Tuesday, March 9, 2021

Corona Daily 159: The Emergent Story: Part One


Tomorrow, on 10 March, the US president Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Baltimore. A company called “Emergent BioSolutions” has started producing the J&J and AstraZeneca vaccines in its Baltimore factory. Emergent promises to produce one billion doses a year. Biden planned to tour the factory tomorrow.

The visit was announced last Friday. Yesterday, it was cancelled.

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Because on the weekend the New York Times published a story about Emergent. The story is big, and may be turned into a novel/movie in the future.

The story surprisingly begins with Bill Clinton reading a thriller in 1998. Clinton himself has written two thrillers in collaboration with James Patterson. (His second novel The President’s Daughter will be published in June this year.) In 1998, he read The Cobra Event by Richard Preston. A mad scientist cum bioterrorist creates a virus named Cobra and launches it on New York City. Such stories are nightmares for sitting presidents.

Until then, the USA had an emergency healthcare stockpile for military personnel, but not for civilians. It would be great for America’s preparedness to have a stockpile of masks, ventilators, PPEs, drugs, vaccines that can immediately respond to a man-made or natural crisis. This project eventually took the shape of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS). If a year ago, the stockpile mechanism had functioned as it was supposed to, the USA could have had enough masks, protective gear, and ventilators and a few thousand lives could have been saved.

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Those old enough to remember 11 September 2001 may also recall the Anthrax bioterror attack that soon followed it. Media offices and a few senators received the anthrax virus by post. The packages killed five and infected seventeen people. Coming so soon after 9/11, the bioterror attempt terrified the nation and some senators became paranoid about opening their postal packages. It must be noted this was the last Anthrax incident in the USA.

Emergent BioSolutions became the sole company to supply anthrax vaccines to the US government.

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In 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic, US health workers didn’t have enough masks or protective gear. Some of them substituted trash bags for masks. State governors were screaming for ventilators. The pandemic has so far claimed more than half a million Americans.

While this was happening, the US government paid $626 million to Emergent for anthrax vaccines.

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The Stockpile and its twelve locations are a secret. The US government contracts with companies such as Emergent are also secret. The volumes, value or inventory are not in the public domain.

The New York Times investigative journalists studied 40,000 documents and talked to more than sixty people with inside knowledge of the stockpile.

In 2015, the US government had approved a plan to buy tens of millions of N95 respirators, lifesaving equipment for doctors and nurses. But there was no money for it. Already Emergent was paid more than $1 billion for anthrax and smallpox vaccines.

Emergent has only a single customer. The US government. And US government has agreed to keep buying Anthrax vaccines only from one supplier. Emergent. This monogamous relationship has allowed Emergent to increase their demands every year. It insists the government must increase investment to keep it safe from terrorists. If-you-don’t-invest-more-we-will-go-bankrupt is one of the negotiation tactics they use. When threatened, the government has obliged by paying them $100 million more.

In 2016, the stockpile already had enough doses to vaccinate 10 million people against anthrax. Anthrax is not infectious; it doesn’t spread like covid. Since 2012, not a single intelligence report mentions anthrax as a possible threat. The risk is possible, but not large enough to have an emergency stockpile filled with nothing but anthrax vaccines.

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2020 was the strongest and most profitable year in Emergent’s history – thanks to the anthrax and smallpox vaccines. Last month, the founder and the chairman cashed in their shares and options worth $42 million. Since then, the share price fell by 30%.

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(continued tomorrow)

Ravi 

2 comments:

  1. कुठल्याही परिस्थितीत स्वार्थी लोकं स्वतःचाच फायदा करून घेतात

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