democracynow--2020-05-06--As Trump Claims "Fantastic Job" on COVID, Reporter Laurie Garrett Warns Pandemic May Last 36+ Months

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman in New York City , the epicenter of the pandemic .
Joining me , my co-host Juan González , from his home in New Brunswick , New Jersey , the state with the second-highest number of reported infections , next to New York .
Hi , Juan .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Hi , Amy .
And welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across @ @ @ @ @ @ @ AMY GOODMAN : Well , as a new report indicates the coronavirus death toll could reach 3,000 deaths a day by June 1st — that ’ s a 9/11 every day — President Trump said Tuesday he ’ s winding down the coronavirus task force , claiming there ’ s been tremendous amount of progress in fighting the pandemic , which has already claimed more than 71,000 lives in the United States alone , with nearly 1.2 million confirmed cases .
AMY GOODMAN : President Trump made the remarks during a trip to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Aerospace plant that ’ s now producing N95 face masks .
Trump wore safety glasses but no mask during the tour , ignoring a sign in the factory ordering everyone inside to wear a facial covering .
A reporter asked him why he was winding down the task force now , despite an expected spike of deaths into the fall .
AMY GOODMAN : Vice President Mike Pence said the task force is expected to disband by the end of May .
This comes as the White House has blocked Dr. Anthony Fauci @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Allergy and Infectious Diseases , the chief coronavirus doctor at the White House , from testifying in front of a House committee .
The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimates there will be nearly 135,000 deaths in the U.S. by the beginning of August .
Well , for more , we ’ re joined by Laurie Garrett , former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations , Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer , author of several books , including Ebola : Story of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance , as well as Betrayal of Trust : The Collapse of Global Public Health .
So , Laurie , if you can go through what is happening now ?
Just as the president insists on opening the country , he is disbanding the coronavirus task force , when you would think you would need it more than ever if you wanted to see any kind of successful , cautious opening ?
LAURIE GARRETT : Well , you just summarized it , Amy .
I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what I can add to that .
We ’ re on the ascent .
At least two different models , including one a government model , predict that we ’ re almost going to double the size of our death toll between now and the end of June .
Yet the president has decided , you know , “ Let ’ s roll up the tent , bring in the circus act .
Come on , everybody.
” JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Laurie , I wanted to ask you — the death toll .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the world ’ s population , yet it has , with all the money spent on healthcare in this country , 25 % of — more than 25 % of the deaths worldwide .
And in recent days , it ’ s gone as high as one-third of all the deaths in the world are occurring right here in the U.S. from COVID-19 .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : What ’ s your sense of the reason for that ?
LAURIE GARRETT : Well , it ’ s very obvious that we have a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a unified , national response to the virus .
We don ’ t have any uniform standards , no guidances .
The CDC is virtually mum , numbed and silenced .
And we ’ re operating as if every local mayor , every local governor has equal capacity to make appropriate choices and decide how to best fight this disease .
And that ’ s , of course , ludicrous .
And so , you can drive from one county to another , from one state to another — completely different policies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all competing .
They ’ re competing to get their economies going .
They ’ re competing to get masks .
They ’ re competing to get PPEs , medicines , healthcare workers , ambulances , burial details .
It ’ s insane .
We ’ ve pitted each component of America against each other for resources , for policy , for response .
And now the president has raised the stake and said , “ And for your economy.
” AMY GOODMAN : So , Laurie , if you could start at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Taiwan , which is right next to China , which dealt with this with extremely few deaths , immediately seeing the need of the supply chain and making sure there was protective — there was personal protective equipment , there was gear , there was testing , right from the beginning .
President Trump continually repeats that he was the one , against all advice , that instituted a travel ban against China very early on .
But doesn ’ t that undercut his very case for preparedness , that if he understood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ why he didn ’ t , at the same time , or before — I mean , Dr .
Bright has been saying he was warning of this way before — why he didn ’ t immediately gear up the testing , gear up the making of the protective gear , like other countries did ?
Take us back to the beginning and talk about what has happened , from the beginning , that led to this catastrophe in this country .
LAURIE GARRETT : Well , Amy , for those of us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and I was in China during the SARS epidemic , and Hong Kong — the warning signs were obvious , and they were obvious in that window of time , roughly about three or four days before Christmas going all the way through to New Year ’ s Eve .
It was very obvious that a terrible epidemic was unfolding , that it looked like SARS or it was similar to SARS , that healthcare workers were panicking .
The social media all over Wuhan was full of fear and rumors and all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those of us that follow China have come to accept are the signals that something is out of control in that country .
And if I could see it , sitting here in my living room or my office and just monitoring what ’ s available on the internet — if I could see that this was happening , then certainly the CIA was seeing it , the Defense Intelligence Agency was seeing it , and a whole variety of other intelligence operations within the United States government were aware of it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were trying to brief the White House .
They were directly briefing the president .
But he was ignoring it , and he had other things on his mind , including the impeachment trial .
And so , that was unfolding on this side , a kind of “ let ’ s just ignore it.
” And on the Chinese side , what was unfolding was a deliberate cover-up , that extended out until January 20th .
So you had about six to eight weeks of transmission of this virus going on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was basically being lied about .
And they were reporting false figures to WHO .
They were distorting the information about it to the world and to the rest of China , until Xi Jinping really ordered transparency .
And that was on January 19th .
So you saw this huge jump in the reported number of cases between January 19th and January 20th , a tenfold increase , because all of a sudden , you know , “ OK , bring all those hidden files out of the shelves and tell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ semblance of the truth.
” And we institute our travel ban as a primary tactic to deal with this imminent plague , and it becomes the only policy , really , that Trump is willing to settle for .
And it fits nicely with an overarching policy he has vis-à-vis China in terms of tariffs , reducing their trade with the United States , holding their feet to the fire for our economic relationships .
So , saying , “ OK , no more flights from Wuhan , no more flights from China @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the president .
It fit .
As this unfolds and countries around the world are doing battle with the genuine outbreak , again , there is a sort of shrug on this side of the oceans , sort of , “ Well , you know , it ’ s not coming here .
That ’ s over there .
It ’ s not us.
” Of course , inside the government , every agency that ’ s responsible for such things has their hair on fire , saying , “ This is actually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get prepared .
We should be doing X , Y and Z , but it ’ s being ignored.
” Now , the countries you named , Amy and Juan , are countries that had been through SARS .
So , Taiwan , Hong Kong , Singapore , South Korea , Vietnam , these countries all said , “ OK , we ’ ve seen this bad guy before , and we know this is what you ’ ve got to do when a coronavirus comes in the front door.
” And they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immediately , and they activated all the networks that they had created after their SARS experience in 2003 , or the MERS experience in the case of South Korea in 2015 , and they said , “ All right , let ’ s get ready .
This is how we respond.
” And response included testing , contact tracing , placing people under quarantine , just aggressively bringing it — keeping it small .
Don ’ t let it spread outwards .
But this was not the response in the United States .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ up and is presented with two separate sets of studies that have models projecting the scale of what we ’ re up against , with the possibility of 2 million dead , we ’ ve already got — the horse is out of the barn , as they say .
We ’ ve already got cases in the United States .
And in fact , we ’ re focused on Seattle area of Washington state and a terrible outbreak in that area , but , indeed , the virus has already seeded all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a huge epidemic pouring in by then from Europe to the East Coast of the United States .
So , all the eyes are on China and blocking travel from China , but , in fact , it ’ s pouring into New York via mostly European tourists , and we ’ re being swamped .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : And , Laurie , I wanted to ask you specifically about that , about this recent report that has identified a COVID-19 case in France as early as December of last year .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the epidemics of recent years .
There was also West Nile virus .
There was H1N1 .
What about the early-warning systems of the advanced countries ?
Because , obviously , the advanced countries have now been hit the hardest .
The U.K. recently has passed France and Italy in terms of numbers of deaths from COVID-19 .
