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National review
Biden must stop blaming Trump and act to fight pandemic
At the current rate, Biden’s new administration is on track to oversee 250,000 more coronavirus deaths and 15 million more infections in its first 100 days. Camp Biden responded to this disaster with a full-fledged press to blame it on the Trump administration. I would be the last to challenge accusations of incompetence directed at the Trump gang’s handling of the pandemic. But the responsibility now ends with Biden, and making the disaster turn like someone else’s fault just won’t be enough. Luckily for Biden, his administration can take steps that could save hundreds of thousands of American lives, if not millions around the world. Let’s start with vaccines. The FDA – after a delay that was, under the circumstances, unreasonably excessive – approved two vaccines for use in the United States. The Pfizer vaccine was developed using the company’s species. The development of the Moderna vaccine, however, was funded by the US government, which means we, the taxpayers, own the rights to it. So why are we limiting its production to Moderna? Moderna is a very innovative company, and it deserves a lot of credit for its development of a highly effective two-day COVID-19 vaccine in January 2020. But in the $ 1.3 trillion a year pharmaceutical industry, Moderna presents himself as a pygmy among the giants. In 2019, Moderna’s total revenue from drug sales was $ 187 million. In contrast, America’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies, starting with Roche with $ 48 billion in 2019 revenue and up to Biogen with $ 11.3 billion, collectively own thousands of times the production capacity. by Moderna. To take an example, Merck, which has abandoned its own vaccine development efforts, has more than 200 times Moderna’s drug production capacity on its own. Instead of waiting months or years for Little Moderna to produce its – or rather our – vaccine in sufficient quantities to cope with the emergency, the Biden administration should license it to Merck and all the other companies. skilled workers who can produce it and place big orders. There are additional vaccines that could be made available quickly: The $ 40 billion per year heavyweight Johnson & Johnson has one, as does AstraZeneca, an average weight of $ 23 billion per year. The safety tests for these two vaccines were carried out months ago. Yet the FDA is still dragging its heels to approve them for use. In the case of AstraZeneca, the FDA’s insistence on spending another three months filled with deaths on a test involving 30,000 people before giving its approval is particularly irritating, as the AstraZeneca vaccine has already been given to more than a million. of people in the UK. Beyond vaccines, there is the question of testing. Any pandemic can be stopped – even without vaccines – if the carriers can be isolated. Rapid tests are now available to identify carriers of COVID within 20 minutes. If all American workers were tested once a week, we could send all carriers home, isolating the virus while keeping businesses open. To do this, 20 million people would have to be tested per day, or 30 million per day if it were only done five days a week. Such a plan goes far beyond the capabilities of official testing sites, which are booming and average around 1 million tests per day. But employers could easily handle it, testing all of their employees every Monday morning and sending anyone who tests positive home (or an official testing site for confirmation) before 9 a.m. to stop a pandemic, all we have to do is identify enough carriers to reduce the likelihood of an average carrier infecting another person to less than 1.0. Unfortunately, the FDA has ruled out such use of rapid test equipment. Instead of banning employer-led testing, the Biden administration must lead it and strongly encourage all employers to undertake testing efforts. If necessary, the government could even subsidize them; Paying 10 million businesses of $ 10,000 each to buy testing equipment would cost just $ 100 billion, a small fraction of the $ 1.9 trillion Biden offered in his COVID relief program. But with or without a subsidy, every businessman I know would rush to implement such a program as soon as it is allowed to do so, because the cost of a workplace infection is so much higher. At a time when the virus is mutating into forms that may overtake existing vaccines, it is imperative to put in place such a second line of defense that can work regardless of how effective the vaccines are. President Biden: You have the goodwill of the public, an enthusiastic supporting press, a completely disorganized opposition, and a situation that requires real leadership. The means to end this pandemic are in your hands. You can either blame Trump for another quarter of a million deaths or prevent them. The choice is yours.
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