Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Tag: Vaccines

Get Ready For the Return of Serious Disease

By

On September 4, 2025

Comments

You probably thought measles was a thing of the past. Along with Mumps, Rubella, Polio, Chickenpox and Heptatis B, kids are required to be vaccinated  for it as a requirement of going to school. (So the little disease spreaders don’t act as disease vectors, which parents and teacher s know they do.)

We hardly see most of these diseases any more, because we make sure everyone is vaccinated, so they can’t get a foothold. (That’s part of why vaccines prevent so many deaths, and that’s why vaccine denial is bad.)

But Florida has decided the days of effective disease control are over:

Florida will end vaccine requirements to attend school, making it the first state to do so. The state’s surgeon general said every vaccine mandate “drips with disdain and slavery.”

This is batshit insane. I don’t care what you think about the Covid vaccines, normal vaccines prevented vast numbers of deaths and crippling disabilities. If they are discontinued, the diseases will spread and be given a chance to mutate. They’ll mutate to defeat vaccines, putting everyone at risk.

(The measles vaccine was approved in the US in 1963.)

Well, what about Smallpox?

I know it’s nice to think “everyone should make individual decisions about everything”, but that’s bullshit when it comes to public health issues, especially dealing with contagious diseases. I warned, repeatedly, that fucking up the Covid response (which was NOT primarily about the vaccine) would discredit public health “well it didn’t work for Covid, so it must be bullshit!”

Anyway, the age of rationality in the West was, overall, nice. But as a friend quipped (exaggeration for effect, I hope), “We’re at most 10 years away from witchcraft trials resuming.” (Ten is too soon, I think, I give it twenty.)

America is descending fast, and much of the Western world is going with it. The very idea of effective mass action has been discredited, and we are all going to pay for that, including the rich, who will find that they can’t completely protect themselves from the demons their malign incompetence has released.

***

If you’ve read this far, and you read a lot of this site’s articles, you might wish to Subscribe or donate. The site has over 3,500 posts, and the site, and Ian, take money to run.

 

Offshoring Critical Industries Is So Harmful It Should Be Treason (Covid Edition)

By

On March 25, 2021

Comments

I was impressed how fast the UK and the US were vaccinating their population. How were they doing it, after they had been so incompetent during the rest of the pandemic?

Simple enough. Restrictions on vaccine exports.

Meanwhile:

India delays big exports of AstraZeneca shot, including to COVAX, as infections surge

And then there’s this:

(Spare me the self-serving arguments that breaking the patents wouldn’t have helped because it takes too much time to ramp up production. However long it takes, the sooner  your open up the IP, the faster it happens.)

And we could make it happen faster:

But the global capacity for producing vaccines is about a third of what is needed, says Ellen t’Hoen, an expert in medicines policy and intellectual property law.

….

To make a vaccine you not only need to have the right to produce the actual substance they are composed of (which is protected by patents), you also need to have the knowledge about how to make them because the technology can be complex.

The WHO does not have the authority to sidestep patents – but it is trying to bring countries together to find a way to bolster vaccine supplies.

The discussions include using provisions in international law to get around patents and helping countries to have the technical ability to make them.

Rich countries use IP law to keep poor countries poor, and to kill and impoverish their citizens to make even larger profits.

And, of course, if you’re stupid enough to believe neoliberal bullshit about how your countries will be OK and don’t take steps even though you have manufacturing capacity, (Europe), well, your citizens die. The EU is now restricting imports to the UK. I wonder how many Europeans will die because of not having those 10 million doses?

“I mention specifically the U.K.,” said EU Commission Vice-President Valdis Dombrovskis. Since the end of January, “some 10 million doses have been exported from the EU to the U.K. and zero doses have been exported from U.K. to the EU.”

OK. I have said this for years and years but I’m going to say it again now that it is being illustrated brutally: if you can’t make it yourself, you can’t be sure you’ll have it when you need it, since countries that can make it will tend to prioritize themselves.

You must make and grow everything essential to your country domestically if you can. Any international laws that forbid you from doing so are illegitimate. They may exist; they are not Just. This doesn’t mean completely breaking patent law (though it needs to be much less draconian and a lot less long), it does mean, at the least, writing in mandatory licensing provisions at reasonable prices.

A lot of people are going to die who didn’t need to because neoliberal “free trade” orthodoxy said you didn’t need to be able to both design and make vaccines in your own country: the “market” would supply you.

Eventually.

This isn’t just about behaviour now. It is about behaviour that has been encoded into law and trade practice over decades.

Don’t offshore anything that matters. If your citizens have to pay 5% or 10% more, slap on tariffs.

To not do so, if you think the welfare of your citizens is your duty, is treason.

All the content here is free, but subscriptions and donations do help, a lot.

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén