One year ago this week, Sputnik V became the world’s first officially registered vaccine against the Covid-19 disease. It was a remarkable achievement by the world-renowned Gamaleya institute of epidemiology and microbiology in Moscow.

The development and registration of the Russian-made vaccine took place within eight months of the first officially reported outbreak of the disease in China and within five months of the World Health Organization declaring a global pandemic from the SARS-CoV-2 novel coronavirus and its potentially lethal Covid-19 respiratory symptoms.

Sputnik V’s name is a nod of gratitude to an earlier breakthrough achievement when the Soviet Union became the first nation to launch a satellite into space orbit in 1957.

The rapid pace of developing Sputnik V reflected the international alarm about the threat to human health from the new coronavirus. A year and half on from the declared pandemic, some 4.4 million people around the world have died from infection, and millions of others have been stricken infirm. The global impact on societies and economies has been devastating. It is doubly concerning that the pandemic shows no sign of being brought under control. Infections and deaths across the globe are on the rise again mainly as a result of new and more transmissible variants of the virus mutating.

There are at least 13 other vaccines against Covid-19 being administered around the world. The WHO has approved the use of five: Pfizer/BioNtech, Astrazeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and Sinopharm. The latter is a Chinese-made vaccine, the rest are developed by the U.S. or Europe.

In the European Union, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved four vaccines: Astrazeneca, Moderna, Pfizer/BioNtech and J&J.

The question is: why has the Russian vaccine not yet been approved by these leading organizations? Approval would amplify the global uptake of the Russian vaccine which has already met with widespread appreciation by many nations in spite of the tardy response by certain authorities. The WHO states that authorization of Sputnik V is on the way. While the European regulator says it still has the Russian jab under review – seven months after the Russian authorities formally applied for registration with the EMA.

The delay in officially recommending the Russian vaccine becomes all the more conspicuous when its excellent medical performance is evaluated. Sputnik V has the efficacy of providing 91-97 percent protection against symptomatic Covid-19 cases. This is comparable if not superior to the best performance of Western pharmaceutical counterparts.

In addition, the Russian treatment is entirely safe with no reported harmful side effects on patients’ health. It is also relatively economical to produce, store and transport. That makes the Russian jab a feasible treatment for many poorer nations.

Furthermore, Sputnik V is shown to offer immunization against new variants of the coronavirus.

While the Russian-made inoculation has not yet been approved by the WHO, the European Union, or the Food and Drug Administration in the United States, nevertheless it has been embraced by many nations as providing effective protection against the disease.

To date, some 69 nations or territories have given approval for administering Sputnik V. Russia has also negotiated bilateral agreements for the local production of the vaccine in dozens of countries.

Most tellingly, several European countries (EU and non-EU) are administering Sputnik V regardless of the bloc’s regulatory authority’s lack of endorsement.

There can be only one conclusion from this anomalous situation. That is, the international fight against the pandemic has been hampered by the politicization of vaccines by Western nations.

The ideological antagonism of the United States and its NATO allies against Russia and China – an odious Cold War mindset – is a barrier to cooperation at a global level to defeat the pandemic. How damnable is that mentality whereby political objectives are put above human health and indeed the lives of millions of people?

Respected U.S. epidemiologist Larry Brilliant, who helped UN efforts to eradicate smallpox several years ago, this week said that the only solution for the Covid-19 pandemic is global vaccination. That means all immunological tools must be deployed in a cooperative, international effort. In theory, there is the existing United Nations’ COVAX facility, but the global reach remains abjectly low – only about 16 percent of the world’s population is protected so far. In many low-income countries, only about 1.2 percent of the population has received immunization.

In this situation, no nation is safe from the pandemic even for those nations with high rates of administered vaccine, such as the United States and Britain. With the Covid-19 virus rampant in most of the world’s population, the danger of new variants evolving will be a continual threat. What happens if existing vaccines become ineffective?

A major factor in impeding a global program of vaccination is the Russophobia (and Sinophobia) of Western governments. This ideological prejudice is reprehensible, if not criminal. The fate of millions of lives is hanging in the balance because of offensive political prejudice.

Deplorably, the political establishments of some Western states have not moved on from the depths of the Cold War. When the Sputnik satellite was launched successfully 64 years ago that undoubted scientific achievement was smeared by Western propaganda and twisted into a sinister anti-Soviet narrative. Not much has changed judging by the irrational, begrudging reaction to the Sputnik V vaccine even when humanity’s survival is at stake. That’s a political virus that poses an existential danger to the world.

By MK BHADRAKUMAR

A full week after External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar’s extended four-day visit to the United States, India is still in the dark as to the Biden administration’s generosity to spare some of America’s surplus stockpiles of Covid-19 vaccines.

We leap out of the famous Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot – of two tramps who waited by the roadside for Godot to come and set life right, but only to realize as dusk falls that He wasn’t coming after all. The tramps leave in disappointment as the curtain comes down on the stage.

Jaishankar probably tied up the scheduling of the next Quad summit. But the Serum Institute of India (SII) has been quick to draw conclusions. It has sought the approval of the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to tackle the vaccine crisis by taking up mass production of the Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V in India.

