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Vaccinating billions means finding ways around a patent impasse (nationthailand.com)

Vaccinating billions means finding ways around a patent impasse

InternationalDec 17. 2020Customers wearing protective masks shop during the festival of Dhanteras at the Lajpat Nagar market in New Delhi on Nov.13, 2020. According to Oxfam, nine out of 10 people in underdeveloped countries will miss out on a vaccine in 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Prashanth Vishwanthan. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Hugo Miller, Susan Decker

Covid-19 vaccines look set to protect millions of citizens of the world’s richest countries in the coming months. But inoculating the rest of the planet’s population may mean finding a way around an impasse over intellectual property.

Representatives from all 164 member states of the World Trade Organization met last week in Geneva to discuss a proposal from India and South Africa to waive broad sections of the WTO’s intellectual property rules and to try to forge an agreement on how patents developed in the race against covid-19 should be recognized.

The meeting ended without consensus, leaving poorer countries who sponsored the proposal frustrated and legal protections for vaccines intact. That may be a victory for patent protection advocates, but pressure for change will only grow if billions of people in poorer countries go unvaccinated while the rich world starts getting a steady flow of doses from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

“With the biggest health crisis we’ve experienced, we’re still not able to find alternative ways of dealing with the IP issues when everyone’s lives are at stake,” said Tahir Amin, executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge, an organization promoting better access to drugs. “You’ve got the advocates saying ‘Let’s knock the wall down,’ and then you’ve got the investors who say ‘If we open the door it’s like the floodgates.’ We have to be smarter than that.”

A patent gives a drugmaker exclusive rights to manufacture a vaccine it developed, also providing it the power to charge a price that covers the costs of research and development. Their profit margin per dose, however, depends on the urgency of the situation, and amid a pandemic, charging anything more than development costs is bound to be controversial. India’s proposal would require that the waiver remain in place until there’s been widespread vaccination and the majority of the world’s population has developed immunity.

Whether it’s possible to reconcile will only be clear as the pandemic plays out. The European Union and U.S., home to leading drugmakers, are vehemently opposed to the proposition, though pricing may offer some room for negotiation.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech have said their vaccine will cost $19.50 a dose in the U.S. That’s likely to be too much for many poorer countries, even if discounted, especially given the cost of the vaccine’s deep-freeze storage requirements. But AstraZeneca’s vaccine costs $4 to $5 a dose and is the big hope for the developing world right now.

The Covax alliance, an effort backed by more than 90 rich countries that seeks to boost access to vaccines in about 90 poor ones, has struck a deal with AstraZeneca to buy and distribute vaccines.Last month, Covax said it had raised $2 billion but that may not be enough as it needs another $5 billion next year to procure 2 billion doses. On Tuesday, the EU and European Investment Bank announced 500 million euros ($608 million) in financing to help vaccinate 1 billion people as part of that effort.

“We’re an integrated world,” said Fred Abbott, a professor at Florida State University College of Law. “Everyone understands you can vaccinate everyone in the United States, but if you don’t vaccinate everyone around the world you’re still going to have a problem.”

Pressure from developing countries however is only going to increase next year if they are left in the lurch. UNAIDS, the U.N. agency combating the immunodeficiency virus, calls it a choice between “a peoples’ vaccine or a profit vaccine.”

While the first vaccines have been distributed in recent days in the U.K., nine out of 10 people in poor countries will miss out on a vaccine in 2021, according to Oxfam. That echoes the early days of the AIDS response, said UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, when “treatment was only available to the rich while poorer countries had to wait years.”

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations argues that suspending patents is fraught with danger. If you waive patents this time round, you risk harming the whole medical infrastructure that allowed Covid vaccines to be developed in record time, said Director General Thomas Cueni.

“Eroding patent protections has far-reaching consequences,” he wrote in a recent New York Times opinion piece, citing the development of messenger RNA, the underlying innovation common to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. “Scientists eager to explore future uses of mRNA will struggle to find investment if intellectual property protections are snatched away when others deem it necessary.”Drugmakers like AstraZeneca have pledged not to profit from their vaccine for the length of the pandemic, while Moderna has said it won’t enforce its patents during the pandemic. Even frequent critics of the drugmakers have praised some of these efforts.

There are precedents for countries unilaterally suspending patents but they have been used rarely since 1945. Enforcement would be tough-most patent applications haven’t even been issued yet, and it’s hard to force companies to reveal trade secrets such as manufacturing processes that can have broad uses beyond vaccines.

Back at the WTO, delegates have agreed to keep discussions open and will submit a report to the WTO’s General Council meeting on Dec. 16, highlighting the “current lack of consensus” on the issue, according to a statement from the organization.

James Pooley, former deputy director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, reckons that even though the proposal is “unlikely to go anywhere,” it may have an impact down the line.

“It’s the battering ram at the door,” he said. “If they keep bashing at it, a hinge may break.”

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Some GOP-led states defy trump to Push for expanded voter access (nationthailand.com)

Some GOP-led states defy trump to Push for expanded voter access

InternationalDec 17. 2020

By Bloomberg
Ryan Teague Beckwit

Some Republican state officials are newly open to expanded voting options after such moves proved popular and the party’s down-ballot candidates won in a high-turnout election, despite President Donald Trump railing against the changes.

Republican elections officials and state lawmakers in Kentucky, Missouri and Texas are considering changes that would either make vote-by-mail more accessible or increase early in-person voting.

Any such moves would be going against the current in the Republican Party, where Trump’s baseless claims of fraud have spurred GOP state lawmakers in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania to consider tightening requirements on mail-in ballots.

