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00:00Peter to me that's so much the mystery here is how ignorant we are about what needs to be done in southern Africa. We don't understand. It's larger than America on a geographic basis. Yeah you're absolutely right. If you actually were to superimpose a map of the United States and the African continent it would barely registered. I mean the African continent is vast geographically and unfortunately the rate. Well we have the one lesson we've learned about the worst variance that we have is they arise out of large unvaccinated populations. The alpha variant arose out of an unvaccinated population in the UK in 2020 dealt out out of an unvaccinated population in India in 2021. What did people think was going to happen allowing Africa the African continent to go completely unvaccinated. This is not hookworm and you've been leading on this for decades. You did your puja thesis at Rockefeller on the horrific tropical diseases the parasites and and all that. If you know the terrain what holds the rich guys back from helping the poor guys. Is it is it a I think a normal constraint a financial constraint or is it a moral constraint. It was the way I see it. Tom was a science policy failure. The G7 countries are so fixed when this virus hit on speed and innovation that they all ran like little kids soccer game or the ball goes in one direction. It was all about mRNA technology and new new and exciting. You know what I sometimes say in my frustration shiny new toys that that no one ever gave thought is any first year engineering student will tell you that when you have rely exclusively on a brand new technology there's a learning curve b before you can go from zero to nine billion doses or 9 billion of anything whether it's widgets or MRI and vaccines. If it's a brand new technology there's a learning curve. And so there was never the situational awareness among the G7 leaders to say hey wait a minute. We also need to balance the portfolio with an older technology that we know we can scale in places like India and Bangladesh and an Indonesian on the African continent. And that's what we did. So we've developed this recombinant protein vaccine. It's been licensed with no patents no strings attached to vaccine developers in India Indonesia Bangladesh and now with a developer linked to sub-Saharan Africa. And we're doing it and we're making it. But if we had even a fraction of the help that Daryn or Pfizer had gotten from the G7 countries we might have had the world vaccinated. Peter you've talked about policy failures. Is just imposing travel bans from southern Africa a policy failure. I think it is we we've we've learned that travel ban simply don't work. We learned this from the beginning. Right. We remember how when in February of 2020 everybody was so focused on travel bans from China. Meanwhile the virus had already entered into New York City from southern Europe to ignite that horrific epidemic and across New York City. So we know that this virus is already spread around the world. And that's not because not because there's anything unique to Omicron that's been true of every variant that we've seen so far. By the time we identify a variant it's already it's already gone global. And and so I think a lot of this is based on optics where the the especially in the European Union and the U.S. they want to show that they're doing something. And unfortunately it's incredibly self-defeating. It actually impairs our ability to fight the pandemic number one. And number two it punishes African countries. And number three it hurts the economy because it spreads unnecessary panic among investors. And and so it's it's a policy failure on all accounts. Well we did see that panic in the markets taking shape on Friday this Monday morning where we are getting a little bit of a lift to them now as people really understand that we have very little information at this point. What information is most critical to ascertain first. There's three three things we need to know one about the severity of the illness. And so far it does not look like this variant is producing anything unusual in terms of symptoms or severity of illness. But we'll know more. Second we need to know if the vaccines are current vaccines will cross protect against the Omicron variant. That's what we're doing in our lab our laboratories this week with our vaccine as I'm sure Pfizer in Madeira. And the way you do that is you measure you look at antibody responses to your vaccines and showed that across this neutralizes the Omicron variant or what's called a pseudo virus variant. And we'll know that in the coming days. I think there's a good possibility that with the third immunizations and that boost that you'll get enough virus neutralizing antibodies to current cross protect at least partially. I don't know that for certain. But but that's the hope. And then we really need to understand the transmissibility. We don't know them. Peter one final question. I really looked at the vaccination trends this morning and I think what we're going hear from the president is we need to get from 59 percent vaccinated to sixty nine percent vaccinated. How quickly is that doable. While 69 percent unfortunately won't cut it we need 85 percent of the U.S. population vaccinated. And you know Tom we've got this horrific situation in the United States where since June 1 2021 a hundred and fifty thousand Americans who refused vaccinations needlessly perished from Covid-19. One hundred and fifty thousand or so anti science defiance and aggression is now a leading killer of young Americans in the United States. And as long as we have that defiance it's going to be hard to see how we get to that 85 percent level.

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Global Vaccinations Are a Science Policy Failure: Baylor’s Hotez

Baylor College National School of Tropical Medicine Dean Peter Hotez explains how the lack of vaccinations is driving the coronavirus pandemic, why travel bans do not work, and three questions that need to be answered about the omicron variant. He speaks on “Bloomberg Surveillance.”

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