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Can surveillance prevent the next pandemic?
While the Munich Security Conference was dominated by discussions about the ongoing war in Ukraine, there were many other critical issues on the table as the world faces converging crises. One of them was health security, and how nations can apply the lessons of the COVID pandemic to future public health threats.
On the sidelines of the 2023 MSC, GZERO’s Tony Maciulis spoke to Francis deSouza, CEO of the biotech company Illumina, about how countries and regions can better communicate to stop the spread of new pathogens and the road ahead for the rapidly growing genomics industry.
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The Ugly Politics of COVID-19's Birth
The Ugly Politics of COVID-19's Birth
China’s COVID-19 coverup continues. Earlier today (July 22), Chinese officials firmly rejected a request by the World Health Organization (WHO) to grant access to laboratories in the area the novel coronavirus was first identified. China’s deputy health minister says the request shows “disrespect for common sense and arrogance toward science.” Beijing did allow WHO investigators to visit the city of Wuhan back in January, but its bureaucrats say there’s no need to investigate labs, because Chinese authorities have already ruled them out as a source of the virus.
When future historians write about COVID-19 and this global pandemic, they’ll lead with the losses—human and economic. The number of dead. The economic toll. The debts incurred. The lasting damage.
But they’ll have to start the story from the beginning. Where exactly did COVID-19 come from? Most people around the world accept that it came from China, but was it the result of an animal biting a human, an accident for whom no one in power is directly responsible? Or did the virus escape from a research lab, casting blame squarely on the Chinese government for hiding the truth?
We don’t know. We’ll probably never know, because Chinese authorities, those who might be able to answer these questions, aren’t credible and won't give outsiders full access to study the evidence.
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Even if we can’t track the origin of the virus, we can trace the coverup. On December 27, 2019, a doctor in China’s Hubei province reported to local authorities that he’d encountered a disease with dangerous respiratory symptoms. Doctors in Wuhan, Hubei’s largest city, began discussing their fears on social media. After monitoring their conversation, China’s public security service summoned Dr. Li Wenliang and accused him of “making false comments” and disturbing social order. They then arrested others for “spreading rumors.” Dr. Li later became one of COVID-19’s first casualties.
When a Chinese scientist sequenced the coronavirus’ genome on January 5, 2020, Beijing blocked him from publishing his finding. It was an Australian scientist who arranged for online publication of the genome on January 11 after receiving it secretly from a Chinese colleague. Today, experts accuse China of continuing to frustrate the ability of the WHO, and everyone else, to get at the truth.
COVID-19 and the global emergency its variants continue to create leave world leaders with a problem: How to demand accountability from the authoritarian government of one of the world’s most powerful countries (not to mention commercial partner), one which sees secrecy as essential to survival?
The Biden administration has made its choice. The new US president has called for a full investigation into the so-called "Lab Leak Theory," which posits that the negligence of Chinese scientists accidentally unleashed COVID-19 on the world. Washington’s line isn’t surprising. It comes at a time of US-China trade and technology wars. President Biden has continued the more confrontational approach toward Beijing advanced by former President Trump. Biden’s lead Asia advisor says the “era of engagement” with China is over. Competition is now the norm, and the risk of conflict, in various forms, is on the rise.
European leaders are none too happy with Beijing either. “The world has the right to know exactly what happened in order to be able to learn the lessons," said European Council head Charles Michel in early June. An EU-US summit then called for “progress on a transparent, evidence-based and expert-led WHO-convened phase 2 study on the origins of COVID-19, that is free from interference.”
Beijing’s credibility is even taking a hit in countries that are far more dependent on good economic relations with China. More than 90 countries are using vaccines created by Sinopharm and Sinovac Biotech, China’s vaccine makers. The New York Times reported in June that though Chile, Mongolia, Bahrain, and the Seychelles have inoculated higher percentages of their populations than the United States, these four countries on the list of top ten worst current COVID-19 outbreaks in the world. That’s why the dozens of countries that have depended on Chinese-made jabs are worried that COVID-19 variants may kill a lot more their people and force many more lockdowns in coming months.
There’s little the US and Europe can do to force China to become more transparent. Smaller countries, increasingly dependent on good commercial relations with China, have even less leverage. We know that China is unlikely to become less secretive whenever its leaders believe the ruling party’s image and their hold on power face a serious threat.
But we also know that COVID-19 isn’t the last novel coronavirus we’ll see. For all its ongoing damage, COVID-19 was much more infectious but less deadly than severe acute respiratory syndrome (2003), Avian Influenza strains like H7N9 (2013) and H5N1 (2014) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (2019). Combine the transmissibility of COVID-19 with the lethality of any of those other viruses, and the next pandemic would be far worse than the one we’re battling now.