Officials in Georgia have even filed suit to curtail the use of drop boxes for absentee ballots and add new layers of scrutiny to the signature-matching process before the Jan. 5 Senate run-off votes.

But in some Republican-led states, especially where the vote was less contentious, officials are looking to emulate a slew of Democratic-led ones and open up voting options in light of the success of the November election, which set records for turnout.

“The right to vote absentee — people didn’t exercise it before, didn’t know how it worked or didn’t trust it,” Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a Republican, said. “That’s changed.”

And while Trump argued that vote-by-mail and other loosened restrictions would mean “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,” Republicans gained seats in the U.S. House, did well in many state elections and may hold on to control of the U.S. Senate.

In Kentucky, Republicans are considering keeping in place early in-person voting set up because of the pandemic after it was well received by both voters and elections clerks.

“We’ve always been leery of early voting in Kentucky, but I think this election made a believer out of a lot of people,” said Republican state Senator Jimmy Higdon.

The state isn’t likely to change the law requiring an excuse to vote by mail — which was temporarily changed to no-excuse vote-by-mail this year — but Adams said its use may grow anyway.

Adams said many Kentuckians who first tried vote-by-mail this year may end up using excuses already allowed under state law — including being elderly, disabled or a college student away from home — a dramatic shift in a state where only 2% of voters cast mail-in ballots in the past.

Elections officials in other states expect similar shifts. In Nebraska, Assistant Secretary of State Cindi Allen said she expects a lot of people to continue voting early and by mail after they first tried it in November.

“Once they understand the process and have used it, they tend to follow the same pattern,” she said. “We all walk on our cowpaths.”

In Texas, state lawmakers have already prepped dozens of bills on elections, with Republican bills largely seeking to restrict options and Democratic measures looking to expand them.

But Republican consultant Derek Ryan said he sees some room for agreement on expanding in-person early voting, which had been expanded by an order from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, after a high-turnout election in which the GOP did well.

“Republicans are finally seeing that, hey, maybe more voters doesn’t mean bad news for us,” he said.

Although vote-by-mail and early in-person voting have grown across the country in recent years, the November election was the most dramatic shift in how the nation votes in modern history.

In 2016, 24% of ballots were cast by mail, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. But preliminary figures from the U.S. Elections Project show that as much as half of all ballots were cast by mail in November. In-person early voting, meantime, went from 17% to roughly 25% of all votes, according to those same sources.

Elections officials say that voter enthusiasm should provide a big boost in states that had not expanded options in the past.

“In the end, incumbents don’t like to upset their voters, and there will be some upset voters if they can’t vote as conveniently as they have this year,” said Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, a Democrat who is pushing changes to elections law in her state.

In addition, a number of states are expected to update some of the more technical aspects of voting due to problems that the pandemic revealed.

Among the changes being considered: Allowing voters to register, request mail-in ballots and track their ballots online; buying more secure drop boxes for returning ballots; helping voters fix mail-in ballots that were rejected; and adding cameras to live-stream ballot counting.

Some states have already made administrative changes in response to the 325 lawsuits that have been filed over voting this year and the court challenges may bring more.

Another likely proposal will be to allow elections clerks to count mail-in ballots earlier. Restrictions on processing those ballots in the battleground states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin skewed early results, delayed reporting and fueled conspiracy theories touted by Trump and his allies.

Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University who tracked the lawsuits, said that local and state elections officials will press lawmakers hard to lift those restrictions.

“The people they’re going to hear from the most are the county and town officials who had to wade into this and are now enduring death threats,” Levitt said.

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Fed mulls shift in bond buying program: FOMC decision-day guide (nationthailand.com)

Fed mulls shift in bond buying program: FOMC decision-day guide

InternationalDec 17. 2020The Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 18, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Erin Scott. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Steve Matthews

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues, facing an economy slowing as the covid-19 outbreak worsens, are considering whether to alter their asset purchase program to provide more support for growth.

The Federal Open Market Committee is all but certain to keep its benchmark overnight interest rate in a target range of 0% to 0.25%, where it’s been since March 15 to help soften the pandemic’s blow. The panel will release a statement and economic forecasts at 2 p.m. Wednesday. Powell will hold a press briefing 30 minutes later.

Economists say the Fed may deliver fresh guidance on its asset purchases, now $120 billion a month, tying how long the buying will continue to substantial progress in meeting its goals of full employment and 2% inflation. That would be a stronger commitment than the existing pledge to maintain purchases “over coming months.”

The market has been primed for a change since the minutes of the November FOMC meeting showed officials discussed enhancing their description of the bond-buying program ”fairly soon.”

“The biggest disappointment would be a failure to deliver on some kind of guidance on asset purchases,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Grant Thornton in Chicago. “The Fed’s most powerful tool is the perception that they are there.”

– Asset Purchases. A slight majority of economists surveyed by Bloomberg expect new guidance on purchases this meeting, though other changes including increasing the scale of the buying are less likely. While nearly two-thirds of economists say the FOMC will extend the average maturity of bond purchases before the end of 2021, just 23% of those forecasting such a step saw it coming this week.

“If more stimulus is needed, they will have a better view in January or February,” said Bob Eisenbeis, vice chairman of Cumberland Advisors and a former Atlanta Fed official. With rates so low, “I am doubtful they can successfully communicate why tweaking the maturities will accomplish some employment or inflation objective.”

There may be dissenting votes over the issue of asset purchases, Deutsche Bank economists led by Matthew Luzzetti wrote in a note to clients. Dallas Fed’s Robert Kaplan and Minneapolis’s Neel Kashkari dissented in September over updated rate guidance, with Kaplan wanting more flexibility and Kashkari arguing it didn’t go far enough.