What does this say about the early-warning systems of the advanced capitalist countries ?
LAURIE GARRETT : Well , we ’ ve been accustomed , Juan , to thinking of outbreaks as over there , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sort of stereotype of an outbreak was it was occurring in a poor country , probably Africa , and that it was in some remote area , and then it got into a city in a developing country .
And this was the model .
And the role of the CDC was to fly in and provide advice and help set up testing and do all the things that supposedly we ’ re supposed to be doing here right now and aren ’ t .
And we had set up a vast apparatus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ things already set up under the Bush administration for training overseas , for building up infrastructures , for rapid disease identification and response .
And we had programs for doing that here in the United States .
I mean , I have , for example , on my shelf here — excuse me for going out of camera for a moment — this big monster , 2005 .
This was put together under the Bush administration , and it has blow-by-blow details of how each agency in the United States was supposed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ influenza in America .
So we have playbooks .
We had multiple playbooks .
Every administration was setting them up .
But the Trump administration came in with a very different attitude , and most of the playbooks were thrown out .
The agencies and the subsets of departments were dismantled .
The whole Obama Global Health Security Initiative , that had been set up to train 194 countries in the world in how to spot and respond to an emerging disease , was all but just completely dismantled .
The CDC was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can go on and on .
You ’ ve all read the articles now .
You all know the scale of this catastrophic lack of preparedness .
And then there comes to the whole point of — you know , a kind of hubris issue .
I mean , Italy has been wiped out , just devastated by COVID .
It ’ s not a coincidence it ’ s Italy , because this is a country where the anti-vaccine movement has been enormous , where members of the government have actually been opposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go mum and stop telling us what to do .
It was caught unawares , unprepared and with a kind of smug attitude that if they kept the immigrants , the riffraff , from Africa and the Middle East out , they wouldn ’ t face these problems .
And we have a similar attitude in much of the rest of Europe , and certainly here in the United States , that always associates the threat of infectious disease with immigration .
So , if you ’ re barring immigration , you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And this is ludicrous , you know ?
The disease got into the United States , it got into Europe , via completely legitimate travelers , tourism , business , a globalized business economy — all things that we promote .
AMY GOODMAN : Laurie , what about this Los Alamos National Lab study ?
It hasn ’ t been peer-reviewed , and they admitted this .
They said they wanted to get it out early .
And this goes to the issue of all those that are developing vaccines around the world @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the coronavirus is actually — what is raging through the United States is not out of China , that it is more virulent , and that it does not lead to , when you get it , having immunity , that you can get it again .
Talk about the significance of this , what you understand .
LAURIE GARRETT : Well , regardless of that particular report , we ’ ve already had plenty of clues and causes for concern about whether or not having COVID provides the individual with protective lifelong @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , certainly , if you survived measles as a child , you ’ re highly unlikely , if not nearly impossible , that you ’ re going to come down with measles as an adult .
And if you , on top of having had measles , also got vaccinated , now you ’ re really truly immune to measles .
And that ’ s why a disease that in my childhood was the number one killer of children under 12 in the world is now vanquished in most of the world , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through mass immunization .
Now , some early prognosticators in this pandemic tried to convince their governments that the way to go was to allow the virus to sweep across their nation .
Sure , some people would die , but , hey , the rest would be herd immune .
So you would create a mass population of people immune to future waves of virus coming through .
LAURIE GARRETT : Case in point , the U.K. , currently Sweden .
And it ’ s often been talked about for the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Wall Street that would prefer we took this herd immunity approach so that businesses could reopen .
And we saw the lieutenant governor of Texas say that he thought that all old people should be willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the Texas economy — that ’ s almost a quote .
And we ’ ve seen similar statements from Wilbur Ross and members of the president ’ s Economic Advisory Council .
Well , the problem is that , increasingly , we ’ re getting evidence , first of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reinfected .
Now , this has been highly controversial .
We don ’ t know .
Are they — did they ever really completely clear virus in the first place ?
In other words , is it like HIV , where the virus seems to be gone from your body , routine testing finds no virus , you feel OK , but actually it ’ s just retreated into types of cells that are not easily found in blood or saliva tests , so it ’ s been missed — or nasal tests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s reactivated ?
So it ’ s not reinfection , it ’ s reactivation of latent infection , if you will .
Or the tests themselves are lousy , and you just missed it , it was there all along .
Or , the third option is , you didn ’ t develop neutralizing antibody response .
Now , this is a phrase that gets bandied about , but a lot of people don ’ t really know what it means , including people saying it .
So , let ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system is a very complex system of defense .
It has a cellular system , where there are special cells that find enemies and eat them up , you know , and send messages out signaling to antibodies to come in , which are not cells , which are molecules .
And so there ’ s a cellular response .
There ’ s what ’ s called an innate response , which is the kind of thing you get when you have hay fever and so on .
And then there ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you get a good vaccine , what that does is activate your neutralizing antibody response and what ’ s called memory .
So , for the rest of your life , or however long it lasts , you have memory in your immune system .
And when this enemy shows up again , your antibodies , that are neutralizing — meaning they latch on and they bring in the whole army of the responding immune system , come in , attack and destroy — is activated .
Well , the problem is , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of controversy and difficulty for many different research teams all around the world in proving that there is neutralizing antibody response to this virus and that it ’ s long-standing , that it survives for weeks , months , hopefully for many years .
Now , that has implications for many things .
It has implications meaning individuals can get reinfected .
You get COVID , you think you ’ re fine , now you don ’ t take precautions — well , maybe that ’ s not a good idea .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ implications for vaccine development .
JUAN GONZÁLEZ : Well , Laurie , I wanted to ask you specifically about this whole issue of vaccine development or potential for a cure .
The EU is leading an effort to raise about $ 8 billion for development of a vaccine and treatments , but the U.S. has not offered to be involved .
Could you talk about the whole issue of this race now to get a vaccine or a cure , and the attempt to monopolize what would be an incredibly [ lucrative ] @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
LAURIE GARRETT : Yeah .
And I can ’ t think of any epidemic in my lifetime where the United States has taken the back seat and said , “ We ’ re not part of the world.
” Excuse me , dry throat .
And here we have a situation where not only is the United States saying , “ We ’ re only protecting America .
To hell with the rest of you .
We ’ re not part of the world response .
We , in fact , hate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pull our money away from the World Health Organization .
And when it comes to vaccine development , drug development , well , we ’ re all about developing for us , not for the world .
And we ’ re all about protecting the patent rights of our pharmaceutical industry and putting our companies first .
So , no , we ’ re not going to engage in any global effort.
” And we ’ re not — even more than not engaged , usually we would be in charge .
Usually @ @ @ @ @ @ @ example for the whole world .
We ’ re bringing forces together that don ’ t normally like each other , and saying , “ Look , put your animosities to the side for the sake of this crisis , ” and we ’ re doing everything we can to encourage collaboration between drug companies , collaboration between academic centers and private sector and so on .
Well , this administration is exactly the opposite .
So we ’ re saying to the whole world , “ You know , we ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We think it came out of a Chinese lab.
” And with the second most powerful country in the world , instead of collaborating to help bring the epidemic under control , we ’ re going to do this .
And similarly , China is responding back to the United States , saying , “ We think it came out of one of your labs , and you deliberately infected China .
And we ’ ve had it with you .
We ’ re going to start cutting you off.
” So @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collaboration is necessary — and let ’ s be clear , we ’ re going to have to vaccinate 7.5 billion human beings .
It ’ ll be the largest vaccination effort ever even imagined , much less executed , in the history of our species .
When that is being revved up in Europe , and there ’ s a desperate desire to see Asian countries , European countries , African countries , Latin American countries all collaborating with a common mission , the United States is saying , “ Bye , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You have people like — well , you have countries like Norway who are giving a billion dollars , and , as Juan pointed out , the United States is not giving anything to the vaccine effort .
But , Laurie , in an interview you did with The New York Times , headlined “ She Predicted the Coronavirus .
What Does She Foresee Next ?
” you said that you see that the pandemic goes on for like 36 months .
I think people are cringing all over who are hearing this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ say — lay out the scenario .
And what exactly does that mean ?
Do you stay in your home for that amount of time ?
What would be the most logical , safe reopening , if that can happen , and also dealing with this pandemic ?
Why do you say 36 months ?
LAURIE GARRETT : Well , 36 months is my best-case scenario .
Worst case is that it becomes a new permanent feature on the landscape for generations to come .
I think we have to , first of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a wave , as a uniform tsunami wave coming across — you know , boom , boom , boom , boom , everybody gets hit at once , we all are in lockdown , and then the wave is gone , and now we can come out and hit the beach .
It ’ s not like that .
If you haven ’ t been paying attention , it ’ s already not a single isolated wave .
Parts of the country are starting to get their first cases .
Other parts of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ downturn , such as here in New York , where our horrible , horrible epidemic is beginning to come down .
And this is how it ’ s going to be for months and months to come — sporadic outbreaks here , there , moving towards the Southern Hemisphere , coming back to the Northern Hemisphere , different parts of the world hit at different times .
And the movement of humanity is going to be the movement of virus .
So , as people come out of not just lockdown in their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and back on airplanes , out of sort of trying to operate business via Zoom into business via personal contact , as the supply chains try to restore full-scale operation with globalized distribution , and that means globalized human movement , then we ’ re going to once again have sporadic outbreaks .
So , it ’ s Italy today .
It ’ s Portugal tomorrow .
It ’ s Albania next week .
It ’ s Rio de Janeiro two weeks later , and so on and so forth .
And this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ very long time .
Meanwhile , let ’ s say — my 36-month scenario is if we have very good luck on a vaccine .
So , let us pretend that we actually do come up with a very effective vaccine , totally safe , and we have it , through the first stage of development and human testing , before the middle of this summer .
And it actually , miraculously , is a vaccine that , number one , can be used in a single dose , no booster required ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have to use syringes , it can be administered nasally , orally or with a patch , so we don ’ t have to worry about the supply chain on syringes and disposal , safe disposal ; number three , it doesn ’ t need to be refrigerated , so you don ’ t have to worry about how are you going to use it in countries without electricity and refrigerators ; and , number four , it can be mass-produced easily , it ’ s not terribly difficult to make , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and it ’ s possible to rev up for production of hundreds of millions of doses right away .
So , then , by the end of 2020 , we would be in large-scale clinical trials .
By early 2021 , if those all miraculously turned out to have no side effects and be just super effective — and we have to figure out how we ’ re going to determine that something is super effective ; you know , you don ’ t want to deliberately infect people with COVID , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — then , all right , now we have a vaccine .
Groovy .
Who has it ?
Who ’ s making it ?
Where are the factories ?
And who ’ s going to get it ?
Well , obviously , it ’ s going to go to the rich countries first .
And it ’ s going to the country that ’ s making it first .
So , if China beats everybody to the mark , then Chinese will get vaccinated .
That ’ s 1.4 billion people .
That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ manufacture before anybody else in the world gets vaccine .
If it ’ s here , you know , we ’ re going to make 300 million doses .
It ’ s going to be Americans first .
Then we ’ ll help our Canadian friends , you know ?
And probably bottom of our list will be Mexico .
And this sort of scenario will play out .
But , meanwhile , it ’ s going to cost money .
People are going to want to make a profit off of it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ patent disputes .
There ’ s going to be all sorts of international distribution issues that will get in the way .
And this epidemic will keep circulating and keep popping up all over the world , and we won ’ t have a campaign for actually getting 7.5 billion human beings vaccinated .
And without vaccinating 7.5 billion human beings , we will continue to have COVID in the world .
And if there ’ s any frailty in this herd immunity and in this vaccine protection that we ’ ve built @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of it coming back over and over and over again for years to come .
And I see no indication of a mass vaccination campaign coming under gear that would be the largest in the history of humanity , would dwarf what we did with smallpox .
AMY GOODMAN : Well , Laurie Garrett , we want to thank you so much for being with us .
We could go on for a long time .
And if you were sitting here in the studio , I would have given you some water @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I ’ m sorry I couldn ’ t help out .
Laurie , thanks so much for being with us , former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations , Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer , author of a number of books .
And we thank you so much for being there .
When we come back , what ’ s going on in Venezuela ?
Two Americans arrested in a coup attempt .
And was this coup attempt masterminded by a former Green Beret ?
Stay with us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Quarantunes ” by Ozomatli , performing together alone in their own homes .

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman in New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic. Joining me, my co-host Juan González, from his home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, the state with the second-highest number of reported infections, next to New York. Hi, Juan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Hi, Amy. And welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, as a new report indicates the coronavirus death toll could reach 3,000 deaths a day by June 1st — that’s a 9/11 every day — President Trump said Tuesday he’s winding down the coronavirus task force, claiming there’s been tremendous amount of progress in fighting the pandemic, which has already claimed more than 71,000 lives in the United States alone, with nearly 1.2 million confirmed cases.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Thanks to the profound commitment of our citizens, we’ve flattened the curve, and countless American lives have been saved. Our country is now in the next stage of the battle: a very safe, phased and gradual reopening. It’s a reopening of our country. Who would have ever thought we were going to be saying that? A reopening. Reopening.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump made the remarks during a trip to Arizona, where he toured a Honeywell Aerospace plant that’s now producing N95 face masks. Trump wore safety glasses but no mask during the tour, ignoring a sign in the factory ordering everyone inside to wear a facial covering. A reporter asked him why he was winding down the task force now, despite an expected spike of deaths into the fall.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, because we can’t keep our country closed for the next five years. You know, you could say there might be a recurrence, and there might be. And, you know, most doctors or some doctors say that it will happen. And it’ll be a flame, and we’re going to put the flame out. We’ve learned a lot. You know, we’ve learned a lot about the coronavirus. We’ve learned a lot about this hidden enemy. It’s a dangerous enemy. It’s a bad enemy. … And we’re saying that people that are over 60, 65, but over 60 — we’re even saying, sort of, “Stay back for a while. We recommend you staying back for a while.” At the same time, with young children and children, we’d like to see the schools open early next season and on time.
AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Mike Pence said the task force is expected to disband by the end of May. This comes as the White House has blocked Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the chief coronavirus doctor at the White House, from testifying in front of a House committee. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington estimates there will be nearly 135,000 deaths in the U.S. by the beginning of August.
Well, for more, we’re joined by Laurie Garrett, former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, author of several books, including Ebola: Story of an Outbreak and The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out of Balance, as well as Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health.
So, Laurie, if you can go through what is happening now? Just as the president insists on opening the country, he is disbanding the coronavirus task force, when you would think you would need it more than ever if you wanted to see any kind of successful, cautious opening?
LAURIE GARRETT: Well, you just summarized it, Amy. I mean, I don’t know what I can add to that. We’re on the ascent. At least two different models, including one a government model, predict that we’re almost going to double the size of our death toll between now and the end of June. Yet the president has decided, you know, “Let’s roll up the tent, bring in the circus act. Come on, everybody.”
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Laurie, I wanted to ask you — the death toll. The United States has about 4% of the world’s population, yet it has, with all the money spent on healthcare in this country, 25% of — more than 25% of the deaths worldwide. And in recent days, it’s gone as high as one-third of all the deaths in the world are occurring right here in the U.S. from COVID-19.
LAURIE GARRETT: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What’s your sense of the reason for that?
LAURIE GARRETT: Well, it’s very obvious that we have a patchwork response. We don’t have a unified, national response to the virus. We don’t have any uniform standards, no guidances. The CDC is virtually mum, numbed and silenced. And we’re operating as if every local mayor, every local governor has equal capacity to make appropriate choices and decide how to best fight this disease. And that’s, of course, ludicrous.
And so, you can drive from one county to another, from one state to another — completely different policies being executed. And they’re all competing. They’re competing to get their economies going. They’re competing to get masks. They’re competing to get PPEs, medicines, healthcare workers, ambulances, burial details. It’s insane. We’ve pitted each component of America against each other for resources, for policy, for response. And now the president has raised the stake and said, “And for your economy.”
AMY GOODMAN: So, Laurie, if you could start at the beginning? We see countries like Taiwan, which is right next to China, which dealt with this with extremely few deaths, immediately seeing the need of the supply chain and making sure there was protective — there was personal protective equipment, there was gear, there was testing, right from the beginning. President Trump continually repeats that he was the one, against all advice, that instituted a travel ban against China very early on. But doesn’t that undercut his very case for preparedness, that if he understood early on what this was about, why he didn’t, at the same time, or before — I mean, Dr. Bright has been saying he was warning of this way before — why he didn’t immediately gear up the testing, gear up the making of the protective gear, like other countries did? Take us back to the beginning and talk about what has happened, from the beginning, that led to this catastrophe in this country.
LAURIE GARRETT: Well, Amy, for those of us that went through the SARS epidemic — and I was in China during the SARS epidemic, and Hong Kong — the warning signs were obvious, and they were obvious in that window of time, roughly about three or four days before Christmas going all the way through to New Year’s Eve. It was very obvious that a terrible epidemic was unfolding, that it looked like SARS or it was similar to SARS, that healthcare workers were panicking. The social media all over Wuhan was full of fear and rumors and all the signals that, you know, those of us that follow China have come to accept are the signals that something is out of control in that country.
And if I could see it, sitting here in my living room or my office and just monitoring what’s available on the internet — if I could see that this was happening, then certainly the CIA was seeing it, the Defense Intelligence Agency was seeing it, and a whole variety of other intelligence operations within the United States government were aware of it. And we know, in fact, they were trying to brief the White House. They were directly briefing the president. But he was ignoring it, and he had other things on his mind, including the impeachment trial. And so, that was unfolding on this side, a kind of “let’s just ignore it.”
And on the Chinese side, what was unfolding was a deliberate cover-up, that extended out until January 20th. So you had about six to eight weeks of transmission of this virus going on in Hubei province and Wuhan, and it was basically being lied about. And they were reporting false figures to WHO. They were distorting the information about it to the world and to the rest of China, until Xi Jinping really ordered transparency. And that was on January 19th. So you saw this huge jump in the reported number of cases between January 19th and January 20th, a tenfold increase, because all of a sudden, you know, “OK, bring all those hidden files out of the shelves and tell the world the truth, or some semblance of the truth.”
And we institute our travel ban as a primary tactic to deal with this imminent plague, and it becomes the only policy, really, that Trump is willing to settle for. And it fits nicely with an overarching policy he has vis-à-vis China in terms of tariffs, reducing their trade with the United States, holding their feet to the fire for our economic relationships. So, saying, “OK, no more flights from Wuhan, no more flights from China,” was a comfort zone for the president. It fit.
As this unfolds and countries around the world are doing battle with the genuine outbreak, again, there is a sort of shrug on this side of the oceans, sort of, “Well, you know, it’s not coming here. That’s over there. It’s not us.” Of course, inside the government, every agency that’s responsible for such things has their hair on fire, saying, “This is actually an imminent threat. We need to get prepared. We should be doing X, Y and Z, but it’s being ignored.”
Now, the countries you named, Amy and Juan, are countries that had been through SARS. So, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Vietnam, these countries all said, “OK, we’ve seen this bad guy before, and we know this is what you’ve got to do when a coronavirus comes in the front door.” And they took very, very strong steps very immediately, and they activated all the networks that they had created after their SARS experience in 2003, or the MERS experience in the case of South Korea in 2015, and they said, “All right, let’s get ready. This is how we respond.” And response included testing, contact tracing, placing people under quarantine, just aggressively bringing it — keeping it small. Don’t let it spread outwards.
But this was not the response in the United States. And by the time the president wakes up and is presented with two separate sets of studies that have models projecting the scale of what we’re up against, with the possibility of 2 million dead, we’ve already got — the horse is out of the barn, as they say. We’ve already got cases in the United States. And in fact, we’re focused on Seattle area of Washington state and a terrible outbreak in that area, but, indeed, the virus has already seeded all over the United States, and we have a huge epidemic pouring in by then from Europe to the East Coast of the United States. So, all the eyes are on China and blocking travel from China, but, in fact, it’s pouring into New York via mostly European tourists, and we’re being swamped.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Laurie, I wanted to ask you specifically about that, about this recent report that has identified a COVID-19 case in France as early as December of last year. The issue — you mention all of the epidemics of recent years. There was also West Nile virus. There was H1N1. What about the early-warning systems of the advanced countries? Because, obviously, the advanced countries have now been hit the hardest. The U.K. recently has passed France and Italy in terms of numbers of deaths from COVID-19. What does this say about the early-warning systems of the advanced capitalist countries?
LAURIE GARRETT: Well, we’ve been accustomed, Juan, to thinking of outbreaks as over there, you know, somewhere else. The sort of stereotype of an outbreak was it was occurring in a poor country, probably Africa, and that it was in some remote area, and then it got into a city in a developing country. And this was the model. And the role of the CDC was to fly in and provide advice and help set up testing and do all the things that supposedly we’re supposed to be doing here right now and aren’t.
And we had set up a vast apparatus under the Obama administration that built on things already set up under the Bush administration for training overseas, for building up infrastructures, for rapid disease identification and response. And we had programs for doing that here in the United States. I mean, I have, for example, on my shelf here — excuse me for going out of camera for a moment — this big monster, 2005. This was put together under the Bush administration, and it has blow-by-blow details of how each agency in the United States was supposed to respond if we had a lethal pandemic influenza in America. So we have playbooks. We had multiple playbooks. Every administration was setting them up.
But the Trump administration came in with a very different attitude, and most of the playbooks were thrown out. The agencies and the subsets of departments were dismantled. The whole Obama Global Health Security Initiative, that had been set up to train 194 countries in the world in how to spot and respond to an emerging disease, was all but just completely dismantled. The CDC was cut back by 20%. We can go on and on. You’ve all read the articles now. You all know the scale of this catastrophic lack of preparedness.
And then there comes to the whole point of — you know, a kind of hubris issue. I mean, Italy has been wiped out, just devastated by COVID. It’s not a coincidence it’s Italy, because this is a country where the anti-vaccine movement has been enormous, where members of the government have actually been opposed to vaccination and have called for scientists to go mum and stop telling us what to do. It was caught unawares, unprepared and with a kind of smug attitude that if they kept the immigrants, the riffraff, from Africa and the Middle East out, they wouldn’t face these problems. And we have a similar attitude in much of the rest of Europe, and certainly here in the United States, that always associates the threat of infectious disease with immigration. So, if you’re barring immigration, you’re protecting yourself from disease. And this is ludicrous, you know? The disease got into the United States, it got into Europe, via completely legitimate travelers, tourism, business, a globalized business economy — all things that we promote.
AMY GOODMAN: Laurie, what about this Los Alamos National Lab study? It hasn’t been peer-reviewed, and they admitted this. They said they wanted to get it out early. And this goes to the issue of all those that are developing vaccines around the world. But this Los Alamos report that the coronavirus is actually — what is raging through the United States is not out of China, that it is more virulent, and that it does not lead to, when you get it, having immunity, that you can get it again. Talk about the significance of this, what you understand.
LAURIE GARRETT: Well, regardless of that particular report, we’ve already had plenty of clues and causes for concern about whether or not having COVID provides the individual with protective lifelong immunity or long-lasting immunity. You know, certainly, if you survived measles as a child, you’re highly unlikely, if not nearly impossible, that you’re going to come down with measles as an adult. And if you, on top of having had measles, also got vaccinated, now you’re really truly immune to measles. And that’s why a disease that in my childhood was the number one killer of children under 12 in the world is now vanquished in most of the world, because we’ve created herd immunity through mass immunization.
Now, some early prognosticators in this pandemic tried to convince their governments that the way to go was to allow the virus to sweep across their nation. Sure, some people would die, but, hey, the rest would be herd immune. So you would create a mass population of people immune to future waves of virus coming through.
AMY GOODMAN: Case in point, Britain?
LAURIE GARRETT: Case in point, the U.K., currently Sweden. And it’s often been talked about for the United States. There are certainly people on Wall Street that would prefer we took this herd immunity approach so that businesses could reopen. And we saw the lieutenant governor of Texas say that he thought that all old people should be willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of the Texas economy — that’s almost a quote. And we’ve seen similar statements from Wilbur Ross and members of the president’s Economic Advisory Council.
Well, the problem is that, increasingly, we’re getting evidence, first of all, of people who can get reinfected. Now, this has been highly controversial. We don’t know. Are they — did they ever really completely clear virus in the first place? In other words, is it like HIV, where the virus seems to be gone from your body, routine testing finds no virus, you feel OK, but actually it’s just retreated into types of cells that are not easily found in blood or saliva tests, so it’s been missed — or nasal tests — and so, in fact, it’s reactivated? So it’s not reinfection, it’s reactivation of latent infection, if you will. Or the tests themselves are lousy, and you just missed it, it was there all along. Or, the third option is, you didn’t develop neutralizing antibody response.
Now, this is a phrase that gets bandied about, but a lot of people don’t really know what it means, including people saying it. So, let’s be really clear. The immune system is a very complex system of defense. It has a cellular system, where there are special cells that find enemies and eat them up, you know, and send messages out signaling to antibodies to come in, which are not cells, which are molecules. And so there’s a cellular response. There’s what’s called an innate response, which is the kind of thing you get when you have hay fever and so on. And then there’s a antibody response.
Now, when you get a good vaccine, what that does is activate your neutralizing antibody response and what’s called memory. So, for the rest of your life, or however long it lasts, you have memory in your immune system. And when this enemy shows up again, your antibodies, that are neutralizing — meaning they latch on and they bring in the whole army of the responding immune system, come in, attack and destroy — is activated.
Well, the problem is, there’s really been quite a lot of controversy and difficulty for many different research teams all around the world in proving that there is neutralizing antibody response to this virus and that it’s long-standing, that it survives for weeks, months, hopefully for many years. Now, that has implications for many things. It has implications meaning individuals can get reinfected. You get COVID, you think you’re fine, now you don’t take precautions — well, maybe that’s not a good idea. And then, secondly, it has implications for vaccine development.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, Laurie, I wanted to ask you specifically about this whole issue of vaccine development or potential for a cure. The EU is leading an effort to raise about $8 billion for development of a vaccine and treatments, but the U.S. has not offered to be involved. Could you talk about the whole issue of this race now to get a vaccine or a cure, and the attempt to monopolize what would be an incredibly [lucrative], obviously, advance in medical science?
LAURIE GARRETT: Yeah. And I can’t think of any epidemic in my lifetime where the United States has taken the backseat and said, “We’re not part of the world.” Excuse me, dry throat. And here we have a situation where not only is the United States saying, “We’re only protecting America. To hell with the rest of you. We’re not part of the world response. We, in fact, hate WHO. We’re going to pull our money away from the World Health Organization. And when it comes to vaccine development, drug development, well, we’re all about developing for us, not for the world. And we’re all about protecting the patent rights of our pharmaceutical industry and putting our companies first. So, no, we’re not going to engage in any global effort.” And we’re not — even more than not engaged, usually we would be in charge. Usually, the United States is setting the example for the whole world. We’re bringing forces together that don’t normally like each other, and saying, “Look, put your animosities to the side for the sake of this crisis,” and we’re doing everything we can to encourage collaboration between drug companies, collaboration between academic centers and private sector and so on.
Well, this administration is exactly the opposite. So we’re saying to the whole world, “You know, we’re blaming China. They made all this. We think it came out of a Chinese lab.” And with the second most powerful country in the world, instead of collaborating to help bring the epidemic under control, we’re going to do this. And similarly, China is responding back to the United States, saying, “We think it came out of one of your labs, and you deliberately infected China. And we’ve had it with you. We’re going to start cutting you off.”
So, at a moment when a massive-scale collaboration is necessary — and let’s be clear, we’re going to have to vaccinate 7.5 billion human beings. It’ll be the largest vaccination effort ever even imagined, much less executed, in the history of our species. When that is being revved up in Europe, and there’s a desperate desire to see Asian countries, European countries, African countries, Latin American countries all collaborating with a common mission, the United States is saying, “Bye, guys.”
AMY GOODMAN: Astounding. You have people like — well, you have countries like Norway who are giving a billion dollars, and, as Juan pointed out, the United States is not giving anything to the vaccine effort. But, Laurie, in an interview you did with The New York Times, headlined “She Predicted the Coronavirus. What Does She Foresee Next?” you said that you see that the pandemic goes on for like 36 months. I think people are cringing all over who are hearing this right now. But if you can say — lay out the scenario. And what exactly does that mean? Do you stay in your home for that amount of time? What would be the most logical, safe reopening, if that can happen, and also dealing with this pandemic? Why do you say 36 months?
LAURIE GARRETT: Well, 36 months is my best-case scenario. Worst case is that it becomes a new permanent feature on the landscape for generations to come.
I think we have to, first of all, put aside this image of a wave, as a uniform tsunami wave coming across — you know, boom, boom, boom, boom, everybody gets hit at once, we all are in lockdown, and then the wave is gone, and now we can come out and hit the beach. It’s not like that. If you haven’t been paying attention, it’s already not a single isolated wave. Parts of the country are starting to get their first cases. Other parts of the country are starting to have a downturn, such as here in New York, where our horrible, horrible epidemic is beginning to come down.
And this is how it’s going to be for months and months to come — sporadic outbreaks here, there, moving towards the Southern Hemisphere, coming back to the Northern Hemisphere, different parts of the world hit at different times. And the movement of humanity is going to be the movement of virus. So, as people come out of not just lockdown in their homes, but out of their countries and back on airplanes, out of sort of trying to operate business via Zoom into business via personal contact, as the supply chains try to restore full-scale operation with globalized distribution, and that means globalized human movement, then we’re going to once again have sporadic outbreaks. So, it’s Italy today. It’s Portugal tomorrow. It’s Albania next week. It’s Rio de Janeiro two weeks later, and so on and so forth. And this is going to go on for a very long time.
Meanwhile, let’s say — my 36-month scenario is if we have very good luck on a vaccine. So, let us pretend that we actually do come up with a very effective vaccine, totally safe, and we have it, through the first stage of development and human testing, before the middle of this summer. And it actually, miraculously, is a vaccine that, number one, can be used in a single dose, no booster required; number two, you don’t have to use syringes, it can be administered nasally, orally or with a patch, so we don’t have to worry about the supply chain on syringes and disposal, safe disposal; number three, it doesn’t need to be refrigerated, so you don’t have to worry about how are you going to use it in countries without electricity and refrigerators; and, number four, it can be mass-produced easily, it’s not terribly difficult to make, there aren’t huge contamination problems, and it’s possible to rev up for production of hundreds of millions of doses right away.
So, then, by the end of 2020, we would be in large-scale clinical trials. By early 2021, if those all miraculously turned out to have no side effects and be just super effective — and we have to figure out how we’re going to determine that something is super effective; you know, you don’t want to deliberately infect people with COVID, so what’s the scheme there? — then, all right, now we have a vaccine. Groovy.
Who has it? Who’s making it? Where are the factories? And who’s going to get it? Well, obviously, it’s going to go to the rich countries first. And it’s going to the country that’s making it first. So, if China beats everybody to the mark, then Chinese will get vaccinated. That’s 1.4 billion people. That’s a lot of doses to manufacture before anybody else in the world gets vaccine. If it’s here, you know, we’re going to make 300 million doses. It’s going to be Americans first. Then we’ll help our Canadian friends, you know? And probably bottom of our list will be Mexico. And this sort of scenario will play out.
But, meanwhile, it’s going to cost money. People are going to want to make a profit off of it. There’s going to be patent disputes. There’s going to be all sorts of international distribution issues that will get in the way. And this epidemic will keep circulating and keep popping up all over the world, and we won’t have a campaign for actually getting 7.5 billion human beings vaccinated. And without vaccinating 7.5 billion human beings, we will continue to have COVID in the world. And if there’s any frailty in this herd immunity and in this vaccine protection that we’ve built, then we’ll have waves of it coming back over and over and over again for years to come. And I see no indication of a mass vaccination campaign coming under gear that would be the largest in the history of humanity, would dwarf what we did with smallpox.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Laurie Garrett, we want to thank you so much for being with us. We could go on for a long time. And if you were sitting here in the studio, I would have given you some water. But these are socially isolated times. I’m sorry I couldn’t help out. Laurie, thanks so much for being with us, former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, author of a number of books. And we thank you so much for being there.
When we come back, what’s going on in Venezuela? Two Americans arrested in a coup attempt. And was this coup attempt masterminded by a former Green Beret? Stay with us.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: “Two Things: Quarantunes” by Ozomatli, performing together alone in their own homes.


democracynow--2020-05-06--Headlines for May  6, 2020

Headlines for May  6, 2020

The White House said Tuesday it may wind down its coronavirus task force by the end of the month — even as a draft government report projected COVID-19 cases in the United States are expected to double by August , with more than 3,000 deaths per day .
The announcement came as the official U.S. coronavirus death toll passed 71,000 — more than a quarter of all reported deaths from the disease worldwide .
New data show that once the New York City metropolitan region is factored out , the U.S. coronavirus infection rate continues to climb .
Despite the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he ’ s ready to move the U.S. to the next phase of its recovery .
President Donald Trump : “ Thanks to the profound commitment of our citizens , we ’ ve flattened the curve , and countless American lives have been saved .
Our country is now in the next stage of the battle : a very safe , phased and gradual reopening .
It ’ s a reopening of our country .
Who would have ever thought we were going to be saying that ?
A reopening .
Reopening.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Arizona , where he toured a Honeywell aerospace plant that ’ s now producing N95 face masks .
Trump wore safety glasses but no mask during the tour , ignoring a sign in the factory ordering everyone inside to wear a facial covering .
As a Honeywell executive showed President Trump N95 masks , loudspeakers blared a cover of the song “ Live and Let Die ” by the band Guns N ’ Roses .

The White House said Tuesday it may wind down its coronavirus task force by the end of the month — even as a draft government report projected COVID-19 cases in the United States are expected to double by August, with more than 3,000 deaths per day. The announcement came as the official U.S. coronavirus death toll passed 71,000 — more than a quarter of all reported deaths from the disease worldwide. New data show that once the New York City metropolitan region is factored out, the U.S. coronavirus infection rate continues to climb. Despite the grim figures, President Trump said Tuesday he’s ready to move the U.S. to the next phase of its recovery.
President Donald Trump: “Thanks to the profound commitment of our citizens, we’ve flattened the curve, and countless American lives have been saved. Our country is now in the next stage of the battle: a very safe, phased and gradual reopening. It’s a reopening of our country. Who would have ever thought we were going to be saying that? A reopening. Reopening.”
Trump made the remarks during a trip to Arizona, where he toured a Honeywell aerospace plant that’s now producing N95 face masks. Trump wore safety glasses but no mask during the tour, ignoring a sign in the factory ordering everyone inside to wear a facial covering. As a Honeywell executive showed President Trump N95 masks, loudspeakers blared a cover of the song “Live and Let Die” by the band Guns N’ Roses.


democracynow--2020-05-07--Profiting from the Pandemic: Will Pharmaceutical Giants Use Patents to Limit Access to COVID Drugs?

This is a rush transcript .
Copy may not be in its final form .
AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now !
, democracynow.org , The Quarantine Report .
I ’ m Amy Goodman , with Nermeen Shaikh .
As the global death toll from COVID-19 tops more than 265,000 , and confirmed cases worldwide approach 4 million — though it ’ s clear they ’ re much higher — the head of the World Health Organization has urged the world to unite to defeat the disease .
AMY GOODMAN : This comes as new clinical trials by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ antiviral drug remdesivir show it reduced hospitalization stays for people infected by the coronavirus from something like 15 to 11 days , compared to a placebo treatment , but did not significantly improve survival .
Meanwhile , the Food and Drug Administration granted authorization Friday to pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences for emergency use of remdesivir to treat patients with COVID-19 , paving the way for broader use .
President Trump announced the news from the Oval Office , joined by Gilead ’ s chief executive , Daniel O ’ Day .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Gilead ’ s donation is expected to be enough to treat at least 140,000 patients , depending on the number of days they need to be treated .
A draft government report projects COVID-19 cases will surge to about 200,000 per day by June 1st .
Gilead started developing remdesivir in 2010 as a potential Ebola treatment and has patent exclusivity for the next 15 years .
Analysts say the company ’ s total revenue from the drug could top $ 11 billion if it ’ s a successful treatment for COVID-19 .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ drug designation from the FDA for remdesivir , a class given to treatments for rare diseases , but rescinded its request after public outcry .
It recently spent a company record of $ 2.45 million in the first quarter to lobby Congress and the White House .
Some members of Congress are now asking how much consumers will pay for the drug .
For more on how much drugs like remdesivir will cost and who gets access to them , we ’ re joined by Achal Prabhala , coordinator of the AccessIBSA project @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in India , Brazil and South Africa , wrote a piece with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on “ Patents vs. the Pandemic.
” And his recent piece for The Guardian is headlined “ We ’ ll find a treatment for coronavirus — but drug companies will decide who gets it.
” He ’ s joining us from Bangalore , India .
Welcome to Democracy Now !
So , if you could fully explain , using the case study of remdesivir , who profits , who gets access , and how important is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you very much , Amy .
The situation with remdesivir is very , very interesting , because it ’ s the first treatment to have been approved by the FDA for use against COVID-19 .
I think everyone agrees that it ’ s not a miracle treatment .
The medical consensus is that it ’ s a great first treatment .
It ’ s by no means the last .
And we ’ ll see more coming out as clinical trials conclude .
Remdesivir is owned by Gilead .
And I was stunned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CEO , repeat , on your show , that he will do his best to make Gilead available to everyone around the world and that he had donated a large number of treatments to the United States , because Gilead ’ s track record in delivering access to medicines , not just in the United States , but elsewhere , has been horrible .
The Trump administration is actually , coincidentally , suing Gilead for the unauthorized use of U.S. government patents from the CDC that are used in a drug that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s what many sexually active gay men can take as a preventive measure against HIV and AIDS .
The drug costs $ 25 a month to take in India .
And the price in the United States is $ 1,800 , which obviously acts as a deterrent to buying that drug , and therefore constitutes a public health hazard .
Their track record in Brazil has been equally abysmal .
They brought to market in 2013 a drug called sofosbuvir — they call it Sovaldi — which is the first-ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a debilitating and fatal disease that affects many people in middle-income countries , like Brazil and the former Soviet Union .
But six years after they introduced it , in 2019 , the cost of the drug , it was $ 84,000 a year , which meant that the Brazilian government simply couldn ’ t afford to buy enough of it .
It meant that 14 % of all Brazilians who needed that drug , in what was a well-funded public health system , could get it , while the rest and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Brazilian government battled Gilead for more access to this excellent cure for hepatitis C. So , Gilead ’ s track record is highly suspect .
