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They Received Eurovision. Can They Conquer the World?

They Won Eurovision. Can They Conquer the World?

ROME — When the rock group Maneskin won this year’s Eurovision Song Contest, it was little known outside Italy. Then the competition catapulted the band in front of 180 million viewers, and propelled its winning song “Zitti e Buoni,” or “Shut Up and Behave,” into Spotify’s global Top 10, a first for an Italian band.

As of Wednesday, the song had been streamed on Spotify more than 100 million times. With nearly 18 million listeners in the last month, Maneskin was performing better on the streaming service in the same period than Foo Fighters or Kings of Leon.

Eurovision acts typically disappear from the spotlight as soon as the competition wraps, yet Maneskin’s members are hoping to build upon their existing fame here and newly won international interest to become a rare long-term Eurovision success story.

A post-curtain controversy that dogged the group last month has only increased the band’s notoriety. On the night of the Eurovision victory, rumors spread on social media after a clip from the broadcast went viral, showing the lead singer, Damiano David, hunched over a table backstage. At a news conference later that evening, a Swedish journalist asked if David had been sniffing cocaine on live TV, and the singer denied any wrongdoing.

David took a drug test, which came back negative. The European Broadcasting Union issued a statement saying that “no drug use took place” and that it “considered the matter closed.”

So it’s been quite a world-stage debut for a foursome whose combined ages add up to just 83. (David is 22; Victoria De Angelis, the bassist, is 21; and the guitarist Thomas Raggi and the drummer Ethan Torchio are 20.)

“For us,” De Angelis said in a recent interview, “music is passion, fun, something that lets us blow off steam” — no surprise to anyone who has seen Maneskin perform live. The band is a high-octane powerhouse of onstage charisma and youthful energy.

One Italian music critic compared Maneskin — which means moonlight in Danish and is pronounced “moan-EH-skin” — to the Energizer Bunny. That may in part explain why “Zitti e Buoni” has transcended what could have been an insurmountable linguistic barrier (though there is already a cover version in Finnish).

The song celebrates individuality and marching to the beat of one’s drum, or guitar riff. The refrain repeats: “We’re out of our minds, but we’re different from them.”

With its carefully curated, stylish androgynous nonchalance — accessorized with high heels, black nail polish and smoky eyes — Maneskin breaks down gender barriers and champions self-expression.

The band was formed in 2015. David, De Angelis and Raggi knew each other from middle school in Rome. Torchio, whose family lives just outside the city, joined the group after responding to an ad in a Facebook group called “Musicians Wanted (Rome).”

There weren’t many venues here for fledgling rock bands, so they busked on the street, played in high schools and in restaurants “where you were expected to bring your own paying public,” David recalled. Small-time battle of the band competitions “ensured that at least we’d be playing front of an audience,” he added.

“These are the kinds of dynamics that toughen you up,” said Torchio.

After a couple of years of struggling to find gigs, the band went on the 2017 Italian edition of the talent show “The X Factor.”

Anna Curia, 24, said “it was love at first sight” when she saw the group’s audition song on the program; a few weeks later, she founded the group’s official fan club. “From the first, they had a distinct style and sound,” she said. Other fan clubs soon followed follow. There’s even one, called Mammeskin, for women of a certain age.

The “X Factor” stint also grabbed the attention of Veronica Etro, of the fashion brand Etro. “They had something,” said Etro, who is the brand’s creative director for the women’s collections. “I was very bewitched.”

The fashion house reached out to the group and began dressing its members for album covers and videos. The collaboration evolved into providing the outfits for Eurovision, where the group’s studded laminated red leather looks made you “think Jimi Hendrix-meets-‘Velvet Goldmine,’” wrote Vanessa Friedman in The New York Times.

“What I love is the way that they mix clothes for women and men,” said Etro in a telephone interview. “There is something very revolutionary about them, the way they don’t have any fear and they have fun with clothes.”

Manuel Agnelli, who was one of the “X Factor” judges in 2017, took Maneskin under his wing. At first, its members weren’t musically mature, he said, “but I saw in them characteristics that can’t be taught, it’s something you’re born with, it’s personality.”

“Their image is a big part of who they are, their sexuality, their charisma, their bodies. It’s part of rock, it’s part of performance,” said Agnelli.

Maneskin didn’t win “The X Factor,” coming second to Lorenzo Licitra, a tenor whose style is more in sync with the Italian penchant for big melodic ballads. Yet the program proved to be a springboard to greater things.

“They are a television phenomenon,” said Andrea Andrei, a journalist with the Rome daily newspaper Il Messaggero. “Without ‘The X Factor’ and the machine behind it that churns out products ready for mainstream success, Maneskin would have struggled for a lot longer, like other rock bands have.”

The real surprise, for many Italian commentators, was Maneskin’s win last March at the Sanremo Festival of Italian Song, the national event that finds Italy’s Eurovision act. Until a few years ago, Sanremo had mostly attracted Italians whose musical heyday predated Woodstock, but recent editions have reached out to younger audiences by involving the winners of talent shows like “The X-Factor.”

“Nothing could be further from rock than Sanremo,” said Massimo Cotto, an Italian music journalist and radio D.J.

So there, too, Maneskin broke ground. “Italy has never had an idyllic relationship with rock music, it never became mainstream,” said Andrei. “Maneskin’s win was unexpected, because they are a real rock band.”

During the interview, David soundly rejected the accusations that he was caught on camera using drugs at Eurovision, complaining that the speculation had overshadowed their win.

The allegations were both infantile and underhanded, he said. And they came to nothing, because drug tests came up negative. “We know we are clean. We have nothing to hide,” he said.

Allegations aside, there have been some changes since the Eurovision win.

Merchandise associated with the band’s most recent album sold out in minutes. It lent its music to a Pepsi commercial. And earlier this month, the band parted ways with Marta Donà, its manager since 2017. Some newspapers here wondered whether an Italian management agency had begun to feel too tight for Maneskin’s international aspirations, and the name of Simon Cowell, the mastermind behind “The X-Factor,” came up as a possible successor. The group has not announced who will replace Donà.

Agnelli, the Italian “X-Factor” judge, offered the quartet some advice for building on its current momentum: Tour as much as possible, get experience under their belts and continue to be themselves.

“It’s their greatest strength,” he said.

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World financial leaders name for $50 billion from rich nations

World economic leaders call for $50 billion from wealthy nations

People wearing protective face masks wait to receive a dose of COVISHIELD, a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India, at a vaccination centre in New Delhi, India, May 4, 2021.

Adnan Abidi | Reuters

Global economic and health leaders called on the world’s wealthier nations to provide $50 billion in funding to accelerate Covid-19 vaccine distribution across the planet and help end the pandemic.

The heads of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, World Health Organization and World Trade Organization said Tuesday that nations need to act before the virus has a chance to spread throughout unvaccinated countries and evolve into more dangerous new variants.

The group, which published an op-ed in newspapers across the globe this week, said there was a two-track pandemic brewing with richer nations vaccinating large portions of their populations while poorer countries that have received less than 1% of the vaccines administered so far “being left behind.”

“Even as some affluent countries are already discussing the rollout of booster shots to their populations, the vast majority of people in developing countries — even front-line health workers — have still not received their first shot,” according to the op-ed signed by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, World Bank President David Malpass and WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.

“By now it has become abundantly clear there will be no broad-based recovery without an end to the health crisis. Access to vaccination is key to both,” they wrote, noting that $50 billion will generate some $9 trillion in additional global output by 2025 by accelerating an end to the pandemic.

