Thought of the Day - August 19 - Vaccine Wars

I talked a few months ago about the vaccine wars that are underway.

First there was the marketing campaigns to try to get a piece of the pie. Then there is the exaggerated trial success data (Thought of the Day - May 13 - Vaccine Trials Are Coming). This has taken a turn for the worse in recent months as both China (Ad5-nCoV) and Russian (Sputnik V) claim to have effective vaccines and so are rushing tests by using the military personnel. There is also a school of thought promoting the speed-up of coronavirus vaccine testing by deliberately infecting volunteers. And of course there is the backlash with massive anti-vaccination campaigns on social media: Thought of the Day - June 18 - Anti-Vaxxers.

Finally international politics are at play with blocks of countries accusing each other of spying. In response the WHO calls for vaccine to be shared 'for public good'.

So where does this leave Canada?

There are a number of strategies that can be adopted:

1. Allow pro-active trial testing on the Canadian public in order to have access to promising vaccines;

2. Align with a propaganda blocks in promoting some and undermining other vaccine efforts;

3. Spend even more money with foreign research and big pharma with the same goal in mind;

4. Setup manufacturing facilities - hoping that we can scale up production of promising candidates, and thus have access;

5. Develop our own vaccine;

6. Hunker down, keep the case rates low, and wait for the dust to settle.

As far as I can tell we are dabbling in all six.

Actually there is also a seventh very important strategy. Get our policy act in gear so regardless of what combination of strategies and what combination of research yield results, we are ready to move forward in a timely fashion and ensure the "Vaccines Wars" do not divide us at home.

Cheers

Cliff

P.S. There is a great resource that talking about the almost 150 vaccine candidates under development around the world, highlighting their characteristics and where Canada has a look in: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/coronavirusvaccinetracker/.