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Car drivers queue to fill their fuel tank at a TotalEnergies gas station in Nice as petrol supplies are disrupted by a strike of French refineries and depots, France, March 20, 2023.
Hard Numbers: French oil refinery blockades, China’s mRNA milestone, Moscow comes to Bali, IMF tweaks rules for Ukraine, TikTok hearing
13: As French protesters continue to strike and block oil refineries in response to the government’s recently passed pension reform, 13% of petrol stations around the country are running short on gas. What’s more, a lack of shipments from LNG terminals is raising fears of shortages – and elevated prices – across Europe.
1: China has finally approved its first mRNA COVID vaccine for emergency use. Beijing says that the drug shows high rates of protection when administered as a booster, though it provided few other details.
22,000: Most Russians fleeing conscription and oppression have gone to Georgia, Armenia, and even Turkey. But many have also fled to faraway … Bali. Now, Bali’s governor has asked Indonesia’s central government to rescind a rule allowing Russians and Ukrainians to apply for visas upon arrival, pointing to the fact that 22,000 Russians arrived on the island in January alone. Jakarta introduced the measure to get a post-COVID tourism bump, but some say the newcomers are ruining the island’s zen.
15.6 billion: The IMF has agreed to a preliminary loan for Ukraine worth a whopping $15.6 billion, the biggest package for Kyiv since Russia’s invasion began in Feb. 2022 – though it still needs to be approved by the board. In order to get this deal across the line, the IMF, whose main shareholder is the US, recently changed a rule to allow loans to go to countries facing “exceptionally high uncertainty.”
5: The Federal Reserve hiked interest rates by a quarter point, bringing its key short-term interest rate up to 5%. The decision signals that the Fed is continuing its campaign to temper inflation and consumer price increases, even after the recent banking turmoil.
150 million: That’s how many of its users TikTok claims are US-based, according to its CEO, Shou Zi Chew. On Thursday, Sou will testify before a US House committee hearing to answer questions about the suspected ties of ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to China’s ruling Communist Party amid growing calls for a US ban.
After COVID vaccines, time to use mRNA tech against other infectious diseases
Using mRNA technology to develop effective COVID vaccines has been a scientific breakthrough.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg, Melanie Saville, head of vaccine development at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, said during a livestream discussion on equitable vaccine distribution hosted by GZERO Media in partnership with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. "
There's still a lot that should be done with the technology moving forward" on other infectious diseases like HIV, malaria, or TB. Still, she said that vaccines are only the beginning.
Local manufacturing and distribution is as important — as is future equitable access to the mRNA tech itself.
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.”
Omicron & the undoing of China's COVID strategy
Omicron is here. The bad news is that it's more contagious. The good news is that mRNA vaccines work against death and hospitalization. COVID may soon become endemic in some parts of the world.
Not in China, where Xi Jinping's zero-COVID approach faces its toughest test to date with omicron. Why? Because China lacks mRNA jabs, and so few Chinese people have gotten COVID that overall protection is very low.
Get ready for a wave of lockdowns that'll severely disrupt the world's second-largest economy — just a month out from the Beijing Winter Olympics.
That could spell disaster for Beijing, Yanzhong Huang, senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, tells Ian Bremmer on this week's episode of GZERO World.
Still, he says zero COVID remains popular with most Chinese people.
If things get really bad, though, Huang believes China will pivot to living with the virus, especially as the cost of keeping zero COVID in the age of omicron becomes too high. He thinks that's the right move for Xi.
Indeed, Huang expects China to start reversing course soon after the Games, and when the pandemic becomes endemic in other parts of the world. Beijing will throw in the towel on zero tolerance in 1-2 years, max.
Also, a look at vaccine incentives around the world. Do prizes like cows and brothel visits actually convince holdouts to get the jab?
Subscribe to GZERO Media's YouTube channel to get notifications when new episodes are published.
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China’s pandemic playbook will fail with Omicron — Laura Yasaitis
China's zero-COVID strategy was a major success story in 2020-21. But it won't work with the new omicron variant, according to Eurasia Group healthcare consultant Laura Yasaitis.
Over 83 percent of the Chinese population is fully vaccinated with domestic vaccines. However, it turns out these jabs are much less effective at stopping omicron transmission compared to mRNA vaccines like Pfizer's and Moderna's.