The money would go toward increasing manufacturing capacity, supply and delivery, which would accelerate the equitable distribution of diagnostics, oxygen, treatments, medical supplies and vaccines.

“Cooperation on trade is also needed to ensure free cross-border flows and increasing supplies of raw materials and finished vaccines,” they said.

They said the money is “a relatively modest investment by governments in comparison to the trillions spent on national stimulus plans and lost trillions in foregone economic output.”

“WTO members can and should deliver on all three fronts,” Okonjo-Iweala said. The trade group currently has members from 159 countries around the world.

The WHO said last week that Africa needs at least 20 million AstraZeneca Covid vaccine doses within the next six weeks to get the second round of shots to people who’ve already received the first. The continent has received only 1% of all of vaccines administered globally and needs another 200 million doses of any cleared Covid-19 vaccines to vaccinate 10% of the continent by September.

“More than 700 million vaccine doses have been administered globally, but over 87% have gone to high income or upper middle-income countries, while low income countries have received just 0.2%,” the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom, said in a briefing last month.

Many countries have had to rely on COVAX for their doses, a global collaboration of organizations like the WHO and UNICEF, to speed the production and delivery of Covid-19 vaccines across the world.

The WHO and its COVAX partners hope to vaccinate 30% of the population in all countries by the end of 2021, if they get enough funding.

“This can reach even 40% through other agreements and surge investment, and at least 60 percent by the first half of 2022,” the agency leaders said.

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Business

In a World Let Free, Video Sport Makers Are ‘Doubling Down’

In a World Let Loose, Video Game Makers Are ‘Doubling Down’

At the height of the pandemic, people stuck indoors spent the time playing tons of video games.

Now that countries are slowly opening up again, this behavior will change. And video game makers have warned that when people go outside, their sales will fall and game spending could fall for the first time in at least a decade.

But the companies do not reduce the anticipation. Far from it.

Consider Riot Games, which makes League of Legends. “We’re doubling up,” said Nicolo Laurent, the company’s managing director. “We’re hiring like crazy.”

Then there is Microsoft’s Xbox. “Our gaming investment has never been higher,” said Phil Spencer, who runs the business.

Video game companies are among the pandemic winners saying they continue to plan to move at full steam even after the coronavirus bans that have propelled their businesses over the past 15 months have largely been lifted. Other tech companies that thrived while supplying an out-of-the-way society – including Zoom and Peloton – have also announced they will continue to spend, expand operations and hire new staff.

It’s a counter-intuitive bet. However, some of the companies said they could use the cash they had in store from the gust of wind of the year to return to the growth path they were on before the pandemic accelerated it.

“This is a great time for the industry,” said Strauss Zelnick, general manager of Take-Two Interactive, which makes the NBA 2K and Grand Theft Auto video games. He said the pandemic has made gambling more accessible to a wider audience, and rather than pulling back, “we are investing to grow to meet that demand.”

When industry predicted a slowdown in growth in the past, companies often cut costs, but those downturns and rallies were usually unpredictable due to falling stock markets and recessions, said Bill Pearce, assistant dean at the Haas School of Business from the University of California, Berkeley.

As the pandemic subsides, coronavirus vaccines and predictions of how people will react when the world opens up means companies have “more clarity and more confidence in investing,” Pearce said. Some industries that followed conventional wisdom and slowed down, such as car dealerships, are now kneeling on their knees for failing to meet increasing demand, he said.

However, John Paul Rollert, a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, said that moving forward in the face of changing behavior is a risky and rewarding approach.

“They really play high-stakes poker,” said Mr. Rollert. Still, as the economy recovered and money sloshed around, he added, “You can see why these companies might think, ‘Covid has been good to us, but maybe post-Covid will be great for us.'”

Newzoo, a gaming analytics firm, has forecast that people will spend $ 175.8 billion on games this year, down 1 percent from 2020. This would be the first drop since Newzoo began tracking spending in 2012.

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Updated

May 28, 2021 at 12:54 p.m. ET

Take-Two announced earlier this month that sales will decrease 30 percent year over year for the next quarter and 8 percent for the fiscal year. Activision Blizzard, which makes the war game Call of Duty, forecast an 11 percent year-on-year revenue decline for the next quarter.

“It’s hard to imagine that there will be as much money or game time or as many players as the industry has benefited over the last year, at least in the immediate future,” said Matthew Ball, managing partner at Epyllion Industries, which operates a company Capital fund that invests in gambling.

Other challenges, such as a global chip shortage that is limiting the availability of new video game consoles from Microsoft and Sony, and a lack of blockbuster games after a year of remote work made game development even more difficult than normal.

However, game makers said they were not concerned, especially after such huge pandemic growth.

In January, Microsoft reported quarterly sales of $ 5 billion with games for the first time, partly due to a new generation of Xbox consoles. The company bought ZeniMax Media, which publishes games like Skyrim and Fallout, in September for $ 7.5 billion.

Microsoft’s gaming business is now aiming to expand in countries like Africa by promoting the cloud gaming service xCloud, Spencer said. In cloud gaming, games are hosted in a company’s data center and broadcast to consumers’ devices so they don’t have to install the games or use expensive hardware.

“If you look at the last decade, gaming has seen a double-digit growth pattern,” said Spencer. “The pandemic has undoubtedly accelerated.”

At Take-Two, based in New York, profits rose 46 percent last year. The company has hired around 700 game developers in the past 12 months, expanded its workforce by 10 percent, and invested heavily in technology and marketing, Zelnick said.

“In many ways, it’s an investment year where we’re building for the future,” he said.

Niantic, the San Francisco-based company that produced the mobile game Pokemon Go, expects to increase its workforce by about 25 percent to nearly 900 employees this year, said John Hanke, its managing director. The company was preparing to launch two new games, one based on the Settlers of Catan board game and the other based on the Pikmin franchise. Eight more are in development.

At Riot in Los Angeles, a post-pandemic downturn was “not even an issue for discussion,” Laurent said. Revenue for the privately held company rose 20 percent last year.

(Mr. Laurent has dealt with allegations and complaints from employees that Riot is a sexist workplace. He was sued in January for sexual harassment and retaliation. He has denied the allegations.)

Riot plans to hire 1,000 employees this year, increasing its workforce by 33 percent, Laurent said. In addition to expanding its flagship League of Legends title, Riot is investing in esports leagues for its first-person shooter game Valorant and for Wild Rift, a modified version of League of Legends played on mobile phones. The company is also building two new studios in Shanghai and Seattle this year and plans to open five more locations over the next three years.

“Gambling will be the center of influence,” said Laurent in the 21st century. “The pandemic is just giving us a small boost.”

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Georgia Anne Muldrow Builds a Musical World of Her Personal

Georgia Anne Muldrow Builds a Musical World of Her Own

Muldrow, 37, grew up in a family of jazz musicians in Los Angeles. Her father, Ronald Muldrow, was a guitarist and worked for decades with the soul jazz saxophonist Eddie Harris. Her mother, Rickie Byars-Beckwith, sang with saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and pianist Roland Hanna.

Alice Coltrane, a friend of the family, gave Muldrow the spiritual name Jyoti, which can mean “light” or “heavenly flame”. Muldrow has been billed as Jyoti for her most jazz-influenced albums, including last year’s critically acclaimed “Mama, You Can Bet!” Which featured daring remakes of Charles Mingus compositions in addition to her own songs.

