quickly, butEric Topol (12:46):Chromatin and histone modification. Right? Bye-bye. Yeah, you got that one.Peter Hotez (12:51):That, so that's,Eric Topol (12:52):But that, that was your really, you knowPeter Hotez (12:55):But that's when, you know, I started going up against Robert F. Kennedy Jr. And, and, and all that was, that was pre-pandemic.Eric Topol (13:03):That was in 2018, right?Peter Hotez (13:05):2017 Trump came out and said, you know, it was about to be inaugurated and, and RFK Jr said he was going be appointed to run a vaccine commission by the Trump administration. And, and I actually was sitting, you know, in my office and my assistant said Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci are on the phone. Do you have time to talk with us ? And I said, yeah, I think so. And they arranged, they had arranged for me to, because I have a daughter with autism could articulate why vaccines don't cause out arranged for me to speak with RFK Jr threw it through a mediator and, and, and it didn't go well. He was just really dug in and, and soEric Topol (13:49):He, he was just as bad then as now.Peter Hotez (13:52):Yeah. I mean, it was just, you know, kept on, you know, as I say, moving the goalposts, you couldn't pin him down. Was he talking about MMR? Was he talking about the am Marisol, was he talking about spacing vaccines too close together? He just, that always kept on moving around and, and then it was not even autism at times. You were talking about it was something called chronic illness, you know, you know, what do you do with that? Mm-hmm. . So I, and that's one when I was challenged by, you know, Joe Rogan and Elon to debate RFK Jr, one of the reasons I didn't want to do it, because I, I knew, you know, doing it in public would be no different from doing this in, in, in private, that it would not be a productive conversation.Eric Topol (14:39):Yeah, no, that I can, I do want to get into that, because that was the latest chapter of kind of vicious anti-science, which was taking on covid and vaccines and the whole ball of wax whereby you were challenged by Joe Rogan on his very big podcast, which apparently is, you know, bigger than CNN  various cable news networks,Peter Hotez (15:07):Which I had done, I had been on his show a couple of times. Yeah. And that was, and that was okay. I mean, I actually liked the experience quite a bit. AndEric Topol (15:15):And he challenged you to go on with RFK Jr. And then Elon Musk, you know, joined and, you know, basically Peter Hotez (15:21):Actually, he started before then, about the week before, or a few days before, Steve Bannon publicly declared me a criminal. And you know, which I said, wow, that's, that's something. And then Roger Stone weighed in. So it was this whole sort of frontal attack from, well, people with extremist viewpoints. And there'sEric Topol (15:41):Been a long history, and a Tucker Carlson in the book, you quote, he referring to Hotezis a misinformation machine constantly spewing insanity. Speaking of projecting things, my goodness. Yeah.Peter Hotez (15:54):Yeah. Well, he did that. You know, he, that was the, that was in 2022. It was, he went on his broadcast the evening after the evening of the, in the, during that day I, with Maria, I was, we were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. And I guess, and I don't know if the two are related or not, I think it may have driven him off the edge, and then he just went on this rant against me. And, you know, claimed I have no experience anything about Covid. I mean, we had made two covid vaccines, right. And transferred the technology nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and just, you know, omitted all of that. But this is how these guys work. It's, it's all about asserting control. And, and it seems to come from an extremist element of the, of the far right.(16:39): and, and, and it's not that I'm a very political person at all. I mean, you know, I've been here in Texas now for 12 years, and I've gotten, you know, I've gotten to know people like Jim Bakker and his wife Susan Baker and, and you know, a lot of prominent Republicans here in Texas, that that wasn't an issue. This is something sort of weird and, and twisted. And, and the point that I make in the book is, and it's not just a theoretical concern or a construct, it's the fact that so many Americans lost their lives during the delta and BA.1 omicron waves in 2021 and 2022, after vaccines were widely and freely available because they refused a vaccine. so vaccines were rolled out in 2021. we started strong and then vaccination rates stalled. And then we didn't get very far by this after the spring because there was this launch of an, of, of a wave of what I call anti-vaccine or anti-science aggression, convinced that deliberately sought to convince Americans not to take a covid vaccine.Eric Topol (17:56):Chapter, yeah. Your chapter in the book Red Covid. Yeah, gets into it quantifies it, hundreds of thousands of lives lost. And I know you've seen some of the papers whereby studies in red states or states like Ohio and Florida showing the, the, the connection between this.Peter Hotez (18:15):Yeah, I, I relied heavily on this guy Charles Gaba, who has a, a website called ACA signups. And he did some really in, you know, strong analysis showing that the, that the people who were refusing covid vaccines and losing their lives were overwhelmingly in red states and could even show the redder the county as measured by voters, the lower the immunization rate and higher the death rates. And the term Red Covid came from David Leonhart of the New York Times wrote an article about Charles Gaba's work, and he called it Red Covid and did a lot of updates. And the data is so strong. I mean, so much so that one person at the Kaiser Family Foundation wrote, if you wanted to ask me whether or not a person was vaccinated, and I can only know one thing about them, you know, she said, the one thing I'd want to know is what political party they're affiliated with.(19:09):It was, it's, it's that strong. And it's, and it's not that I care about your politics, even your extreme views, but somehow we have to uncouple this one from it, right. Because somehow not getting vaccinated been added to the canon of stuff that you're supposed to believe in. If you are, if you're down that rabbit hole watching Fox News every night, or, or listening to Rogan Podcasts and that sort of stuff. And somehow we have to uncouple those two, and it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. First of all, it's unpleasant to talk about, because all of, you know, your training, Eric mine as well is, you know, said you don't talk about politics and you're, you know, we're supposed to be above all that. But what do you do when the death and dying is so strong on, on one side?(19:58):And, and I, I was in east Texas not too long ago, giving grand rounds at a new medical school in East Texas and Tyler, Texas, and very conservative part of the state. And, you know, basically everyone you talked to has lost a loved one mm-hmm. because they refused a Covid vaccine and died. I mean, that's, that's where you really start to see that. And then, and these people are wonderful people. I gave you know Bob Harrington at oh yes, at at Stanford Medicine, now he's going be the Dean of Cornell. He, he invited me with Michelle Berry to, to give grand rounds, medical grand rounds at Stanford. And I said, look, if, if my car had broken down and the flat had a flat tire, and you, and I can't fix, I'm, I'm a disaster at fixing anything.(20:49):So if you said, okay, where you had the choice, where, where do you want your car broken down in Palo Alto, California, or Stanford is, or very wealthy enclave or East Texas, I'd say I'd pick East Texas in a second. 'cause in East Texas, they'd be fighting over who you know, is going to rush to help you change your tire. Right? And these are, you know, just incredible people. And they were victims. They were victims of this far right. Attacks from, from Fox News. And one of the things I do in the book is, you know, the documentation is really strong media matters. The Watchdog group has looked at the evening broadcast of Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram, and, and Hannity, and, you know, can I, you know, actually identify the anti-vaccine content with each broadcast during the summer and fall. And then our a social science research group out of ETH Zurich, the Federal University of Technology of Zurich, where Einstein studied, actually, you know, one of the great universities did another analysis and showed that watching Fox News is one of the great predictors of refusing a vaccine.(21:52):And, and so that, those were the amplifiers, but those generating a lot of the messages were elected leaders coming out of the House Freedom Caucus, or Senator, you know, Johnson's conservative senate that, I don't even like to use the word conservative, because it's not really that they're conservative, they're extremists. And yeah, a Senator Johnson of Wisconsin, or Rand Paul, you know, of, of Kentucky, you know, all the physician know what Yeah. And know physician and the CPAC conference of conservatives in Dallas, in 2021, they said, first you're gonna, they're going to vaccinate you, and then they're going to take away your guns and your Bibles. And as ridiculous as that sounds to us, people in my state of Texas and elsewhere in the South accepted it and didn't take a covid vaccine and pay for it with their lives. And, and how do we, you know, begin walking that back?(22:45):And, and the point of writing the book said, well, the first step is to at least describe it so people can know what we're talking about. Because I think right now, when you look at the way people talk about anti-vaccine or anti-science stuff, they, they call it misinformation or the infodemic, like it's just some random junk that appears out of nowhere on the internet. And it's not any of those things. It's, it's organized, it's well financed. It's politically motivated, and it's killing Americans on, on a massive scale. So I said, look, you know, I, I went, I'm did my MD and PhD in New York at Rockefeller and Cornell. I devoted my life to becoming a vaccine scientist. You know, the motto of Rockefeller universities to be the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research translates to science for the benefit of humanity. And, and I believe making vaccines is one of the high expressions. And I think most physician scientists believe, I think you believe that too. And that's why you're, you're in this as well, you know, not vaccines, but you know, other lifesaving interventions. And, and so I said, well, now making vaccines is not enough. 'cause now we have to counter all of this anti-vaccine stuff, and there's, there's nobody better, you know, in terms of my training and my background going up against anti-vaccine movements because of Rachel to do this. So I, I've done it and yeah.Eric Topol (24:11):Well, you've done it. All right. you,Peter Hotez (24:14):That's my wife. Ann says you've done it. Alright, .Eric Topol (24:17):Well, as I wrote in your, with your book of blurb about you are a new species, the physician scientist warrior, and you are Peter, because you're the only one of all the physicians. We're talking about a million docs almost in this country who has stood up and you've put your life at risk, your family at risk, you've had death threats, you've had the people you know, come right to your house. and so what you've described this kind of coalescence of political will of extremists, media, of course, amplification because it benefits them. They, they're selling more you know, they get more viewers, more the spots for commercials and more they can charge. And then you're even, as you described in the book, so well, is you even have outside interested parties like Russia as part of this organization, of this coalescence of forces that are taking on the truth, that are promoting anti-science, that are winding up, people are dying, or, yeah. Or having a, you know, serious morbidity,Peter Hotez (25:26):Right? Yeah. In the case of, in the case of Russia, , it's a slightly different motivation. What they're doing is they're filling the internet and social media with both anti-vaccine messages and pro-vaccine messages. Because they have a different agenda. Their agenda is destabilized democracies. So what they're doing is they're cherry picking certain issues that they can use as a wedge to sow discord. And so when they saw the stuff about vaccines, yeah, they'll flood it with both pro and anti-vaccine message. And you see the stuff on Twitter, so much of it is computer generated, and it's just repeats the same stuff over and over again. And, and a lot of that are, you know, some of that not only, only Russia, I think China's doing it, North Korea, Iran's doing it, but particularly Russia. And that was documented by a colleague of mine, David Broniatowski who's a computer scientist at George Washington University, has really done a deep dive in that. So so'sEric Topol (26:22):I think a lot of people are not aware that's what your book, book brings to light of how organized, how financed, you know, how this thing is a machine from coming from many different domains, you know, and for different interests as you, as you just summarized, it's, it's actually scary. And besides you standing up and facing, you know, the really ultimate bravery with the, all of the, these factions attacking you, literally ad hominem, you know, personally attacking you, then you have you know, this continues to get legs throughout the pandemic, and there's no counter as you've, as you've touched on what is going to be done. You can't stand up alone on this.Peter Hotez (27:09):Well, there's, there's a couple of things. First of all, it's not only attacking the science, it's attacking the scientists. Right, right,Eric Topol (27:15):Right.Peter Hotez (27:16):Exactly. It's, it's portraying and you get get it too, as well. I mean, it's basically portraying scientists as enemies of the state. which I think is so dangerous. I mean, as I like to say, you know, this is a nation that's built on science and technology, right? The, you know, the strengths of our research universities and institutions like Scripps, like Baylor, like Rockefeller, like MIT and Stanford, and University of Michigan and University of Chicago. This is what, you know, helped us defeat fascism in World War II as evidenced by the Oppenheimer movie, right. Or, and or allowed us to achieve so many things, why people so admire our nation. When I served as US Science Envoy and the Obama administration, the State Department, and the White House. I mean, that's where people loved our country, is they all wanna study at our research universities, or they want their kids to study at our research universities.(28:10):And, and by attacking not only science, but the scientists, I think it's weakening our stature globally. And, and, and, and I think that's, that, that's another aspect. I think the other problem is we, we don't get the backing that I think we should from the scientific societies in the Times, even the National Academies. I think they, they could be out there more. exactly why, you know, I think part of it is they see, they see how I get beat up and they say, well, what's that? Right? Yeah. And I, and I understand that, but I think also, you know, they, they depend on, oftentimes on government funding. And I think they're worried that, you know, if they're, again, it's this idea that you have to be politically neutral, even if it favors the torment or the aggressor to paraphrase Desmond Tutu, that's part of it as well.(29:09):I mean, it, I mean, I do find it meaningful. It's scary at times, and I, but I do find it meaningful to ha to have this role. But getting, getting more help and backing, I mean, we're our, our university, I mean, Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children's Hospital has been pretty good. You know, Stan, you know, having my back, it's not that way at every, and I know Scripps has been really strong with what Kristian Anderson's had to deal with around you know, all the phony bologna around covid origins. But, but not all academic health centers are that way. And, and I think we need our university presidents to be more vocal on this issue. And, and too often they're not as well as our academies and our, our scientific societies, because this is, I believe, going to do irreparable harm to, to science. Well, yeah.Eric Topol (30:04):You know, in my experience too, we, we've actually seen, you know, academic physicians who have basically, you know, supported conspiracy theories who have detracted from evidence and science, you knowin a major way. Some of the leading universities here as you, as you mentioned. And when I've contacted and others, their leadership, they say, well, freedom of speech, freedom of speech. 'cause they're afraid to confront them because, you know, all the different things. We've, we, you've mentioned social media, but no, the universities don't want to get attacked on social media. They're afraid of that. They're afraid of, of calling out, you know, one of the people, faculty members who are deliberately, you know garnering a lot of, yeah. And,Peter Hotez (30:56):And the point is, is it's not just, you know, freedom of speech in the sense of espousing you know, crazy views. It's the fact that they're going on the attack against mm-hmm. . I mean, I don't attack these guys, but they attacked me with, with impunity and Yes. Say terrible thing, untrue things about me. I mean, where's there's, isn't there something called professionalism or, or ethics, yeah. Right. That don't, don't, don't, don't we, aren't we supposed to be in instilling that in our, in our faculty and, and that that doesn't seem to happen.Eric Topol (31:28):So that'sPeter Hotez (31:28):Troubling asEric Topol (31:29):Well. They're, they're making credible scientists who are doing the best they can into pinatas Right. And attacking them. And with, and it can't, it can't be reciprocated because that's, that's beneath professionalism. I mean, just as you say. So, you know, you just keep, they just keep going at it. So what you have is now we've added all these different entities and all add more. One more is ai, which is going to further blur the truth.Peter Hotez (31:59):Yeah, Renee DiResta at the Stanford Internet Observatory, I don't if you know Renee, she does fabulous work. And she's written about, you know, what happens when, you know, all of the anti-science, anti-vaccine stuff is now imbued with ai, and, you know, it's going become even more sophisticated and more difficultEric Topol (32:17):To No, there's, there's gonna be a video of you saying that, you know, these vaccines are killing people but don't get a booster and it'll be just like you with your voice. Yeah.Peter Hotez (32:28):Well, they already, they already have. Now these, there's these few things on YouTube that, that claim, I'm secretly Jack Black, the actor . And that the CIA has arranged it so that Jack Black plays this fictional character named Dr. Peter Hotez. And they do all these things like, you know, focus in on my eyes and do like eye identification. It's just, it's just nuts. I mean, what, what's out there?Eric Topol (32:54):Well, has there been a time in these months where you were very scared you, you're for yourself or your family because of all the incredible density and, and what appears to be very serious threats and duringPeter Hotez (33:08):, during, during the day, during the day, I'm okay. I mean, in, you know, when the, when the, when the Steve Bannon in stuff and Joe Rogan stuff, then I had the stalking at the house, and, you know, I had to have a Houston Police Department officer parked in front of my house or a Harris County Sheriff that, that was troublesome. But it, it's more of during the day, I am fine. I'm working, I'm talking, you know, to people like you and in lab meetings, doing what scientists do, writing grants and throwing pencils at the wall when you get a paper with a major review or, or a major revision or rejection. But, but it's, I think at night, you know, wake up in the middle of the night and the, it's, the stuff does start to mess with your head at times. And it'sEric Topol (33:54):Well, and you travel a lot and you, you've, I think expressed that, hey, you could be given a talk in an innocent place and somebody could come, you know, attack youPeter Hotez (34:04):There. Yeah. So I have to, I have, I have security now at, in major venues when I speak. and, you know, I had an, there was an incident at the World Vaccine Congress in Washington. There were protesters out in front of the, out in front of the convention center waiting for me that that wasn't fun. And so, even, you know, we've got, we'll see what happens with the, when the, you know, I'm doing a number of events around the book in Washington DC and New York and elsewhere. We'll, we'll see how that goes. soEric Topol (34:38):Well take it. You, you're, I know you well enough to know that you're an optimistic person. I mean, you've been smiling and we've been laughing during this and discussing some very heavy, serious stuff. What gives you still optimism that this can someday get on track?Peter Hotez (34:57):Well, I think it could get worse before it gets better, first of all. And, and two fronts. One, you know, I had the opportunity to meet with Dr. Tedros, the World Health Organization Director, general of World Health Organization towards the end of last year. And to say this could be the warmup act in the sense that now it's globalizing. I'm anticipating spillover all childhood immunization rates. And, you know, you're starting to see the same US style of anti-vaccine rhetoric now, you know, even in low and middle income countries on the African continent in South Asia. So I worry about, you know, measles and polio, both in the US and, and globally. I think that's, that's, I'm worried about that. The other is, you know, a lot of this is heating up, I think because of the 2024 presidential election. I think one was that with, with our, our mutual friend and colleague Anthony Fauci, now that he's out of government he's not as visible as he was.(35:58):I think they're, the, the extremists are looking around for another, they need a monster right. To, to galvanize the base. And I think I've become that monster. You know, that's, that's one thing I'm worried about. But also you with, I talk to probably someone you've seen on Twitter. and I've gotten to know her somewhat, I'm very impressed with her. Molly Chong Fast, who's a commentator on c n at M S N B C, and she, you know, put out there, and she told me privately and put it out in public that, you know, one of the reasons why things are so vicious around RFK Jr, as they see him as a third party candidate that could take Biden votes away and help create a path for Trump being elected. So by, you know, by having me debate him, it, it kind of elevated in, in its own way, elevated his stature and made him seem like a more serious person. Right, right. And my refusal, you know, popped their bubble. And that, that's one of the reasons why, why they're so angry. So this is very much tied, I think, to the 2024 presidential look. And that's what you're having seen with the House subcommittee hearings too, portraying scientists as enemies of the state. It's all for, I mean, I don't know if you've seen this, the, that House Subcommittee Twitter site, it actually says something like, we're selling popcorn, you know, we'reEric Topol (37:18):Yeah, I know. I mean,Peter Hotez (37:20):They're, they're not, they're not even pretending it's anything, theEric Topol (37:23):PoliticalPeter Hotez (37:23):Theater for Fox News soundbites. So I think we're gonna see they're the word.Eric Topol (37:27):Alright. Yeah.Peter Hotez (37:28):Yeah. And, and, but, you know, but the attacks on biomedical science, I think are gonna be, you know, have a long-term effect. If for no other reason, I think people are gonna think twice about wanting to do a PhD in biomedical scientist or become an MD PhD scientist when they see that, you know, we'reEric Topol (37:47):. Well, that's what you, you also covered that really well in the Yeah. In the book. But when you think about where we are now with climate crisis, or we're facing future pandemics, not just the one we're still working through here where is the hope that we can counter this? I mean, we need armies of people like you. We need, as you say, the scientific establishment and community all stand up. That, that gets me to one of the things that makes you differentiates you from most physicians and scientists. You write books, you are active on social media. You, you appear on the media. Most scientists grew up to have their head do the work, do good science, get their stuff published, and get grants and, you know, try to advance the field and physicians doing that, are taking care of patients, same kind of thing. What prompted you in your career to say, Hey, you know, that's not enough. I got another dimension. And why, how can we get millions of clinicians and scientists to rally to do what you'rePeter Hotez (39:01):Doing? Well, in my, in my case, I, it's not that I was deliberately seeking to be a public figure or what some call a public intellectual. It was more the case, the issues that I was most interested in, nobody was talking about. Mm. And nobody was going to talk about it. So if I didn't talk about it, it wasn't gonna be talked about. So neglected tropical diseases, you know? Yeah. For guard people was, and, and I had two colleagues in the uk, Alan Fannick and David Mullen, who felt the same way. And so we began be, we became the three Musketeers of the neglected tropical disease space. And I found that extremely meaningful and interesting. And it was the same with vaccines. So although I, I'm often in the, you know, doing a lot of public engagement, if you notice, I don't try to be like some people who do it very well, like as Sanjay Gupta or, or some others that will, or Megan Rainey that will talk about, you know, just about any health issue.(39:56):I, I don't try to do that. I sort of stay, it's a wide lane, but I try to stay in my lane around infectious, neglected diseases and, and, and vaccines. And I think that's very important. Now, in terms of, you know, the statement, most scientists or physician scientists wanna keep their head done, write their grants and paper. I think that's perfectly fine. I don't think you people should be forced to do it, but I think there's enough of us out there that wanna do it, but don't know how to get started and don't feel safe doing it. I, and so I think we need to change that culture. Mm-hmm. I think we need to offer science communication to our graduate students in their PhD programs or in MD PhD programs for those who wanna do it, or in residency training or fellowship training. And so that, because there, there are things you can learn.(40:46):I mean, we had to do it by trial and error, and in my case, more error than trial. But, but, but there is a, there is, there are things you can learn from people who do this professionally. So I think that's important. I think the other is we need to change the culture of the institutions. You know, I, I get evaluated just like you do like everybody, like any, you know, senior scientist or professor at university, and, you know, what do they ask me about? They ask me about my grants and, and my papers preferably in high impact journals, and they ask me, and I don't see patients anymore, so they don't ask me about my clinical revenue, but they ask me about my grants and papers and my grants and papers, and my grants and papers. There's not even any place on my form, my annual evaluation from, to put in the single author books. I've written much less, you know? Yeah. The, the opinion pieces I've written, or certainly not social media or even, or even the cable news channel. So, so it basically, the academic health center is sending the message. And I don't think that's unique. I think that's probably the rule in most places. I think the, the culture of academic health centers is they're basically, they're sending a message just saying, well, we don't consider that stuff important, and somehow we have to make it important. I think for those who wanna do itEric Topol (42:08):AbsolutelyPeter Hotez (42:09):To send that message,Eric Topol (42:10):You're, you're, you're pointing out a critical step that has to be undertaken in the future. it'll take time to get that to gel, hopefully, but if it's promoted actively, I certainly promote that. I know you do. Yeah. I think,Peter Hotez (42:23):I think most, most offices of communications at academic health centers, as I said, Baylor and Texas Children's is pretty good, better than most, but most, you know, don't even like their docs and scientists speaking out. Yeah. Right. They wanna control the message. It's all about, you know, they're very risk averse. They're protecting the reputation of the institution. They only see the risk side. They don't, you know, you know, you wanna speak about social justice or, or combating anti-science. Well, you know, we guess we can't stop you, but they sort of cringe at, at the idea. And then, you know, they say, well, you know, ultimately you're a professor or a scientist here, you have academic freedom.com, but don't screw this up. Right. And don institution at risk. Right.Eric Topol (43:07):Ab you're describing exactly how university communications worked.Peter Hotez (43:12):Yeah. ButEric Topol (43:13):ThePeter Hotez (43:13):Point is, and so you do it with the sort of Damocles over your head, and, and you know, as you know, and as anyone knows, if you do enough, you will screw it up eventually, right? Everybody does. And, and you know, you're gonna make mistakes. That's how you learn. You make mistakes and you, you auto correct. But, but you have to have that freedom to be able to make mistakes and Yeah. And right now that's not there either.Eric Topol (43:35):What, what you're driving at though altogether is that we're defenseless. That is, if you have an organized finance coordinated attack on science, and also of course on vaccines, and you have no defense, you have, I mean, it's hard for the government to stand up because they're part of what's the conspiracy theory is, is, is against, and you, and, and the scientific community, the clinician community is, you know, kind of handcuffed as you are getting at. And also, you know, that's not the culture that's unwilling, but something's gotta give. And this is one thing I think you're really reinforcing that, that should a pathway to countering. I mean, we can't clone you. You know, we can't, we need lots of warriors. We need, you know, thousands and hundreds of thousands of points of light who support data and evidence, you know, as best that they can. And we don't have that today.Peter Hotez (44:36):Yeah. And we, we need to cultivate that. So I'm in discussions not only with people like yourself, but other colleagues about should we try to create, whether it's a nonprofit of 5 0 1 C three or C four the climate scientists are ahead of the game on this. Yeah. Yeah. I, I talk to Michael Mann every now and then, and, you know, they've got a climate science defense fund. They, they seem to be, 'cause it, they've, they've experienced this for longer than we have. You know, the, this all started a decade before with tax against climate scientists, you know, should, in the book I talk about, should we create something like a Southern Poverty Law Center equivalent to, to protect science and scientists? And, and I think we need that because the existing institutions don't seem willing to, to create something like that. It's somehow seen as too edgy or too out there and Right.(45:30):And it shouldn't be. But, but again, this is a I think a, a great opportunity for college presidents to, to step up and, and they're not doing that. They're, they're also pretty risk averse. So I think, you know, getting, getting the heads of the academic health centers, getting the college president, university presidents to say, Hey, this is important because otherwise science is at risk. And, and you're already starting to see some crazy stuff come out of the N I h now about doing international research. They're trying to put in rules to say they want, you know, if you have international collaborators, you're supposed to collect their notebooks and translate the how are you gonna do that? That's, that's completely, IM it's important. I mean, it's, and who's gonna review it and who's gonna sign off in general legal counsel at the university on, that's basically gonna halt international research. And we have to recognize that we need this because the threats are coming. Right? I mean,Eric Topol (46:33):CliPeter Hotez (46:34):Climate change is real, and pandemic threats are real. We're gonna see another major coronavirus pandemic possibly before 2030 or a flu or an arbovirus. And, and we're, we're, we need, this is a time we need to be reinforcing our, our virology research and our infectious disease research, not a time to, you know, start dismantling it, which is what totally the house hearings are, are meant to do, and what some of these new n i h rulings are meant to do. So it's gonna take a lot of strong players and, and, and government and at universities to stand up to this.Eric Topol (47:14):Well, if we ever need to be vaccinated or immunized, it's against this. And I hope that something will give to start to provide an antidote to what is a relentless progression of united science that you so elegantly eloquently in, in your book, Peter. So thanks for writing that. thanks for joining today. I know we'll have, as we do every week conversations yeah. You,Peter Hotez (47:41):You've been a, you've been an amazing friend and colleague, Eric, and I've learned so much from you. And, andEric Topol (47:46):No, no. I, I feel I can't tell you thank you. I, I, I think it's completely reciprocal from what you bring to this table of trying to make this a better place for advancing science search for, for the truth of what's really going on out there, rather than having to deal with wacky, you know, extremists that are advancing things for various purposes that are, that are nefarious in many cases. So, appreciate it. we'll be talking some more and this has been a really for me, an enriching conversation.Peter Hotez (48:21):Same, same Eric. And thank you so much for giving this attention and the dialect to be continued.Thanks for listening, reading and subscribing to Ground Truths!Please share if you found this podcast worthwhileFull video link Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

"COVAX and World Bank to Accelerate Vaccine Access for Developing Countries," trumpets a World Bank press release. "How AI Is Making Healthcare More Affordable And Accessible," announces Forbes magazine. "How technology is helping improve financial inclusion around the world," reports CNBC.   It's a linguistic frame that appears regularly in media, PR, and policymaking. Those who can't afford the top-tier forms of basic necessities like housing or physical and mental healthcare, we're told, can have "access" to less expensive, lower-quality versions. Enter bottom-rung ACA marketplace plans, less effective COVID vaccines, homeless people living in train containers, scammy cryptocurrency apps, and clunky chatbot "therapists." After all, they're better than the alternative: having no healthcare, housing, or income at all.   But why must having nothing at all be the only alternative? Why isn't it possible to ensure high-quality essentials for everyone? And how does media's repackaging of substandard necessities as "increasing access" and fostering "inclusion" serve to make the barbarism of austerity politics seem palatable, even benevolent?   On this episode, our season seven premiere, we'll examine the trope of framing subpar material essentials as forms of "inclusion" for the poor or "increasing access" to important life saving and sustaining needs, exploring how media simply accept, rather than challenge, the manufactured austerity that allows this cruel stratification in the first place.   Our guest is writer, artist and pod host Beatrice Adler-Bolton.

GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Mark Latham is an Australian politician and media commentator, currently serving as the leader of One Nation in the New South Wales Legislative Council. He previously served as the leader of the Australian Labor Party and leader of the opposition from December 2003 to January 2005, leading the party to defeat at the 2004 federal election. After leaving parliament in 2005, Mark was a columnist for various newspapers. He is the author of 13 books, including Civilising Global Capital (1998), The Latham Diaries (2005), Outsiders (2017) and Take Back Australia (2018). Against the media orthodoxy, in 2015 he became well known as an early and strong supporter of Donald Trump in his bid for the US Presidency. Mark is one of Australia's leading advocates of ‘outsider' politics. He strongly opposes the impact of political correctness and identity politics on public debate, freely speaking his mind on a range of issues. GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Dr Nikolai Petrovsky is Founder and Research Director of Vaxine, an Adelaide-based biotechnology company focused on vaccine development. He has been awarded over 50 million dollars from the US National Institutes of Health for his vaccine research. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed research papers and is an inventor on multiple vaccine patents. In 2020, he developed the Covax-19/SpikoGen® vaccine against COVID-19 that in October 2021 received authorization in Iran, making it the first recombinant protein COVID-19 vaccine in the world to receive regulatory approval, and the first Australian-developed human vaccine in the last 40 years to achieve approval.