– Market reaction. The decision on asset purchases is likely to affect trading in Treasury securities. A failure to extend the maturity of Treasury buying or increase purchases could help to lift the 10-year Treasury yield to 1% or higher.

Since late March the 10-year yield has moved between 0.5% — a trough reached in August — and just under 1%. It nearly broke this upper barrier in the first few days of December, after a tepid employment report lifted hopes for more government spending as virus cases mounted.

Officials are expected to project rates staying near zero though 2023, reinforcing the message delivered by Powell that they will delay tightening policy to achieve inflation that averages 2% over time. In September, four of 17 FOMC participants saw a hike by 2023. Any increase would suggest a growing internal debate about an earlier rate liftoff.

The central bank may upgrade its 2020 unemployment and growth forecasts, reflecting a faster-than-expected recovery from the pandemic. With the first vaccines being distributed in the U.S. this week, the committee could tweak its 2021 or 2022 forecasts, though most economists say the committee will look for a slow return to normal, so expectations could be muted.

“Growth forecasts for 2021 and 2022 may be revised slightly higher fueled by optimism for a near-term vaccine,” said Lindsey Piegza, chief economist with Stifel Nicolaus in Chicago. “Given the extended timeline for a full recovery back to pre-pandemic levels both at home and globally, the committee’s inflation forecast is likely to remain subdued for some time.”

While St. Louis Fed director of research Christopher Waller was confirmed Dec. 3 by the U.S. Senate to take one of the two vacant governor seats on the Fed Board, he had not been sworn into office by the time the meeting began Tuesday. As a result, the number of forecasts submitted by Fed officials this month will remain at 17.

– FOMC statement. Recent economic data have shown slowing progress in the labor market and a surge in virus cases, hospitalizations and deaths, prompting some cities and states to increase curbs on economic activity. That will probably be reflected in the tone of the statement, even as the medium-term outlook has improved because of the rollout of vaccines.

“I would expect that the statement will acknowledge the worsening pandemic and slower progress in the labor market,” said Jonathan Wright, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University. “There is a danger that progress in the labor market could stall completely. That is not yet there in the data, but slow progress is.”

– Press conference. Powell’s press conference will hash over the decision on asset purchases, as well as what would prompt future changes in bond buying. The chair is also likely to repeat his call for additional fiscal support, with Congress continuing to discuss aid before leaving for its Christmas break.

The Fed’s view on the need to re-install some of its emergency lending programs is another likely topic. Several, including its Main Street facility aimed at small and medium-sized borrowers, will wind down Dec. 31 following a decision by outgoing Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin that they should not be extended.

Seeking their resuscitation could be an early decision for Janet Yellen, Powell’s predecessor as Fed chair whom President-elect Joe Biden has tapped as Treasury secretary.

– IOER. Downward pressure on short-term rates due to supply-demand imbalances could encourage officials to make another technical adjustment in the interest rate the Fed pays on excess reserves, which is currently 0.10%. The rate could be increased to keep money-market rates further away from zero, Bank of America Corp. strategists said.

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Year of pain sets stage for 2021’s top 10 emerging-market themes (nationthailand.com)

Year of pain sets stage for 2021’s top 10 emerging-market themes

InternationalDec 17. 2020Recep Tayyip Erdogan, president of Turkey, in Brussels on March 9, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Geert Vanden Wijngaert (Bloomberg). 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Livia Yap, Aline Oyamada, Sydney Maki

Some risks aren’t going away any time soon for emerging markets, irrespective of the overwhelming view among investors and strategists that 2021 will be a year of continued recovery.

Though the turbulence triggered by the coronavirus outbreak has given way to optimism that vaccines and central bank largess will keep the revival on track, a few themes are likely to keep dominating developing economies that collectively account for $30 trillion, or about 34%, of global gross domestic product.

1. Vaccine headway. After bringing much of the global economy to a halt in 2020, there’s growing optimism that multiple vaccines will help control the pandemic. Yet banks such as HSBC Holdings caution against too much enthusiasm as availability and distribution in emerging markets may lag behind their developed peers.

Wealthier countries have secured extensive supply deals to hedge their bets, while many developing ones may have to rely on international groups that have promised to make vaccines affordable. The logistics of transporting, distributing and administering them require advanced infrastructure and medical expertise that might not be available in every country.

2. Gauging policy turns. Central banks in emerging markets followed their developed peers in cutting interest rates to record lows this year, together easing more than during the 2008 financial crisis. A number of them even took a page from the developed-market playbook by buying bonds. Now, as vaccines are rolled out and the risk of inflation rises, some policymakers will come under pressure to reverse course, a theme that will come increasingly to the fore in 2021, according to Jean-Charles Sambor, head of emerging-markets fixed income at BNP Paribas Asset Management in London.

3. Debt mountain. Unprecedented stimulus in emerging markets drove debt levels to all-time highs. Brazil, for example, is spending the equivalent of 8% of its gross domestic product to counter the impact of the coronavirus. In 2021, the focus will likely turn to how such nations will pay for it all.

There are already worrying signs. Moody’s Investors Service predicts Turkey’s debt burden will jump above 40% of GDP in 2020 from 32.5% last year. South Africa just had its credit ratings cut due to a worsening debt trajectory, while Colombia’s widening deficit is putting its investment-grade rating at risk. Fitch Ratings has the highest balance of net negative outlooks for European emerging markets in more than a decade, while Oxford Economics says rising government debt will slow Latin America’s recovery.

4. Biden’s pivot. Emerging-market assets have been bolstered by Joe Biden’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, but concerns are growing that his administration may be less than positive for many developing nations in the longer run. Russia’s ruble slumped in the run-up to the U.S. polls as investors feared a harder crackdown under a Biden administration. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who Biden has reportedly called an “autocrat,” and Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz are also preparing for a tougher time. The new president would probably pursue sanctions relief for Iran in the first half of 2021 in exchange for a freeze on nuclear activity, while ratcheting up the rhetoric against countries including Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt, according to Eurasia Group.

5. Rise of China. China has led the global recovery from the coronavirus, becoming the only major nation to see growth this year, and is widely forecast to continue driving the rebound in 2021. State Street Global Markets and JPMorgan Asset Management are among those predicting a Biden administration will take a softer stance on trade with China, burnishing the investor appeal of the Asian export powerhouse. At the same time, China’s gathering economic strength may embolden it further on the global stage, exacerbating geopolitical tensions.

6. Political risks. The year 2020 saw an upsurge in domestic political turmoil among developing nations, a trend that remains a key risk next year. Pro-democracy demonstrations in Thailand threaten to snuff out the prospect of a consumption-led recovery, according to Maybank Kim Eng Research. In neighboring Malaysia, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, having narrowly survived a leadership test, is under growing pressure to call an election. In Europe, Poland has been racked by protests over abortion rules. And in Latin America, Chile will embark on the process to rewrite its constitution as Peru’s government works toward stability after the unexpected ousting of Martin Vizcarra triggered a wave of street protests.

7. Latin America restructuring. Latin American debt woes ratcheted up several notches in 2020. Argentina and Ecuador reached accords with bondholders, but the euphoria didn’t last long. Argentine bonds have tumbled on concern over the government’s ability to reignite economic growth, and the country’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund will continue to be a focus next year. Ecuador’s debt has also swooned on speculation leftist candidate Andres Arauz may win next year’s presidential vote, a prospect Amherst Pierpont Securities says will fuel price volatility in early 2021.

8. Spotlight on Turkey. Turkey had its fair share of headlines in 2020 as the lira depreciated more than any peer except the Argentine peso. Authorities resisted rate increases until November, when President Erdogan, after firing the central bank governor, allowed his replacement to raise the benchmark interest rate by the most in two years. While Erdogan has pledged to pursue more market-friendly policies, investors will be waiting for further proof that the change of stance is real. Governor Naci Agbal said Wednesday the country will tighten monetary policy further to curb inflation, with price stability a key prerequisite for sustainable economic growth. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. says more policy tightening is necessary to restore confidence. Recent U.S. sanctions are hardly helping sentiment.

9. African distress. A backwater of the emerging-market landscape took on fresh significance in 2020 as a debt crisis erupted in Zambia, a reminder to investors of the financial strains in the world’s poorest continent. After borrowing heavily since 2012, Zambia became the first in Africa to default during the pandemic after bondholders refused to grant it an interest-payment freeze. The government is in talks with the IMF and has pledged to restore budget credibility. Carmen Reinhart, the World Bank’s chief economist, sees many low-income economies and several emerging markets at risk.

10. Ethical investing. Investments linked to environmental, social and governance criteria took a step toward the mainstream this year and are set to gather pace in 2021. ESG-focused stocks and bonds fared much better then traditional peers amid the coronavirus sell-off. Governments and companies across the developing world have this year sold an unprecedented amount of so-called social bonds — debt securities whose proceeds are used to address human needs. With China making a new pledge to address climate change, and Biden an outspoken supporter of environmental initiatives, low-carbon and fossil-free assets may outperform next year, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.

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U.S. retail sales tumble in sign economic rebound is sputtering (nationthailand.com)

U.S. retail sales tumble in sign economic rebound is sputtering

InternationalDec 17. 2020A pedestrian passes an available retail space in Chicago on May 7, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Christopher Dilts. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Olivia Rockeman

U.S. retail sales dropped by more than forecast in November and the prior month was revised to a decline, indicating the economic rebound is hitting bumps amid record coronavirus cases and lawmakers’ extended wrangling over a new stimulus package.

Total retail sales decreased 1.1% from the prior month, following a 0.1% October decline, the first drops since March and April, Commerce Department figures showed Wednesday. That was worse than all but one economist had forecast in a Bloomberg survey calling for a 0.3% decline, and October’s figure was originally reported as a 0.3% increase.

The figures signal that the third U.S. surge in covid-19 cases, along with the arrival of colder weather, is taking an increasing toll on the economy as governments re-impose lockdowns, with more people losing their jobs and businesses shutting temporarily or permanently. Consumers are becoming more conservative with their finances during the wait for widespread vaccine distribution and a fresh stimulus package.

“The story is pretty simple: It’s clear the shutdown and third wave are affecting activity,” particularly at restaurants, said Brett Ryan, senior U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank. “The report highlights the need for more fiscal aid.”

After months of stalemates and talks, the top congressional leaders from both parties were close to agreement Wednesday on a relief package, which they hope to attach to crucial government spending legislation and pass by the end of the week, Bloomberg News reported.

Federal Reserve policymakers also conclude a two-day meeting later Wednesday, where officials are considering whether to alter their asset purchase program to provide more support for growth.

U.S. stocks were little changed at the open, while 10-year Treasury yields were higher and the dollar was lower.

Excluding autos and gasoline, sales fell 0.8%, compared with estimates for a 0.1% gain. So-called control group sales, which exclude food services, car dealers, building-materials stores and gasoline stations, dropped 0.5%. The measure is often considered more reflective of underlying consumer demand.

The monthly drop in retail sales was most pronounced for clothing stores and restaurants, while sales at nonstore retailers — mostly e-commerce — barely rose from October. The only other categories to record gains were building materials and food and beverage stores.

Motor vehicle and parts dealers, the largest category at about a fifth of all retail sales, fell 1.7%.