In the early 2000s, Muldrow came to New York City to study jazz at the New School with a focus on singing. But she got out, she said, because, “I didn’t like the boxes they have for people. I feel like we’re stepping out of the box to survive emotionally as black people. We do this for our emotional uplift. The search for your own inner strength, your own property and your own language – that is what drives this music forward. “

The teenager Muldrow was into electronic music, building beats and developing abstract sounds on drum machines, synthesizers and computers. “The appeal of technology, sound design and sound generation with computers has been my experience as a composer of hearing,” she said. “Regardless of how I look, regardless of my gender, regardless of race, the computer was listening to me.”

One of her mentors and collaborators was Don Preston, who had played keyboards for Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention in the 1960s and 1970s and was the musical director of Meredith Monk. He encouraged her to work with the experimental synthesis that she now regards as the “cornerstone” of her music. On “Fifth Shield”, a manifesto from her 2015 album “A Thoughtiverse Unmarred”, she knocked: “I know I’m abstract – it’s not for everyone.”

For Muldrow, the parameters that control the synthesizer tones – attack, decay, sustain, and release – provide lessons outside of the recording studio. “I’ll turn everything into a metaphor,” she said with a laugh. “The way we attack things shapes our lives, the way we hold onto things shapes our lives, the way we let go of things shapes our lives. This is what makes me dig deeper every time I make music. “

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What Would It Take to Vaccinate the World In opposition to Covid?

What Would It Take to Vaccinate the World Against Covid?

In delivering vaccines, pharmaceutical companies aided by monumental government investments have given humanity a miraculous shot at liberation from the worst pandemic in a century.

But wealthy countries have captured an overwhelming share of the benefit. Only 0.3 percent of the vaccine doses administered globally have been given in the 29 poorest countries, home to about 9 percent of the world’s population.

Vaccine manufacturers assert that a fix is already at hand as they aggressively expand production lines and contract with counterparts around the world to yield billions of additional doses. Each month, 400 million to 500 million doses of the vaccines from Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson are now being produced, according to an American official with knowledge of global supply.

But the world is nowhere close to having enough. About 11 billion shots are needed to vaccinate 70 percent of the world’s population, the rough threshold needed for herd immunity, researchers at Duke University estimate. Yet, so far, only a small fraction of that has been produced. While global production is difficult to measure, the analytics firm Airfinity estimates the total so far at 1.7 billion doses.

The problem is that many raw materials and key equipment remain in short supply. And the global need for vaccines might prove far greater than currently estimated, given that the coronavirus presents a moving target: If dangerous new variants emerge, requiring booster shots and reformulated vaccines, demand could dramatically increase, intensifying the imperative for every country to lock up supply for its own people.

The only way around the zero-sum competition for doses is to greatly expand the global supply of vaccines. On that point, nearly everyone agrees.

But what is the fastest way to make that happen? On that question, divisions remain stark, undermining collective efforts to end the pandemic.

Some health experts argue that the only way to avert catastrophe is to force drug giants to relax their grip on their secrets and enlist many more manufacturers in making vaccines. In place of the existing arrangement — in which drug companies set up partnerships on their terms, while setting the prices of their vaccines — world leaders could compel or persuade the industry to cooperate with more companies to yield additional doses at rates affordable to poor countries.

Those advocating such intervention have focused on two primary approaches: waiving patents to allow many more manufacturers to copy existing vaccines, and requiring the pharmaceutical companies to transfer their technology — that is, help other manufacturers learn to replicate their products.

The World Trade Organization — the de facto referee in international trade disputes — is the venue for negotiations on how to proceed. But the institution operates by consensus, and so far, there is none.

The Biden administration recently joined more than 100 countries in asking the W.T.O. to partially set aside vaccine patents.

But the European Union has signaled its intent to oppose waivers and support only voluntary tech transfers, essentially taking the same position as the pharmaceutical industry, whose aggressive lobbying has heavily shaped the rules in its favor.

Some experts warn that revoking intellectual property rules could disrupt the industry, slowing its efforts to deliver vaccines — like reorganizing the fire department amid an inferno.

“We need them to scale up and deliver,” said Simon J. Evenett, an expert on trade and economic development at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. “We have this huge production ramp up. Nothing should get in the way to threaten it.”

Others counter that trusting the pharmaceutical industry to provide the world with vaccines helped create the current chasm between vaccine haves and have-nots.

The world should not put poorer countries “in this position of essentially having to go begging, or waiting for donations of small amounts of vaccine,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, senior scientific liaison to the Covid-19 Prevention Network. “The model of charity is, I think, an unacceptable model.”

In this fractious atmosphere, the W.T.O.’s leaders are crafting their proceedings less as a push to formally change the rules than as a negotiation that will persuade national governments and the global pharmaceutical industry to agree on a unified plan — ideally in the next few months.

The Europeans are banking on the notion that the vaccine makers, fearing patent waivers, will eventually agree to the transfers, especially if the world’s richest countries throw money their way to make sharing know-how more palatable.

Many public health experts say that patent waivers will have no meaningful effect unless vaccine makers also share their manufacturing methods. Waivers are akin to publishing a complex recipe; tech transfer is like sending a master chef to someone’s kitchen to teach them how to cook the dish.

“If you’re to manufacture vaccines, you need several things to work at the same time,” the W.T.O. director-general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, told journalists recently. “If there is no transfer of technology, it won’t work.”

Even with waivers, technology transfers and expanded access to raw materials, experts say it would take about six months for more drug makers to start churning out vaccines.

The only short-term fix, they and European leaders say, is for wealthy countries — especially the United States — to donate and export more of their stock to the rest of the world. The European Union allowed the export of hundreds of millions of doses, as many as it kept at home, while the United States held fast to its supply.

But boosting donations and exports entails risk. India shipped out more than 60 million doses this year, including donations, before halting vaccine exports a month ago. Now, as a wave of death ravages the largely unvaccinated Indian population, the government is drawing fire at home for having let go of doses.

The details of any plan to boost vaccinations worldwide may matter less than revamping the incentives that have produced the status quo. Wealthy countries, especially in the West, have monopolized most of the supply of vaccines not through happenstance, but as a result of economic and political realities.

Companies like Pfizer and Moderna have logged billions of dollars in revenue by selling most of their doses to deep-pocketed governments in North America and Europe. The deals left too few doses available for Covax, a multilateral partnership created to funnel vaccines to low- and middle-income nations at relatively low prices.

While the partnership has been hampered by multiple problems — most recently India’s blocking exports amid its own crisis — the snapping up of doses by rich countries was a crucial blow.

“We as high-income countries made sure the market was lopsided,” said Mark Eccleston-Turner, an expert on international law and infectious diseases at Keele University in England. “The fundamental problem is that the system is broken, but it’s broken in our favor.”

Changing that calculus may depend on persuading wealthy countries that allowing the pandemic to rage on in much of the world poses universal risks by allowing variants to take hold, forcing the world into an endless cycle of pharmaceutical catch-up.

“It needs to be global leaders functioning as a unit, to say that vaccine is a form of global security,” said Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, a global health expert at Harvard Medical School. She suggested that the G7, the group of leading economies, could lead such a campaign and finance it when the members convene in England next month.

The argument over Covid vaccines harkens back to the debate over access to antiretroviral drugs for H.I.V. in the 1990s.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the first powerful H.I.V. drug therapy in 1995, resulting in a plunge in deaths in the United States and Europe, where people could afford the therapy. But deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia continued to climb.

In 2001, the W.T.O. ruled that countries could allow local companies to break patents for domestic use given an urgent need. The ruling is still in place. But without technology transfers, few local drug makers would be able to quickly replicate vaccines.