Nikolai Petrovsky – a professor & vaccine inventor – examined advanced computer models of animal ACE2 receptors as part of an investigation into the real origins of COVID-19. He uncovered new details that appear to conflict with the idea that SARS-CoV-2 crossed to humans through bats. One key finding is the presence of the Furin Cleavage Site, which is unique to SARS-CoV-2. Despite theories of mutation or recombination, the origins of this site remain unclear. The spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 is highly similar to that of a coronavirus found in pangolins, leading to speculation that the pangolin may have played a role. The research appears to suggest that the virus was already adapted to infect humans at the start of the pandemic, as it bound most strongly to human ACE2 receptors compared to other animal receptors studied. Professor Nikolai Petrovsky, founder and research director of Vaxine, is a world-renowned expert in vaccine development and immunology. He developed Covax-19 / SpikoGen® vaccine that was approved for use in Iran in October 2021, becoming the first successful human vaccine developed in Australia in the last 40 years. Find his company at https://vaxine.net 「 SPONSORED BY 」 • PALEOVALLEY - "Paleovalley has a wide variety of extraordinary products that are both healthful and delicious,” says Dr. Drew. "I am a huge fan of this brand and know you'll love it too!” Get 15% off your first order at https://drdrew.com/paleovalley • THE WELLNESS COMPANY - Counteract harmful spike proteins with TWC's Signature Series Spike Support Formula containing nattokinase and selenium. Learn more about TWC's supplements at https://twc.health/drew • BIRCH GOLD - Don't let your savings lose value. You can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account, and Birch Gold will help you do it. Claim your free, no obligation info kit from Birch Gold at https://birchgold.com/drew • GENUCEL - Using a proprietary base formulated by a pharmacist, Genucel has created skincare that can dramatically improve the appearance of facial redness and under-eye puffiness. Genucel uses clinical levels of botanical extracts in their cruelty-free, natural, made-in-the-USA line of products. Get an extra discount with promo code DREW at https://genucel.com/drew 「 MEDICAL NOTE 」 The CDC states that COVID-19 vaccines are safe, effective, and reduce your risk of severe illness. You should always consult your personal physician before making any decisions about your health.  「 ABOUT the SHOW 」 Ask Dr. Drew is produced by Kaleb Nation (https://kalebnation.com) and Susan Pinsky (https://twitter.com/firstladyoflove). This show is for entertainment and/or informational purposes only, and is not a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. 「 WITH DR. KELLY VICTORY 」 Dr. Kelly Victory MD is a board-certified trauma and emergency specialist with over 30 years of clinical experience. She served as CMO for Whole Health Management, delivering on-site healthcare services for Fortune 500 companies. She holds a BS from Duke University and her MD from the University of North Carolina. Follow her at https://earlycovidcare.org and https://twitter.com/DrKellyVictory. 「 ABOUT DR. DREW 」 For over 30 years, Dr. Drew has answered questions and offered guidance to millions through popular shows like Celebrity Rehab (VH1), Dr. Drew On Call (HLN), Teen Mom OG (MTV), and the iconic radio show Loveline. Now, Dr. Drew is opening his phone lines to the world by streaming LIVE from his home studio. Watch all of Dr. Drew's latest shows at https://drdrew.tv Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Professor Nikolai Petrovsky is an accomplished immunologist, vaccine developer, and clinical researcher with decades of experience in his field. He holds a double degree in medicine and surgery and completed his PhD in immunology. He has also contributed over 220 peer-reviewed articles to academic journals. In 2002, Professor Petrovsky founded Vaxine, an Australian biotech company specialising in vaccine development, which developed a COVID-19 vaccine called COVAX-19 which was authorised for emergency use in Iran. In this episode of BASED, Professor Petrovsky shares his expertise in vaccine tech and viruses and his views on Australia's COVID-19 pandemic response.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed that the current global health architecture is not fit for purpose. While rich countries hoarded vaccines, low and middle income countries were left behind, coping with massive global healthcare inequalities. Despite lofty promises, COVAX, the global initiative launched during the pandemic to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of tests, treatments, and vaccines failed to deliver on its promises.  This episode of Rethinking Humanitarianism explores how the global health architecture can be adjusted to make it more inclusive, and better placed to respond in a more equitable way during a future pandemic.  Guests: Petro Terblanche, managing director of Afrigen; Fifa Rahman, civil society representative at the ACT-Accelerator  

Last month, the Central government, in an affidavit to the Supreme Court, said that it cannot be held liable to pay compensation for deaths caused by adverse reactions to the COVID-19 vaccine. The affidavit was filed in a case in response to a petition filed by the parents of two young women, who allegedly died due to adverse reactions following their taking the COVID-19 vaccine. The Centre also said that taking the COVID-19 vaccine was purely voluntary and that the government had made all the relevant information about the vaccines freely available in the public domain. AstraZeneca's vaccine or Covishield as it is known in India, which was the vaccine largely used in the country's immunisation drive, is reported to be linked to a rare blood clotting condition, known as TTS – the United Kingdom in fact offers alternative vaccines to healthy adults under the age of 40.  The Centre said that a total of 26 TTS cases were reported, of which 14 recovered and 12 died. Other countries offer compensations to those who are injured following a vaccination: during the COVID-19 vaccinations, the World Health Oganisation introduced a “no fault compensation programme” as part of its Covax initiative. As of last month, India has administered nearly 220 crore doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, since the vaccination drive began in January 2021. As per the Centre's affidavit, a total 92,114 cases of adverse events following immunisation (AEFIs) have been reported in this period, which amounts to 0.0042% in terms of adverse events against the number of doses given. Of these, 89,332 have been “minor” cases while only 2,782 cases or 0.00013% are serious and severe. But how robust is India's system of reporting adverse events following immunisation? How easy or difficult is it for patients to report an adverse event, and do most people know how to do so? How much communication was there with regard to possible effects of taking vaccines? And while vaccine injuries are rare, and vaccines are necessary for public health initiatives, what happens to families of those who fall sick or lose their lives following a vaccination? Should the government, ultimately, take responsibility?

Molecular biologist Jerneja Caserta was born in Slovenia and got her Bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology in Italy. In 2002 she received her PhD at the same University studying function of proteins that participate in protein synthesis. However, since 2020 she has had to question much of what was previously taken for granted (and still is by her colleagues). In this informative and entertaining episode Jerneja takes us on her journey and process of awakening, which began primarily when she heard that PCR technology was being misused to diagnose so-called “co(n)vid-19” cases. As it happens, Jerneja has over 25 years of experience working with PCR technology and immediately recognised something was seriously wrong with the Narrative. As she quickly realised, there is no c-19 v!rus, and v!rology is a fraudulent branch of science controlled by Big Ph@rma. She now watches her colleagues for the day they too open their eyes and see the truth. Also discussed: her time as a member of the Left, her dalliance with communism, and her nascent interest in exploring the nature of reality and spirituality free of the fetters of the Roman-Catholic indoctrination of her youth. Find the FULL episode and all my members-only multimedia content at: Truthiversity.com Special Guest: Jerneja Tomsic.

The shock of a global pandemic exposed so many flaws in our current system. With that in mind, what kind of preparation and leadership do we need for the next global disaster? Dr. Seth Berkley, the CEO at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, joins us to shed light on the topic. He co-founded and led the organization to accelerate vaccine access to the poorest of the poor worldwide. Dr. Seth also co-created COVAX, the global emergency response and the only multilateral solution to COVID-19. In this episode, he chats with host Anne Pratt to discuss the initiatives they've spearheaded from the start and what they're currently doing to keep up and prepare for what's next. People want the virus to be over, but the virus might have different plans. It's essential to have leaders with the foresight and commitment to long-term solutions and efforts to ready us for whatever comes. Listen in to learn more about the current state of vaccinations worldwide and why we need to continue on this path to maintain global health and safety.Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review & share! https://anne-pratt.com

The Health Information and Quality Authority (HIQA) has today launched a fully revised and updated Catalogue of National Health and Social Care Data Collections in Ireland. National data collections collect health and social care information and are crucial in providing a national overview of an identified health or social care-related issue or service in Ireland. HIQA's catalogue presents an overview of the large volume of data currently being gathered by national health and social care data collections in Ireland in one accessible location. The catalogue includes 128 national data collections which collect health or social care information in Ireland, including 24 newly identified collections since the previous version in 2017. This includes a number of new national data collections that were established in response to the COVID-19 pandemic such as CoVAX – the National COVID-19 Immunisation System, and the COVID-19 Data Research Hub. Barbara Foley, HIQA's Health Information Manager Quality, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of high-quality data and information in order to drive improvements in public health. Access to and use of good quality information leads to safe, reliable health and social care. It is therefore essential that health information is accessible, promoted and used if we are to achieve a high-standard of healthcare in Ireland. “The publication of this updated version of the catalogue acts as a key resource in providing information on the current health data available. It highlights the changes seen in the healthcare landscape over the past five years, with a number of new collections established since the previous version to collect and trend information around COVID-19. We hope it will used by a range of stakeholders, including healthcare professionals, people using services, researchers, policy-makers, service-users and members of the general public.” Advances in the health information landscape are taking place at both a national and European level which will impact on collections of health information. Work is currently underway for the creation of an EU-wide data sharing platform known as the European Health Data Space, while the Department of Health is developing a Health Information Bill. HIQA believes these advances present an opportunity to shape and improve the health and social care information system. Barbara Foley continued: “The delivery of Ireland's health and social care services must be underpinned by a robust approach to data collection, analysis and management. With the growing number of data collections, people should be assured that their information is being collected, used and shared in a secure way, and that the data collected is of good quality. As outlined in HIQA's recently published paper on Key considerations to inform policy for the collection, use and sharing of health and social care information in Ireland, there needs to be national coordination of these existing data sources in line with international best practice.” The catalogue can be found as both a downloadable report and as an interactive online version on www.hiqa.ie here.

Demetre Daskalakis, deputy coordinator of the White House national monkeypox response, and Jeremy Youde, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Minnesota Duluth, discuss the emergence of monkeypox and other diseases, international responses, and messaging around health issues that especially affect the LGBTQ+ community. Jennifer Nuzzo, senior fellow for global health at CFR, moderates. Learn more about CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program. FASKIANOS: Thank you, and welcome to the Council on Foreign Relations Social Justice Webinar series. The purpose of this series is to explore social justice issues and how they shape policy at home and abroad through discourse with members of the faith community. I'm Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR. As a reminder, this webinar is on the record, and it will be made available on CFR's website, CFR.org, and on the iTunes podcast channel, “Religion and Foreign Policy.” As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. We're delighted to have Jennifer Nuzzo, senior fellow for global health at CFR, to moderate today's discussion on infectious diseases. Dr. Nuzzo is a senior fellow for global health here at CFR. She's also a professor of epidemiology and the inaugural director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University's School of Public Health. Her work focuses on global health security, public health preparedness and response, and health systems resilience. In addition to her research, she directs the Outbreak Observatory, which conducts operational research to improve outbreak preparedness and response. And she advises national governments, and for-profit and non-profit organizations on pandemic preparedness and response, and worked tirelessly during the COVID pandemic to advise and tell people what was going on, to the extent that we knew, as we made our way through this two-and-a-half-year pandemic. So, Jennifer, I'm going to turn it over to you to introduce our speakers. NUZZO: Great. Thank you, Irina. Thanks for that introduction and thanks for organizing this webinar today. I'm very glad that we're having this conversation. As someone who's worked in infectious diseases for my entire career, I have found the last few years to be particularly staggering. I was looking, and as of today there are more than 616 million cases of COVID-19 that have been reported globally, upwards of 6.5 million diagnosed deaths that have been reported worldwide. At the same time, we are also seeing a global surge in cases of monkeypox, a disease that many hadn't heard of prior to this past year. And now we are over 66,000 cases that have been reported globally, more than 25,000 of those reported here in the United States alone. At the same time, successive outbreaks of Ebola have been occurring, and we have measles once again on the rise. And now vaccine-derived polio circulating in countries where the virus had been previously thought to be eliminated. So it's really a staggering list of infectious diseases that have been occurring and continue to occur. So clearly, we're at an important crossroads in terms of how we respond to these recurring hazards and infectious disease emergencies. But today we get to zoom out a little bit, and to examine factors that they may have all in common, and to try to understand what may be driving these—the recurrence of these events over and over again. So over the past few years we have seen the consequences of social, economic, and racial inequities play out center stage. These factors have underpinned not only our underlying vulnerabilities to infectious diseases, but also how effectively we respond to them. So that's what we're going to talk about today. And to help discuss these issues we are joined by two globally renowned experts who have a long history in working to address infectious disease threats and the disparities that accelerate them. Our first panelist is Dr. Demetre Daskalakis. Dr. Daskalakis is the deputy coordinator of the White House national monkeypox response. Prior to this role, he served as director of CDC's division of HIV prevention. And prior to that, oversaw infectious diseases for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, which is one of the largest health departments in the nation and rivals the WHO in terms of staff and budgets. So Dr. Daskalakis is a leading national expert on many things, but also in particular health issues affecting the LGBTQIA+ communities. And he has worked clinically for much of his career to focus on providing care for these communities. We are also joined by Dr. Jeremy Youde, who is the dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Previously, Dr. Youde was an associate professor in the department of international relations at Australia National University in Canberra. Dr. Youde is an internationally recognized expert on global health politics. And he is a very prolific writer. He has written five books, and many chapters, and countless articles. I recently read a very compelling blog post by him on our own CFR's Think Global Health. So really excited to get both Dr. Youde and Dr. Daskalakis's perspectives on the issues in front of us. So I will get the conversation started. We have a lot of great attendees, and we'll have time for questions. But just to get the conversation going, let's see here. Maybe first, if I could turn to you, Dr. Demetre. For those who haven't been living in the monkeypox data as much as you have, perhaps you could just give us a quick summary of where we are and where you see us being headed. DASKALAKIS: Thank you. And thank you for having me. I'm really excited to join Jeremy and to be a part of this discussion. So living in the data is, in fact, what I do. So I'll tell you, so monkeypox—I'll give a little key bit of background just for everyone to be level-set—is an orthopoxvirus, that is a virus that causes disease, transmitted usually from animals to humans. Usually, traditionally, not a lot of human-to-human transmission. This current outbreak in 2020, global in scale, with 66,500 cases reported internationally, actually demonstrates pretty good human-to-human transmission, often in the setting of close contact, often associated with sexual activity, and the majority of cases being among men who have sex with men—the vast majority, over 96 percent. In the U.S., at this moment, we have 25,300 cases. I can tell you right up to the moment. And so we continue to see increases in cases in the United States, but we're seeing a deceleration in the rate of increase. So cases are stilling being logged. We used to see kind of around four hundred cases per day. We're now more on the order of two hundred or below and continue to see that trend going in a good direction with more data imminently coming to the website of CDC later on today. Again, just briefly, the demographic, majority male, mainly men who have sex with men—the gay, bisexual, other men who have sex with men. Looking at the demographics, at the beginning of the outbreak in May, the majority of cases were among white men. And now we're seeing about 68 percent of those cases are happening in Latino or Black men. From the perspective of that measure as well we've seen a significant increase in vaccinations. So we can talk—we're going to talk more about that, I'm sure. But really with lots of strategies to increase vaccine supply. We are now well over eight hundred thousand vaccines administered. There is an inequity there as well. The majority of vaccines are going to white men. And we're seeing Latino men and Black men in second and third place, respectively, in terms of vaccines administered. Jennifer, I hope that that's a good situation summary to start off with. NUZZO: Yeah, great summary. Thank you so much. That helped kind of bring everybody to the same—somewhat same level. Just a quick follow-up question for you. There have been a lot of headlines about the important progress we've made, and the fact that the global monkey—or, sorry—the monkeypox cases seem to be coming down in terms of numbers. Question: Are you seeing similar trends for all demographics? Or are you concerned that perhaps the large numbers are hiding increased transmission in other groups? DASKALAKIS: I had to fix the mute. There we go. So I think what we've seen is that the declines are looking to be even across population. So that's good news. Again, the vaccine equity is our main issue right now in terms of where we're—where that's stubborn right now, and really thinking about strategies to improve that. We had a lot of news today, which I'm sure we'll be able to talk about some of the strategies that we have to address that. But so I think there's no clear sign that the deceleration is different in different populations. Geographically, however, it is different. And so that's, I think, one place where—the jurisdictions that have had the greatest and longest experience with this outbreak, so the most cases, are also the jurisdictions that have access to the most vaccines. So whether it's because of behavior change that we're seeing, which is definitely something that we, I imagine, could talk about here as well, or natural infections plus vaccine-induced immunity, I think the places that have had more experience are showing deceleration faster. So New York, California, Texas, and Georgia are looking down, while some of the places where the outbreak is newer and they've also had less access and time for vaccines, those places are showing an increase. We're going to get an update of this, this week. So this is based on data that's about a month old. So soon we're going to have a new view into how this deceleration or acceleration looks like, jurisdiction by jurisdiction. NUZZO: Great. Thank you. Maybe turn to you, Dr. Youde. You've been an important voice about the global dimensions of the monkeypox crisis. And I'm just curious where you think we are globally. And I referenced in introducing you that piece that you wrote on Think Global Health that I thought was—made a quite compelling argument about the role of WHO and where you see the response needing to go. Do you want to maybe elaborate on those points for people who haven't had a chance to read your article? YOUDE: Sure. Thank you for the question, and thanks for organizing this. I'm honored to be part of this event. And, picking up on some of what you were talking about and what Demetre was just talking about as well, we do see these inequities that exist, especially when we're looking worldwide. The World Health Organization did declare monkeypox a public health emergency of international concern. And while it doesn't necessarily come with automatic funding or programmatic resources, it does raise the profile. It does put this on the global health agenda and say: This is something we need to be paying attention to. In the piece I described it as the WHO's bat signal. We're sending out the message: This is something that we need to pay attention to. But one of the things I think is frustrating about the WHO response, and just sort of the global community's response to monkeypox in general, is that monkeypox isn't a new disease. This is a disease that we've known about in human cases since 1970. Laurie Garrett in her book, The Coming Plague, which came out in '94—which is one of the books I think a lot of us who are probably about a similar age read in our early, formative days as we were coming into global health and global health politics—she talks about it in that book. And if you look at the data that we have, we've been seeing increases in monkeypox cases in humans in countries where monkeypox was endemic for about the last decade or so. And so—but what really caught the international community's attention was then when it came to the Global North, when it came to the industrialized countries. And that helps to reinforce some of these questions about what is the nature of our real concern about global health? Is it about health in this very broad mandate, like the World Health Organization has as part of its constitutional mandate, to be this international coordinating body? Or is the sense that we, in the Global North, want to keep the diseases from the Global South coming to affect us? And there are similar sorts of issues when we're looking at vaccine equity and vaccine access, when we're looking globally. And, there have certainly been some problems here in the United States, getting access to the vaccine. But, I was able to get vaccinated against monkeypox. Yeah, I had to drive two and a half hours to Minneapolis to do it, but I was able to do it. And I was able to arrange it. People in countries where monkeypox is endemic have little to no access to these vaccines. And it raises some of the questions then, again, about how the international system and the global health governance systems that we have in place—how they can address some of these equity challenges? Because in many ways, outbreaks like monkeypox, they glom onto the societal and social cleavages that exist, and help to reinforce and exacerbate them, but also provide this opportunity for us to really put some of our ideals and our promises around social justice, around a cosmopolitan view of understanding that we are all healthier if we are all healthier. And really put those into practice, if we have the political and economic will to do so. And that's where—that's one of the areas where I get a bit concerned right now. I know we're all exhausted talking about COVID-19 and about monkeypox, and all of these sorts of outbreaks. Jennifer, I know you've been doing a lot of this. Demetre, obviously, you've been on the frontlines. I've been doing some of this work as well. But when we lose that attention, sometimes we lose then that motive—that momentum in the political system to try to address some of these challenges and these shortfalls that we have identified. So, I can be a critic of the World Health Organization, but I also recognize that the World Health Organization is a creature of its member states. And so, it's really incumbent upon the member states to really put some action behind their words. And to say: If we want to have a more effective response, we need to build systems that are going to be able to respond better than this. NUZZO: Thank you for that. It's a good segue to what I wanted to talk about next, which is the title of this webinar being about social justice. And those who've worked in public health, the notion that social justice has a role to play in reducing our vulnerability to infectious disease is quite clear. But I'm aware, particularly over watching—(laughs)—the national political debate over the last several years that those outside of public health may not recognize the connection between our vulnerability to infectious diseases and social justice. And they may be dismissive of the idea that public health authorities should be engaged in the work of social justice. So this is actually a question for you both. And maybe reflect on monkeypox or your long experience of other infectious disease threats that you've worked to address. And what would you say to folks that just don't understand why public health should be concerned with social justice, and what role do you think it has to play going forward? And maybe we'll turn back to you after Demetre. DASKALAKIS: Do you want Jeremy to go or do you want me to go first? NUZZO: Go ahead. YOUDE: Go for it. Go for it. I'll let you start. DASKALAKIS: All right. So I'll put my very strong HIV hat on, because that's sort of where I come from. And I'll start that this is a forty-one—a forty-two, almost, year-old lesson that I think we've seen play out over and over again, which is that really the social determinants of health are actually what drive infection. So there are countermeasures that can work. There's vaccines. There's drugs. There's pre-exposure prophylactics, post-exposure prophylactics. It doesn't matter. The social determinants are really what ultimately ends up blocking us from being able to implement the full vision of what we know we can from the perspective of medical technology and public health. And so I think that at the end of the day that implementation piece is so critical. So much technology can exist, so many interventions can be designed, but they sit on the shelf unless there's both the political and social will to move them forward. And so I think I should put that HIV hat there for a second, because in environments where there is less political and social will we tend to see HIV flourish. And in places where there is social and political will, we tend to see HIV not do so well from the perspective—or, in other words, we will do well because of less incidents and prevalence. So I think that sort of looking at that will is so critical. I'll give you a story from monkeypox which I think is really important, that is about the sort of CDC response. I got pulled in really early on, before the first case actually hit the United States. One of the very early conversations that we had with the response is that we need to expect that we're going to have inequities that are going to be a part of this. And I think that's based on lessons from COVID, and lessons from HIV, and lessons from so many other infections. I think we really worked to make equity the cornerstone of the response. But even when you do that, it is an all-of-society thing that needs to happen, and not just something that is mediated simply by a public health department or a public health agency. Over. YOUDE: And if I can take that public health hat and HIV hat that you had on, and I'll wear it myself. I got into this line of work through working on HIV/AIDS issues in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and seeing how those sorts of societal cleavages played a role, but then also how infectious disease outbreaks, and the spread of HIV was glomming into these other issues around democratization, around building societies that were going to be equitable, that were going to be able to fulfill the promises that governments had made to their populations. And seeing how a disease like this was thwarting that progress. So it's something that is not just unique to the United States. It's something that we see globally. From a very instrumental perspective we can say, look, public health is ultimately a weakest link public good. Everyone is still at risk, so long as risks still exist. So we need to reach out to those places which might have fewer resources, which might not have the same sorts of ability to implement these sorts of programs, because ultimately that's going to make us all healthier. And I think there's elements and an important role for those sorts of instrumental views of public health. But I also think about the recently passed Paul Farmer, and his notion of public health, especially his idea around the preferential option for the poor, which was kind of a double-edge sword. Because on the one hand he was saying, look, the people who are disenfranchised within societies, those are the people who are the most vulnerable to these infectious disease outbreaks. Those are the people who are at the greatest risk. But also, we need to think about our programs, we need to think about our interventions putting those people first, thinking about equity. Putting that not as an afterthought or something that we think about five, six, seven steps down the road, but it needs to be central, and it needs to be core. Because, again, if we're not taking equity seriously and we're not really putting this into everything that we're doing, then we're just reinforcing these sorts of divisions and, again, providing these opportunities and these outlets where diseases can thrive. And so, to just cosign what Demetre was saying we can have all the technologies we want. And I have all my criticisms about the way that the access to pharmaceuticals and drug interventions exist on a global level, and questions about compulsory licensing and all these sorts of things. Those are all important, but those are secondary in a lot of respects if we don't have the underlying core infrastructure in place. And that core infrastructure, even if it's not touching us in a direct way, does have an effect on our ability to stay healthy. DASKALAKIS: Could I—this is a fun one. Could I keep going a little bit longer on this? NUZZO: Please do, yeah. DASKALAKIS: This is a great, stimulative conversation on this. And along with what ends up being both the foundation of the issue as well as the deeper foundation, the way that all of these social issues interact with stigma, like I think we've seen in fast-forward with monkeypox. Like all the things that we saw with HIV and other infections and COVID—today, for instance—this is a really good example. So, we're giving the vaccines and right now they're going on people's forearms. Which means that literally some people will have a mark on their forearm. So talking about stigma—literally stigma. And so, we changed it so that individuals can elect to get the vaccine on their shoulder or on their back. So we have people who want vaccines but are saying, I don't want to be marked by this. I don't want to have the sort of—someone know that I am someone who's potentially identifying myself as part of a group at risk. And so it interacts exactly with the social determinants. Whether it's poverty, transportation, racism, all of it interacts in a way where these sort of more brass-tacks economic issues interact with these very profound stigma issues and create barriers where even if you do have great access—I'll give an example again. [The] Ryan White [program] is really great access for people for HIV medication, but we still don't have everybody in the country—(inaudible)—right? So why is that? It's partially access, but it's also that the systems are built to sort of maintain structures of stigma and structures of inequity that are really hard to overcome, even with things that provide access. NUZZO: So I was actually going to ask you about stigma. So thank you for segueing to it. And I seems to me that—and I don't have the HIV hat to wear, like you both do. But studying events that we typically think about in the field of health security—which is a field that sort of struggles to incorporate the forty-plus year lessons that HIV has learned—is that it is clear that stigma is an issue in nearly every single event. Any time we have particularly a new infectious disease, or something that's unusual, society seems to look for some group to blame. But what it seems, though, is that while there's an increasing recognition of the importance of stigma, it doesn't seem like we have great strategies for addressing it. And I guess I'm wondering, do you agree? And also, what practically can and should we be doing to address stigma? I really saw us struggle with this. I mean, we had a recognition of it as being important in monkeypox, but I feel that the absence of clear ways to deal with it really led us to struggle to talk about monkeypox, and who was at risk, and how people could protect themselves. So what should we be doing going forward not just for monkeypox but future threats, so that we don't get hobbled by—first of all, that we can minimize or tackle stigma, but also don't get hobbled by it? Whoever wants to chime in. (Laughs.) DASKALAKIS: So this is back to the HIV hat. This is the tightrope that we walk every day in HIV. And I think that the lesson actually—well, one of the first lessons that's important, sort of sitting on the government side of the world, is that government needs to lead, and governmental public health needs to lead, so that its messaging does not propagate stigma. That's very important. Because whether people like governmental public health or not, or have complaints about it, ultimately people do look to governmental public health—like CDC, local health departments—to really fine-tune their own messaging, and then translate that messaging not just to another language but translate it so the populations that people work with actually understand. And so I think monkeypox was actually a kind of exciting example, where from the very beginning of the response it was a how can we take an anti-stigma stance in how we messaged it? And so the balance really then depended on the data. And so that's what was really important. So it was starting with imperfect data, and as the data became more and more clear, making sure that the messaging evolved in a way that addressed what you were actually seeing epidemiologically without necessarily—without creating a scenario where you're pinning infection, a virus, on a population. Let me give you an example since, Jennifer, you say your HIV hat isn't as strong as ours. So in the '80s, when HIV started, before it was HIV it was gay-related immunodeficiency. So that lesson was the lesson that was so important in the work that we did with monkeypox, to start off by saying: This is a virus that can affect anyone. But we're seeing this virus more in this population. As opposed to saying: This is this population's virus. And so it's leading by that example. And it's one of those things that we can raise up and say: We have learned the lesson from this forty-two years ago, and we're not doing it this way again. And so with that said, I think that there's a lot of strategies that can address stigma. And a lot of that has to do with communications, using trusted messengers. So, that has been a really important part of this as well because, again, working in public health I would love if everybody listened to public health data. So providing good communications to individuals who are trusted messengers is really important. And also, part of the propagating stigma is also being clear about what data is, things that we fully know and things that we're still learning. Because that really allows that risk communication so that you don't over-select or too rapidly move a response into what population, as opposed to being broad. So as you learn more data—so, for us, our guidance started off in one place about safer sex and safer gathering. As we were seeing that this was not moving throughout the different populations, it got stronger and stronger. And we really started the conversation by saying that this is guidance that's going to change as we learn more. I think that we do have stigma mitigation strategies. But stigma's a stubborn thing. I'll give it over to Jeremy. YOUDE: Yeah, I would agree with everything that you said. And especially being—having that level of humility. We are still learning about this. Things are going to change. Things are going to evolve but building those sorts of trusting relationships. The other things that I would emphasize, and I think these complement what you were saying quite well, is empowering communities to speak to each other. I think one of the things that we've seen here in the U.S. around access to the monkeypox vaccine, and the relatively high rates of vaccination that we've seen, has been people talking to other people. Men who have sex with men talking to other men who have sex with men, and this becoming part of the conversation. Even if it is something at the level of, where were you able to get access to it? When supplies are limited. Just building that sort of awareness within a community can be incredibly important. I think it's also important to make sure that we do have targeted messages. Not blaming messages, but understand that the message that just says, everyone is at risk for HIV or everyone is at risk for monkeypox, ends up falling flat and doesn't really strike anyone. And so having that sort of targeted outreach plays an important role. But going back to this point about empowering the affected communities, one of the most powerful things that I think that I've seen in the work that I've done is looking at the Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, and the work that they did, especially in the late '90s and early 2000s, with the T-shirts that just in huge, bold letters across the chest said: HIV positive. And just having people going out there, wearing those T-shirts. The image of Nelson Mandela wearing one of those Treatment Action Campaign T-shirts is just incredibly important because, again, it's helping to remove some of that stigma. It's getting people who are trusted, who are respected, coming into the conversation. OK, if he's involved in this, if he's saying this is an important issue, maybe this is something that I need to be paying attention to. But also just trying to make that sort of availability, so that people are willing to share their experiences, or talk about what's going on, or what worked, or what didn't work for them. Again, these all play really important roles. It's never going to be perfect. It's something that we do need to keep at the forefront when these sorts of outbreaks happen. And you see some of this in some of the broader conversation around even what we call diseases, the names that we use. The fact that there is a very strong move away from geographically located names for diseases, because we don't want to stigmatize those particular communities or people who happen to be coming from those areas. Even something like that can play a really important role in helping people to think, this is something that I need to take seriously if I'm in the United States, I need to take this seriously. Even though we're talking about something like monkeypox, which isn't a geographic designator but there aren't a lot of monkeys roaming around in Minnesota. But it's something that they should be taking seriously, because of these effects and these sorts of community-based responses that help to try to destigmatize things, encourage people to get access to vaccines, or treatments, or other sorts of options that are available to them, and start to have those conversations to empower communities. NUZZO: That's great. I'm going to turn over to questions. And maybe participants can start putting their hands up. But while that's happening and before I turn it over for that section of the conversation, one last question to you both. Which is, I am deeply worried that we respond to these events as these one-offs. We have an emergency, we get emergency funding, then perceptions of the emergency being over, the funding disappears, and it's gone. And we saw that happen with COVID, where the money went away and then states had to let go their pandemic hires. And guess what? They weren't there when monkeypox happened. So I guess the question is, how do we move away from sort of seeing these as just one-off emergencies, and moving towards a role where we create a durable sort of permanent system that's in place to snap into action anytime there's an event, which is happening—which we're seeing—these events are happening with an increasing frequency? YOUDE: I'll jump in first, Jennifer. It's like you're reading the paper that I've been working on throughout the event today. And that's part of my concern about WHO designating this to be a public health emergency of international concern, when we're talking about monkeypox or COVID-19 for that matter, is the emergency framework. Public health, when it's doing its job, we don't know about it. It's something that—where we're essentially trying to stop things before they reach that level of public consciousness, or stopping it really, really early in the process. And so the emergencies, they get the attention for global health but they don't necessarily get the long-lasting system. It becomes, like, OK, whew, we got through that. We can move onto the next thing, or we can just not pay attention to global health again until the next system comes up. But at a very fundamental level we have this organization. We have the World Health Organization, which has this constitutional mandate to act as this international coordinating body for health—cross-border health issues. And it has a smaller biennial budget than many large hospital systems here in the United States. So how is it going to be able to do that sort of work when it has so few resources? Plus, given the way that the WHO is funded, it only has control over about 20 percent of its budget. The rest of it is coming through these voluntary contributions, which are generally specified for specific purposes, which may or may not align with the purposes that the WHO itself would put in place. So I think that one of the things that happens there is it behooves us, it behooves the member states to actually—to put some diplomatic and political capital behind this, to actually move on this. I have no doubt that in a few years' time we will have some sort of after—some sort of response that will look at the response that WHO made to COVID-19. And it will bemoan the failures. And it will talk about all the things that need to change. And then it will gather dust on the bookshelf. And we will get similar sorts of things for monkeypox. And what we haven't had is a country or a group of countries, or some sort of person with high stature, really glom onto this and be like, yes. We need to do this. This is our potential roadmap for trying to address this in the future. I—nerding out in the global health politics world—I had this idea that someone like a Helen Clark, or an Angela Merkel, someone who knows international politics, who knows the systems, who has that sort of diplomatic experience, but also is concerned about issues around health, that could be the person who could help to inspire some of these actions, and could get the attention of world leaders in a way that civil society organizations often aren't able to do. Which is not to say anything bad about those organizations, just that there are structural problems getting the attention of world leaders, and having that sort of concentrated attention. So I think we—ultimately, we need a champion. We need a person, or a country, or a group of countries who are willing to really champion this, and go to the mat for trying to make these sorts of changes, so it isn't just emergency, after emergency, after emergency, but something that is going to be more long lasting, that is going to provide that sort of infrastructural support, and make sure that we aren't just lurching from here, there and everywhere, but actually can have some sort of coordinated response and something that is a bit more forward-thinking. But it's a challenge. NUZZO: Demetre, the bullets of your bio—(laughs)—are a list of the emergency, after emergency, after emergency. So I know you have first-hand perspectives of this. So any hope we can fix it? DASKALAKIS: Sure do. (Laughter.) So, my perspective may be very domestic, but I actually think it's not. I think when I start talking, I think it's going to seem as if there's also infrastructure that needs to be leveraged internationally that's similar. Which is, I always think about what actually worked. And so one of the things that I think we're seeing over and over again, whether it's COVID, or monkeypox, or other outbreaks, is leveraging systems that already exist, and really figuring out how to support those systems during peacetime as well as wartime, so that it stays warm for a response. And that's a very public health—it's a very sort of operational, public health example. So I'm talking HIV. I'm talking chronic infections. I'm thinking domestically, we have this excellent—I think the HIV Epidemic Initiative, it's not nationwide yet. It hasn't been resourced to do that. But, if it were, that is a really sort of important way to be able to create and maintain an infrastructure. So thinking about sort of chronic diseases like viral hepatitis, having an infrastructure that could potentially lead to curing more people with viral hepatitis creates a system that then could be used for care and other public health delivery of countermeasures. So thinking about things that—what can we do to sort of do our peacetime work, which is around chronic infections like virus hepatitis and HIV, and what can we—and STIs, which are out of control in the United States, mainly because they're under-resourced—but what can we do sort of to maintain sort of those systems, so that when we flip the switch from peacetime to wartime that we can pivot those resources to do the work? I'll give an example from the research universe—monkeypox, as an example. Right now, there are studies that are going on for monkeypox vaccines and for monkeypox therapeutics. And they're built on the networks of HIV investigators. So, HIV Vaccine Trials Network and AIDS Clinical Trials Group are currently the people that are doing those studies. And sort of research funding potentially being a bit more flexible, that pivot is possible. But what if we had similar models sort of in the operational world of public health, where you have sexual health clinics or STD clinics that are doing HIV/STD work during peacetime, but can flip into monkeypox vaccines and testing in wartime? And so it's investing in a chronic infrastructure to be able to make it translatable into an emergency response, in a nimble way, I think is really important. And of course, I back up Jeremy. That idea of political will and leadership is really important in making sure that this sort of moves forward in a way that works. But, I mean, I say this domestically, but then one can conjure PEPFAR in terms of an infrastructure that works. So that—they have been leveraged. And so what if we worked harder to make sure that they were resourced adequately during the peacetime, so that during wartime they flip and are flipped more effective? And by the way, that HIV positive T-shirt has influenced my career, Jeremy, in terms of seeing people who were willing to put on a shirt that really works against stigma. My favorite being Annie Lennox, who I met with that T-shirt on, and I was very excited, as a fan. But definitely an important thing to reclaim that stigma. Jennifer, thank you. YOUDE: And if I can build on what Demetre was saying, think about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, and the cases that popped up in Nigeria. That led to all sorts of concern. Now you've got someone who has Ebola in Lagos, a city of twenty million people, and just not a city that necessarily has the sort of infrastructure in place that you're going to think, oh, we're going to be able to contain this. But they were able to repurpose existing programs. They were able to use measles control programs and other sorts of programs. And, using the word that we have all become way too familiar with over these past two and a half years, they pivoted, turned that into doing the surveillance and doing the contact tracing for Ebola, and were able to stop the spread, and being able to prevent that from spreading rampantly throughout one of the largest cities in the world. And I think that's the sort of thing, you know? If we have these sorts of structures in place, we can adapt them. Even if they are for one purpose, they can be adapted for other purposes. And so it's not that we need to recreat the wheel each time, it's that we need to figure—we need to make sure that we've got enough wheels out there, essentially. DASKALAKIS: And that goes for surveillance. Maintaining good surveillance systems for chronic things means that when an acute thing comes up, that good surveillance already exists there. So not only for an operation, but also for being able to understand what's happening with the threat. I like to call it keeping the system warm, if you think of sort of the stuff that's happening. So when you have to heat it up, you're not starting from—it's not a TV dinner you're taking out from frozen. It's thawed already. You can move quickly. NUZZO: It's really hard to build capacities in the midst of an emergency. So thank you for those thoughts. I am going to give others a turn to ask questions and turn it over to the question-and-answer session now. OPERATOR: Thank you. (Gives queuing instructions.) Our first question comes from Mark P. Lagon from Friends of the Global Fight against AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. LAGON: Hi, there. Thank you for this really thought-provoking forum. I come from a perspective working in the health field, but also background in human rights. I was an adjunct senior fellow at CFR, and president of Freedom House. I wonder, to take some of the points that Jennifer Nuzzo has been making and posing to you, to move to pandemic preparedness. If you have—we've seen that AIDS confronts one with very clear human rights and equity issues, particularly for stigmatized populations. You have a kind of a reprise with monkeypox. There was a lot of discussion about in terms of the impact of COVID and equity on vaccines. As the international community has moved to form a fund housed at the World Bank, how do you embed preparation for pandemics to have a human rights or social justice perspective? Activists really had to push hard to get two voting seats for civil society on the governing body of that fund. Thank you. NUZZO: Anyone want to take that on? (Laughs.) YOUDE: Sure. I'll offer a few thoughts. I think this is something—again, this is something to be thinking about at this early stage. As these sorts of systems are being designed, as they're being set up, keeping these sorts of elements important and at play. But I also think it's important to make sure that there are multiple channels for this communication to happen. That there's one thing to talk about formal board seats, and those are obviously important to have people at the table for these pandemic financing facilities through the World Bank and other sorts of organizations. But also make sure there are other opportunities, because new organizations may pop up. They may change. Depending on the particular circumstance or the particular outbreak that we're talking about, there may be other groups that are being mobilized and being affected by this. And so, there needs to be a certain level of nimbleness that needs to go into this. I think it's also something that puts a lot of—we need to put pressure on our leaders to really put their promises into action, to make sure that this isn't just something that we have as a tick box exercise. Oh, yes, equity is important, we need to address this. But actually, that there is this ongoing pressure and this sort of check of what are we actually doing here? Are we reaching out to these communities that are being affected? How can we better do this? And so I—again, there's an interesting moment right now that we can hopefully seize to make sure that this is something that really does get instantiated within these systems. And I hope we don't let that moment pass. I hope we don't decide to just we'll go back to existing systems. Because that's the other thing that goes along with this. It does challenge the status quo. It does challenge the sorts of standard operating procedures that we have in these organizations. And that can be challenging. That can be a difficult sort of conversation to have. And we have to be willing within our international organizations and other sorts of responses, we have to be willing to have those conversations. We have to be willing to challenge ourselves and to criticize ourselves, and to then make changes that are going to be effective. LAGON: Thank you. DASKALAKIS: I don't have almost anything to add to what Jeremy said. I think there really—again, the political will is important. And just we've all experienced that U-shaped curve of concern, right, where when things are very exciting everyone is very worried and engaged, and then when it fades away, resources fade away. And what that means is the infectious disease comes back. And so it's really—whether it's the same or a different infectious disease, sort of keeping that momentum and having it really come both from the political piece, from organization, but also from the side of advocates and activists is really critical to keep the—to keep the energy moving and the momentum moving. We have to make sure that we come to a better place. Every event, you learn more. And so I think that even if we take a quantum leap in what preparedness looks like, whatever the next event will challenge that level of preparedness and will require us to then—to really develop systems that are—that are updated based on the experience. So I think moving the needle anywhere, but moving it in a coordinated way because of that will and that strategy is the most we could hope for and the most we should expect. Or the least that we should expect, the minimum, of being able to move to a place where we have something that is better than how we found it, and potentially more resilient in terms of a—monkeypox is minor compared to COVID, after COVID. NUZZO: Yeah. I mean, I think the more we have these events the more we learn, though it does feel to me a little bit like the more we have these events, the more we learn the same things over and over again. (Laughs.) And particularly when we're talking about these inequities. And Jeremy pointed out about the stark inequities in terms of who's able to access vaccines in the globe. And that was clearly something that we saw throughout much of COVID-19, still see it today. We saw it during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, in terms of who had vaccines and who didn't. So I guess the question—and I recognize that we have just about ten minutes left, and the CFR rule is we always end on time. So I'm going to—(laughs)—I'm going to be aggressive about that. But just on that point what do we need, I think, to put into place? We talked about how there's a pandemic fund now, which is important. But aside from money, and maybe it's just money, what else do we need to kind of create structures to address these inequities globally? Given, Jeremy, you also made the important point about—I've been struck by how hard it's been to contain monkeypox here in the U.S. But let's say we're successful, we're still going to have challenges as the virus continues to circulate. So we need to make progress globally. And we need to have systems in place such that every time these emergencies happen, we don't keep learning these same lessons over. So maybe just two or three minute each, your takeaways on what you would do to fix these problems if you were deemed in charge of the world. YOUDE: A little new world, just like that. Money is obviously important. The amount of money that we spend on development assistance for health has gone up dramatically since the early 1990s, but it still pales in comparison to the level of need. So there is just a basic resource need. The second is that we need to make sure that systems that we are building are not for specific diseases, but are things that can be flexible, things that can be adapted. We don't want to just say: Now we're going to set up all these monkeypox surveillance systems, when that may or may not be what is going to be the next big outbreak. So we need to have things that are going to be able to be flexible like that. Third, we need to have—we need to have a better sense of just our—I guess our international community's willingness to engage with global health. We have the international health regulations. So we do have an international treaty that's supposed to govern how states respond to infectious diseases and their outbreaks. But the willingness of states to abide by that varies quite dramatically. And so we need to have a big of a come-to-Jesus moment about what are we actually willing to do, when push comes to shove? And then last thing I'll say is that I do think we need to have a conversation around access to pharmaceuticals and vaccines and other sorts of medical interventions like that. Because we know that there are inequities, and we know that oftentimes the communities that have the least access are the communities that have the highest rates of incidence or are in the most need of these sorts of things. And our structures are not really well designed for getting people access. Even though there are things like COVAX, even though there are things like PEPFAR, and all these other sorts of programs, which have done tremendous work, they are still falling short. And so we need to—we need to have a better sense of what—how do we actually put these sorts of things into practice? How do we actually make sure that these scientific breakthroughs that are so invaluable are reaching all the people that need to be reached? DASKALAKIS: Ditto, I'll start off. So that makes my job a little bit easier, because I think what Jeremy said is really important. I'll say again, I think in my hierarchy the first and most important thing is consistent political will, because I think that that then drives a lot of what happens beyond that. So I think that that really jives really well with what Jeremy said, in terms of that sort of commitment. Money is very important, I think, but it is not the only thing that drives us into preparedness. So I think that having that commitment. I also would like to think about that investing the money in things that keep the system warm. So I'll go back to that sort of statement, or like thinking about investing in the diseases that we still haven't finished. We still are working—we've got HIV, we have hepatitis, malaria internationally that we're worried about. There are a lot of areas that we could invest to create systems that are infrastructures that keep it warm for operation for pandemic. I cannot say it loud enough that what Jeremy said about flexibility is right. You can't really build the infrastructure on chronic disease if it's not flexible to move to another acute event. So it needs to be something that is both creates and maintains the infrastructure, but also has the ability—everyone's favorite word today—to pivot into the emergency response zone. So very important. I think also workforce and data. I think that it is important to remember that we talk about giving patients trauma-informed care, but we need to give our workforce trauma-informed care. COVID has been hard. Monkeypox has been hard. Our next challenge will be hard. And sort of how can we support the workforce and then also continue to mentor it to be able to do the work? Data also is so important. A commitment to share data, and to have data that is accessible for decisions, even if it is imperfect. And then finally, the realization—and it goes back full circle, Jennifer, to your first question—about our—or, maybe second question—about the social determinants. There's only so much that public health can do. There is an all-of-society need to address the core drivers of so many of the inequities. We can't solve everything through public health. We can get closer to health equity, but ultimately the goal is that as you access is really to go into social justice, which is not just public health but really an all-of-society endeavor to try to improve the environment so that we don't have fertile ground for these pandemics to blossom and grow. NUZZO: Thank you. There's a question that just popped up in the Q&A box. And we just have a few minutes. It's about the privilege of good information and how we address misinformation and disinformation, which likely leads to fragmentation. I will just chime in, having done a lot of communication over the past two years, I think that this is not a problem that public health can solve. I actually think the drivers of this are much, much larger. And I think we need an all-of-government approach to this that includes the potential regulation of the platforms. But I'm curious if you all have any quick comments to add to that. DASKALAKIS: I mean, I just agree with you. (Laughs.) It's definitely much bigger. There are things we can do, like monitor social media and make sure that our messaging is one way. But ultimately this is an issue that's bigger, that requires not just the public health lens to address. YOUDE: And, at the same time, we also can recognize that those trusted outlets, those can be really important tools. So, churches in sub-Saharan Africa played a really crucial role in many parts of helping to decrease HIV stigma, helping to get access and information out there about testing, about protection, about these sorts of things. I mean, that can also be the flipside, though. If you got these trusted sources that are peddling this misinformation, then it becomes this much bigger issue that goes beyond what public health can do. So I guess it's—part of it is just figuring out where those allies exist, be they in government or outside of the government, and what sorts of connections they might have with populations. DASKALAKIS: And to your earlier point about building those connections prior to events, so those relationships exist and you're not trying to forge them in the midst of a crisis. NUZZO: Well, really, thank you both. I wish I could appoint you both in charge of the world, because if I was asked who should be in charge of the world you would both be on the top of my list. But I am very glad that you continue to do the work that you do and contribute in important ways. And have both been really guiding voices as we continue to experience these events. So thank you very much for that, and really thank you to our participants for attending and the thoughtful questions. FASKIANOS: I second that. Thank you all. And we appreciate your taking the time to do this. I hope you will all follow their work. For Dr. Daskalakis, you can follow him at @dr_demetre. Dr. Youde is at @jeremyyoude. And Dr. Nuzzo is at @jennifernuzzo. Pretty easy. So we also encourage you to follow CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Program on Twitter at @CFR_religion and write to us at outreach@CFR.org with any suggestions or questions. We want to help support the work that you all are doing. And we hope you will join us for our next Religion and Foreign Policy Webinar on the Politics of Religion and Gender in West Africa, on Tuesday October 11 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. So thank you all again for being with us, and thank you for your public service. We appreciate it.

Meg welcomes Shahrzad Yavari, COVAX Cold & Supply Chain Consultant at Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Gavi is an organization working to improve vaccination efforts globally.Shahrzad is a public health strategist and avid women's rights advocate who has dedicated much of her efforts to creating opportunities for women globally. Her background in psychology helped to shape her interest in community-driven solutions for various challenges in the healthcare and education sectors, among others.Her most recent achievements include her work with Gavi, where COVAX has been a lifeline in vaccination efforts for many countries, responsible for delivering more than 1 billion vaccines worldwide. She also established and scaled an innovative vaccine cold chain program installed in over 17,000 health facilities across 23 countries.In this episode, Meg and Shahrzad discuss the complex network working to solve disparities in equitable vaccination efforts; the Cold Chain and Shahrzad's relevant expertise; her upbringing and how that affected her career path; her advice for those entering the field; and more.Producer Calvin Marty joins Meg to tell Shahrzad's story in a new format.  Further Reading: GaviCovaxPaul FarmerUrban Health Resource CentreEpisode Credits: The Game-Changing Women of Healthcare is a production of The Krinsky Company. Hosted by Meg Escobosa. Produced by Meg Escobosa, Calvin Marty, Chelsea Ho, Medina Sabic, and Wendy Nielsen.Edited, engineered, and mixed by Calvin Marty. All music composed and performed by Calvin Marty. ©2022 The Krinsky Company

Ana Paula Ordorica platica con Cristina Rivera Garza, escritora, sobre su libro “El invencible verano de Liliana” que relata el feminicidio de su hermana. En otros temas: Otro periodista asesinado. Ya van 15 tan solo en lo que va del 2022./ COVAX ofreció a México 10 millones de dosis pediátricas contra COVID./La CEPAL mejoró su proyección de crecimiento para América Latina y el Caribe.

La fusión de Televisa y Univisión y la reestructura de Aeroméxico empujaron la inversión extranjera directa en México.Surtir la mochila para el regreso a clases sale 30 por ciento más caro en este año, según Inegi.El exprocurador Jesús Murillo Karam admitió públicamente su responsabilidad en la investigación del caso Ayotzinapa, dice el presidente.México denunciará al mecanismo COVAX de la ONU por incumplir con la entrega de vacunas contra COVID.Personal de seguridad capturaron a una serpiente en las instalaciones del Metro de la Ciudad de México.Maca Carriedo y Javier Garza comentan algunas de las noticias que son tendencia. Compártenos tu opinión en Instagram: @expansion.daily.Encuentra más información en expansión.mx

Ana Paula Ordorica platica con Jorge Fernández Menéndez sobre la detención del ex procurador Jesús Murillo Karam por el caso Ayotzinapa y proceso de Rosario Robles. En otros temas: México presentará una denuncia contra la ONU y el mecanismo COVAX./INAI solicita a la Semarnat la autorización provisional para la construcción del Tramo 4 del Tren Maya./Anthony Fauci, dejará el cargo.

•SMN pronostica lluvias y chubascos en la CDMX y EDOMEX•Anthony Fauci, epidemiólogo dejará el cargo en el mes diciembre•Más información en nuestro podcast

As a young girl, Dr. Maria Guevara was inspired by her parent's volunteer medical missions in the Philippines where they helped repair cleft lips and palates. The deep impression that work created led her on a path to medicine and eventually to her role today as International Medical Secretary at Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders). In her eighteen years with the agency, Dr. Guevara has traveled the world tending to the needs of people who have been victimized by armed conflicts, natural disasters, and disease outbreaks such as Ebola. Founded in 1971 in the wake of the Biafra war in Nigeria, Médecins Sans Frontières now operates as an independent medical organization in over seventy countries with more than forty-six thousand members. Join host Shiv Gaglani for this riveting conversation with Dr. Guevara in which she shares her experiences in the field, provides her thoughts on global health as a discipline, and shares lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic with an eye on the looming challenge of climate change. “We're getting dress rehearsals on a regular basis to see how we can fix ourselves. It's like Mother Earth is saying, ‘We're going to teach you. Learn!'”

Ex-pharma senior scientist and medical whistleblower Mike Donio joins me for an insightful and disturbing show centred around the highly dubious “science” underpinning the HIV-AIDS myth. He details how he came through the education system and into the pharmaceutical industry with the best of intentions, hoping to do good science to make the world a better place. However he soon began finding reasons to question what he had been told about “viruses”, how they were supposedly worked with, “proved,” and how they were identified as so-called disease-causing agents. It turned out that nothing about HIV was as it initially seemed. Eventually, Mike realised the realm of corporately controlled Science wasn't going to let him make a positive difference in the world, and was ultimately terminated from his job for refusing to take the experimental DNA-altering covax. Special Guest: Mike Donio.

GUEST OVERVIEW: Nikolai Petrovsky is Professor of Medicine at Flinders University, Director of Endocrinology at Flinders Medical Centre and Research Director of Vaxine, an Adelaide-based biotechnology company focused on vaccine development. He has been awarded over 50 million dollars from the US National Institutes of Health for his vaccine research. He has authored over 200 peer-reviewed research papers and is an inventor on multiple vaccine patents. In 2020, he developed the Covax-19/SpikoGen® vaccine against COVID-19 that in October 2021 received authorization in Iran, making it the first recombinant protein Covid-19 vaccine in the world to receive regulatory approval, and the first Australian-developed human vaccine in the last 40 years to achieve approval.

In this episode of Truthiverse Brendan destroys the monkeypox narrative and provides several plausible alternative explanations for what causes pox symptoms. First we look at the impact of an acidic diet and lifestyle and then explore how toxicity can play a role in the creation of pox-like skin conditions. But that's just the warm up. Brendan then takes you on a fascinating tour through psychosomatic medicine and how the mind can unconsciously create a vast range of physiological symptoms, including pox, as well as those associated with "covid". We cover the role of suggestion, belief, mass mind control programming, media propaganda, the collective cognitive imperative, and mass-formation psychosis as it relates to the individual's health - or lack thereof - and the importance of impeccable psychological hygiene for maintaining good health. Don't miss this one. NOTE! This episode is can be listened to as per normal, but if you'd like the visual supplements then please see the video HERE (https://www.bitchute.com/video/7vAC8GOAUmVG/)

Guest: Alex Boyd, Toronto Star reporter Almost two years after the first COVID-19 vaccines arrived in Canada, the excitement is somewhat over. Most Canadians are now vaccinated and demand is grinding to a halt. The rush for vaccines has also slowed down considerably after recently lifted mandates. This means that millions of doses are lying unused, just weeks or months away from expiring. And millions of vaccines have been thrown away. Vaccination continues to lag in low-income countries. In the meantime, just how many vaccines are we tossing in the garbage and can Canada actually do anything to prevent this vaccine wastage? This episode was produced by Saba Eitizaz, Alexis Green and Matthew Hearn

Korea24 – 2022.04.12. (Tuesday) News Briefing: The Democratic Party has decided it will push through a controversial reform bill, that would strip the prosecution of its investigative powers, before the end of President Moon Jae-in’s term. (Eunice KIM) In-Depth News Analysis: The Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the South Korean national assembly via video on Monday, where he asked Korea to provide military hardware for his nation’s fight against Russia’s aggression. Zelenskyy's request, however, came after Seoul had reiterated its refusal to send such weapons last week, citing South Korea's security situation. To talk more about the Ukranian leader's address as well as the role of the United Nations in the conflict, South Korea’s former Ambassador to the UN, Oh Joon, joins us on the line. Korea Trending with Jenny Suh: 1. The global vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX has allocated 1.83 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines to North Korea, despite the regime canceling the last batch 10 days prior. (백신접종 시작 안한 北…코백스, 물량 취소했다가 183만회분 재배정) 2. Cultural authorities in Korea have announced that they will no longer use the term '문화재' or ‘Cultural Heritage’ and instead use '국가유산' or ‘National Heritage’. (문화재, 이제부터 ‘국가유산’으로 부른다) 3. The bestselling novel ‘Pachinko’ by Min Jin Lee will no longer be on sale in Korea from Wednesday, amid uncertainties about a contract extension with its publisher. (소설 '파친코' 판매중단…베스트셀러 '절판' 초유 사태) Touch Base In Seoul: The children’s book author, Hope Lim, known for her touching stories of children learning more about the world, joins us via video this week. Her latest book “MOMMY’S HOMETOWN” follows a young boy who travels with his mother to her childhood hometown in Korea, only to find it was not as he had imagined it. She tells us more about the book, as well as the inspiration behind her works.

A review of multiple studies on common painkillers found that they have a marked effect on our resistance to infection—which is sometimes bad and sometimes good. Some of these medications could also reduce our response to a vaccination—especially if taken straight before one. Doctors, nurses and other health professionals keep you healthy. But despite Australia's relative good health it has major problems with general practice. By international standards we are probably overproducing medical graduates, but not enough go into general practice. New variants of the COVID-19 virus continue to appear, especially as there are low income countries with low levels of immunisation. The 2022-23 Australian Budget allocated A$85 million to COVAX, the international program for delivering COVID-19 vaccines particularly to low income countries. Is it enough?

New variants of the COVID-19 virus continue to appear, and especially as there are low income countries with low levels of immunisation—and so high levels of circulating virus. The 2022-23 Australian Budget allocated A$85 million to COVAX, the international program for delivering COVID-19 vaccines particularly to low income countries. Is it enough? This week the German Government will host a meeting of international leaders who aim to raise US$5.2 billion ($7 billion AUS) for COVAX and fund a major push to ramp up vaccine coverage.

A little while ago, I had a conversation with Dr. Madhukar Pai about vaccine equity. In it, I tried to understand why and how developed countries were spending billions on COVID vaccine boosters, but so relatively little in low-income countries. Not to say that nothing has been done, but it's a pretty clear-cut case where whatever we have done, however complex the system, it's nowhere near enough. I can't be more clear here. This will affect you. We're handing out 21 million shots a day across the world, and yet, 36.8% of the world's population – 2.9 billion people – still haven't received a single shot. 87% of people in low-income countries still haven't received a single shot. The international organization that was supposed to shepherd this whole endeavor to vaccinate the world, COVAX, has, however you squeeze it, failed. I want to understand technically what the issues have been, but also as always, to understand why we do what we do when it's so morally corrupt, when it costs so many lives, and even when all of the evidence tells us that it will come back to bite us. My guest today is Gayle Smith. Gayle served until recently as Coordinator for Global COVID Response and Health Security at the Department of State and has recently returned to her role as the President and CEO of the ONE Campaign. Prior to the ONE Campaign, Smith was the Administrator of USAID, where she led a staff of more than 10,000 people working to end extreme poverty, foster sustained and inclusive economic growth, and promote resilient, democratic societies all over the world.  Smith has also served as Special Assistant to President Obama and Senior Director for Development and Democracy at the National Security Council, where she helped lead the U.S. and global response to the Ebola crisis in 2014 and 2015, and as Special Assistant to President Clinton and Senior Director for African affairs at the National Security Council. If anyone can help me understand where the US, in particular, has fallen short of helping to vaccinate the world and get us out of this thing, it's Gayle. ----------- Have feedback or questions? http://www.twitter.com/importantnotimp (Tweet us), or send a message to questions@importantnotimportant.com New here? Get started with our fan favorite episodes at http://podcast.importantnotimportant.com/ (podcast.importantnotimportant.com). ----------- INI Book Club: Find all of our guest recommendations at the INI Book Club: https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club (https://bookshop.org/lists/important-not-important-book-club) Links: Follow Gayle on https://twitter.com/gaylesmith?lang=en (Twitter) https://www.one.org/international/ (ONE Campaign) ONE Campaign https://twitter.com/ONECampaign (Twitter) Follow us: Subscribe to our newsletter at http://newsletter.importantnotimportant.com/ (newsletter.importantnotimportant.com) Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ImportantNotImp (twitter.com/ImportantNotImp) Follow Quinn: http://twitter.com/quinnemmett (twitter.com/quinnemmett) Edited by https://anthonyluciani.com (Anthony Luciani) Intro/outro by Tim Blane: http://timblane.com/ (timblane.com) Artwork by https://amritpaldesign.com/ (Amrit Pal)

Biden's Global Covid Response coordinator Gayle Smith, now back leading the ONE Campaign, opens up about what went wrong with global Covid vaccine markets and what she'd do to make a Covax 2.0 work better.

防疫公衛專家何美鄉指出，有人說Omicron可能是上帝賜給我們的禮物，或將終結新冠疫情的威脅！台灣堅守防疫有成，但清零政策卻有礙與世界恢復接軌，我們有這本錢、或是決心和意願改變策略，試圖和病毒共存嗎？放眼全球，哪些國家的防疫策略值得我們借鏡？又有哪些國家的覆轍值得我們引以為戒呢？精彩訪談內容，請鎖定@華視三國演議！ 本集來賓：#何美鄉 #矢板明夫 主持人：#汪浩 #清零 #共存 #Omicron #新冠疫情 電視播出時間

Llegan a México 14 millones de dosis de la vacuna contra el Covid-19 de AstraZenecaUltimo día para pagar predial en la CDMX Por problemas de salud, Enrique Bunbury dice adiós a los escenarios

In this week's show, inspiring messages from disability activist Irena Valarezo Cordova from Ecuador, who features in the UN Population Fund's (UNFPA) World For One Billion exhibition. And UN humanitarians remind us of the likely heavy human cost of the Ukraine crisis in Europe, while on other continents, a new biotechnology hub to make COVID vaccines, insulin and more is announced for South Korea, as African nations take stock, one year after coronavirus vaccines starting arriving in the country via the UN-partnered COVAX initiative.

Over two years into the pandemic, much of the world remains either unvaccinated, partially vaccinated, or lacking access to mRNA vaccines entirely. How did the leading effort to vaccinate the world go so wrong? Guest: Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project and a fellow of the Shuttleworth Foundation, in Bangalore. Host: Lizzie O'Leary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

-COVAX vaccine allocation for North Korea changed-Yoon Seok-youl and Lee Jae-myung slam each other at the 2nd TV debate-10 thousand new house constructions in Pyongyang-북한 대상 코백스 백신 지정량 변화-윤석열-이재명 2차 TV 대선토론서 국방 정책 두고 공방-평양에 1만세대 주택 건설 착공Guest: Kim Jeongmin, Seoul Correspondent, NK NewsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Covax is reportedly out of money. This could lead to a potential disaster for low-income countries that have come to depend on the United Nations-backed initiative for access to covid-19 vaccinations. Billionaire Mark Cuban launched an online pharmacy aimed at lowering generic drug prices.Hosts: Ana Kasparian See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Is the new Paxlovoid pill just a "reworked" ivermectin? What do you think of the data? Love the show. My question is, is it safe to take the provolone iodine with hypothyroid? There is a history of heart disease in my husband's family so the thought of my boys getting any vac scares me, especially since I have 3 teenage sons. Will there be a 'safe' alternative? Will Novovax or Covax be safer?

新冠疫情席捲全球，台灣因為警覺性高，防疫開始得早，成為全球數一數二的抗疫模範生！除了全國人民上下一心之外，疫情指揮官，陳時中部長的帶領，更是功不可沒！這兩年陳部長是怎麼走過來的？還有還有，如果總統徵召參選，陳時中會轉換跑道嗎？　精彩訪談內容，請鎖定@華視三國演議！ 本集來賓：#陳時中 #矢板明夫 主持人：#汪浩 #新冠病毒 #武漢肺炎 #新冠疫苗 #TAIWAN CAN HELP

Since the last episode in February, a lot has happened with the vaccination rollout -- so we're back for a few more episodes. But we've changed our name from The CoVax Files to The Vax Files, which was was done mainly to avoid any confusion with GAVI/WHO's COVAX facility and also to maintain our independence from any official organization. As we approach the end of 2021 and almost 7 billion administered vaccine doses, we now have a good chunk of real world effectiveness data available. During this episode, experts walk us through some important datasets that can speak to how the vaccines have been working, with particular nuances around the emergence of the highly transmissible Delta variant. Experts take a deep dive into real world evidence data in different countries to elucidate overall protection, antibody waning, protection against severe disease and death as well as the likelihood of transmission when vaccinated. Finally, experts discuss the dangers of misinterpreting headline or summary data, which has been a regular occurrence in the media and social media during this pandemic. Expert Guests: -- Dr Jeffrey Morris is Professor of Biostatistics and Director, Biostatistics Division at the University of Pennsylvania, US. His research focuses on developing quantitative methods to extract knowledge from biomedical big data and he set up a blog dedicated to issues concerning the Covid-19 pandemic. -- Dr Nikolai Petrovsky is Professor of Medicine, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia and vice-president and secretary-general of the International Immunomics Society. He is the founder of vaccine biotech, Vaxine, which has a protein based vaccine for Covid-19 in its pipeline. -- Dr Maria Elena Bottazzi is the Associate Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics (Tropical Medicine) and Molecular Virology and Microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, Texas, US. She is a leading expert in the field of vaccine development and tropical diseases. -- Dr Andrew Read is Professor of Biology and Entomology at PennState University, US. His research specializes in the ecology and evolutionary genetics of infectious disease, which includes the impact of vaccination on virus evolution.

Andy calls up Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel for a remarkable behind-the-scenes look at the last two years inside the company. As Moderna's booster shots start to roll out across the country, Andy and Stéphane discuss the origins of Moderna's partnership with the government, how he thinks the vaccine will hold up against future variants, and the effort to vaccinate the globe. Plus, Stéphane's riveting recollections of hearing about COVID-19 for the first time in January 2020, and what else they're working on right now to help us end the pandemic.   Keep up with Andy on Twitter @ASlavitt and Instagram @andyslavitt.    Follow Moderna @moderna_tx on Twitter.   Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.    Support the show by checking out our sponsors!   Click this link for a list of current sponsors and discount codes for this show and all Lemonada shows: https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/  Throughout the pandemic, CVS Health has been there, bringing quality, affordable health care closer to home—so it's never out of reach for anyone. 

Learn more at cvshealth.com.   Check out these resources from today's episode:    Check out Stéphane's letter titled “Our Global Commitment to Vaccine Access”: https://investors.modernatx.com/news-releases/news-release-details/our-global-commitment-vaccine-access Read more about how the FDA and CDC approved Moderna's booster shot last week and also endorsed the mix-and-match approach: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/21/health/covid-vaccine-boosters-cdc.html Here's the Bloomberg story Stéphane mentioned about Haiti shipping unused doses back to COVAX: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-13/haiti-to-send-back-expiring-u-s-donated-moderna-vaccines Find a COVID-19 vaccine site near you: https://www.vaccines.gov/  Order Andy's book, Preventable: The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S. Coronavirus Response: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250770165    Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.    For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com/show/inthebubble. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

NK Now-North Korea reveals new top party figures days after politburo meeting-North Korea refuses COVAX offer of 3 million sinovac vaccine doses-Unification Ministry to expand 2022 budget for humanitarian aid-South Korea successfully launches homegrown SLBM-북한 정치국회의 결과 및 승진 관료 정리-코백스 통한 시노백 코로나19 백신 거절한 북한-국방부 5년 계획 예산 및 통일부 인도적 지원금 예산 확대 예정-군의 SLBM 수중 발사 성공 소식Guest: Kim Jeongmin, Seoul Correspondent, NK NewsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to episode 18 where we talk about all the frigging rain, floods all over the world and how Covax International swoops in to jab as many Haitians and Africans as they can. We answer some listener questions and conduct an alcohol taste test. This episode goes on a few tangents but it all comes together. Take a listen and as always thank you for your support. Follow Ron on Instagram @ronfromnewengland and @thewickedplanetpodcast. Email us any questions or show ideas at thewickedplanetpodcast@gmail.com And let Buckley know if he needs to start his own show page!

@今天是重要的5月28日。 那個雙北自動封城，大家到賣場搶購後躲起來的周末已經14天了。接下來幾天是驗收我們這兩個禮拜努力成果的時候了。 我還是有一定的信心，希望之後幾天的案例可以看到明顯的下降。讓重症增加的速度也可以趨緩，醫療緊繃能獲得紓解。 如果接下來幾天，確診人數沒有辦法下降的話，我們真的遇到大麻煩了。 台灣加油，大家堅持下去！沒事待在家裡！ @如何快速重建流行曲線與指揮中心公信力　從校正回歸之亂談起 陳建仁老師昨天臉書的發文其實是有點重的。 https://www.facebook.com/chencj/posts/3993562464057879 老師轉貼他學生劉玠暘醫師的投書，並表示認同。這代表老師也認為歷經此次事件，指揮中心的公信力需要重建。這講的不可謂不重。 劉醫師的觀點： 1.建議建立預測模型，每天提供民眾「當日確診數+預估追加數」。 2.指揮中心可以考慮提供多種方案、多筆公開資料，越透明化，越能平息爭議。政府越是坦然面對，越能取信於民(包括體制外的專家學者，甚至還會幫忙跟民眾溝通)，藉機生事者也難以見縫插針。 3.上週指揮中心在發現有backlog的時候，就應該告訴民眾「目前確診數還沒有定下來，檢驗出爐後會事後追加」，而不是禮拜六再突然追加回溯。 @日本可能提供台灣AZ疫苗 看到這個報導，眼淚都快流下來了。詳情還不確定，希望能夠成真！ 日本疫情也很嚴峻，台日一起努力，我們一定會再見面的！以下出自中央社翻譯產經新聞的報導。 1.日本政府得知台灣新冠疫情擴大，疫苗取得成為課題，因此考慮供應AZ疫苗給台灣做為緊急措施，快的話6月可以提供。 2.日本政府及執政黨自由民主黨相關人士27日透露，日本政府考慮提供AZ疫苗給台灣。日本已確保給人民施打的其他藥廠製的疫苗，研判原本要給國內用的部分AZ疫苗供應台灣也不至於造成影響。正在考慮的方案是透過COVAX供應疫苗給台灣，將在詢問台灣政府需要多少疫苗數量及提供疫苗時期之後，再訂出詳細供應計畫。 3.日本政府已與輝瑞簽約今年之內購買1億9400萬劑疫苗、與莫德納簽約在9月底前購買5000萬劑疫苗。光是向這兩家藥廠購買的疫苗就有約2億4000萬劑（約1億2000萬人份），16歲以上者要施打的疫苗數量幾已確保。 4.日本政府與AZ簽約今年購買1億2000萬劑，但因為海外有報告顯示接種後少數會出現血栓的案例，日本政府目前將AZ疫苗排除在官方安排施打疫苗的對象外。今後如果用途未能決定，保存期限恐到期。 5.日本政府考慮到台日每當發生大規模災害時都會互相幫助，這次作為緊急措施，認為有必要支援台灣。台日互相支援的歷史長久，2011年311大地震，台灣捐款逾200億日圓（約新台幣52億元）給日本。去年4月，疫情擴大，日本出現口罩荒之際，台灣捐贈醫療用口罩200萬片給日本。（不好意思，口誤為300億和300萬) 2016年台南地震時，日本政府宣布捐100萬美元支援。2018年花蓮地震時，日本派遣救難隊到災區協助救災。 中央社新聞連結 https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/202105280012.aspx 產經新聞連結 https://www.sankei.com/article/20210528-SV4CNQSITBI67BEG3PAQBNROFI/ 新冠快篩懶人包 普篩 抗體快篩 抗原快篩 https://linshibi.com/?p=36564 新冠肺炎疫情下的防疫須知 常見問題解答FAQ https://linshibi.com/?p=35408 新冠疫苗常見問題懶人包 https://linshibi.com/?p=38945 林氏璧醫師的電子名片 https://lit.link/linshibi 歡迎贊助我喝咖啡 https://pay.firstory.me/user/linshibi Powered by Firstory Hosting

