3 ms·

> "...There’s just nobody acting like this is a fucking emergency" - Peter Staley https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/22/peter-staley-monkeypox-respo

by abeppu 4y ago

> "...There’s just nobody acting like this is a fucking emergency" - Peter Staley https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/22/peter-staley-monkeypox-response-us-interview https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jul/22/peter-stale... So, I think it's crazy that: > In early June, top officials assured Staley that the US had in place a stockpile of 1.2m doses of the vaccine > The problem was most of those doses weren’t ready. Just 68,000 of the doses were already located in the US; the rest were in freezers in Denmark awaiting shipment. Worse, two-thirds of the doses in Denmark had been manufactured on a new factory line that the FDA hadn’t inspected – which meant the vaccines produced on it couldn’t be used, despite approvals from the FDA’s EU counterpart, the European Medicines Agency (EMA). So the US is buying a stockpile of vaccines that it considers unacceptable for use? Who does that help? Was this the result of lobbying from a US-based donor with heavy investments in specific EU producers? Is this emergency-preparedness theater? The FDA reported that it _started_ inspections of that plant on July 7. To be clear, these were bought under a Trump-administration order, so they could easily have inspected that plant a long time ago. Why wait until you actually have an outbreak? And of the vaccines that _were_ already FDA-approved, it really seems like the administration has really slow-walked moving them. Meanwhile, in my city which has perhaps the worst outbreak in the US in per-capita terms, vaccines are scarce enough that people can wait for hours in line and then not receive it. People who are in the group who are advised to get the vaccine can call one of several phone numbers to try to get an appointment, but no one will answer. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-monkeypox-cases-rise-17317868.php https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/san-francisco-monkeyp... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/san-franciscos-lgbtq-monkeypox-vaccine-access https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/san-franciscos... So while others in this thread are arguing that the WHO shouldn't be declaring this an emergency, I'm frustrated that the people calling it an emergency aren't empowered to do much.

dannyw 4y ago
Public regulatory agencies are chronically underfunded and have been for a long time. The FAA gets Boeing to hire people who carry out the jobs of regulatory approval, just think about that.
- abeppu 4y ago
  If you don't have the resources to inspect overseas facilities, maybe try trusting the agencies in those countries? And if you're not willing to do that, and you're sure you're not going to have the resources to inspect the facility, then don't buy vaccines that you're not going to allow yourself to use. And if you _are_ going to have to send people to inspect an overseas facility, why not do it sooner rather than later? But buying vaccines that are supposed to be used in an _emergency_ (i.e. against bioterror https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemic-trumps-stockpile-chief-put-focus-on-biodefense-an-old-client-benefited/2020/05/04/d3c2b010-84dd-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemi...) and storing them overseas and not allowing them to be used in a crisis because you haven't inspected the facility that produced them seems like the worst of all worlds. This government spent resources on vaccines, pretended this made us safer, and refused to use them. I have a bag of supplies for an inevitable earthquake. Using the logic of our government, instead of storing it in my home, I should keep it in a distant self-storage locker ... and I should refuse to drink my emergency water because the bottle could have BPA. > “We were hit by a wall of FDA arrogance, which it’s famous for: ‘This is how we do things, and this is why we do things, and you all don’t know how it works.’ They told us directly that they simply think that they are the best in the world at this and that the EMA is not quite there yet. And they won’t say why.” I think when you fail hard, you shouldn't get to be smug at the other countries that (a) produced the vaccine and (b) had their inspectors do their jobs in a timely manner.

by abeppu 4y ago

dannyw 4y ago

Public regulatory agencies are chronically underfunded and have been for a long time. The FAA gets Boeing to hire people who carry out the jobs of regulatory approval, just think about that.

abeppu 4y ago
If you don't have the resources to inspect overseas facilities, maybe try trusting the agencies in those countries? And if you're not willing to do that, and you're sure you're not going to have the resources to inspect the facility, then don't buy vaccines that you're not going to allow yourself to use. And if you _are_ going to have to send people to inspect an overseas facility, why not do it sooner rather than later? But buying vaccines that are supposed to be used in an _emergency_ (i.e. against bioterror https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemic-trumps-stockpile-chief-put-focus-on-biodefense-an-old-client-benefited/2020/05/04/d3c2b010-84dd-11ea-878a-86477a724bdb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/before-pandemi...) and storing them overseas and not allowing them to be used in a crisis because you haven't inspected the facility that produced them seems like the worst of all worlds. This government spent resources on vaccines, pretended this made us safer, and refused to use them. I have a bag of supplies for an inevitable earthquake. Using the logic of our government, instead of storing it in my home, I should keep it in a distant self-storage locker ... and I should refuse to drink my emergency water because the bottle could have BPA. > “We were hit by a wall of FDA arrogance, which it’s famous for: ‘This is how we do things, and this is why we do things, and you all don’t know how it works.’ They told us directly that they simply think that they are the best in the world at this and that the EMA is not quite there yet. And they won’t say why.” I think when you fail hard, you shouldn't get to be smug at the other countries that (a) produced the vaccine and (b) had their inspectors do their jobs in a timely manner.