The total retail sales figure was still 4.1% above the same period last year. Illustrating the deep shifts in composition of sales, nonstore retailers were up 29.2%, while restaurant receipts plunged 17.2%.

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Merkel ties pandemic exit to immunization rates of over 60% (nationthailand.com)

Merkel ties pandemic exit to immunization rates of over 60%

InternationalDec 17. 2020German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Bundestag in Berlin, on Dec. 16., 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Rolf Schulten. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Arne Delfs, Raymond Colitt

Chancellor Angela Merkel tied an exit from the coronavirus pandemic to immunizing more than 60% of the population, indicating a long fight still ahead.

Germany is targeting so-called herd immunity, which means most of the population is resistant to the disease, Merkel said Wednesday in Germany’s lower house of parliament, as a hard shutdown takes effect across Europe’s largest economy.

The German leader has hinted that stringent restrictions, which are set to run until Jan. 10, will remain in force longer. The country’s daily death toll jumped on Wednesday to a record 910 people, the latest reminder of the risks posed by covid-19.

Merkel told her parliamentary caucus that Germany faces a new peak of infections next month and predicted that the first two months of 2021 will be particularly tough, according to a participant in the virtual meeting Tuesday. The nation is heading toward a seven-day incidence rate of 200 cases per 100,000 people, four times the level the government has determined to be manageable, she said.

Europe’s biggest economy began a strict lockdown on Wednesday, with non-essential stores closed, employers urged to shutter workplaces where possible and parents encouraged to keep children away from school. The tougher rules follow weeks of a partial shutdown, delivering a blow to Germany’s recovery and an extension could deepen the impact.

Despite the German government’s aggressive spending to prop up the economy, the fallout from the pandemic will likely depress business activity and lead to company failures, according to the head of the DIW economic institute.

“One of the biggest risks for the German economy is a wave of corporate bankruptcies next year,” Marcel Fratzscher, DIW’s president, said in a Bloomberg TV interview. “It’s not the question of whether it’s going to come. It’s more a question of when exactly companies will fail,” he said, adding that the thinktank is forecasting a contraction in the German economy in the first quarter.

As the restrictions take effect, fatalities surged to more than 900 in the 24 hours through Wednesday morning, well above Friday’s previous record of 604 and taking the total beyond 23,000. The number of new cases rose by 21,456, to 1.38 million, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The seven-day incidence rate has risen sharply in the past few weeks and currently is at a peak of 180 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the RKI public health institute. Officials have said the rate needs to come down to 50 and stay there to allow effective contact tracing.

Germany is in the uncomfortably position of tightening restrictions after some countries such as France and the U.K. imposed stricter curbs earlier and are now gradually easing. Still, there are concerns across the continent that Christmas celebrations could lead to a renewed spike in infections.

Merkel will meet in early January with regional leaders to evaluate the impact of the measures and could move to extend the lockdown then. German law requires the government to reassess a nationwide lockdown every four weeks.

The chancellor told her caucus lawmakers that it’s impossible to develop a long-term strategy to tackle the pandemic because there are still too many unknowns.

She appealed to regional leaders to stick to lockdown rules, warning that failure to do so would risk extending them even longer. She said it’s too early to tell when the pandemic will be over, damping optimism that the expected European approval of a Covid-19 vaccine next week could quickly provide a way out of the crisis.

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Trump sits out debut of covid-19 vaccine that he long championed (nationthailand.com)

Trump sits out debut of covid-19 vaccine that he long championed

InternationalDec 17. 2020A health care worker receives the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine in San Diego on Dec. 15, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Bing Guan. 

By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Josh Wingrove

President Donald Trump pinned all his hopes for ending the pandemic on a vaccine, but as shots started going into American arms this week, he has barely acknowledged the moment and has wavered on when he’ll be inoculated.

The first shipments of a coronavirus vaccine created by Pfizer and German company BioNTech arrived on Monday, with front-line health-care workers receiving injections on live television to mark the occasion. The rollout coincides with the U.S. setting records for daily cases, daily deaths and hospitalizations.

The president has had little to say about any of it, beyond a single congratulatory tweet buried among a stream of false assertions and conspiracy theories about the election he lost. He has not made a public appearance since Saturday, when he attended the Army-Navy football game at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Trump’s administration bet heavily on fast-tracking vaccine development, defying critics who said it would be nearly impossible for a shot to reach consumers less than a year after the coronavirus hit American shores.

The White House is now preparing to publicly inoculate a handful of officials in an event to celebrate the breakthrough and encourage Americans to get vaccinated. Vice President Mike Pence, who is not known to have contracted the virus, said he’ll receive a vaccination within days, but his office declined to say if it would be in front of cameras.

Public vaccination of top government officials, including the president, is regarded as a confidence-booster by health authorities for Americans wary of the shots. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Anthony Fauci, has said he intends to receive an injection in public as soon as practicable.

But Trump said Sunday he is not “scheduled” to be vaccinated, after Bloomberg News reported that top White House officials including the president had been given priority for shots. His press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany — who has called the shots the “Trump vaccine” — wouldn’t say Monday whether Trump would be vaccinated while he’s still in office.

“He will receive the vaccine as soon as the medical team determines it’s best,” she said. “These are vaccines that he oversaw the development of, he has great confidence in. He wants to see all Americans get this vaccine and he wants to see the most vulnerable among us get it first.”

President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday that he would get the vaccine in public, but also didn’t say when. “Dr. Fauci recommends I get the vaccine sooner than later. I want to make sure that we do it by the numbers and when I do it you’ll have notice and we’ll do it publicly.”

The course of the pandemic has become intertwined with Trump’s own political fortunes. The U.S. outbreak soared under his watch, with far more publicly reported cases and deaths than anywhere else in the world, even as Trump promised the virus would fade away and downplayed its danger. Most Americans rated his handling of the crisis poorly, opening the door for Biden’s victory.

