Politics questions how to give an immediate response to the population quarrels about the different positions to be taken to restart the economy and looks to the scientific community for definitive solutions, that is, vaccines. Fortunately for us, there is a sixty-four-year-old from Seattle who has decided to directly support this challenge and to make a contribution that could prove to be decisive; responds to the name of Bill Gates, has a precise plan and an estimated wealth of 98 billion dollars.
Usually, it takes years for a vaccine to reach the final stage, that is to be injected freely in people, but with Covid-19 all the schemes have been skipped and numerous projects run in parallel, some of which are very promising. Gates is following them very closely and – interviewed by The Times in the past few hours – has decided to finance, through his foundation, the construction of the plants that must be immediately ready in the production of vaccines in billions of doses, even before being officially approved by the authorities. This will save a lot of time and we will be ready if one or more experiments are successful.
His bet concerns all of us because Gates’ goal is to cover the entire global population, out of his own pocket and without distinction of country, language, religion, colour, gender or political preference. Among these experiments, there is one already underway at the University of Oxford, where ” ChAdOxlnCoV-19 ” serum was injected to the very first volunteers. In total 510 people will undergo this experiment, all between 18 and 55 years old.
The founder of Microsoft is also in contact with the Oxford team and is in dialogue with the pharmaceutical companies for the large volume production of this serum if the premises are confirmed: he himself said that ” if their antibody results are promising as it would seem, then we and others in a consortium will help make mass production happen. ”
It will take at least three months to have certain answers; after the first phase in which the possible vaccines will be injected onto humans, there will be a more complete picture of which will be the best. Gates knows that maybe four or five will be the ones for which the production plants will have to be built, but it doesn’t matter if in the end, it will be only one or two that will actually be used on the population. With billions of doses ready it will be only a matter of logistics, and at that point, the whole process of several months will be shortened.
Mr Gates also cares very much that the poorest countries have equal opportunities, for this reason, he wants to play a leading role and coordinate this very important phase where, already now, selfishness and nationalism are prevailing; the wealthier nations cannot be allowed to manage the stocks of upcoming vaccines and those in the developing world are queued. So he hopes to raise at least 7.5 billion euros next month, the occasion will be the Coronavirus Global Response Summit (which will take place online) in which governments, research, development, production and distribution organizations will take part.
Whenever something bad happens, it is worse for developing countries than for richer ones. . . Although the numbers are currently rather small in the poorest countries, unless there is some factor that we are not aware of, it is likely that the vast majority of suffering and deaths will occur in particular in the most at risk urban areas. Even in developed countries, the poorest suffer disproportionately and tragically. The pandemic is causing a fatal blow against the demand for greater equity in the world – Gates told The Times.
