It was supposed to be a day when India made a bold step forward in its fight against Covid-19, when everyone 18 and older in its vast population became eligible to be inoculated. Instead, several states reported that vaccine shortages had forced them to delay expanding access
India’s long, nightmarish day began with a hospital fire in the western state of Gujarat that killed at least 16 Covid-19 patients and two health care workers,
While it is a global power in vaccine production, India didn’t purchase enough doses to protect itself. When its cases were relatively low, it exported more than 60 million shots...
The chief executive of Serum Institute of India, the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, is in Britain, having come under increasingly intense pressure at home.
[See, that’s the problem: travel to and from Britain. Sounds like this motherfucker fled though. If that’s the case, DON’T COME BACK.]
As long as vaccines are in short supply and the virus is running rampant, experts warn that dangerous variants will evolve, spread and possibly evade vaccines.
...
“In order to stop this pandemic, we have to vaccinate the whole world,” Dr. [Michael Diamond [Washington U, St. Louis] said. “There will be new waves of infection over and over again unless we vaccinate at a global scale.”
[Wow. I never really thought of that. The whole fucking world. Chad. Congo-Brazzaville. Alabama. How the fuck are we going to vaccinate all of those backward remote, backwards?]
...
India has a homegrown variant called B.1.617, which some in the news media and medical industry have concluded is responsible for the ferocious second wave.
Researchers outside of India, however, say the limited data so far suggests that a better-known variant may be more to blame: the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant that was first found in Britain and is now the most common source of new infection in the United States. All of the major vaccines in use have been shown to be effective against B.1.1.7.
[That is what I remembered yesterday.]
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s Covid adviser and the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said in an interview with The Indian Express that to get a clearer picture, genetic materials could be sent from India to Britain and the United States to be sequenced, though U.S. efforts only recently ramped up.
Dr. Fauci also said India should consider another lockdown...
“No one likes to lock down the country,” Dr. Fauci said.
“But if you do it just for a few weeks,” he added, “you could have a significant impact on the dynamics of the outbreak.”
As long as vaccines are in short supply and the virus is running rampant, experts warn that dangerous variants will evolve, spread and possibly evade vaccines.
...
“In order to stop this pandemic, we have to vaccinate the whole world,” Dr. [Michael Diamond [Washington U, St. Louis] said. “There will be new waves of infection over and over again unless we vaccinate at a global scale.”
[Wow. I never really thought of that. The whole fucking world. Chad. Congo-Brazzaville. Alabama. How the fuck are we going to vaccinate all of those backward remote, backwards?]
...
India has a homegrown variant called B.1.617, which some in the news media and medical industry have concluded is responsible for the ferocious second wave.
Researchers outside of India, however, say the limited data so far suggests that a better-known variant may be more to blame: the highly contagious B.1.1.7 variant that was first found in Britain and is now the most common source of new infection in the United States. All of the major vaccines in use have been shown to be effective against B.1.1.7.
[That is what I remembered yesterday.]
Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s Covid adviser and the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said in an interview with The Indian Express that to get a clearer picture, genetic materials could be sent from India to Britain and the United States to be sequenced, though U.S. efforts only recently ramped up.
Dr. Fauci also said India should consider another lockdown...
“No one likes to lock down the country,” Dr. Fauci said.
“But if you do it just for a few weeks,” he added, “you could have a significant impact on the dynamics of the outbreak.”