Rather than trying to twink our current Corporate Government, we need
to follow Cuba's example and install a new People's Government.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/3/21, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Cuba’s COVID-19 Vaccines Serve the People, Not Profits
https://socialistaction.org/2021/03/02/cubas-covid-19-vaccines-serve-the-people-not-profits/
March 2, 2021
BY W. T. WHITNEY JR.
February 28, 2021
Cuba’s socialist approach to developing vaccines against COVID-19
differs strikingly from that of capitalist nations of the world. Cuba’s
production of four vaccines is grounded in science and dedicated to
saving the lives of all Cubans, and to international solidarity.
The New York Times’s running report on the world’s vaccine programs
shows 67 vaccines having advanced to human trials; 20 of them are in the
final phase of trials or have completed them. The United States, China,
Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, South Korea, and India have each
produced many vaccines; most vaccine-manufacturing countries are
offering one or two vaccines.
Cuba is the only vaccine manufacturer in Latin America; there are none
in Africa. The only state-owned entities producing the leading vaccines
are those of Cuba and Russia.
Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute has produced two COVID-19 vaccines.
Trials for one of them, called Sovereign I, focus on protecting people
previously infected with COVID-19. The antibody levels of some of them
turned out to be low, and the vaccine might provide a boost.
The other vaccine, Sovereign II, is about to enter final human trials.
For verifying protection, these trials require tens of thousands of
subjects, one half receiving the vaccine and the other half, a placebo
vaccine. Cuba’s population is relatively small, 11 million people, too
small to yield enough infected people in the short time required to test
the vaccine’s protective effect. That’s why Sovereign II will be tested
in Iran.
100 million doses of Sovereign II are being prepared, enough to immunize
all 11 million Cubans, beginning in March or April. The 70 million
remaining doses will go to Vietnam, Iran, Pakistan, India, Venezuela,
Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Sovereign II “will be the vaccine of ALBA,”
explained Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, referring to the
solidarity alliance established in 2004 by Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro.
“Cuba’s strategy in commercializing the vaccine represents a combination
of what’s good for humankind and the impact on world health. We are not
a multinational where a financial objective comes first,” says Vicente
Vérez Bencomo, director of Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute. Income
generated by vaccine sales abroad will pay for health care, education,
and pensions in Cuba just as happens with exports of medical services
and medicines.
Cuba’s Center for Genetic and Biotechnological Engineering is developing
two other COVID-19 vaccines; One, named “Mambisa” (signifying a female
combatant in wars of liberation from Spain), is administered via the
nasal route, just as is Cuba’s hepatitis B vaccine. The other vaccine,
named “Abdala” (a character in a Jose Martí poem) is administered
intramuscularly. The two vaccines are involved in early trials.
Cuba was ready
Cuban education emphasizes science and technology. In the 1990s, Cuba
accounted for 11% of doctorate-level Latin American scientists. Cuban
scientists work in the 50 or so biomedical research and production
facilities which together make up Cuba’s state-owned BioCubaFarma
Corporation, and which produces vaccines, drugs, medical tests, and
medical equipment. It makes 60% of medicines used in Cuba, and 8 of 12
vaccines.
Cuba previously produced a pioneering vaccine that prevents
life-threatening infection caused by type B meningococcus. Cuba
developed a genetically-engineered hepatitis B vaccine and a vaccine
offering palliative treatment for lung cancer. A Cuba-developed vaccine
offers protection against infection, particularly childhood meningitis,
caused by the Hemophilus Influenza type B bacterium.
In fashioning vaccines, Cuban scientists relied on familiar technology.
To provide an immunological extra, the antigen of Cuba’s Sovereign II
vaccine is mixed with tetanus toxoid, as was done with Cuba’s Hemophilus
influenza vaccine. As with other vaccines, scientists used a segment of
the virus’s protein – here the COVID-19 virus – to form an antigen to
stimulate protective antibodies. By contrast, the U. S. Pfizer and
Moderna vaccines contain the whole viral protein, not a segment. That
protein contains “genetic instructions” which enter human cells, causing
them “to make spike proteins, which then get released into the body”
where they trigger antibodies.
Observers suggest that this innovative U.S. technology may be less safe
than the one used in Cuban vaccines. Not requiring extremely cold
storage, as do the U.S. vaccines, the Cuban vaccines are suited for
areas without adequate refrigeration capabilities.
Cuba’s bio-medical production sector has also created drugs for treating
Covid-19 infection. Interferon, an antiviral agent developed in Cuba,
produced in China, and used throughout the world, prevents many Covid –
infected patients from becoming critically ill. The Cuban
anti-inflammatory drug Jusvinza, used for treating auto-immune diseases,
and Cuba’s monoclonal antibody Itolizumab, which moderates exaggerated
immune responses, are both effective in reducing Covid-19 deaths.
