I want to write a blog summarizing what I have learned from the media on virus origin, vaccine marketing and of course, the vaccine politics.
The Global Divide in Vaccine Distribution
Start from a recent review article from the Nature magazine. It is clear from the review that the world has been divided into two in terms of vaccine availability and vaccine types. None of the developed “global north” countries bothered to use the Chinese vaccines, but the majority of the less developed “global south” have gone to China for help. With the recent WHO approval of one Chinese vaccine, we can expect the spread of Chinese vaccine to be at a higher pace in the south.
The Significance of The Biden Pledge
It’s against this background that we see a great move for the Biden administration to buy 500 million doses and distribute them globally! This is the very first step to show that “The America is back!” A move that is worthy of Nobel Prize.
First of all, these are all Pfizer, the best vaccines with the latest mRNA technology. This means people in the global south do not have to be stuck with China’s less efficient, older technology vaccines. Secondly, I am not sure if this is the first time after the Marshall Plan that the taxpayers’ funds are used for peaceful purposes, but it’s safe to say that we have seen more military uses before, making this one unique and great. Thirdly, the US is giving the vaccines to COVAX, an international coordination platform based on needs rather than the US picking and choosing its preferred partner countries.
Finally, it is likely that the US government is spending the money to make a difference from China, which has been selling its vaccines in the global south like crazy (see more below). This is what I call “peaceful competition” between the two and that’s beautiful! The more competitive moves from either the US or China, the better for the world!
We don’t have to be judgmental, like calling China’s or US’s move “vaccine diplomacy” in a negative tone. It is wrong because it only looks at the supply side, as if demand did not exist. Simply put, the world needs more vaccine diplomacy these days, which is definitely better than no vaccine at all.
Two Contributions From China
To give credit where it is due and to put politics aside, even if China’s Wuhan lab accidentally leaked the virus — a low possibility as I will show later — Beijing got two things right: One, through draconian — but effective — lockdown measures it has successfully controlled domestic spread of the virus in a relatively short time, which indirectly helped slow down the spread in the world. It is unlikely for the west to copy and paste that strategy, but still we can appreciate or at least understand it, at least when we did not know if any vaccine would be possible, “lockdowns = slowdowns” for the virus spread. Beijing contributed in its own way to the world when the Trump administration were still arguing that covid-19 is like common cold.
Secondly, China also moved very fast in domestic vaccination. As of June 5, China had administrated roughly 763 million doses. It also made its contribution in developing and distributing vaccines that fit better in the developing south, due to its less demanding storage temperatures like the Pfizer & Moderna products. Again, the western world can laugh at the relatively lower efficacy, with a less advanced technologies compared with mRNA vaccines, but ever since the vaccines become available, fighting the pandemic has turned into a race on time. Time is essential and the global South cannot afford to wait for the more advanced vaccines to arrive — after satisfying the developed countries first. China’s vaccines provided and will continue to provide a life-saving alternative to the people who otherwise would be exposed to life-threatening risks.
A derived contribution is that by getting vaccines to people’s arms in time, it reduces the chance for the virus to produce variations through infecting people. In that sense, every vaccination does not only help one particular human but indirectly many more who may be infected by variation of virus.
The Real Problems With China
As much as Beijing wants to beat the US in all technological fronts, the US won in innovation again this time. The efficacy of Chinese vaccine is lower to significantly lower than Pfizer & Moderna.
According to the Nature article, Chinese vaccine’s “(a)pproval was based on late-stage trial data, including a UAE study involving 31,000 participants. These showed the vaccine was 86% effective at preventing COVID-19 after 2 shots, with no deaths among immunized individuals. The WHO listed the vaccine on 7 May and reported an efficacy of 79%.” These numbers are much lower than the 95% effectiveness of Pfizer and 94.1% for Moderna.
Beijing is also less transparent in almost everything, and this is bad not just for itself but also for the entire world. The virus origin search has been greatly slowed down by this low transparency.
There is a deeper reason for low transparency: low curiosity. In the mind of Chinese leaders, searching for virus origin is seen by China as a pure political move. Although some are politically motivated, it is wrong to think everyone in that way. It is best for Beijing to think that finding virus origin, especially the lab-leak possibility, is for China’s own good to draw lessons and to prevent similar incidence from happening — whether this time it was or was not caused by lab leak.
China has been wanting to conduct original, pioneering and new to the world research just like the US — if not better than it. Xi Jinping has made more rallying calls for scientific and technologies than perhaps any other national leaders combined. Yet he calls for tackling “practical problems,” those that China has difficulties with as it lagged behind the US and western world. Xi also called for Chinese scientists to focus on research, not to be distracted by bureaucratic activities.
But original research is first and foremost inspired by scientific curiosity. Low curiosity gets in the way for genuine scientific progresses because for one to follow others by the time efforts have brought success, it requires no curiosity. Yet original research must be driven by internal curiosity, given the high uncertainty involved.