In 2003, the W.T.O. took a crucial further step for H.I.V. drugs, waiving patents and allowing low-income countries to import generic versions manufactured in Thailand, South Africa and India, helping contain the epidemic.

With Covid, the request for a patent waiver has come from the South African and Indian governments, which are seeking to engineer a repeat of that history. In opposing the initiative, the pharmaceutical industry has reprised the argument it made decades ago: Any weakening of intellectual property, or I.P., protection discourages the investment that yields lifesaving innovation.

“The only reason why we have vaccines right now was because there was a vibrant private sector,” said Dr. Albert Bourla, chief executive of Pfizer, speaking in a recent interview. “The vibrancy of the private sector, the lifeblood, is the I.P. protection.”

But in producing vaccines, the private sector harnessed research financed by taxpayers in the United States, Germany and other wealthy nations. Pfizer expects to sell $26 billion worth of Covid vaccines this year; Moderna forecasts that its sales of Covid vaccines will exceed $19 billion for 2021.

History also challenges industry claims that blanket global patent rights are a requirement for the creation of new medicines. Until the mid-1990s, drug makers could patent their products only in the wealthiest markets, while negotiating licenses that allowed companies in other parts of the world to make generic versions.

Even in that era, drug companies continued to innovate. And they continued to prosper even with the later waivers on H.I.V. drugs.

“At the time, it rattled a lot of people, like ‘How could you do that? It’s going to destroy the pharmaceutical industry,’” recalled Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser for the pandemic. “It didn’t destroy them at all. They continue to make billions of dollars.”

Leaders in the wealthiest Western nations have endorsed more equitable distribution of vaccines for this latest scourge. But the imperative to ensure ample supplies for their own nations has won out as the virus killed hundreds of thousands of their own people, devastated economies, and sowed despair.

The drug companies have also promised more support for poorer nations. AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been the primary supply for Covax, and the company says it has sold its doses at a nonprofit price.

In January, Pfizer announced that it was joining Covax, agreeing to contribute 40 million doses at a not-for-profit price. So far only 1.25 million of those doses have been shipped out, less than what Pfizer produces in a single day.

Whether the world possesses enough underused and suitable factories to quickly boost supply and bridge the inequities is a fiercely debated question.

During a vaccine summit convened by the W.T.O. last month, the body heard testimony that manufacturers in Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Senegal and Indonesia all have capacity that could be quickly deployed to produce Covid vaccines.

One Canadian company, Biolyse Pharma, which focuses on cancer drugs, has already agreed to supply 15 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to Bolivia — if it gains legal permission and technological know-how from Johnson & Johnson.

But even major companies like AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have stumbled, falling short of production targets. And producing the new class of mRNA vaccines, like those from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, is complicated.

Where pharmaceutical companies have struck deals with partners, the pace of production has frequently disappointed.

“Even with voluntary licensing and technology transfer, it’s not easy to make complex vaccines,” said Dr. Krishna Udayakumar, director of the Duke Global Health Innovation Center.

Much of the global capacity for vaccine manufacturing is already being used to produce other lifesaving inoculations, he added.

But other health experts accuse major pharmaceutical companies of exaggerating the manufacturing challenges to protect their monopoly power, and implying that developing countries lack the acumen to master sophisticated techniques is “an offensive and a racist notion,” said Matthew Kavanagh, director of the Global Health Policy and Politics Initiative at Georgetown University.

With no clear path forward, Ms. Okonjo-Iweala, the W.T.O. director-general, expressed hope that the Indian and South African patent-waiver proposal can be a starting point for dialogue.

“I believe we can come to a pragmatic outcome,” she said. “The disparity is just too much.”

Peter S. Goodman reported from London, Apoorva Mandavilli from New York, Rebecca Robbins from Bellingham, Wash., and Matina Stevis-Gridneff from Brussels. Noah Weiland contributed reporting from New York.

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Entertainment

Solely Join: Craving for the Intimacy of a Danced, Onstage World

Only Connect: Yearning for the Intimacy of a Danced, Onstage World

When the music starts we start dancing. It’s the beginning of April and for the first time in 13 months I’m rehearsing with a partner in the New York ballet studios. Ashley Bouder and I meet while we are dancing side by side. After more than a year of dancing alone, we are not used to this kind of closeness.

We’re working on the first moments of George Balanchine’s “Duo Concertant” to record music on my iPhone while our repertoire director Zooms walks in with her adorable daughter bouncing on her lap. Ashley and I have been tested for Covid twice and we both wear masks. It’s a far cry from work as we know it, but we’re back in studios that we know, dancing steps we’ve danced for years, and we’re holding hands.

The excerpt we are preparing for a film by Sofia Coppola for the company’s virtual spring gala takes just 2 minutes and 11 seconds. But this is the longest time I’ve danced with anyone else in a long time, and after doing it on that first rehearsal, I got upset.

With every breath I take, I suck my mask to my mouth, which makes it even harder to recover. “I smile!” Says Ashley and makes sure the repertoire manager Glenn Keenan and I know that she’s happily dancing behind her mask again. I giggle breathlessly. I’m glad we’re back too, but disappointed with how impersonal it is to dance in a mask. I expected going back to this work would be emotional and precious, but with the short snippet of the snippet we’re dancing and the fact of our masks, it feels strange, almost like we’re dancing side by side, but not together.

After the outbreak of the pandemic last year, my life and that of my colleagues, like everyone else, have radically changed. We were used to gathering in sweaty groups in windowless rooms, where we kept hugging and touching each other for choreographic and emotional reasons. Last year we danced alone in small studios that we made ourselves.

Using my portable dance mat, I took ballet lessons from the five New York apartments I’ve lived in since March. out of my sister’s garage, driveway, and deck in Maine; and from my parents’ living room in Philadelphia. In the fall, I was allowed to return to the City Ballet studios in Lincoln Center to dance alone. More recently, I’ve danced with small groups of masked colleagues in our studios to keep my distance and mostly to stick to ballet exercises. But with the exception of an idyllic bubble residence in Martha’s Vineyard with 18 other dancers in October, it’s been some time since I’ve actually danced with my colleagues.

In a way, that time outside of the studio and the stage felt necessary. Groups of us in the company meet regularly for Slack and Zoom to develop strategies on how we can strengthen and transform our community in order to prepare for a hopefully changed cultural landscape. And I had time to properly rehabilitate my ankle, which I injured in the fall of 2019, and think about what is most valuable to me about my job and my dancing.

During this break, I have often longed for the space (and the strength) to do a coupé-jeté manége, or longingly thought of the fulfilling exhaustion that overwhelms me when the curtain falls on a particularly challenging ballet. But when I really imagine that I can dance again, two moments always come to mind. The first comes in the opening section of Justin Peck’s “Rodeo”. Dancers perform in a number of small groups and hurry to take the stage for short, playful vignettes of each other. When it is my turn, I run at full speed towards the center and pull myself in front, a few meters away from two other dancers. There is a pause in the music where we all turn a blind eye. A smile creeps into our faces as the music introduces us to our dance.

The second moment is in Jerome Robbins’ Grand Waltz “Dances at a Gathering”. Really, I just think of a dancer’s face. I picture Indiana Woodward who sometimes reminds me of my younger sister and grins at me. We go on stage with a pony flanked by four other dancers, and she smiles so hard I think she might burst with excitement and explode into something unstoppable.

These moments of connection are only possible in the context of a dance. My colleagues and I find this unspoken recognition of each other and our shared passion in the intimacy and physical closeness of a danced world on stage. And it is these relationships and closeness that have been established on stage and in motion that have been impossible on our video screens and in our socially distant dancing.

In ballet we are told where to stand, what to do, and how often to do it. However, this doesn’t change how the connection makes sense when I reach for my partner’s hand – when I offer my hand as I was taught and it is taken as my partner was told. The prescribed nature of ballet takes none of the intimacy I experience over and over again in these repeated gestures and choreographies. Intimacy is heightened by familiarity, but also by the fact that my partner and I are cutting out our own space in these dances at the same time.

The everyday act of taking a partner’s hand before dancing a combination of steps that requires trust and spontaneity can feel like essential recognition of our personal investment in each other and in the work we share. This type of physical contact has been a comfort to me for a long time, and before the pandemic was so often my way of showing care.

“Duo Concertant”, which Ashley and I have danced together again and again since 2015, is full of these moments and rewards her choreographic ingenuity and humanity. Balanchine made “Duo” for the Stravinsky Festival in 1972 – a week-long homage to the composer who had been Balanchine’s long-time friend and favorite collaborator. Their connection and Balanchine’s devotion and closeness to Stravinsky are evident in “Duo”. It’s a closed job. Intimate, a natural ballet from the Covid era.

Dancing this ballet means living in a world that you have created yourself. There are only four performers on stage: two dancers and two musicians. The two pairs of performers challenge and complement each other, the music expands the dance and vice versa. In a concertante there is often the pairing and counterpoint of two musical lines: tension and duality. In “Duo” the piano and violin play opposite each other and together in a conversation that crosses the dramatic and lively terrain of the piece.

This score resulted from further close cooperation. Stravinsky composed it to play on tour with the violinist Samuel Dushkin and adapted it to Dushkin’s hands, to his abilities. And apparently Dushkin weighed in too – his riffs for Stravinsky’s composition and arrangements were worked into the last piece.

Many pairings, many intimacies are built into this music, this work: Balanchine and Stravinsky, Stravinsky and Dushkin, the violin and the piano, the music and the dance and of course the two dancers. The ballet feels like a joke and like there is nothing else my partner and I could possibly do to this music together on stage.

When the curtain opens on “Duo Concertant”, Ashley and I stand behind the piano and look at the pianist and the violinist. We stand and listen for the first four minutes of the dance. After this charged opening, I take Ashley’s hand and we go to the other side of the stage and start dancing. Only now, after we’ve listened, are we ready to dance. Only now, after listening, is the audience ready to see.

The violinist intones six somewhat wistful notes, then the piano begins a rhythmic stroll and Ashley and I move up and down – I’m up when she’s down. “Like a metronome,” says Glenn. Then we add in our arms like we’re trying things out, like we’re building something, like we’re building ourselves up to something. We jumble at imaginary sounds, play for each other, then she does a series of poses and I tap my arm in a circle like a clock and count to the dance that frees us from that measured, constant clip.

What follows is a dance of pushing and pulling, forwards and backwards, from side to side. We stamp and do it and fling our legs and arms in quick, casual leaps and lunges. We annoy each other and forward and just before the movement ends we pause, catch our eyes, I offer my elbow and we rush to the musicians just in time to hear them play the final notes.

The dance continues on stage – but this is where Ashley and I will stop filming. Manageable, if a bit teasing. As we prepare for the day of shooting and our time in the studio progresses, our dancing feels more and more like the dancing that I missed. Our breathing is soon no longer so desperate, our body relaxes, we find the rhythm again to try new things, to be in a studio together.

On Friday we are in costume for a dress rehearsal before filming on Tuesday. Our section is turned left behind the stage – almost on stage, but not entirely; We’re back to work, but not quite. Ashley and I piled on the warm-ups unused to the thin leotards and tights we wore every night – costumes meant to be exposed and naked. There are people watching – Sofia Coppola and her team, and a handful of familiar and reassuring faces from the City Ballet’s artistic and administrative staff. It’s a fraction of a fraction of the audience we’re used to, but more eyes than a year before. Ashley and I are both nervous.

“All right!” someone calls. “Let’s see.”

We take off our costumes and take our place. After a few false starts with the recording, it starts. I can feel our dancing pulse with a little more than what we gave at rehearsals. Ashley’s body is tense with exertion and excitement, and our movements have a kind of swing and power that is lacking in our time in the studio. We wear masks, we are backstage and the audience is small, but as the dance unfolds Ashley and I find something for us in this shared experience.

“That was fun!” Says Ashley, putting her hand lightly on my shoulder when we’re done. “I could tell you were smiling.”

Russell Janzen is a dancer with the New York City Ballet.

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Health

WHO chief urges world to observe U.S., waive Covid vaccine patent protections

WHO chief urges world to follow U.S., waive Covid vaccine patent protections

World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a press conference organized by the United Nations Union of Geneva Correspondents Association (ACANU) during the COVID-19 outbreak on July 3, 2020 at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland has been.

Fabrice Coffrini | Pool | Reuters

The Director General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on Friday called on other countries, in particular the Group of the Seven Industrialized Nations, to follow the example of the US and support a request by the World Trade Organization to temporarily waive patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines .

“The US announcement on Wednesday to support a temporary waiver of intellectual property protection for Covid-19 vaccines is an important declaration of solidarity and support for vaccine justice,” Tedros said at a press conference. “I know that this is not easy politically, so I really appreciate the US leadership and we urge other countries to follow suit.”

The USA, which is strongly committed to the enforcement of intellectual property rights around the world, has previously spoken out against the waiver of patent protection for Covid vaccines.

President Joe Biden personally made the decision to change the US stance, White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One on Thursday. As a presidential candidate, Biden had supported the abandonment of the intellectual property of Covid vaccines.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, whose members include vaccine manufacturers AstraZeneca, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson, firmly oppose the Biden government’s decision.

WHO chief Tedros on Friday also called on the G7 industrialized nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Great Britain, as well as the USA – to do more to facilitate the equitable distribution of Covid vaccines worldwide.

“For G-7, vaccines and vaccine equity are now the most important and immediate support we need,” said Tedros. “I think everyone knows what we should do to increase production capacity and then increase vaccination rates in all countries.”

According to the WHO chief, more than 80% of the more than 1 billion Covid vaccine doses distributed worldwide went to high-income countries, while low-income countries received 0.3%.

“That kind of gap is unacceptable,” said Tedros. “It is not only unacceptable on moral grounds, but also because we will not defeat the virus in a divided world.”

“It is in the interests of every country in this world to exchange vaccines and to contribute in every possible way to ensure the justice of the vaccines,” said the WHO chief. “Vaccine equity is not a charity. Vaccine equity is in everyone’s interest.”

The demand for the revocation of patent protection proposed by India and South Africa last October is facing an uphill battle at the WTO, which takes decisions by consensus among its 164 member states.

Germany, Europe’s largest economy, has spoken out against the attempt to temporarily forego vaccination patents. BioNTech, which developed a Covid vaccine in collaboration with Pfizer, is based in Germany.

“The US proposal to lift patent protection for Covid-19 vaccines has a significant impact on vaccine production as a whole,” said a spokesman for the federal government on Thursday. “The limiting factor in vaccine production is the production capacity and high quality standards, not the patents.”

After the US reversal, the governments of Canada, Italy, Japan and Great Britain did not take any clear public positions for or against the renunciation of the protection of intellectual property. French President Emmanuel Macron supported the US position.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who heads the executive body of the European Union, did not accept the waiver plan and declared in a speech that she was “ready to discuss proposals for effective and pragmatic management of the crisis”.

Russia, which developed the Sputnik vaccine, has expressed support for the move and China is open to further discussion. The WHO announced on Friday that it has approved the emergency vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm.

According to The Associated Press, which quoted a Geneva-based trade official, around 80 WTO countries, mostly developing countries, have expressed support for the proposal.

“It’s also important to remember that abandoning intellectual property must go hand-in-hand with a transfer of technology and expertise for these elusive vaccines,” said Tedros.

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World News

India’s worsening Covid disaster may spiral into an issue for the world

India’s worsening Covid crisis could spiral into a problem for the world

A woman wearing a mask against Covid-19 as a precaution stands in a crowded area near India Gate in New Delhi on March 19, 2021 as coronavirus cases continue to rise across India.

Money sharma | AFP | Getty Images

India’s Covid-19 cases soared to daily record highs in April, and experts warn that the country’s deepening health crisis could undo efforts to end the global pandemic.

The South Asian country, which is home to around 1.4 billion people, or 18% of the world’s population, was responsible for 46% of new Covid cases worldwide last week, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday. One in four deaths in the past week came from India, the UN health department said.

India has reported more than 300,000 new cases daily for the past two weeks, overtaking Brazil in April to become the second worst infected country in the world. According to the Ministry of Health, the cumulative coronavirus infections in India reached around 20.67 million on Wednesday with more than 226,000 deaths. However, several studies of India’s data found that cases were likely severely underreported.

There are already Signs that India’s outbreak is spreading to other countries. Neighbors Nepal and Sri Lanka have also reported spikes in infections, while other regional economies such as Hong Kong and Singapore have imported Covid cases from India.

So the coronavirus crisis in India could turn into a bigger global problem.

Possible new Covid variants

Prolonged large outbreaks in any country could increase the possibility of new variants of Covid-19, health experts warned. Some of the variants could elude immune responses triggered by vaccines and previous infections.

“Here’s the bottom line: we know there are variations in major outbreaks. And so far our vaccines are holding up, we’re seeing a few breakthrough infections, but not a lot,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of Brown University School of Public Health, told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith”.

“But India is a big country, and of course if there are big outbreaks there we will all be concerned about other variants that are bad for Indians and of course spread around the world,” he added.

India first discovered variant B.1.617 in October last year – also known as the “double mutant”. The variant has now been reported in at least 17 countries, including the US, UK and Singapore.

The WHO has classified the B.1.617 as an interesting variant, suggesting that the mutated strain may be more contagious, deadly, and more resistant to current vaccines and treatments. The organization said more study is needed to understand the meaning of the variant.

Global vaccine supply at risk

India is a major vaccine maker, but the domestic health crisis has prompted authorities to stop exporting Covid-19 vaccines as the country prioritizes its domestic needs.

The Serum Institute of India (SII) – the country’s main producer – has the right to manufacture the Covid vaccine jointly developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. Part of the production is planned for Covax, the global initiative to supply poor countries with Covid vaccines.

Developing countries are lagging behind advanced countries in securing vaccine supplies in what the WHO has called a “shocking imbalance” in distribution.

Delaying vaccine exports through India could therefore leave lower-income countries vulnerable to new coronavirus outbreaks.

Threat to the global economy

India is the sixth largest economy in the world and is a major contributor to global growth.

Some economists have downgraded their growth forecasts for India. However, they remained optimistic about the outlook for the economy for the year as the restrictions to curb the spread of the virus were more targeted compared to the strict nationwide lockdown last year.

The International Monetary Fund expected the Indian economy to grow 12.5% ​​in the fiscal year ended March 2022 last month, after shrinking 8% in the previous fiscal year.

However, the renewed outbreak in India has resulted in several countries tightening travel restrictions – and that’s bad news for airlines, airports and other companies that depend on the travel industry, said Uma Kambhampati, an economics professor at the University of Reading in the USA United Kingdom

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has warned that India’s health crisis could weigh on the U.S. economy, Reuters reported. According to the report, many U.S. companies are hiring millions of Indian workers to perform their back office operations.

“With all these problems and the spreading humanitarian crisis, it has become imperative for the world to act quickly to help India, whether or not such aid is requested,” said Kambhampati in a report published on The Conversation has been published. Profit website with comments from academics and researchers.

Correction: This story has been updated to accurately reflect that the World Health Organization said India caused 46% of the new Covid cases worldwide over the past week. Due to an editing bug, an earlier version of the story misrepresented the timeframe.

Categories
Health

This New Covid Vaccine May Carry Hope to the Unvaccinated World

This New Covid Vaccine Could Bring Hope to the Unvaccinated World

Anfang 2020 versuchten Dutzende wissenschaftlicher Teams, einen Impfstoff gegen Covid-19 herzustellen. Einige entschieden sich für bewährte Techniken wie die Herstellung von Impfstoffen aus abgetöteten Viren. Eine Handvoll Unternehmen setzen jedoch auf eine riskantere Methode, bei der noch nie ein zugelassener Impfstoff hergestellt wurde: den Einsatz eines genetischen Moleküls namens RNA.

Die Wette hat sich ausgezahlt. Die ersten beiden Impfstoffe, die aus klinischen Studien von Pfizer-BioNTech und Moderna erfolgreich hervorgegangen sind, bestanden beide aus RNA. Es stellte sich heraus, dass beide Wirksamkeitsraten so gut waren, wie ein Impfstoff nur sein konnte.

In den folgenden Monaten haben diese beiden RNA-Impfstoffe zig Millionen Menschen in rund 90 Ländern geschützt. Aber viele Teile der Welt, einschließlich derer mit steigenden Todesopfern, hatten kaum Zugang zu ihnen, auch weil sie in einem Tiefkühlschrank gehalten werden müssen.

Jetzt kann ein dritter RNA-Impfstoff dazu beitragen, diesen globalen Bedarf zu decken. Ein kleines deutsches Unternehmen namens CureVac steht kurz vor der Bekanntgabe der Ergebnisse seiner späten klinischen Studie. Bereits nächste Woche kann die Welt erfahren, ob der Impfstoff sicher und wirksam ist.

Das Produkt von CureVac gehört zu dem, was viele Wissenschaftler als zweite Welle von Covid-19-Impfstoffen bezeichnen, die die weltweite Nachfrage insgesamt senken könnten. Novavax, ein in Maryland ansässiges Unternehmen, dessen Impfstoff Coronavirus-Proteine ​​verwendet, wird voraussichtlich in den nächsten Wochen eine US-Zulassung beantragen. In Indien testet das Pharmaunternehmen Biological E einen weiteren Impfstoff auf Proteinbasis, der von Forschern in Texas entwickelt wurde. In Brasilien, Mexiko, Thailand und Vietnam starten Forscher Versuche für einen Covid-19-Schuss, der in Hühnereiern in Massenproduktion hergestellt werden kann.

Impfstoffexperten sind besonders gespannt auf die Ergebnisse von CureVac, da die Impfung einen wichtigen Vorteil gegenüber den anderen RNA-Impfstoffen von Moderna und Pfizer-BioNTech hat. Während diese beiden Impfstoffe in einer Tiefkühltruhe aufbewahrt werden müssen, bleibt der Impfstoff von CureVac im Kühlschrank stabil – was bedeutet, dass er die neu entdeckte Kraft von RNA-Impfstoffen leichter an schwer betroffene Teile der Welt liefern kann.

“Es ist weitgehend unter dem Radar verschwunden”, sagte Jacob Kirkegaard, Senior Fellow am Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC. Jetzt fügte er hinzu: “Sie sehen ziemlich gut positioniert aus, um den globalen Markt aufzuräumen.”

Für den Mitbegründer von CureVac, den Biologen Ingmar Hoerr, ist die Covid-19-Impfstoffstudie des Unternehmens der Höhepunkt einer Arbeit von einem Vierteljahrhundert mit RNA, einem Molekül, das dazu beiträgt, DNA in Proteine ​​umzuwandeln, die die Arbeit unserer Zellen erledigen. Als Doktorand an der Universität Tübingen in den 1990er Jahren injizierte Dr. Hoerr Mäusen RNA und stellte fest, dass die Tiere das von den Molekülen kodierte Protein herstellen konnten. Er war überrascht festzustellen, dass das Immunsystem der Mäuse Antikörper gegen die neuen Proteine ​​bildete.

Hier, dachte Dr. Hoerr, könnte dies die Grundlage für eine neue Art von Impfstoff sein. “Ich dachte, Wow, wenn das beim Menschen so funktioniert, dann haben wir eine völlig neue pharmazeutische Möglichkeit”, sagte er.

Zu dieser Zeit betrachteten nur wenige Wissenschaftler auf der Welt einen RNA-Impfstoff als ernsthafte Möglichkeit. Aber Befürworter dachten, es könnte die Medizin verändern. Theoretisch könnte man ein RNA-Molekül herstellen, um Menschen gegen jedes Virus zu immunisieren. Sie könnten sogar in der Lage sein, einen RNA-Impfstoff zur Heilung von Krebs zu entwickeln, wenn Sie ein RNA-Molekül herstellen könnten, das ein Tumorprotein codiert.

Im Jahr 2001 war Dr. Hoerr Mitbegründer von CureVac, um der Idee nachzujagen. In den ersten Jahren kämpfte das Unternehmen jedoch ums Überleben. Um das Licht an zu halten, wurden Aufträge von anderen Labors für maßgeschneiderte RNA-Moleküle entgegengenommen. Nebenbei bastelten die Wissenschaftler von CureVac an ihren eigenen Entwürfen für RNA-Impfstoffe.

Im Laufe der Zeit fanden sie subtile Verbesserungen an RNA-Impfstoffmolekülen, die dazu führten, dass Zellen mehr Proteine ​​produzierten. Je wirksamer die RNA ist, desto niedriger ist die Dosis, die sie für Impfstoffe benötigt.

Die Forscher von CureVac fanden auch heraus, wie die RNA-Moleküle in Fettblasen eingebracht werden können, um sie auf ihrem Weg zu den Zellen vor Zerstörung zu schützen. Und vielleicht am wichtigsten war, dass sie eine Form von RNA verwendeten, die bei relativ warmen Temperaturen stabil bleiben konnte. Anstatt eine Tiefkühltruhe zu benötigen, könnte der Impfstoff von CureVac gekühlt werden.

Mit der Zeit stiegen auch andere Unternehmen in das Geschäft mit RNA-Impfstoffen ein: BioNTech in Deutschland im Jahr 2008, dann Moderna in Boston im Jahr 2011. Ihre Experimente zeigten, dass diese Impfstoffe Tiere vor einer Vielzahl von Viren schützen können. Im Jahr 2013 injizierte CureVac Freiwilligen in der ersten klinischen Studie der Technologie gegen eine Infektionskrankheit einen Tollwut-RNA-Impfstoff.

CureVac und andere RNA-Impfstoffhersteller haben jahrelang daran gearbeitet, ihre Impfstoffe zu perfektionieren. Der erste Versuch von CureVac mit einem Tollwutimpfstoff zeigte, dass er sicher war, aber eine schwache Reaktion des Immunsystems hervorrief. Das Unternehmen hat diesen Impfstoff inzwischen umgerüstet, und die aktualisierte Version hat sich in frühen klinischen Studien als vielversprechend erwiesen. Aber andere Bemühungen scheiterten. Im Jahr 2017 gab CureVac bekannt, dass sein RNA-Impfstoff gegen Prostatakrebs den Patienten keine Vorteile bietet.

Trotz dieser Rückschläge hat sich das Unternehmen einen guten Ruf erworben. “Sie haben die Kriterien für wissenschaftlichen Scharfsinn, Geschwindigkeit, Umfang und Zugang erfüllt”, sagte Nicholas Jackson, Leiter der Impfstoffforschung und -entwicklung bei der Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, einer Stiftung, die die Impfstoffforschung unterstützt. CEPI spendete CureVac 2019 34 Millionen US-Dollar, um die Entwicklung von RNA-Impfstoffen für zukünftige Pandemien zu unterstützen.

Aktualisiert

5. Mai 2021, 15:31 Uhr ET

Als die Coronavirus-Pandemie auftrat, sprangen CureVac, BioNTech und Moderna ein, um RNA-Impfstoffe herzustellen. Aber BioNTech und Moderna haben sich bald durchgesetzt, auch dank tief in die Tasche gesteckter Verbündeter. BioNTech hat sich mit dem Pharmagiganten Pfizer zusammengetan, während Moderna mit den National Institutes of Health zusammenarbeitete und im Rahmen der Operation Warp Speed ​​eine Milliarde Dollar von der US-Regierung erhielt.

CureVac blieb zurück. CEPI stellte dem Unternehmen 15 Millionen US-Dollar zur Verfügung, aber CureVac würde weit mehr benötigen. “Wenn Sie dies tun, brauchen Sie eine beträchtliche Menge Geld”, sagte Franz-Werner Haas, der Geschäftsführer von CureVac, in einem Interview. “Und die beträchtliche Menge an Bargeld war nicht da.”

Im März 2020 berichteten deutsche Zeitungen, dass Präsident Donald J. Trump CureVac 1 Milliarde US-Dollar angeboten hatte, um seine Aktivitäten in die USA zu verlagern. CureVac lehnte die Berichte ab, aber der Geschäftsführer ging plötzlich, um von Dr. Haas ersetzt zu werden.

Die Forscher von CureVac haben ihre begrenzten Ressourcen weiterentwickelt und ein RNA-Molekül entwickelt, das für ein Protein kodiert, das sich auf der Oberfläche des Coronavirus befindet und als Spike bezeichnet wird. Experimente an Hamstern zeigten, dass es die Tiere vor dem Virus schützen kann.

Im Juni investierte die Bundesregierung 300 Millionen Euro in das Covid-19-Research von CureVac, weitere Investoren folgten bald. Nach vielversprechenden Daten aus frühen Sicherheitsstudien startete das Unternehmen im Dezember seine letzte sogenannte Phase-3-Studie, in der 40.000 Freiwillige in Europa und Lateinamerika rekrutiert wurden. Das Unternehmen wird einen ersten Blick auf die Daten werfen, wenn 56 Freiwillige Covid-19 entwickeln. Wenn die meisten von ihnen in der Placebo-Gruppe und nur wenige in der geimpften Gruppe sind, ist dies ein Beweis dafür, dass der Impfstoff funktioniert.

Dr. Haas sagte, er rechne damit, diese Daten bis Mitte Mai zu haben. Es gibt keine Möglichkeit, im Voraus zu wissen, wie es CureVac ergeht. Angesichts der Leistung anderer RNA-Impfstoffe und der frühen Ergebnisse von CureVac haben einige Wissenschaftler hohe Erwartungen.