The other way
The U. S. approach to producing and distributing COVID-19 vaccines is
based on private enterprise, although the U. S. government did deliver
billions of dollars to pharmaceutical companies to produce vaccines free
of charge to recipients. The companies have contracted with purchasers
abroad.
According to forbes.com in November, 2020, ‘If Moderna’s [vaccine] can
get FDA approval and can make enough doses, its top line could be nearly
$35 billion higher … than … in the last 12 months.” Another report
suggests that, “The companies (Pfizer and Moderna) stand to earn
billions of dollars in profits from their COVID vaccines this year [and]
there will be more profits in later years.” The companies “claim the
rights to vast amounts of intellectual property.”
With corporations in charge, distribution of COVID-19 vaccines is
skewed. As of Jan. 27, “some 66.83 million doses have been sent out, of
which 93 percent were supplied to only 15 countries.” In Latin America,
only Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and Chile have secured purchase
contracts adequate for immunizing entire populations. The companies’
contracts with African nations allow for immunization of only 30 percent
of Africans in 2021. Meaningful immunization has yet to begin there.
The wealth divide determines distribution Epidemiologists at Duke
University report that, “While high-income countries represent only 16%
of the world’s population, they currently hold 60% of the vaccines for
COVID-19 that have been purchased so far.” Cuban journalist Randy Alonso
reports that only “27 percent of the total population of low and middle
income countries can be vaccinated this year.”
“The world is on the brink of a catastrophic moral failure – and the
price of this failure will be paid with lives and livelihoods in the
world’s poorest countries,” declared Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus,
director of the World Health Organization, on January 18. He warned
that, “some countries and companies continue to prioritize bilateral
deals, going around COVAX, driving up prices and attempting to jump to
the front of the queue.”
The WHO initiated the global vaccine collaboration COVAX to assure
access by poor nations to COVID-19 vaccines. The 190 nations that are
enrolled agreed to obtain vaccines through COVAX. Rich nations would
supply COVAX with funds to enable 90 poor nations to receive no-charge
vaccines. COVAX anticipates distributing two billion doses, enough to
immunize only 25 % of the populations of poor nations during 2021.
Problems include: wealthy nations order vaccines independent of COVAX;
they buy more vaccine than they need; manufacturers set prices; and
prices are secret, variable, and very high.
Most other countries producing COVID-19 vaccines are at variance with
Cuba through their profiteering and because they are complicit with the
U.S. economic blockade of Cuba. Pursuing routine overseas commercial
affairs, they all too easily adjust to U.S. regulations by means of
which that cruel policy is enforced. More to the point, the U.S.
blockade hinders Cuba’s vaccine efforts, and they are silent.
“We don’t have in Cuba all the raw materials and supplies we’ll need for
the unprecedented scale of production that vaccinating our whole
population requires,” Dagmar García-Rivera, Director of Research at
Cuba’s Finlay Vaccine Institute, explained. “They have to be purchased
and for this, we need financing. This is made infinitely more difficult
by the U.S. embargo … Procuring the necessary reagents for research and
the raw materials for production is a challenge we face daily.”
In confronting the pandemic, Cuba exhibits attention to detail
suggestive of a level of caring and concern not readily matched
elsewhere. For example, Cuba’s government-friendly cubadebate.cu website
provides a daily, detailed update of the infection’s impact. Its report
on Jan. 27 presents data relating to cities, provinces, the nation, and
the world – and the nation’s intensive care units. Readers learn that of
43 patients in intensive care that day, 16 were in critical condition,
stable or unstable, and 27 were in “grave” condition.
All 43 cases are reviewed, beginning with: “Cuban citizen, 75 years old,
from Alquízar, in Artemisa, already suffering from arterial hypertension
and ischemic cardiopathy who is afebrile, on mechanical ventilation, is
hemodynamically stable… with acceptable blood gases (oxygen and CO2), is
improving radiologically with inflammatory lesions in the right [lung]
base – reported as critical but stable.” The cases of four Cubans who
died that day are also presented.
Fighting a pandemic in Cuba, it’s understood, is no casual matter. Nor
is the health of Cuba’s people.
(Physician and life-long Cuba solidarity activist, W.T. Whitney Jr.
resides in rural Maine. This article originally appeared in Marxism
Leninism Today, February 28, 2021.)
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--
Charles Bukowski “For those who believe in God, most of the big
questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the
God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to
new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a
command nor faith a dictum. I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the
teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here
to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds
and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ―
Charles Bukowski