The situation in China won’t be a health catastrophe, Yasaitis predicts, but the Chinese government will impose severe restrictions, including lockdowns such as the one in Xian.
“It's going to be like this game of whack-a-mole, trying to stop each small outbreak as it happens.”
What's more, she anticipates that Xi Jinping’s commitment to the zero-Covid approach will cause economic disruption not only in China, but all over the world.
Watch the full discussion here: https://www.gzeromedia.com/events/top-risks-2022-w...
L-R: Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin with their advisers at Yalta, in the Crimea, where the Allies decided the future of post-Second World War Europe.
What We’re Watching: No Yalta in 2022, Kazakh turmoil worsens, China needs mRNA jabs
EU warns the US and Russia. EU officials look to be getting nervous about meetings next week between Russia, the US, and NATO. Though NATO representatives from EU member states will be part of the talks, the EU itself was not invited to join. During a visit to Ukraine this week, the EU’s top diplomat warned that “We are no longer in Yalta times,” a reference to the 1945 Yalta agreement among the US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union that helped to divide post-war Europe into eastern and western blocs. “In this dialogue, there are not two actors alone, not just the US and Russia,” Josep Borrell added. Russia has massed 100,000 troops along its border with Ukraine, and Vladimir Putin has demanded guarantees that NATO not expand to include Ukraine or other former Soviet states. The EU’s comments are intended, in part, to reassure Ukraine that it will not be abandoned to Russian domination. But it’s also a sign that officials in Brussels don’t fully trust US President Joe Biden to protect European rights and interests in bargaining with Putin.
More Kazakh turmoil.Violence continues to escalate in Kazakhstan, where security forces have been told to shoot protesters without warning, and troops from a Russian-led military alliance have arrived on the scene at the invitation of the frightened Kazakh leaders. The unrest began in the town of Zhanaozen in response to a planned price hike that immediately doubled the cost of fuel. The trouble then spread to Almaty, the country’s most populous city, and to Nur-Sultan, the capital. As we wrote yesterday, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has declared a state of emergency after anti-government demonstrators were killed by police during intense protests and state buildings were set aflame. Tokayev’s decisions to sack the government and call off the fuel price hike have not appeased protesters, who remain angry not just about inflation, but also about wealth inequality in a resource-rich country and the perceived cronyism and ineptitude of a regime that has dominated Kazakh politics since the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia is now directly involved in restoring order. China — which imports a lot of Kazakh oil, gas, and minerals — is watching closely.
China's mRNA vaccine race. China is rushing to develop homegrown mRNA vaccines, as the world's most populous and second-largest economy scrambles to contain local COVID outbreaks with the more transmissible omicron variant. Throughout the pandemic, Beijing has focused on mass-producing traditional vaccines to inoculate its population — and export them overseas — but those jabs offer much less protection against omicron. China has refused to license the mRNA vaccines by Pfizer and Moderna. This strategy, along with Xi Jinping's zero-COVID approach to completely isolate the population from the virus, has come at a heavy cost: our parent company Eurasia Group's #1 top geopolitical risk for 2022 is that a zero-COVID policy will cause many problems for China. Right now, only one local mRNA vaccine candidate has been approved to conduct a booster trial, so it's unlikely the country will have several effective jabs ready to go until at least a year from now. Will the urgency of omicron force Xi to risk losing face by ditching zero COVID and approving foreign-made mRNA vaccines? Don't hold your breath, nor underestimate China's capacity to get big things done at surprising speed.
Ian Bremmer: Zero COVID no longer works, and China will pay a price
For Ian Bremmer, China has the strongest political governance of any major economy today. Sometime that's good, and has allowed China to become the world's second largest economy.
But there's also a downside we're going to see this year, Bremmer said during a livestream conversation to launch Eurasia Group's annual Top Risks report. China's zero-COVID policy, which worked incredibly well in 2020 to respond to the pandemic, no longer works because the virus has changed.
However, Xi Jinping is so invested in his strategy that he'll likely double down on it in 2022 — at the expense of more shutdowns and closures in global supply chains. Xi himself has not left the country since January 2020 — hampering China's own diplomatic ability.
"China cannot move towards living with the virus" until it has its own mRNA vaccines — and that means it'll be a very tough year for the country, and its leader.
Watch the full discussion on Top Risks 2022.
- China’s pandemic playbook will fail with Omicron: Laura Yasaitis - GZERO Media ›
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