But now the efficacy of the U.S. vaccination campaign rests in part with Trump. Before he was president, Trump gave credence to the American anti-vaccine movement by publicly questioning the childhood vaccine schedule and suggesting, falsely, that pediatric inoculations may be linked to autism.

Former presidents have already volunteered to publicly take the vaccine as a signal of its efficacy. Recent polls have shown that confidence in the vaccine is increasing but that many Americans still harbor doubts.

Fauci, who has agreed to be the new president’s top medical adviser, said Tuesday that the pandemic will only truly be curbed when 75% or 80% of Americans are vaccinated.

McEnany said Trump was trying to send a “parallel message” by waiting to get it himself: promoting the vaccine as safe but wanting higher-risk groups to receive it first. Trump contracted covid-19 in October, McEnany pointed out, and the president has described himself as “immune,” though the extent and duration of protection from naturally attained antibodies is unknown.

“Even though the president himself was infected, and he has, likely, antibodies that likely would be protective, we’re not sure how long that protection lasts. So, to be doubly sure, I would recommend that he get vaccinated as well as the vice-president,” Fauci said.

Trump has said he’d be criticized for getting a shot too early.

“If I’m the first one, they will say, ‘He’s so selfish, he wanted to get the vaccine first,'” he said in a Fox News interview over the summer, before he was infected. “Either way, I lose on that one, right?”

By many metrics, the pandemic is worse than ever, and continues to worsen. Trump has met the milestones with silence, saying nothing on Friday when daily deaths hit a record of 3,306, or on Monday when there were 264,000 new cases, also a record. He hasn’t asked Americans to do anything to slow transmission of the virus, such as wearing masks.

Pence has found himself filling the vacuum. At a roundtable event on the vaccine rollout Tuesday in his home state of Indiana, he assured Americans the vaccine is safe and pledged to get a shot himself.

“We have come to the beginning of the end of the coronavirus pandemic in America, but as I expect you will hear from our panel and you’ll continue to hear, we have a ways to go,” he said. “Wear a mask and put the health of your family and your neighbors first.”

The Pfizer vaccine’s arrival, with others expected to follow shortly, will focus attention on distribution efforts, the infrastructure developed by the Trump administration and the question of who should receive shots first.

McEnany said Tuesday that two groups of White House officials would get an early vaccine. “Some career staff, national security staff, for the purposes of continuity of government, will have access, in addition to a very small group of senior administration officials for the purpose of instilling public confidence,” she said.

McEnany, like Trump himself and several White House staff, tested positive for the virus earlier this year. She said she “absolutely would be open to taking the vaccine.”

Moncef Slaoui, a leader of the Trump administration’s “Operation Warp Speed” program to accelerate vaccine development, also said Tuesday that both Biden and Trump should be inoculated.

“It is very important that our leaders, departing ones and arriving ones, are protected. And I think both President Trump and President-elect Biden, they are both parts of the higher age group and, therefore, higher risk. So, yes, I think they should be vaccinated,” he told CNN. “That’s an example for the population to follow.”

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Trump lashes out at McConnell for recognizing Biden’s victory (nationthailand.com)

Trump lashes out at McConnell for recognizing Biden’s victory

InternationalDec 17. 2020

By The Washington Post · Timothy Bella

After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., finally acknowledged on Tuesday that Joe Biden is the president-elect, President Donald Trump publicly pleaded with him to support his continued efforts to upend the election with baseless claims of mass electoral fraud.

“Mitch, 75,000,000 VOTES, a record for a sitting President (by a lot). Too soon to give up,” the president tweeted at nearly 1 a.m. Wednesday. “Republican Party must finally learn to fight. People are angry!”

Trump’s tweet made it clear that McConnell’s decision to recognize Biden as president-elect has opened a rift at the top of the GOP, with the president continuing to falsely claim victory while McConnell works behind the scenes to convince Republican senators not to challenge the electoral college, which cast 306 votes for Biden on Monday, formalizing his victory.

Before Tuesday, McConnell was among a majority of GOP lawmakers in both chambers who had declined to acknowledge Biden as the incoming president for weeks. But in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, he said he accepted the electoral college results.

“Many of us hoped that the presidential election would yield a different result, but our system of government has processes to determine who will be sworn in on January 20. The electoral college has spoken,” McConnell said. “So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden. The president-elect is no stranger to the Senate. He’s devoted himself to public service for many years.”

The Senate majority leader’s speech sets up a potential fight for control of a Republican Party that’s been reshaped by Trump. The GOP is now faced with its two most influential leaders holding “completely irreconcilable” positions of reality ahead of two critical Senate runoff races in Georgia to decide control of the chamber, The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake wrote in an analysis.

McConnell and other GOP leaders on Tuesday also urged Senate Republicans in a conference call not to join a long-shot effort led by House conservatives to challenge the electoral college results when Congress tabulates the vote on Jan. 6, reported The Post’s Seung Min Kim and Rachael Bade.

Among the Republican lawmakers to join McConnell in accepting the electoral college’s results on Tuesday was Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. “I think as hard as the losses are to take, at the end of the day, you have to accept what the people’s voices told you,” she said.

On Twitter, Trump pleaded with McConnell and other Republicans to reconsider. Amid another barrage of early-morning tweets promoting the same unfounded claims of election fraud that have been defeated in his campaign’s legal challenges, the president falsely claimed he did better than voting projections in swing states he lost, “but bad things happened.”

Some of the president’s allies also lashed out at the Senate’s top Republican on Tuesday, with Trump-aligned attorney L. Lin Wood calling him “a traitor to American Patriots.”

“His day of judgment is coming,” Wood tweeted.

Fox News host Mark Levin, meanwhile, called for McConnell to retire. While not naming McConnell, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia representative-elect and QAnon conspiracy theory supporter, said that Republicans who don’t continue contesting the election results are supporting “the Chinese Communist Party takeover of America.”

“You typically don’t use the term ‘congratulations’ when someone just stole a bank,” said Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA.

Trump appeared to note the smattering of support, retweeting early on Wednesday an article titled, “Trump allies slam Mitch McConnell for congratulating Biden.”

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Volunteer leads race to rebuilt damaged Beirut church by Christmas Eve (nationthailand.com)

Volunteer leads race to rebuilt damaged Beirut church by Christmas Eve

InternationalDec 17. 2020Worshipers gather outside a local Maronite church in the Karantina neighborhood in Beirut in August 2020, days after its structure was heavily damaged in a massive port explosion. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Lorenzo Tugnoli. 

By The Washington Post · Miriam Berger, Nader Durgham

BEIRUT – It is crunchtime for Nicole Sfeir and her team.

In a hard hat and face mask, the 27-year-old architect is among a cadre of hired hands and volunteers who have been left to pick up Beirut’s pieces after the massive port explosion that devastated the city in early August.

Sfeir is responsible for one street in the hard-hit Karantina neighborhood, but she has been fixated on a single particular site: the blasted-out Maronite Christian church. She has been consumed by details of the century-old neighborhood landmark for weeks, from how to best reconstruct its sandstone walls to the ceiling’s intricate wooden arc. She has tried to incorporate more natural light for enhanced spirituality.

Sfeir’s 30-member team has promised to repair the church by Christmas Eve.

With the Lebanese government shirking responsibility for rebuilding the city, there is no grand plan. Instead, lives are being reconstructed brick by building by block. For months, charities have worked around-the-clock and coronavirus curfews to rebuild bits of the broken city, racing to secure walls and return residents home before winter rains cause further damage.

In the immediate aftermath of the Aug. 4 explosion, which killed more than 200 people, Sfeir and others throughout Lebanon descended upon Beirut to clear the rubble, replace windows, offer emergency care, and house, clothe and feed the estimated 300,000 people who had been displaced. These workers rightly feared that the country’s entrenched political elite, dominated by former militia leaders enriched by sectarianism and the spoils of the civil war, would not come to the rescue.

Public faith in the government was running especially low because Beirutis blamed Lebanese authorities for failing to prevent the tragedy, though they had been repeatedly warned over the years that 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate were improperly stored at the port.

As politicians avoided the streets, the government tasked the more popular army with coordinating reconstruction efforts. But in the four months since the blast, it has been local and international charities, reliant on donations from abroad, that have kept the recovery efforts going.

When the explosion erupted, Sfeir said she felt it in her hometown of Qlayaat, about 16 miles from Beirut. She was unemployed at the time and looking to leave Lebanon. Instead, by chance, she connected with Offre Joie, a Lebanese charity founded during Lebanon’s civil war. She decided to stay in Beirut to volunteer.

“There are people who on their own can’t get back up,” she said, amid the clinking and clanking of construction. “We are helping them stand.”

Worshipers gather outside their Maronite church in Beirut to attend mass in August. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Lorenzo Tugnoli.

The hardest days, she said, are when construction materials are delayed. Or when it rains, interrupting work and exposing every crack still left to fix. Sometimes, Sfeir needs a day off to stay home and reboot. Then she is back at it.

“People are without windows. People are without doors. People have broken walls. People have water coming from the ceiling,” she said. “So, we have the goal of working faster and faster because the weather isn’t helping.”

Her favorite moments are when residents stop by to ask about the church’s progress, reminding her of the community at the heart of it all. She admires how dedicated people are to the church, inquiring about it before the status of their own homes.

And sometimes she panics: What if there’s another upheaval in the city and they cannot meet the Christmas Eve deadline? “I’m afraid that something will happen outside of my control,” Sfeir said.

Rebuilding Beirut is a daily battle. In the areas most severely affected by the blast, about 2,600 buildings were damaged and one-third of them heavily, according to Jad Tabet, president of the Order of Engineers and Architects of Beirut. These neighborhoods, representing nearly a quarter of the city, included many of Beirut’s famed cafes, bars and clubs. In the four months since, Tabet estimated that at most 20% of the damaged buildings had been fixed.

About $2.5 billion is immediately needed for reconstruction, according to international donors, while so far $5 million is at hand, Tabet said. Adding to the funding shortage is the challenge of accessing money from abroad. This is a logistical minefield because of the country’s banking crisis.

Earlier this month, France and the United Nations announced a new humanitarian aid fund, but they warned that billions of dollars would be held up if Lebanon’s politicians did not break their impasse and form a new government to undertake economic reforms.

So even if windows or walls have been fixed, reconstruction remains far from complete. Few Lebanese can afford to replace everything they lost inside their homes, from ovens to bedroom doors.

“This is a country where the social arm of the state has been delegated to NGOs for quite a while,” said Mona Fawaz, professor of urban studies at the American University of Beirut (AUB). “That’s why it was normal to see some of the big NGOs in Lebanon jump in and do some admirable work.”

Yet, Fawaz warned, this would not be sufficient. “No one can replace the state as a custodian of the common good,” she said. Without proper urban planning, the recovery risks leaving the poor and disenfranchised behind.

Mohamad El Chamaa, 25, volunteered with Offre Joie in Karantina after the blast and now researches the neighborhood for his master’s degree at AUB. In those initial weeks, he recalled, the Karantina church served as a meeting place for volunteers, who congregated there to eat.

But once the initial round of renovations are complete, he said, he worries whether residents will be able to afford to remain in their neighborhood.

The church “is an incentive for them to stay,” he said. “But will they have the power to stay? We are trying to make it so they can.”

For her part, Sfeir said she is ready to take on a new project in Beirut after the work at the church is finished. Then, eventually, she will return to building her own future, she said.

Sfeir holds no illusions about her long-term prospects in Lebanon. Tired of unfulfilled dreams here, she ultimately sees her future outside the country and, like so many Lebanese in her generation, longs to leave. While the Lebanese have long been praised for their resilience, she admits she has grown weary of the soaring poverty, unemployment and inflation, as well as the decades of government corruption and mismanagement. She wants more.

“When I feel that this city is able to return to standing on its legs, I’ll travel to find my future because I won’t have a future in this country,” she said.

As for when that would be, she offered no deadline.

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Vaccinating billions means finding ways around a patent impasse (nationthailand.com)

Vaccinating billions means finding ways around a patent impasse

InternationalDec 17. 2020

By Bloomberg
Hugo Miller, Susan Decker

Covid-19 vaccines look set to protect millions of citizens of the world’s richest countries in the coming months. But inoculating the rest of the planet’s population may mean finding a way around an impasse over intellectual property.

Representatives from all 164 member states of the World Trade Organization met last week in Geneva to discuss a proposal from India and South Africa to waive broad sections of the WTO’s intellectual property rules and to try to forge an agreement on how patents developed in the race against covid-19 should be recognized.

The meeting ended without consensus, leaving poorer countries who sponsored the proposal frustrated and legal protections for vaccines intact. That may be a victory for patent protection advocates, but pressure for change will only grow if billions of people in poorer countries go unvaccinated while the rich world starts getting a steady flow of doses from Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech, Moderna and AstraZeneca.

“With the biggest health crisis we’ve experienced, we’re still not able to find alternative ways of dealing with the IP issues when everyone’s lives are at stake,” said Tahir Amin, executive director of the Initiative for Medicines, Access & Knowledge, an organization promoting better access to drugs. “You’ve got the advocates saying ‘Let’s knock the wall down,’ and then you’ve got the investors who say ‘If we open the door it’s like the floodgates.’ We have to be smarter than that.”

A patent gives a drugmaker exclusive rights to manufacture a vaccine it developed, also providing it the power to charge a price that covers the costs of research and development. Their profit margin per dose, however, depends on the urgency of the situation, and amid a pandemic, charging anything more than development costs is bound to be controversial. India’s proposal would require that the waiver remain in place until there’s been widespread vaccination and the majority of the world’s population has developed immunity.

Whether it’s possible to reconcile will only be clear as the pandemic plays out. The European Union and U.S., home to leading drugmakers, are vehemently opposed to the proposition, though pricing may offer some room for negotiation.

Pfizer and its partner BioNTech have said their vaccine will cost $19.50 a dose in the U.S. That’s likely to be too much for many poorer countries, even if discounted, especially given the cost of the vaccine’s deep-freeze storage requirements. But AstraZeneca’s vaccine costs $4 to $5 a dose and is the big hope for the developing world right now.

The Covax alliance, an effort backed by more than 90 rich countries that seeks to boost access to vaccines in about 90 poor ones, has struck a deal with AstraZeneca to buy and distribute vaccines.Last month, Covax said it had raised $2 billion but that may not be enough as it needs another $5 billion next year to procure 2 billion doses. On Tuesday, the EU and European Investment Bank announced 500 million euros ($608 million) in financing to help vaccinate 1 billion people as part of that effort.

“We’re an integrated world,” said Fred Abbott, a professor at Florida State University College of Law. “Everyone understands you can vaccinate everyone in the United States, but if you don’t vaccinate everyone around the world you’re still going to have a problem.”

Pressure from developing countries however is only going to increase next year if they are left in the lurch. UNAIDS, the U.N. agency combating the immunodeficiency virus, calls it a choice between “a peoples’ vaccine or a profit vaccine.”

While the first vaccines have been distributed in recent days in the U.K., nine out of 10 people in poor countries will miss out on a vaccine in 2021, according to Oxfam. That echoes the early days of the AIDS response, said UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima, when “treatment was only available to the rich while poorer countries had to wait years.”

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and Associations argues that suspending patents is fraught with danger. If you waive patents this time round, you risk harming the whole medical infrastructure that allowed Covid vaccines to be developed in record time, said Director General Thomas Cueni.

“Eroding patent protections has far-reaching consequences,” he wrote in a recent New York Times opinion piece, citing the development of messenger RNA, the underlying innovation common to the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. “Scientists eager to explore future uses of mRNA will struggle to find investment if intellectual property protections are snatched away when others deem it necessary.”Drugmakers like AstraZeneca have pledged not to profit from their vaccine for the length of the pandemic, while Moderna has said it won’t enforce its patents during the pandemic. Even frequent critics of the drugmakers have praised some of these efforts.

There are precedents for countries unilaterally suspending patents but they have been used rarely since 1945. Enforcement would be tough-most patent applications haven’t even been issued yet, and it’s hard to force companies to reveal trade secrets such as manufacturing processes that can have broad uses beyond vaccines.

Back at the WTO, delegates have agreed to keep discussions open and will submit a report to the WTO’s General Council meeting on Dec. 16, highlighting the “current lack of consensus” on the issue, according to a statement from the organization.

James Pooley, former deputy director general of the World Intellectual Property Organization, reckons that even though the proposal is “unlikely to go anywhere,” it may have an impact down the line.

“It’s the battering ram at the door,” he said. “If they keep bashing at it, a hinge may break.”