@復必泰疫苗之亂 https://www.cna.com.tw/news/aipl/202105270157.aspx 莊人祥說，德國輝瑞BNT疫苗中文就叫做復必泰，而香港所施打的疫苗就是復必泰，只不過上海復星公司擁有香港、台灣代理權，因此若台灣要購買BNT，可能的管道就是與BNT直接簽約，並從德國進口，或是透過上海復星的代理，但也是從德國進口，因為這些疫苗均在德國產製。 莊人祥強調，無論國產或進口疫苗，只要來到台灣，政府都會把關品質，並針對生產文件、疫苗品質進行各項檢驗，待審核通過後才會施打，民眾是可以放心的；羅秉成補充，採購疫苗最高原則就是保護國人身體健康，疫苗確實有需要，但如果不能確保安全及有效性、不可不慎，國內向來採購疫苗都是向原廠或透過COVAX平台向原廠洽詢，會依法嚴格檢驗確保品質跟安全。 @莫德納15萬劑來了 https://linshibi.com/?p=38083 1.我很高興我們能買到保護力高達94%，佛奇所屬的美國國家衛生研究院（NIH）參與研發還有執行臨床試驗的莫德納疫苗，也是我心中目前如果可以選擇的第一順位新冠疫苗之一！ 如果可以讓我選擇： 輝瑞/莫德納 ＞ Novavax ＞AZ/嬌生/俄羅斯等腺病毒疫苗 2.如此順位的理由除了產生中和抗體最佳，保護力最佳之外，mRNA疫苗也是對變種病毒可以最快做出調整的平台。可以在六週內更改序列做出新款疫苗。 3.美國生物科技公司莫德納（Moderna）和NIH合作的mRNA疫苗「mRNA-1273」，第一期臨床試驗於2020年3月16日開始收案，距離中國的新冠病毒基因排序公布只有63天。第三期臨床試驗於7月27日開始收案，在美國89家醫院收案30420人，疫苗的保護效力高達94.1%，研究成果已刊登於新英格蘭醫學期刊。美國FDA於12月17日通過莫德納疫苗的緊急授權使用。 4.莫德納和輝瑞/BNT都是mRNA疫苗，皆須要冷鍊運輸，不過他不需要到零下負70度這麼嚴格的條件，負20度即可。 5.和AZ混打是可行的嗎？ 我認真覺得混打：先AZ再莫德納是可行的。西班牙AZ混BNT臨床試驗的抗體生成令人滿意。可惜英國混打資訊來不及出來，且下個月出來也是AZ混BNT的資料，混莫德納的結果還要等。現階段資料實在不足以做如此推薦。 第一線那五六萬人高風險醫護，已經打了AZ第一劑的，應該考慮一下混打。風險最高的人值得更高的保護力。且英國後續資訊AZ第二劑還是可能TTS，只是機率降為百萬分之一。 但我們不是英國，應該會比較保守吧。指揮中心現階段不可能同意混打的，所以我只是講爽的啦.... 如果可以，我完全願意當AZ混打莫德納的白老鼠。反正你國產疫苗讓全民第三期也是讓全民當白老鼠，我沒有什麼好害怕的。 新冠快篩懶人包 普篩 抗體快篩 抗原快篩 https://linshibi.com/?p=36564 新冠肺炎疫情下的防疫須知 常見問題解答FAQ https://linshibi.com/?p=35408 新冠疫苗常見問題懶人包 https://linshibi.com/?p=38945 林氏璧醫師的電子名片 https://lit.link/linshibi 歡迎贊助我喝咖啡 https://pay.firstory.me/user/linshibi Powered by Firstory Hosting

VACCINE. Does that word scare you to read? It's understandable if it does - vaccines are the only medicine we give to people who are totally healthy. BUT, do the benefits of what they provide outweigh the risks of what they prevent? That's what we as adults and as parents have to decide, and this conversation is here to give you the information you need to help with that decision process. Misinformation around vaccines is nothing new, but it's running rampant even more so than normal thanks to Covax! I've had questions about vaccines for a long time, and when the first Covid-19 vaccine became available I knew I needed to speed up my timeline for this episode. So, I sat down with a REAL expert on the topic! Kennen Hutchison is a virologist working on his PhD at Northwestern University. He quite literally studies viruses and vaccines for a living, so you can have confidence listening to this that he is qualified to speak on the topic! In the first half of our conversation, Kennen and I are talking broadly about vaccine safety. He's answering common questions like, what's the link between vaccines and autism? And, how effective is the flu shot really? Next week in Part 2, Kennen and I will be focusing specifically on the Covid-19 vaccine. But for now, having the base knowledge of how vaccines work and whether or not they are good for our bodies is going to help you more than you realize, especially for those of you who are parents having to make many a vaccine decision! Links from the show: Goods & Better Store: https://www.goodsandbetterstore.com?ref=mackenzieneally (https://www.goodsandbetterstore.com?ref=mackenzieneally) Connect with Mackenzie: Instagram: @theheartfelthippie // @the.enlightenme.podcast Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theheartfelthippie/ (https://www.facebook.com/theheartfelthippie/) Website: http://www.heartfelthippie.com (www.heartfelthippie.com) Email: mackenzie.heartfelthippie@gmail.com Connect with Kennen: Instagram: @kennenhutchison / @sciencewithkennen YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_V-JuHBZ1ZtTaJliRjN9pw (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_V-JuHBZ1ZtTaJliRjN9pw) Email: sciencewithkennen@gmail.com

今日新增之267例本土個案為127例男性、140例女性，年齡介於未滿5歲至80多歲，發病日/採檢日介於今年4月30日至5月18日，居住縣市分別為新北市129例(中和區26例為多)、臺北市70例(萬華區31例為多)、彰化縣28例，桃園市16例、高雄市8例、臺中市5例、基隆市4例、宜蘭縣3例、臺南市及新竹市各2例；新增縣市為臺南市。其中萬華區活動史87例、茶藝館相關73例、水果盤商相關28例、某社團相關群聚2例、進香團1例。不明感染源49例、疫調中27例。相關疫情調查持續進行中。 行政院發言人羅秉成今天表示，中央流行疫情指揮中心指揮官陳時中上午10時30分向行政院報告，台灣透過COVAX平台購買的41萬劑AZ疫苗，凌晨3時已經自阿姆斯特丹起飛。疫苗於下午3時34分抵達台灣。這批疫苗來自韓國廠，最快7天內可完成檢驗封緘並開打，效期至8月31日。 第一順位接種對象為有執業登記的醫事人員，總計約四十三萬人，已有十萬人接種疫苗。第二順位接種對象為中央和地方政府防疫人員，包括衛生單位第一線的防疫人員、執行居家檢疫隔離等可能接觸到病患的防疫人員，約有九萬人，目前約四萬多人接種。 全國升第三級防疫至5/28 生活須知QA這裡看 https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/202105155013.aspx 不到5天全台升三級警戒 陳時中：相信不會到四級 https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/202105190335.aspx 台大醫院10名員工採檢陽性 停止手術、門診降載 https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/202105195003.aspx 台大醫院今天宣布院內10名員工採檢陽性，匡列7天前追查行蹤。副院長王亭貴呼籲，非急重症者請勿到台大急診，醫院今天起停止所有常規手術、門診降載，也將進行全院同仁普篩。副院長兼發言人王亭貴強調，這不是院內感染，研判是院外帶進來的病毒，但10人在同一個工作區域，目前認為是他們互相傳染沒錯，但不符合院內感染的定義；最初發燒的這位是工務室員工，沒有跟病患接觸。 新北增設土城、永和、樂生篩檢站 共600名額 https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/202105190090.aspx 新北市府擴充篩檢能量，今天增設土城醫院、永和耕莘醫院、樂生療養院3處篩檢站，將於今天下午2時起，共提供600個名額服務。在增加土城等3座篩檢站之後，加上原設置板橋篩檢站，新北市目前共4座社區篩檢站。 新冠快篩懶人包 普篩 抗體快篩 抗原快篩 https://linshibi.com/?p=36564 新冠肺炎疫情下的防疫須知 常見問題解答FAQ https://linshibi.com/?p=35408 新冠疫苗常見問題懶人包 https://linshibi.com/?p=38945 林氏璧醫師的電子名片 https://lit.link/linshibi 歡迎贊助我喝咖啡 https://pay.firstory.me/user/linshibi Powered by Firstory Hosting

今日新增本土29例，4人無症狀。（你沒有看錯，29例） 獅子會相關5例，累積25例。 萬華相關16例，累積23例。 宜蘭遊藝場相關1例，累積9例。 感染源調查中7例。 感染源調查中的這７例是重點。我的感覺是社區現在就是多點開花了，病毒生根進入社區的機率繼續增加，要靠圍堵的方式控制下來清零的機率越來越低。疫情會進入完全不同的階段。 要有這樣的心理準備才行。 醫院開始大量作新冠檢測，不管是醫師懷疑或是民眾主動，這一週內案例增加數可以看出社區病毒到底擴散到什麼程度，會決定之後的走向。接下來的幾天非常的重要。 不要天真了，這次真的不一樣。觀察到6月8日之前就沒事了？看起來不會這麼樂觀。 病毒基因定序，傳統疫調，其實可能會越來越不重要了。接下來要仔細觀察的是檢驗量能，輕症重症人數，還有醫院收治量能的監測。 做最壞的打算，最好的準備。 至於普篩封城疫苗的種種政策，我相信指揮中心的專家小組都會幫我們做最好的決定，大家不需要擔心。到了什麼階段，就會怎麼處理。 打完AZ疫苗了，心頭一塊大石放下來。 幾個月來我都在分析各疫苗的所有數據，包括有效性和不良反應，考量各種數據之後，我幫自己決定了，是時候來打AZ疫苗了。AZ在英國大量施打後有效控制英國變種株來勢洶洶的疫情，也累積了大量安全性資訊，擔心的TTS血栓併血小板低下在韓國200萬劑和菲律賓這些亞洲人種都沒發生，這讓我放心很多。我已經離開醫院沒有第一類的身份，佩琪可以等到莫德納但我應該等不到，且就算莫德納來應該開始數量也不多，應該要留給第一線醫護人員，所以就這樣吧。 我也不擔心打不到第二劑疫苗。我們可是訂了1000萬劑，還有COVAX，且你也知道AZ在全世界並不是最被瘋搶的疫苗，我對AZ後續繼續到貨的信心比莫德納到貨的信心大多了。 人山人海，掛了200號。上週帶老媽來觀察室只有小貓兩三隻，今天好像菜市場@@ 打完AZ疫苗第九小時。 人有一點累，有輕微的頭痛，不過這在工作一天後我自己常常會有類似的症狀，還好。 36.6度，沒有發燒。 注射處有輕微的痠痛。不會影響行動。 先報告到這，繼續喝水。 新冠快篩懶人包 普篩 抗體快篩 抗原快篩 https://linshibi.com/?p=36564 新冠肺炎疫情下的防疫須知 常見問題解答FAQ https://linshibi.com/?p=35408 新冠疫苗常見問題懶人包 https://linshibi.com/?p=38945 林氏璧醫師的電子名片 https://lit.link/linshibi 歡迎贊助我喝咖啡 https://pay.firstory.me/user/linshibi Powered by Firstory Hosting

WHO通過了中國國藥疫苗Sinopharm的緊急使用授權 https://linshibi.com/?p=39460 1.譚德塞表示，這增加了COVAX可以採購的疫苗名單，也給了各國審查這個疫苗的信心，可以進口和使用這個疫苗。 2.WHO專家們是從4月26日起就開會審查中國的兩支疫苗，他們給出的建議是年滿18歲的人士們，可接種2劑國藥疫苗，相隔3~4週施打。 3.Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) 主席說，60歲以上受試者的資料很少。但我們沒理由認為疫苗在老人家會有不同的結果。 "The information we have for people over 60 is still very scarce. There is no reason to think the vaccine would behave differently in this older age group." 4.因為資料不足，專家們也建議應該要監測60歲以上，有慢性病還有懷孕女性使用疫苗後的保護力和副作用。此外還需要更多證據的有：對重症的保護力，效果可以維持多久，是否需要追加劑量，未來是否有疫苗引發疾病的風險（就是ADE那一類的），對變種病毒的效果，比較稀有不良反應的監測等等。 5.WHO下周會做成另一支中國疫苗：科興疫苗的決定。專家表示已經向科興要求更多需要的資料，希望能很快取得而做出決定。 6.這是WHO通過的第六支疫苗，前五支分別是輝瑞/BNT，嬌生，AZ，COVISHIELD（印度血清研究所做的AZ），莫德納。 04b解讀： 1.中國國藥集團（Sinopharm）旗下武漢生物製品研究所研發的不活化疫苗，第三期臨床試驗於去年7月16日開始收案，預計在阿拉伯聯合大公國，約旦，巴林，埃及共收案四萬五千人。 2.去年8月發表了第一期/第二期的臨床試驗結果在JAMA期刊。中國政府在第三期結果出來前已經給予此疫苗緊急授權，可以在政府員工，醫療工作者或是其他族群施打。目前在中國，阿拉伯聯合大公國和巴林批准，在阿根廷，祕魯，委內瑞拉，蓋亞那，柬埔寨，埃及，匈牙利，伊朗，伊拉克，約旦，尼泊爾，巴基斯坦，辛巴威，馬爾地夫等地緊急授權使用，在塞爾維亞，塞席爾限制性使用。 3.在提供給WHO的資料中，疫苗組有13765人，對照組也是13765人。追蹤112天，在疫苗組產生了21例新冠確診，對照組則是95例。保護力是78.1%（CI 64.9~86.3）。 4.住院的話，疫苗組3例需要住院，對照組則是14例。住院的保護力是78.7%（CI 26.9~93.9）。 5.重症的話，僅有2例發生在對照組。收案族群僅有各約200人是大於60歲，多半是年輕人，因此無法明顯看出預防重症的效力。 6.慢性病的話，糖尿病和高血壓各收了約300人，數量也是很少。肥胖倒是各收了約3000人，做出來的保護力是80.7%（CI 56.7~91.4） 7.不良反應方面，多半都是輕微到中等，最常見的是注射處疼痛，頭痛，疲勞。有兩例嚴重不良事件可能和疫苗有關，分別是嚴重噁心，還有一例急性瀰漫性腦脊髓炎(acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, ADEM)。 8.我比較不理解的是，如果中國已經在一般民眾或是世界各國施打了這麼多國藥疫苗，為何不好好整理真實世界的數據一起審查？只照現在送上的數據，60歲以上的老人家資料實在太少（科興也有一樣的問題），我們沒理由認為疫苗在老人家會有不同的結果－－＞這句話根本不像是人講的話。WHO新聞稿中是指出，初步資料還有抗體生成資料顯示在老人家應該也有保護效果，而學理上不太可能在老人家會有和年輕人不同的安全性資料。 9.當然我更不能理解的是，為何不早點把第三期臨床試驗的結果投稿到正式期刊發表？這些結果很早就出來了，投稿應該是舉手之勞且是很快獲得公信力的方式。謎呀。 10.有人可能會擔心COVAX列入中國疫苗，那台灣會不會被分配到？照指揮中心的說法，我們簽的合約是可以選擇不要的，所以應該是不會發生這樣的狀況。 新冠疫苗常見問題懶人包 https://linshibi.com/?p=38945 林氏璧醫師的電子名片 https://lit.link/linshibi 歡迎贊助我喝咖啡 https://pay.firstory.me/user/linshibi Powered by Firstory Hosting