And the fact is that patents and monopolies that pharmaceutical companies own have been hobbling the lives of people in developing countries and poor countries for at least three decades .
It ’ s only in the last four or five years that there ’ s been a visible impact that these pharmaceutical monopolies have had in richer countries , especially those without a universal healthcare system @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ m glad that there is more and more action on this issue now in countries where much of the lobbying and much of the marketing and much of the stock market value of these companies is based , because that indicates that perhaps there will finally be some action on reining in these pharmaceutical monopolies , both by societies as well as the states that actually allow these monopolies to exist .
NERMEEN SHAIKH : Achal , you talked about Gilead ’ s record with both hepatitis C medicine , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the — it ’ s not just Gilead , of course , that has these patents and overprices the drugs , life-saving drugs .
I mean , one of the most stunning examples is , of course , as you know , pneumonia , for which a vaccine has long existed , over which Pfizer Pharmaceuticals holds the patent , and still 100,000 children below the age of 5 die every year in India alone from pneumonia .
So could you talk about the steps that the international community , multilateral organizations like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the power of pharmaceutical companies in having these patents and setting these exorbitant drug prices , that have such lethal consequences around the world , but especially in the developing world ?
ACHAL PRABHALA : I ’ ll start with the last part of your question , which is what steps have states taken , historically , to rein in these drug prices .
The answer is , very little .
What steps have the U.N. organizations , like the WHO , taken ?
A little more .
They could do a lot @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of us hold out hope for when this pandemic will end , thinking that it ’ ll end when treatments and vaccines emerge , when a cure emerges .
But my experience and our experience in poorer parts of the world , we know bitterly that , in fact , the fight begins once a treatment or a vaccine emerges .
The distance between Washington , D.C. , and Johannesburg is about 8,000 miles .
It took eight years , between 1996 and 2004 , for AIDS drugs — AIDS drugs which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ condition — to travel that distance , which takes 16 hours by plane , while millions died simply because of monopoly prices that had to be dismantled and reined in .
The PCV vaccine that you bring up is a very , very interesting and tragic example of the ways in which vaccines fail .
It is the monopoly property of Pfizer .
The newest version of the vaccine is PCV13 .
Pfizer calls it Prevnar in the United States .
Funnily enough , it ’ s Pfizer ’ s single biggest revenue-earning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s brought in $ 5 billion in revenue every single year , which is a funny thing because Pfizer is a company that we associate with drugs like Lipitor and Viagra , but , in fact , it ’ s a vaccine , and it ’ s a vaccine against pneumonia , that is the single biggest revenue generator for this giant pharmaceutical company .
Pfizer sells the vaccine at about $ 850 a course in the United States .
They offer it through GAVI , which is the vaccines @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Indian government at $ 10 a course .
The problem is that $ 10 a course represents the highest price that the Indian government pays for any vaccine .
It ’ s 20 to 30 times more expensive than any other vaccines that they procure .
And as a result , the government can only afford to buy enough to treat a very small proportion of the children who need it .
And as a result , tragically , there are over 100,000 deaths recorded , infant deaths , from pneumonia , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It ’ s been preventable since the 1980s , but it still continues .
So , in fact , the journey from New York to Delhi , which is also 8,000 miles , which should take 16 hours , is actually infinite .
We haven ’ t even made that journey as yet .
And this is instructive for COVID-19 , because of any treatments and vaccines that come out of the billions of dollars that has been thrown at pharmaceutical companies , something like 75 % of all money that has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ EU and the U.S. , has gone to private corporations .
Not a single dollar or euro of that money comes with any stipulations for access .
So you have people like the Gilead CEO saying nice things about access and saying , “ Trust us , ” which is difficult to do , given his record and his company ’ s record , and you have leaders of the EU saying , again , somewhat meaningless platitudes around access and making sure that poor people in developing countries will be able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But we know from history that that ’ s just not true .
Unfortunately , there is a very easy way to guarantee access , which is to simply strip all monopolies of any product that is created for the detection or treatment of COVID-19 , but none of the agreements that the governments have signed with pharmaceutical companies — which , again , run into the billions of dollars — mention anything about patents or monopolies or access .
And that should be very worrying to us .
AMY GOODMAN : Achal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ precedent for this : Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine , right ?
I mean , he famously said , when asked by Edward Murrow , “ Who owns the patents ?
” he said , “ [ The people ] , I would say .
There is no patent .
Could you patent the sun ?
” And what a difference the polio vaccine meant for so many .
Could you end by talking about AccessIBSA , your group — India , Brazil , South Africa — what this means , what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do you think you can win ?
ACHAL PRABHALA : Look , I ’ m so happy you brought up Jonas Salk , because Jonas Salk is not just responsible for the creation of the polio vaccine , which of course changed the course of humanity .
He was also responsible for the first flu vaccine , which came out of similar mid-20th century efforts in the United States , which were very publicly oriented .
They were funded publicly , sometimes by actual citizens mailing in checks , and definitely by governments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the World War II and during the World Wars , were most keen on protecting their soldiers who were out on the battlefront .
The original flu vaccine , by the way , which billions of us have taken over many decades , is a publicly funded effort , which didn ’ t have any intellectual property protection , and has been run since the 1970s out of a wonderful network at the WHO in Geneva , which releases two recommendations annually that set out what strains of the flu virus should go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ effort .
A hundred and ten countries , governments collaborate .
And anyone then can manufacture the vaccine based on their formula .
The U.N. just set out , in one of its many complicatedly worded resolutions , that they intend every treatment — ACHAL PRABHALA : — and vaccine for COVID-19 to get to everyone , everywhere .
That can only happen if the vaccines and treatments can be manufactured by everyone , everywhere .
AMY GOODMAN : Achal Prabhala , we want to thank you so much for being with us @ @ @ @ @ @ @ authored a piece with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on “ Patents vs. the Pandemic , ” which we will link to , as well as your Guardian story , “ We ’ ll find a treatment for coronavirus — but drug companies will decide who gets it .
”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh. As the global death toll from COVID-19 tops more than 265,000, and confirmed cases worldwide approach 4 million — though it’s clear they’re much higher — the head of the World Health Organization has urged the world to unite to defeat the disease.
TEDROS ADHANOM GHEBREYESUS: But just as the number of new cases and deaths is declining in some countries, it’s mounting in others. … This virus will be with us for a long time, and we must come together to develop and share the tools to defeat it.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as new clinical trials by the National Institutes of Health of the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir show it reduced hospitalization stays for people infected by the coronavirus from something like 15 to 11 days, compared to a placebo treatment, but did not significantly improve survival.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration granted authorization Friday to pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences for emergency use of remdesivir to treat patients with COVID-19, paving the way for broader use. President Trump announced the news from the Oval Office, joined by Gilead’s chief executive, Daniel O’Day. This is O’Day.
DANIEL O’DAY: We want to make sure nothing gets in the way of these patients getting the medicine, so we made a decision to donate about 1.5 million vials of remdesivir.
AMY GOODMAN: Gilead’s donation is expected to be enough to treat at least 140,000 patients, depending on the number of days they need to be treated. A draft government report projects COVID-19 cases will surge to about 200,000 per day by June 1st.
Gilead started developing remdesivir in 2010 as a potential Ebola treatment and has patent exclusivity for the next 15 years. Analysts say the company’s total revenue from the drug could top $11 billion if it’s a successful treatment for COVID-19. In March, Gilead sought an orphan drug designation from the FDA for remdesivir, a class given to treatments for rare diseases, but rescinded its request after public outcry. It recently spent a company record of $2.45 million in the first quarter to lobby Congress and the White House. Some members of Congress are now asking how much consumers will pay for the drug.
For more on how much drugs like remdesivir will cost and who gets access to them, we’re joined by Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which campaigns for access to medicines in India, Brazil and South Africa, wrote a piece with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on “Patents vs. the Pandemic.” And his recent piece for The Guardian is headlined “We’ll find a treatment for coronavirus — but drug companies will decide who gets it.” He’s joining us from Bangalore, India.