The pandemic has surely taught China’s leaders a valuable lesson. Whether they’ll ever admit it publicly, they must know that, with help from the WHO, they could have done much more to contain this virus in those first few dangerous days. Their international reputation would have taken a short-term hit that would now be long forgotten by most of the world’s people. Compare that with the hit China is taking.
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How depoliticizing the US health response will save lives (COVID isn't over)
We're not done with the pandemic — yet.
Although COVID will likely become endemic sometime this year in some parts of the world, the virus will still rage on everywhere else.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer catches up on the pandemic's state of play with former CDC chief Tom Frieden, who has a message for everyone who hasn't gotten vaxxed yet: do it.
Why? New variants could emerge, making the virus more deadly.
Frieden also shares his thoughts on why China needs to transition to "almost" zero-COVID, the post-pandemic need to invest more in public health, and whether we should worry about monkeypox.
Bonus: we mark Pride month by looking at the history of the AIDS quilt.
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A demonstrator holds a banner reading "Where are Dom and Bruno" during a protest.
Hard Numbers: Amazon arrests, UK and EU tussle (again), Russian spy found at ICC, COVID vaccines … for babies
2: Two brothers have been arrested in connection with the murder of British journalist Dom Phillips and Brazilian indigenous expert Bruno Pereira in the Amazon rainforest. Authorities believe one of the suspects ambushed the victims prior to the attack. Phillips and Pereira worked to expose and prevent illegal fishing and mining in the rainforest.
24: The British government is deciding whether to ditch a European human rights pact it passed into law 24 years ago after the European Court of Human Rights forced London to freeze a controversial immigration policy mandating the transfer of asylum seekers to Rwanda. This latest row comes as the UK and EU are already at loggerheads over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
20: Dutch authorities say they caught a Russian spy trying to infiltrate the International Criminal Court at the Hague, which is investigating alleged war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine. The suspect, who was posing as a Brazilian intern, will face legal proceedings in Brazil. This breach isn’t new: the Dutch say they’ve expelled some 20 Russian spies in recent years.
20 million: The US Food and Drug Administration has authorized the use of Moderna and Pfizer/BioNtech vaccines for children as young as six months. Around 20 million American kids under the age of 5 will now be eligible for the shot.This comes to you from the Signal newsletter team of GZERO Media. Subscribe for your free daily Signal today.
Can the world learn lessons from vaccine inequity?
GZERO Media and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation convened leading experts in public health, research, development, and philanthropy on Thursday to discuss the uneven state of global recovery from health and economic perspectives. Participants included moderator Natasha Kimani of Africa No Filter; Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer; José Manuel Barroso, chair of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance; Dr. John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centers for Disease Control; Melanie Saville, director of vaccine research and development for CEPI; and Mark Suzman, CEO of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They discussed vaccine equity and how we can end the COVID pandemic in a way that better equips the world for similar challenges in the future.
On many streets in the UK and US, it’s almost possible to forget that there’s an ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. With so many westerners double vaccinated and boosted, the threat of the omicron variant has eased. In fact, the CDC just lifted mask recommendations for much of the US. But that doesn’t mean the pandemic is over. For many countries, that’s far from the case.
Moderator Natasha Kimani, the research and media programs lead at Africa No Filter, kicked off the discussion by asking where things stand today as the world marks the second anniversary of the pandemic.
“It depends on where you sit,” says Dr. John N. Nkengasong, a virologist and director of Africa’s CDC. “If you’re sitting in Africa, the glass is half empty. If you’re sitting in the global north, the glass may be half full.”
There’s a reason for optimism in parts of the world that have managed to vaccinate a majority of their populations. But in Africa, says Nkengasong, there’s deep concern because the virus, and its effects remain “very unpredictable and very unsettled.” Optimism elsewhere, he warns, should be approached with caution and humility because more surprises may await us. “There’s still a lot we need to learn about the virus,” he says.
Nkengasong is optimistic the world will overcome the pandemic but is concerned by how long it will take. “We are dealing with a very determined enemy — let there not be doubt in anyone’s mind.”
Sadly, many low-income countries are still struggling to get vaccines and distribute them properly. With only 11 percent of the African continent vaccinated, according to the UN, much more needs to be done.
So, why have some countries fared so well while others have languished?
“The world has not provided equitable distribution,” says Mark Suzman, CEO of The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which came at the cost of “lives lost that could’ve been saved.” Before a vaccine was available, countries agreed in principle to distribute a future jab to the most vulnerable. But once a vaccine was developed, Suzman explains, domestic political pressures in western countries led to a free-for-all instead.
Politics aside, the production of such a quick and effective vaccine is remarkable, and the technological innovation is worth heralding. “I think we've put 10 years of development into less than a year,” says Melanie Saville, director of vaccine research and development for CEPI.
