“Biden’s failed COVID summit was our last straw,” say scientists who held dual press conferences at the homes of White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel. Speakers at both demonstrations blamed the two men for “millions” of global COVID deaths. They argued that President Biden and Klain have ignored global health leaders' calls to scale COVID vaccine supply, instead leaving production to Bancel and other industry executives who have primarily produced doses to sell to wealthy nations, leaving poorer nations without access to high-quality vaccines.
WHAT: Vaccine equity demonstration at homes of Ron Klain and Stephane Bancel
WHEN: 2:30pm Wednesday, September 29, 2021
WHERE: Chevy Chase, MD 20815; Boston, MA 02108
WHO: A non-partisan group of scientists and health professionals, including doctors, nurses, and public health advocates.
VISUALS: Scientists, health care providers, and public health professionals in professional attire, speaking to reporters in front of large piles of artificial human bones placed outside of the homes of White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel
WASHINGTON and BOSTON, Sept. 29, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Scientists, medical providers, and public health advocates rallied Wednesday outside the homes of White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel to condemn Biden’s recent U.N. performance and demand increased global manufacturing and donations of COVID vaccines.
Assembled beside the expert speakers at both locations were twelve-foot tall piles of artificial human bones, representing the millions of global COVID deaths the speakers claimed Biden, Klain, and Bancel were responsible for.
At Bancel’s home in Boston, speakers included Salmaan Keshavjee, KJ Seung, Rebecca Zash and Joia Mukherjee, all physician-scientists from Harvard Medical School. At Klain’s home in Chevy Chase, speakers included Gregg Gonsalves, Associate Professor, Yale University; James Krellenstein, Co-Founder, PrEP4All; Fatima Hassan, Founder, Health Justice Initiative; Larry Gostin, University Professor, Georgetown Law; Keith Martin, Executive Director, Consortium of Universities for Global Health; and Amy Kapczynski, Professor of Law, Yale Law School
The advocates denounced President Biden and Klain for ignoring repeated pleas from global health leaders and institutions like the World Health Organization to act to dramatically scale vaccine supply. The speakers argued that Biden has instead left vaccine supply decisions to private industry leaders such as Bancel of Moderna, whose main goal is to profit from the pandemic by selling doses to wealthy countries rather than ending the pandemic by making enough doses to meet global needs.
The advocates claimed that if Biden had acted in March-- when Congress gave him over $16 billion eligible for scaling vaccine supply -- the U.S. could have already built the manufacturing capacity needed to produce 8 billion doses of the Moderna-NIAID vaccine, enough to vaccinate over half the world. They estimate these additional supply lines would have cost just $4-12 billion, and could have produced mRNA vaccines at just $2-3 per dose.
The speakers noted that instead, Biden aims to donate just 300 million vaccine doses to low-income countries by the end of this year. They claimed that Biden’s donations are too small and too slow, and that millions of people will die needlessly because Biden has ignored the global health experts he claims to be listening to.
Calling Biden’s recent COVID summit “more pageantry and platitude than planning,” the speakers listed proposals they argued Biden should have announced at his summit. These recommendations included scaling mRNA-1273 (Moderna-NIAID) to 8 billion doses per year by March 2022, immediately getting the Merck and Emergent production of the J&J vaccine online and dedicating 100% of their output to COVAX, and committing to a more aggressive donation program, supplying at least 100 million doses per month to low- and middle-income countries starting in October.
Speaker quotes from the press conference
“The public needs to understand that global health leaders have warned Biden and Ron Klain from the beginning that millions of people would die and hundreds of millions would be plunged into poverty if they did not dramatically scale vaccine supply,” said KJ Seung of Harvard Medical School. “Knowing this, they chose not to act.”
“Sadly, Biden and Ron Klain have treated the global aspects of the pandemic as a PR game rather than a global health crisis. Biden’s UN COVID Summit last week was more platitude and pageantry than planning,” said KJ Seung of Harvard Medical School.
“The world’s current shortage of COVID-19 vaccines is the result of deliberate policy choices made by pharmaceutical companies and the Biden Administration, not some inherent scientific or engineering limitation on expanding production capacity,” said Gregg Gonsalves, Associate Professor at Yale School of Public Health and Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership, “Industry and the U.S. government need to immediately commit to rapid production scale up of the most effective COVID-19 vaccines”.
“Since we discovered that mRNA vaccines were highly effective at preventing COVID-19 in November, more people have died from the disease than in the entire pandemic prior,” said James Krellenstein, Co-Founder of the advocacy group PrEP4All, “The fact that neither government nor industry have developed an effective plan to scale up the most effective vaccines as fast as possible will result in hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths.”
“Moderna itself has shown that even a previously small biotech firm can rapidly scale up production if it works with contract manufacturers around the world,” said Salmaan Keshavjee of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We know from experiences with HIV and TB medicines and even other vaccines that increasing access requires technology transfer and rapid scale-up of production. Many countries and companies not only stand ready to do this, but have been begging for this to happen. It is time for the US Government to take leadership in making this happen. We can’t just keep saying we believe in this; we actually have to do it.”
“Stephane Bancel and Moderna’s decision not to share its technology with low- and middle-income countries jeopardizes the lives of millions worldwide,” said Fatima Hassan, Founder of the South African advocacy group Health Justice Initiative, “During a pandemic, it is more important than ever to put public health before profits. Moderna has failed to do so.”
“The world’s current shortage of COVID-19 vaccines is the result of deliberate policy choices made by pharmaceutical companies and the Biden Administration, not some inherent scientific or engineering limitation on expanding production capacity,” said Dr. Joia Mukherjee of Partners In Health and Harvard Medical School, “Industry and the U.S. government need to immediately commit to rapid production scale-up of the most effective COVID-19 vaccines”.
“Charitable donations alone will never correct the deep injustices,” said Lawrence Gostin, University Professor at Georgetown Law and Faculty Director of the O’Neill Institute for National & Global Health Law, “Low and middle income countries don’t want to go hat in hand for donations, which never come soon enough or in ample supplies. They have the right to produce their own vaccines and medicines now and for the next health crisis.”
“The technology used in Moderna’s vaccine was invented using billions of dollars in public funds,” said Amy Kapczynski, Professor of Law at Yale Law School and Co-Director of the Global Health Justice Partnership, “The US government even owns patents protecting this vaccine. This technology must be used to protect lives both at home and abroad.”
The longer we delay in vaccinating the world with the most effective vaccines, the more we risk new, vaccine-resistant variants arising that could undo our progress here in the United States,” said Keith Martin, Executive Director of the Consortium of Universities for Global Health, “The issue is not just humanitarian: vaccine inequity is an immediate threat to national security and public health.”
“Without bold leadership from this Administration, we risk being caught in a pandemic loop in which we are constantly battling new variants,” said Dr. Rebecca Zash of Harvard Medical School, “The only way out of this pandemic is by vaccinating the world with our most effective vaccines.”
Media Contacts:
NATIONAL/D.C. CONTACT: James Krellenstein (516) 965-7707 james@prep4all.org
BOSTON CONTACT: Jon Shaffer (503) 789-4677 jonshaff@gmail.com
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a2e681c0-34d2-423c-bd62-f7e1c3081abf
