Milan. It is difficult to believe, today, here in Europe, in Italy and in Lombardy that the United States will celebrate Independence Day on July 4th, being able to finally be together as herd immunity will be close. As American President Joseph Biden announced on Thursday 11 March. Precisely in the days when the old continent inexorably touched bankruptcy. And when today, attending the European Union summit, Biden extends a hand full of vials to the 27, whether we like it or not, we will all breathe a sigh of relief. It is not the first time, from the trucks full of penicillin that saved Italy after the war to all, absolutely all, the medicines that made it possible to cure the worst killers in our world: when we are sick we have to thank the Americans. Why?
We will not be here to retrace the history of the pharmaceutical industry and the ability of Americans to transform biomedical science into a standardized product that can be spent in the hospital as on Wall Street (even if that is where we must start). We limit ourselves to our contemporary tragedy. Beat Covid. They did it, we didn’t. And, to understand why, we need to keep the threads of three different stories: the funding that goes hand in hand with the results of biomedical research, the ability to form partnerships between government and pharmaceutical companies with a single and shared purpose: to hurry up, political legitimacy to tackle the vaccination campaign militarily, without local manipulations or baroqueism (this aspect also made the success of Great Britain possible).
Covid vaccine: the mistakes we are paying for
by Daniela Minerva
Let’s start with the patents that belong to those who finance the research. For example, the Moderna vaccine patent belongs to the federal government which fully funded it. But the others have also benefited from huge federal funds. Today The New England Journal of Medicine, the Bible of American medicine, writes that as of January 1, 2021, or 10 months after the start of the pandemic, over 4000 drug trials against Covid were underway in the United States, of which 1500 about potential vaccines. A huge amount even by American standards. All fed with a base of 10 billion dollars, since last May. With this shooting power difficult to fail? Sure, but not entirely. Because, on closer inspection, the rapid successes came from companies that had a very strong research structure on vaccines (Pfizer, for example, already had the lung vaccine on the market), from start-ups at the avant-garde on cutting-edge technologies such as that of the RNA. In short, all a know-how that cannot be invented overnight, either you have built it up over the decades or you don’t have it. And to build it you need money.
But even having a know-how and products that then land on the dusty tables of the Ema is not much use. The key to American speed lies in a typical feature of the FDA, their regulatory body: to sit at the table of companies and write the protocols together, in order to have experiments done as the FDA comes in and therefore speed up the registration process. The EMA does not do this by calling into question the disappearance of the tables: sitting down to negotiate with the companies the experiments could seem like a mess. But perhaps the fact that in Europe there are no strong and innovative companies that need to register quickly is weighing more. Or perhaps, once again, baroque and burcracy slow down. Result: delays of weeks that result in a multiplied delay. The companies, waiting for the EMA to clean up the files, run around on other markets. As Wall Street commands.
Finally, the military ability to vaccinate people. That the Americans share with the British; in Europe and especially in Italy it simply does not exist. But, there is not, or at least there was not, not even the clarity to grasp the danger. The EU wanted to save on vaccines. Because, as Sandra Gallina, one of the European negotiators on Covid vaccines, told the New York Times: “Here we are talking about taxpayers’ money”. As if every lockdown day doesn’t talk about taxpayers’ money. Perhaps, here we are, instead, talking about lucidity of evaluation. The bureaucrats in Brussels are so far from reality that they have not realized the danger, they have toyed with negotiating on the price, thus thinking of being smart and pure, while the companies are not pure but much smarter. If Brussels pays little, they sell elsewhere. Knowing full well that the same lack of clarity would have paralyzed, as it later happened, every hard-nosed decision necessary to bring Big Pharma back on the right path.
Covid vaccine: who is to blame for the Pfizer mess
by Daniela Minerva
So, today as always, here we are knocking on the door of the Americans. With the painful soul of Eduardo who in his “Naples milonaria” grabbed the penicillin of the Americans, passed through atrocities and trade. Also this time “Ha da passà ‘a nuttata”. The night of Covid will pass. We hope to remember it.
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