But as for the lessons to be learned from their unequal distribution? Suzman points to two areas. First, we must finish addressing the current crisis and ensure effective delivery of vaccines to the unvaccinated. But, second, we must get ahead of future health threats by ensuring there’s enough volume of treatments available in both low- and higher-income countries. To be ready for the next pandemic, he says, we need to have all the tools and structures in place, including good surveillance, research and development, and manufacturing capabilities to respond to health threats within a couple of hundred days.
You would think that a global pandemic threatening millions of lives would pull the world together in search of a solution. Instead, we’ve witnessed political fragmentation in the US and vaccine inequity worldwide.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, meanwhile, has managed to take the pandemic off everyone’s radar. What’s a deadly virus compared to the threat of nuclear weapons? “Maybe we should give President Putin a Nobel prize of medicine because, apparently, he made COVID disappear,” quips Manuel Barroso, chair of Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance. Putin, of course, did nothing of the sort, and low oxygen supplies in Ukraine have spotlighted how COVID, as well as many other medical issues, are amplified during times of war.
But the Russian assault on Ukraine has managed to breathe new life into transatlantic cooperation. Could this newfound energy for a bolstered alliance help move the needle on other issues, such as health?
“I think the answer’s yes,” says Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer. The pandemic wasn’t enough to shake up the dysfunctions in geopolitics, he explains, pointing to the politicization of health care at home and vaccine distribution inequity worldwide.
But the idea of a western collision with a nuclear-armed Russia?
That’s enough to shake up the allies and get them moving forward together, and Bremmer expects that cooperation to be long-lasting and to extend beyond the realms of defense and security (the wildcard being China and its future relationship with Russia), which will hopefully make it easier to help end the COVID pandemic and prepare for future health crises.
Looking back at the fight against COVID, Nkengasong likens the struggle in 2020 to one of fighting “a war with bare hands.” Last year, vaccines became the main tool for fighting back. This year, he says, we need to use every tool at our disposal — including self-testing, vaccines, boosting vaccine equity worldwide, ensuring access to new drugs — to prepare for the next variant, which “might cause severe disease.”
Only then, in late 2022, does he think there’s hope for “seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.”
COVID at the Beijing Winter Olympics
China's zero-COVID strategy will be put to its biggest test to date with the Beijing Winter Olympics approach.
Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Chinese officials think they are taking the safest approach, but that may not be enough against the more transmissible omicron variant.
That's a big risk for Xi Jinping, who hasn't left the country in almost two years — but doesn't want to become isolated on the global stage.
“When other countries learn to live with the virus, and the pandemic's becoming an endemic,” Huang says. “China will find that zero-tolerance strategy unsustainable."
China, he predicts may be able to sustain zero COVID for another year, but not much longer.
Watch his interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World: Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy
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COVID immunity gap could spell disaster for China — global health expert
China’s homegrown COVID vaccines were once crucial — but they're not as effective against omicron as mRNA jabs.
What's more, with with local cases near zero for the better part of the pandemic, most Chinese have no natural immunity. That could spell disaster for Beijing as omicron surges.
Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, warns that the highly transmissible new variant will make zero COVID harder and harder to sustain.
If China’s current strategy fails, it’s likely that Xi Jinping will have to pivot to one that favors living with the virus.
Watch Huang’s interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World: Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy
Get vaxxed for cash and prizes: vaccine incentives around the world
Governments around the world are offering creative incentives for getting a jab.
If you happen to live in New York and are one of the city’s 18% of unvaccinated residents, now might be a good time to go get jabbed. But not just because of omicron.
In late December, now former NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio announced the city would start offering gift cards, free roller coaster rides on Coney Island and trips to the Statue of Liberty to those who get their shots. And it’s not just the Big Apple.
As infections jump, vaccination incentive programs have been brought back around the world. Officials in vaccine-hesitant Missouri have earmarked $11 million dollars for gift cards worth $100. Vermont is awarding schools with per-pupil bonuses if they hit rates higher than 85%.
The mayor of San Luis in the Philippines is encouraging residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19 by raffling off a cow every month until August 2022. Hong Kong has also tried to entice its residents to get vaccinated with more than $15 million in prizes that included a $1.4 million dollar apartment, gold bars, and a Tesla.
One Austrian brothel called the Fun Palace offered patrons a free 30-minute rendezvous to anyone who got vaccinated on site.
Sadly, it’s unclear how effective these programs actually are in increasing vaccination rates. One recent study from the Boston University School of Medicine found that incentive programs in several states failed to move the needle.
Some experts argue that a more effective way to increase rates is for officials to make daily life more difficult for the unvaccinated. France’s president Macron seems to agree.
Watch this episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer: Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy