So, the UK has no vaccine production capability. Ain’t that a shame:
In 2008, the world successfully pulled together – with Britain playing a catalytic role – when faced with the threat of financial collapse. In 2020, confronted with the threat of a global pandemic, it is every country for itself. There has been no international health summit of national leaders supported by the World Health Organization – although the World Bank has announced a $12bn package of assistance. There are frantic national efforts to create a vaccine and no effort to ensure that, when found and produced in sufficient scale, it will go to the places of need – in all our interests. Britain, with no vaccine production capacity of its own, is especially vulnerable.
Hmm, so, what would we do about that if Will Hutton were to rule us? There would be a government program to create that vaccine creation and production line.
Dramatic increase in the UK vaccine capability
Posted by:Nick Medcalf, Posted on:3 December 2018 – Categories:Funding, ISCF, Support
I’m really excited to report that the largest single project in Wave 1 of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund Medicines Manufacturing portfolio – the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC) – is now under way.My job for much of 2018, as Interim Challenge Director, has been to set up the first wave of investments. Put simply, this Centre will make better vaccines, more quickly, to help save thousands of lives across the world and protect just as many here in the UK. This £66m investment will be led by a new company: Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre UK Ltd (VMIC).
Oh. Right. We already did that. Two years ago. Under the Tories.
So, the need to get Will Hutton to rule us is?
Britain would contain, delay, research and mitigate on its own, Johnson declared – fighting Covid-19 metaphorically on the beaches. There would be no surrender. Britain alone would beat this foreign incubus.
But didn’t Hutton just tell us that it was appalling that Britain couldn’t help itself?
I’m curious – if we find a vaccine, why will it not go to the “places of need”? Will it be going to the places with no need? Not much of a market there i wouldn’t have thought?
“There has been no international health summit of national leaders”
Yes. That’s what we need. A Potemkin meeting between a former journalist and classisist, a property developer, a philosopher and lawyer. All flying miles at huge cost.
Far more useful than a load of people who are specialists in disease control at the CDC, NHS, and whoever is in the EU working together via email and skype to create solutions.
More useful still: We’ve got a company in Mass. computer-modeling a point on the surface of the virus and hoping to gum it up there. We’ve got a company with a failed Ebola vaccine that’s showing promise on Covid. The Israelis think they’ve got a cure. And hundreds of other teams I haven’t read about. We solve a problem no one has ever solved before, not by having tenured gas-bags debate whether we need a silver-bullet approach or a scatter-shot approach, but by the hope of windfall profits. In the middle of this, Bernie declares that “the cure must be… Read more »
so this Hutton whatsit has not heard of C130s, C17s and 747s ? Vaccines are not big or heavy, even in bulk.
Will Hutton “The death count can get larger as long as the rich don’t get richer”.