Welcome to Democracy Now! So, if you could fully explain, using the case study of remdesivir, who profits, who gets access, and how important is this drug?
ACHAL PRABHALA: Thank you very much, Amy. The situation with remdesivir is very, very interesting, because it’s the first treatment to have been approved by the FDA for use against COVID-19. I think everyone agrees that it’s not a miracle treatment. The medical consensus is that it’s a great first treatment. It’s by no means the last. And we’ll see more coming out as clinical trials conclude.
Remdesivir is owned by Gilead. And I was stunned to hear Daniel O’Day, the CEO, repeat, on your show, that he will do his best to make Gilead available to everyone around the world and that he had donated a large number of treatments to the United States, because Gilead’s track record in delivering access to medicines, not just in the United States, but elsewhere, has been horrible.
The Trump administration is actually, coincidentally, suing Gilead for the unauthorized use of U.S. government patents from the CDC that are used in a drug that Gilead calls Truvada. Truvada is PrEP. It’s what many sexually active gay men can take as a preventive measure against HIV and AIDS. The drug costs $25 a month to take in India. And the price in the United States is $1,800, which obviously acts as a deterrent to buying that drug, and therefore constitutes a public health hazard.
Their track record in Brazil has been equally abysmal. They brought to market in 2013 a drug called sofosbuvir — they call it Sovaldi — which is the first-ever treatment designed against hepatitis C, which is a debilitating and fatal disease that affects many people in middle-income countries, like Brazil and the former Soviet Union. But six years after they introduced it, in 2019, the cost of the drug, it was $84,000 a year, which meant that the Brazilian government simply couldn’t afford to buy enough of it. It meant that 14% of all Brazilians who needed that drug, in what was a well-funded public health system, could get it, while the rest and many died on the way, while the Brazilian government battled Gilead for more access to this excellent cure for hepatitis C.
So, Gilead’s track record is highly suspect. And the fact is that patents and monopolies that pharmaceutical companies own have been hobbling the lives of people in developing countries and poor countries for at least three decades. It’s only in the last four or five years that there’s been a visible impact that these pharmaceutical monopolies have had in richer countries, especially those without a universal healthcare system, like the United States. And I’m glad that there is more and more action on this issue now in countries where much of the lobbying and much of the marketing and much of the stock market value of these companies is based, because that indicates that perhaps there will finally be some action on reining in these pharmaceutical monopolies, both by societies as well as the states that actually allow these monopolies to exist.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Achal, you talked about Gilead’s record with both hepatitis C medicine, as well as HIV/AIDS, but one of the — it’s not just Gilead, of course, that has these patents and overprices the drugs, life-saving drugs. I mean, one of the most stunning examples is, of course, as you know, pneumonia, for which a vaccine has long existed, over which Pfizer Pharmaceuticals holds the patent, and still 100,000 children below the age of 5 die every year in India alone from pneumonia. So could you talk about the steps that the international community, multilateral organizations like the WHO, have taken to limit the power of pharmaceutical companies in having these patents and setting these exorbitant drug prices, that have such lethal consequences around the world, but especially in the developing world?
ACHAL PRABHALA: I’ll start with the last part of your question, which is what steps have states taken, historically, to rein in these drug prices. The answer is, very little. What steps have the U.N. organizations, like the WHO, taken? A little more. They could do a lot more.
The truth is that a lot of us hold out hope for when this pandemic will end, thinking that it’ll end when treatments and vaccines emerge, when a cure emerges. But my experience and our experience in poorer parts of the world, we know bitterly that, in fact, the fight begins once a treatment or a vaccine emerges.
The distance between Washington, D.C., and Johannesburg is about 8,000 miles. It took eight years, between 1996 and 2004, for AIDS drugs — AIDS drugs which turned a death sentence into a chronic condition — to travel that distance, which takes 16 hours by plane, while millions died simply because of monopoly prices that had to be dismantled and reined in.
The PCV vaccine that you bring up is a very, very interesting and tragic example of the ways in which vaccines fail. It is the monopoly property of Pfizer. The newest version of the vaccine is PCV13. Pfizer calls it Prevnar in the United States. Funnily enough, it’s Pfizer’s single biggest revenue-earning product. Over the last five years, it’s brought in $5 billion in revenue every single year, which is a funny thing because Pfizer is a company that we associate with drugs like Lipitor and Viagra, but, in fact, it’s a vaccine, and it’s a vaccine against pneumonia, that is the single biggest revenue generator for this giant pharmaceutical company. Pfizer sells the vaccine at about $850 a course in the United States. They offer it through GAVI, which is the vaccines initiative, at a subsidized price to the Indian government at $10 a course. The problem is that $10 a course represents the highest price that the Indian government pays for any vaccine. It’s 20 to 30 times more expensive than any other vaccines that they procure. And as a result, the government can only afford to buy enough to treat a very small proportion of the children who need it. And as a result, tragically, there are over 100,000 deaths recorded, infant deaths, from pneumonia, which is a perfectly preventable condition. It’s been preventable since the 1980s, but it still continues. So, in fact, the journey from New York to Delhi, which is also 8,000 miles, which should take 16 hours, is actually infinite. We haven’t even made that journey as yet.
And this is instructive for COVID-19, because of any treatments and vaccines that come out of the billions of dollars that has been thrown at pharmaceutical companies, something like 75% of all money that has been pledged by rich country governments, the EU and the U.S., has gone to private corporations. Not a single dollar or euro of that money comes with any stipulations for access.
So you have people like the Gilead CEO saying nice things about access and saying, “Trust us,” which is difficult to do, given his record and his company’s record, and you have leaders of the EU saying, again, somewhat meaningless platitudes around access and making sure that poor people in developing countries will be able to access the drugs and the vaccines. But we know from history that that’s just not true.
Unfortunately, there is a very easy way to guarantee access, which is to simply strip all monopolies of any product that is created for the detection or treatment of COVID-19, but none of the agreements that the governments have signed with pharmaceutical companies — which, again, run into the billions of dollars — mention anything about patents or monopolies or access. And that should be very worrying to us.
AMY GOODMAN: Achal, I mean, there is a precedent for this: Jonas Salk and the polio vaccine, right? I mean, he famously said, when asked by Edward Murrow, “Who owns the patents?” he said, “[The people], I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” And what a difference the polio vaccine meant for so many. Could you end by talking about AccessIBSA, your group — India, Brazil, South Africa — what this means, what you’re fighting for? And do you think you can win?
ACHAL PRABHALA: Look, I’m so happy you brought up Jonas Salk, because Jonas Salk is not just responsible for the creation of the polio vaccine, which of course changed the course of humanity. He was also responsible for the first flu vaccine, which came out of similar mid-20th century efforts in the United States, which were very publicly oriented. They were funded publicly, sometimes by actual citizens mailing in checks, and definitely by governments, who at that time, during the World War II and during the World Wars, were most keen on protecting their soldiers who were out on the battlefront.
The original flu vaccine, by the way, which billions of us have taken over many decades, is a publicly funded effort, which didn’t have any intellectual property protection, and has been run since the 1970s out of a wonderful network at the WHO in Geneva, which releases two recommendations annually that set out what strains of the flu virus should go in. It’s a collaborative effort. A hundred and ten countries, governments collaborate. And anyone then can manufacture the vaccine based on their formula.
The U.N. just set out, in one of its many complicatedly worded resolutions, that they intend every treatment —
AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.
ACHAL PRABHALA: — and vaccine for COVID-19 to get to everyone, everywhere. That can only happen if the vaccines and treatments can be manufactured by everyone, everywhere.
AMY GOODMAN: Achal Prabhala, we want to thank you so much for being with us, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, authored a piece with Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz on “Patents vs. the Pandemic,” which we will link to, as well as your Guardian story, “We’ll find a treatment for coronavirus — but drug companies will decide who gets it.”