Taiwan Should Have Put Politics Behind Human Lives
According to this article in Forbes, Taiwan had an excellent track record at first, but lately showed vulnerability in dealing with the pandemic. “China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, an arm of the mainland Chinese government, said that it is willing to provide Taiwan with vaccines as a means to help solve its current COVID-19 crisis.”
However, “Taiwan’s health minister Chen Shih-Chung told reporters earlier this year that Chinese vaccines are ‘not an option’ for Taiwan.”
I am disappointed by the rejection. “At this moment, lives are at stake, and we respectfully tell the Tsai government: the real enemy is the virus, not the mainland,” as the opposition party’s leader said in a statement.
“Steve Tsang, the director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, says that Tsai will almost certainly reject Beijing’s offer given the potential political ramifications.”
“‘If Tsai accepts the vaccine, it shows the superiority of the [Chinese Communist Party] system and makes it easier to persuade the Taiwanese that accepting unification is good for all,’ he says.”
But saving lives should be the priority, not politics.
“Taiwan’s government is insisting that Beijing has thwarted Taiwan’s efforts to procure vaccines rather than helped.” According to the Forbes article, which did not offer much detail why Taiwan made the accusation. I learned the real story by reading a Chinese article. It turned out that Taiwan did not want anything to do with the mainland, certainly not vaccines produced in the mainland, but not even the vaccine distributor from the mainland.
The following story is from the Forbes article: “China’s Fosun Pharma, a mainland pharmaceutical company, controls distribution rights to the BioNTech-Pfizer mRNA vaccine in mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.” But the Forbes article did not explain why Fosan gained that distributional right.
I learned from this article in Chinese the crucial detail that Fosun had a high risk investment in the BioNTech, the Germany company that invented the vaccine that is produced by Pfizer. As a part of the return to the investment, Taiwan cannot directly negotiate with BioNTech for vaccines.
The problem is not on the mainland side, as “On Saturday, Fosun Pharma chairman Wu Yifang told Chinese media outlet Xinhua that Fosun is willing to provide Taiwan with doses from BioNTech. Wu explained that Fosun has been promoting the BioNTech doses in Taiwan since last year.”
It is highly likely that Taiwan contacted BioNTech directly for the vaccines but was rejected — given the exclusive distribution right by Fosun. This is a case not about democracy or not but intellectual or business rights. Taiwan should know that but chose to blame the mainland for its own failure in following the right path in business.
I must admit that Taiwan lost my respect because its government has placed political considerations before human lives — at a time when everyday counts toward controlling or spreading the virus.
How China Sells Its Vaccines In the South
China “has also committed to sharing its vaccines with more than a dozen nations, particularly low-income countries that it has close ties with,” according to this article in Nature.
This article in Chinese gives a good overview how China markets its vaccines in the global south. As always, the capacity of vaccine production in China is second to none in the world. The article says one vaccine manufacturing plant initiated in Wuhan on March 5th and started production May 31 of this year for one billion vaccines per year. Presumably 80% of market needs in the world will be met by China. The other 20% will be produced by US and EU.
With production gets out of way, the next issue is marketing. The same article talked about four keys for China to sell its vaccines, using Peru as an example.
The first key is high prices. Contrary to the expectation, Chinese vaccines are not cheap. One shot costs $37.5, while Pfizer is $19.5, Moderna $15, Russian $9.95, J&J $10 but it only needs one shot, so $5 per shot. Chinese vaccine costs roughly eight times of the J&J. The AZ vaccine produced by Indian can be as low as $2.5 but is far less popular in the global south. Obviously people still believe expensive medicine means better quality, which may or may not be true.
The second key is user conducted vaccine tests. It asks Peru government to organize its own efficacy test, the same holds in Turkey, Brazil and others. This effectively places the risk of testing on the user side, with the benefit that whatever the result, the credibility of the users is on line, not the producers.
The third key is donating doses to cover the medical frontline staff in the countries where Chinese vaccines are to be used. This is a real life test using frontline workers as demonstration. Once they got the shots and offered protection, it becomes a “word of mouth” marketing that sends a strong message to other potential clients. This works even though the western media have criticized China for low transparency and vaccine diplomacy. As always, China essentially stayed silent to the criticisms, perhaps partly because its marketing scheme has been working and western countries are not its target market anyway.
The final step is to keep its vaccines marginally scarce. That is, China did not offer enough number of shots immediately, even though countries had placed orders. Not sure if this is because production capacity or to create an artificial shortage so that people in the country will appreciate the vaccine more. Either way, the article says many corrupted government officials in Peru ended up getting shots ahead of ordinal people, which in turn created more panic and higher demand for vaccines.
In the end, Chinese vaccines are the most successful in selling: More than 260 million shots have been sold to more than 50 countries, far more than Russian and Indian versions. Vaccine diplomacy or not, it is clear that vaccines are serious business for China.
It is interesting to see if China is willing to follow the US in offering the free vaccines to the world with no strings attached!