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Like much of what passes for the inter-relationships of aggregations of collectives that for a long time have been battling for territory, control, influence, and authority within the greater community of nations, the effort to develop and distribute a vaccine to protect against the COVID-19 virus has a significant and sometimes complex political dimension.
Vaccines have been transformed, as well, from an object with a specific function, to a symbol with specific significations. This transformation is critical where, as is now the case, the triumph of vaccination has yet to be definitively attained among those actors seeking for their vaccine candidate the role of key contributor to the "conquest" of the pandemic. Yet at the same time, the politics and technologies of of COVID vaccines creates a space where even small and less developed states might compete with the more powerful states which traditional drive both the narrative and technologies of vaccination.
Vaccines serve as a brick in the walls that separate emerging imperial territories. (for a general discussion, see essays at CPE EmpireSeries). This takes the form, for example, of requiring proof of national vaccination to enter a territory even when proof is offered of vaccination offered in the home territory. But it can also serve to strengthen the equally hard walls of legalized cntrol over access through patent, pricing, and administrative (bureaucratic) rationing.
Vaccines also signify the success of a specific political-economic system and its structural capacity to meet and overcome the challenges of pandemic. This occurs not just in Marxist Leninist states (where the focus is on the identity of vaccine with the inevitable triumph of the political leadership of the vanguard); it occurs as well in liberal democratic states (where the focus is on the triumph of the market managed under the regulatory-normative administrative apparatus of the state).
Vaccines also signify the triumph of the language of analytics as the driver of policy, and in the way that policy effectiveness is quantified. For vaccines, the primary quantifiable driver are efficiency rates. Virtually all debate starts and ends with this measure; contestations over vaccines revolve around the metrics of efficiency; and modification of vaccines are driven by effectiveness in the face of arising challenges. Other quantifiable measures are embedded in less obvious ways: these may include measures of delivery; measures of safe storage and distribution; and the quantification fo resources used and material value received in the process of vaccine development and delivery. Indeed, the quantification of vaccine effectiveness may sometimes align (and mirror) the political objectives of those states and enterprises whose resources and prestige are invested in the vaccine project. Little discussion, of course occurs below the surface: the robustness of measurement, the forms of measurement, and the reliability of analytics. Yet this quantification language has consequential effect--from debates about mandatory vaccination, to the value of distribution and availability of vaccine, to the market power of vaccine competitors.
Vaccines can in addition serve to equalize power--especially where states can sacrifice enough resources to effectively compete in a capacity privileging environment. Technology and educational capacity are two areas where larger and richer states may hold sometimes only marginal advantage to smaller and less resource rich states. Cuba provides a case in point. At some sacrifice, it has devoted national resources to specific education and tech based development, gambling that such investment would allow them to compete with the larger powers. That competition, then, would combine tech progress with political objectives and narrative enhancing tools that could challenge the driving influence of vaccine policy meaning making deployed by the traditionally leading states.
Cuba said on Thursday its two-shot Soberana 2 vaccine, delivered with a booster called Soberana Plus, had proven 91.2% effective in late stage clinical trials against the coronavirus, following similar news about its Abdala vaccine. . . While the Cuban efficacy claims have not been peer reviewed, the results, if accurate, would catapult the U.S.-boycotted Caribbean island nation into the select group of the United States, Germany and Russia that produce vaccines with efficacy of more than 90% - Novavax, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sputnik V. ("Cuba says second COVID-19 vaccine Soberana 2 boasts 91.2% efficacy")
The politics of the vaccine are unavoidable, even as its value to individual populations otherwise locked out of vaccine availability are potentially positive. In June 2021, Marc Frank and reported for Reuters that:
The Communist-run country has opted not to import foreign vaccines but to rely on its own. Some experts said it was a risky bet but it appears to have paid off, putting Cuba in position to burnish its scientific reputation, generate much-needed hard currency through exports and strengthen the vaccination drive worldwide. Several countries from Argentina and Jamaica to Mexico, Vietnam and Venezuela have expressed an interest in buying Cuba’s vaccines. Iran started producing Soberana 2 earlier this year as part of late-phase clinical trials. (Cuba says Abdala vaccine 92.28% effective against coronavirus)
At the same time, the politics of vaccine development suggetss an interactive process of technology, political objectives, and transnational influence to undermine the hegemony of markets based deveopment and allocation rules (as well as its pricing and rationing mechanisms).
The Cuban government has bet everything on its own vaccine, since it has not acquired doses in the international market nor is it part of the 33 Latin American countries that have joined the Covax Mechanism, created under the auspices of the World Health Organization to favor equitable access to immunization for low- and middle-income nations. (Oncuba) (Cuba sends Iran 100,000 doses of the Soberana 02 vaccine candidate)
Reporting by Marc Frank for Reuters (as posted to Yahoo News 8 July 2021) with excellent background on the situation in Cuba follows:
Cuba says second COVID-19 vaccine Soberana 2 boasts 91.2% efficacy
(Adds details and background)
By Marc Frank
HAVANA, July 8 (Reuters) - Cuba said on Thursday its two-shot Soberana 2 vaccine, delivered with a booster called Soberana Plus, had proven 91.2% effective in late stage clinical trials against the coronavirus, following similar news about its Abdala vaccine.
The announcement came from state-run biopharmaceutical corporation BioCubaFarma, which oversees the Finlay Institute, the maker of Soberana 2, and the Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, the producer of Abdala. Last month, Abdala was found to have a 92.28% efficacy.
While the Cuban efficacy claims have not been peer reviewed, the results, if accurate, would catapult the U.S.-boycotted Caribbean island nation into the select group of the United States, Germany and Russia that produce vaccines with efficacy of more than 90% - Novavax, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sputnik V.
Cuba’s biotech sector has a long history of vaccine development, producing 80% of vaccines used in the country and exporting some of them.
Communist-run Cuba is the first country in Latin America and the Caribbean to successfully develop a coronavirus vaccine.
The import-dependent island is in the throes of an economic crisis with activity falling 10.9% last year and 2% the first half of 2021 as the pandemic kept the tourism industry shuttered and Trump-era sanctions on top of the decades old trade embargo hammered finance and trade.
Cuba says it has a total of five candidate vaccines in the pipeline, with Abdala and Soberana 2 expected to be quickly authorized for emergency use by local regulators and sent up for approval to the World Health Organization.
The local authorizations would open the way for other countries to purchase the vaccines or produce them. Mexico, Argentina and Vietnam have expressed interest in production and Iran says it is producing Soberana 2 after trials in that country.
Both vaccines are “low” tech, meaning they use a traditional approach deploying a part of the virus’s spike protein which helps the virus enter and infect cells, to build up the immune system.
These vaccines are generally less expensive to develop and easier to store and transport as they do not require extremely low temperatures.
The three shot Abdala, named after a poem by apostle Jose Marti, is given in two-week intervals, while Soberana 2, translated as sovereign in English, is administered in four-week intervals.
Cuba is facing its worst COVID-19 outbreak since the start of the pandemic following the arrival of more contagious variants, setting new records for daily coronavirus cases at over 3,500 this week.
Authorities have already started administering the up-to-now experimental vaccines en masse as part of "intervention studies" they hope will slow the spread of the virus.
About 1.5 million of the country's 11.2 million residents have been fully vaccinated to date.
Cuba reported a total of 218,376 COVID-19 cases and 1,431 deaths through Wednesday. (Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
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