“Ich wäre nur wirklich überrascht, wenn es nicht gut funktionieren würde”, sagte John Moore, Virologe bei Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, der mit CureVac an einem RNA-basierten Impfstoff gegen HIV zusammengearbeitet hat

Dennoch steht der Impfstoff von CureVac vor einer Herausforderung, die Pfizer und Moderna nicht hatten: neue Varianten, die möglicherweise seine Wirksamkeit beeinträchtigen können. Experimente an Mäusen haben gezeigt, dass der Impfstoff gut gegen die B.1.351-Variante wirkt, die erstmals in Südafrika aufgetaucht ist.

Im vergangenen Jahr hat CureVac mit einer Reihe großer Unternehmen zusammengearbeitet, um die Produktion seines Covid-Impfstoffs zu steigern, falls die klinischen Studien gut verlaufen sollten. Das Unternehmen verhandelte außerdem mit der Europäischen Union einen Vertrag über 225 Millionen Dosen sowie die Option, in den folgenden Monaten weitere 180 Millionen Dosen hinzuzufügen.

Jetzt ist jedoch nicht klar, wer den CureVac-Impfstoff erhalten könnte, wenn er nächsten Monat verfügbar sein wird. Im Januar erteilte die Europäische Union einem Impfstoff von AstraZeneca die Notfallgenehmigung und plante, sich für den größten Teil seiner Versorgung auf dieses Unternehmen zu verlassen. Aber AstraZeneca blieb drastisch hinter seinen Lieferversprechen zurück und veranlasste den Block, sich mit einer Klage zu rächen.

Im April hat die Europäische Union dieses Defizit endgültig behoben und mit Pfizer und BioNTech verhandelt, um bis 2023 1,8 Milliarden Dosen ihres Impfstoffs zu erhalten. Aufgrund dieser Vereinbarung haben sich Analysten gefragt, wie viel Nachfrage nach CureVac noch bestehen wird.

“Sie werden das Boot auf den großen Märkten der fortgeschrittenen Wirtschaft vermissen”, sagte Dr. Kirkegaard. “Die USA, Europa und Japan werden mit diesen Moderna- und Pfizer-Impfstoffen weitgehend geimpft.”

Dr. Haas konterte, dass die meisten Dosen des Blocks von Pfizer-BioNTech erst im nächsten Jahr kommen werden. “CureVac sieht sich als wichtiger Akteur bei der Beendigung der Covid-19-Pandemie in Europa und anderswo”, sagte er.

CureVac wird aber auch mit einem weltweiten Mangel an Rohstoffen zu kämpfen haben, die für RNA-Impfstoffe benötigt werden. Das Defizit ist für das Unternehmen besonders akut, da die Importe aus den USA durch das Defence Production Act begrenzt sind. Im Gegensatz zu Pfizer-BioNTech oder Moderna verfügt CureVac über keine US-Einrichtungen.

“Das US Defence Production Act war ein Faktor, der unseren Zugang zu einigen Materialien und Vorräten beeinflusste”, sagte Dr. Haas. “Wir gehen jedoch derzeit nicht davon aus, dass dies unsere Produktionsprognosen für den Rest des Jahres 2021 und darüber hinaus wesentlich beeinflussen wird.”

Ursula von der Leyen, Präsidentin der Europäischen Kommission, sagte, wenn der CureVac-Impfstoff funktionieren würde, wäre er dank zweier Vorteile in der Mischung: Es handelt sich um einen mRNA-Impfstoff, der in Europa hergestellt wurde. Es ist auch möglich, dass einzelne europäische Nationen Nebengeschäfte mit dem Unternehmen abschließen.

Milliarden anderer Menschen in Ländern mit niedrigem und mittlerem Einkommen haben noch keinen Impfstoff erhalten, und Experten sagen, dass CureVac einen Teil ihrer Nachfrage befriedigen könnte. “Wir brauchen weltweit immer noch viel Impfstoff”, sagte Florian Krammer, Virologe an der Icahn School of Medicine am Mount Sinai in New York. “Ich denke, viele Menschen können davon profitieren.”

Die Impfstoffe von Moderna und Pfizer-BioNTech sind in Entwicklungsländern aufgrund der zum Einfrieren dieser Impfstoffe erforderlichen Ausrüstung und Stromversorgung nur schwer zu vertreiben. Der RNA-Impfstoff von CureVac kann bei 41 Grad Fahrenheit mindestens drei Monate lang stabil bleiben und vor der Verwendung 24 Stunden lang bei Raumtemperatur stehen.

“Die Stabilität ist ein echter Vorteil”, sagte Dr. Jackson. CEPI befindet sich “in sehr aktiven Gesprächen” mit CureVac über die Verteilung des Impfstoffs des Unternehmens über Covax, eine Initiative zur Verteilung von Impfstoffen an Länder mit niedrigem und mittlerem Einkommen.

CureVac entwickelt aber auch eine neue Generation von Impfstoffen mit dem Ziel, schließlich auf den Märkten in den USA und anderen reichen Ländern Fuß zu fassen. Da für seine potente RNA nur eine geringe Dosis erforderlich ist, könnte das Unternehmen möglicherweise Impfstoffe für verschiedene Varianten herstellen und diese in einem einzigen Schuss mischen.

Solche Möglichkeiten sind jedoch bedeutungslos, bis CureVac nachweisen kann, dass sein Impfstoff funktioniert. Mary Warrell, eine Impfstoffforscherin an der Universität von Oxford, zögert, vor diesem Meilenstein über das Schicksal des Impfstoffs zu spekulieren.

“Vorhersagen während dieser Pandemie waren selten rentabel”, warnte sie.

Matina Stevis-Gridneff trug zur Berichterstattung bei.

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Mr. Beast, YouTube Star, Desires to Take Over the Enterprise World

Mr. Beast, YouTube Star, Wants to Take Over the Business World

Mr Donaldson declined to be interviewed. A representative of his declined to discuss working conditions in his companies, but commented on the videos with objectionable content: “When Jimmy was a teenager and first starting out, he carelessly used a gay arc more than once. Jimmy knows there is no excuse for homophobic rhetoric. “The representative added that Mr. Donaldson” has grown and matured into someone who doesn’t speak like that “.

Many younger creators said they wanted to emulate Mr. Donaldson’s entrepreneurial path.

“I think Mr. Beast inspires all of Generation Z,” said Josh Richards, 19, a Los Angeles TikTok inventor with nearly 25 million followers. “It gives a lot of kids a new way to teach these little kids how to be an entrepreneur, not just to get a lot of views or get famous.”

Like many Generation Z members, Mr. Donaldson, who grew up in Greenville, NC, started a YouTube channel in 2012 when he was in middle school.

To crack YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, he first went through various genres of video creation. He’s posted videos of himself playing games like Call of Duty, commenting on the YouTube drama, uploading funny video compilations, and responding to videos live on the Internet.

Then, in 2018, he mastered the format that would make him a star: stunt philanthropy. Mr Donaldson filmed himself giving away thousands of dollars in cash to random people, including his Uber driver or people suffering from homelessness, to capture their shock and joy in the process. The money originally came mainly from brand sponsorships.

It turned out to be a perfect viral recipe mixing money, a larger than life personality, and healthy responses. Millions started watching his YouTube videos. Mr. Donaldson soon renamed himself “YouTube’s Greatest Philanthropist”.

The combination was also lucrative. Though Mr Donaldson was giving away ever larger amounts – from $ 100,000 to $ 1 million – he made it all back and more with the advertising that ran alongside the videos. He also sold merchandise such as socks ($ 18), water bottles ($ 27), and t-shirts ($ 28).