Moderna

Am I ‘fully vaccinated’? For the last few months I was sure I was — but recent events are making me doubt myself. Take Monday, when President Biden rolled up his sleeve and presented his unusually hirsute arm for his third Pfizer shot. This followed some federal health advice last week that people over 65, as well as 18-to-64-year-olds with ‘underlying health conditions’ or ‘jobs that increase their risk of developing severe COVID’, are eligible for a third dose of Pfizer. ‘The booster line is if you're fully vaccinated — the bottom line is that if you're fully vaccinated and — you're highly protected now from severe illness, even if you get COVID-19,’ explained the President with his trademark clarity.

After months of uncertainty, the Centers for Disease Control shifted its policy this week to fully recommend that pregnant and breastfeeding women get vaccinated against COVID-19. The announcement marked a significant shift for expecting mothers, many of whom have struggled to weigh the risks and benefits of taking an experimental vaccine while growing a baby inside. Yet, in announcing the new guidance, the CDC carefully called pregnant and breastfeeding women ‘people’, implying that men, too, can give birth and produce breast milk. You could dismiss this as a harmless bit of inclusion, meant not to offend the trans men (born female-bodied) who are pregnant and breastfeeding.

The Biden administration is desperate for some fresh ideas as they attempt to convince more Americans to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Between White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Rochelle Walensky, we are constantly hearing about the White House’s latest creative ways to encourage people to get vaccinated. The administration seems eager to push the notion that all of the vaccine holdouts are Trump supporters. Unfortunately for them, recent studies suggest otherwise.

Biden’s new-found support for a temporary waiver of COVID vaccine patents raises another fascinating set of questions. World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus makes the case for a waiver in terms of overwhelming priorities and the inequitable distribution of doses to date — 80 percent to the richest countries. Economic pragmatists add that the faster the whole world is vaccinated, the sooner global trade, including demand for exports from the rich West, will also recover.

We have become used to Mondays bringing good news on the vaccine front. But the publication of interim results from the Astra Zeneca/Oxford University vaccine – AZD1222 – will certainly please the UK government. Not merely because this is the home-grown option and we have already ordered 100m shots, but because, shot for shot, it is considerably cheaper to buy and administer than the other vaccine candidates. The vaccine itself is less than a fifth of the price of the Pfizer vaccine. Moreover, it does not need storing and transporting at minus 70 Celsius – it can be kept at ordinary fridge temperatures (2 to 8 Celsius), greatly facilitating any roll-out.

A couple of shots to the arm and this will all be over. With today’s news from Moderna, last week’s from Pfizer, and with a potential update from AstraZeneca in the next few days, we may soon have three vaccines against Covid-19 (and if you add in candidates from Russia and China perhaps more). And yet, it turns out, that some people are already fretting about potential side effects from that. And they don’t just mean a mild fever or muscle ache. They mean something far, far nastier. Profits. While most of us have been feeling a lot better about the epidemic over the last week, Jeremy Corbyn seems most worried that — once a vaccine has been approved and the virus eliminated — a big company might make some money from it.