Hope for normality: mid-week links
More about how vaccines work, with a side dish of geopolitics.
My first link this week is something I mentioned in my article – a video from the Global Vaccine Alliance (GAVI) explaining how different types of vaccine work. It gives a good overview, but for more specific information about the three vaccines which have been approved in places like the USA and Europe, here’s a video from the BBC.
If you would rather read or look at diagrams, there’s a lot of great material in this article from the Washington Post. It answers a lot of questions, including how messenger RNA vaccines work, whether they meet safety standards and why were they developed so quickly.
The row between the manufacturer AstraZeneca and the European Union has had a lot of news time recently. It’s a rather unseemly story – wealthy countries squabbling over who gets more of the vaccine while poorer countries don’t have much chance. But there’s another story in the background, good news for health but perhaps worrying in terms of geopolitics. Both India and China are manufacturing huge amounts of vaccine and are being generous about supplying it to other nations. As an example, China has just sent half a million vaccine doses to Pakistan. The article I’ve linked here discusses the distribution of vaccines from India and China, and wonders how much their generosity is motivated by strategic interests.
Finally, here’s a great article from Substack writer Katherine Cheung, about the challenges which come after a vaccine has been developed and approved. There’s funding, distribution, the cold chain requirements - especially for the Pfizer/ BioNTech vaccine which has to be kept at around minus 70 degrees Celsius - imbalances between richer and poorer nations, and public trust. It’s clear that the battle against Covid-19 is far from over.
The Turnstone comes out twice a week - a full article on Sunday and some interesting links related to each week’s article on Wednesday. If you have any suggestions for topics or articles which I should highlight, please let me know.
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