The SII, of course, has a massive production base for making vaccines and is already selling Covishield based on the so-called AstraZeneca vaccine (“Oxford Vaccine”), which is now the mainstay of immunization for Indians.

This comes amid reports that Britain is once again asking AstraZeneca to meet new emergencies. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a tough leader and once he sets his eye on something, he ruthlessly pursues it even if it draws the blood of Europeans or Indians.

He bluntly admitted during a Zoom meeting with Conservative members of Parliament in March, “the reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.”

The US and UK will never agree on a waiver of intellectual property (IP) rights. Whoever put this idea into the Indian calculus played tricks with the naivete of the country’s leadership.

Russia could be the key

Taking into account President Joe Biden’s timidity and rapacity and Johnson’s self-centered attitude, it is good that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is showing signs of taking India’s vaccine strategy out of the Anglo-American basket and turning to Russia.

But all this didn’t have to happen in this haphazard way. After all, India is well aware of the great Soviet legacy in vaccine research and development. An alert government in New Delhi should have begun government-to-government discussions with Moscow the moment it came to know that the Russians were developing a vaccine. That is to say, almost a year’s time has been lost.

All the pin-pricking today by Indian states that the central government should procure the vaccine from abroad, that it should be freely supplied, blah, blah, would have been avoidable. The Russians do not have a problem dealing directly with the Indian end-user, either.

Going one step further, New Delhi could have encouraged the state governments to act boldly to set up their own manufacturing base for Sputnik V.

New Delhi could have even promoted such initiatives by providing funds. Indeed, this is not a matter of self-sufficiency alone. India also could have realized its dream to be the “world’s pharmacy.” But all this needed commitment and vision both at the central and state levels.

On the contrary, India’s elite, besotted with America and Britain, instead had their eyes cast on the vaccines developed in those two countries. That is, despite the gory past of the Western pharmaceutical companies as bloodsuckers and predators in their propensity to make fortunes out of human disease, the Indian government put all its eggs in the Anglo-American basket.

This mishap is emblematic of the Indian elite’s pro-Western mindset.

Come to think of it, even if Biden shares with India some of his extra vaccines, what does it add up to? Some 20 million doses? Jaishankar made this trans-Atlantic journey to arrange 10 million doses of vaccine for his country of 1.4 billion.

A partnership?

India could have taken to mass production of Sputnik V at least six months ago when the vaccine’s financial backers and developers announced in Moscow that they were keen to win global market share and touted the international price for Sputnik V as competitive.

Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a sovereign wealth fund, disclosed at a November briefing that Russia (which has a limited production base) was keen to collaborate with foreign partners; that more than 50 countries had made requests for more than 1.2 billion doses; and, importantly, that the supplies for the global market would be produced by foreign partners.

He mentioned India among potential partners.

Some enterprising Indian companies indeed made a beeline to Moscow and negotiated collaboration agreements. Production of Sputnik V may soon start, which is a good thing. But precious time has been lost even as India is racing to prepare for the third wave of the Covid-19 epidemic, which is already at the gates.

Indeed, since Sputnik V was developed by the renowned state institution Gamaleya National Center and marketed by the RDIF (which comes directly under the Kremlin’s supervision), this topic should and could have been prioritized by Modi in a call with President Vladimir Putin.

What all this shows is the absence of a well-thought-out holistic strategy. Resources were never the problem; a lack of political will is. The Supreme Court has touched the core issue by demanding to know what the government has done with the 350 billion rupees (US$4.8 billion) earmarked for vaccines in the budget.

In strategic terms, the government is being exceedingly foolish in not having the big picture. The pandemic is not only a matter of public health but also threatens to destroy the Indian economy, with unthinkable consequences for future generations.

The record daily infection cases and fatalities and lockdowns combine with an exasperatingly slow vaccination drive to disrupt industrial supply chains and undermine the country’s goal of becoming a manufacturing power.

Until the beginning of this year, economists and international financial institutions still generally believed that India would become one of the fastest-growing economies in the post-pandemic era. But these projections are now up in the air.

asiatimes.com

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic remains a news item. Testimony given during a recent senate inquiry by former Health Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta exposes how Bolsonaro was aware of risking people’s lives to the point of death with his approach that ridiculed science. “I warned him systematically, with projections even,” Mandetta stated, as he explained that the fatality statistics prediction presented to Bolsonaro was close to the death toll in Brazil last year.

As the vaccine race started, Brazil engaged diplomatically with Russia, seeking to import the Sputnik V vaccine, which was authorised for use in Russia since August 2020. In April, Bolsonaro discussed purchasing the vaccine, with Russia acknowledging Brazil’s approach in a statement by the Kremlin. The statement noted Brazil’s approach towards Russia and the commitment by both countries to work towards a common goal in line with their strategic partnership. Registering the Sputnik V vaccine in Brazil was discussed, along with military, science and technological cooperation.

The Sputnik V vaccine is being used in 62 countries across the world, mostly sought by developing countries as these have been politically disadvantaged due to a lower threshold of diplomatic engagement. It is still pending official recognition by the World Health Organisation and the European Medicines Agency, yet a study by the leading health journal The Lancet, states that the Sputnik V vaccine has an efficacy rate of 91.6% after taking the first dose, in terms of preventing Covid19.

However, Brazil’s national health service agency, Anvisa, rejected the use of Sputnik V, citing a “lack of consistent and reliable data”, questions over vaccine production as well as Russia’s refusal, according to Anvisa, to allow Brazilian regulators to visit the vaccine production sites. Russia rejected the claims and described the decision as political, citing U.S. interference back in 2020 which advised Brazil to reject the Russian vaccine.

Meanwhile, Brazil has also reached deals with Israel, which Bolsonaro stated has “the real solution to treating COVID,” even though at the time of the announcement the anti-viral treatment had only been tested upon 35 people and not even reviewed in medical journals.

Adding to Brazil’s shambles is the lack of vaccines in the country, contrary to government propaganda which declared having secured 560 million doses. Having rejected Sputnik V, Brazil has now turned to the options used in the U.S. and the EU, notably AstraZeneca and Oxford, with Bolsonaro seeking deals to acquire surplus doses to make up for the country’s current shortages.

“We need to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines and in line with this we would like to call on those countries with extra doses to share them with Brazil as soon as possible so we can also broaden our vaccination campaign and contain the pandemic at this critical time, and avoid the proliferation of new variants,” Brazil’s Health Minister Marcelo Queiroga said during a WHO briefing.

Russia has been accused of vaccine diplomacy, a term which has not been used by the West in the case of Israel, for example, which reached an exclusive deal with Pfizer for unlimited vaccine supplies in return for sharing patient data with the company. The deal has enabled Israel to use its surplus of Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines to bolster diplomatic support in the international arena.

The Biden Administration is also in a position to enter the vaccine diplomacy contest, in a move that is designated to create obstacles for Russia and China, both of which have supplied developing countries with vaccines while world powers scrambled over acquiring doses to the detriment of other countries in the developing world.

Vaccine diplomacy is indeed a reality, and one that is severely mismanaged to the benefit of countries that boast allegiances. Russia has supplied vaccines to countries which the West would have turned a blind eye to. Additionally, Russia’s vaccine rollout was met with derision, while the complications arising from AstraZeneca, particularly, have not been subjected to the same political scrutiny. A game of double standards has emerged, in which Brazil might find itself floundering, as it might have well recognised given its recent diplomatic efforts at restoring relations and collaboration over vaccines procurement with Russia again.

In an era when sensible folk believe that nations should cooperate in doing everything possible to counter the hideous plague that has beset us, there remain many dedicated zealots in Western countries who believe that confrontation is more important than efforts to save lives. These activists detest Russia and China and seek to destroy their governments’ efforts to prosper economically while securing their borders.

Although China represents the greater commercial threat to the United States, the establishment in Washington, aided by the United Kingdom, its suitably slavish adherent under the stumbling administration of Boris Johnson, has recently intensified its focus on Russia, whose leader it wishes to overthrow. The core reasons for this energetic campaign are economic rather than ideological, and closely tied to the increasing U.S. production of expensive weaponry with which to combat the supposed threat from the East.

The happy days of the Cold War are with us once again.

The propaganda drive against the Moscow government is gathering pace, and the Western mainstream media are suitably cooperative with the plethora of “official sources” who feed them anti-Russia bits and pieces that are devoid of substance and evidence but tantalising enough to attract uncritical public attention. Open actions by governments in Washington and London, usually military but also economic, are presented with a nationalistic slant designed to guide its targets into belief. The campaign is a fairly good example of psychological warfare, to which the United Kingdom, for example, is devoting more time and money.

The U.S.-Nato military alliance is no foot-dragger in angling news reports and its description of “interceptions” of Russian aircraft on March 29 is a good example. It is a comparatively minor illustration, but demonstrates how the Washington-Brussels team go about reporting international affairs. The Nato media release declared that “In all, NATO aircraft intercepted six different groups of Russian military aircraft near Alliance airspace in less than six hours.”

The Russian aircraft were flying in international airspace and obviously were not going to take any action against any Nato country or anyone else, for that matter. But Brigadier General Andrew Hansen, Deputy Chief of Operations at Nato’s Air Command located at Ramstein in Germany, declared that “intercepting multiple groups of Russian aircraft demonstrates NATO forces’ readiness and capability to guard Allied skies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.”

“Allied skies”?

These Russian aircraft were based in Russia and flying, as acknowledged even by U.S.-Nato, in international airspace. This has nothing whatever to do with “Allied skies”.

As is not unusual, there was flexing of the truth in the U.S.-Nato statement which claimed that there were “six different groups” of Russian aircraft. In fact the media release said there were “two groups near Norway’s coast”, then one group over the Black Sea and a maritime patrol aircraft over the Baltic. That makes four “groups” out of the claimed six. But it wasn’t totally untrue (which is what psyops is all about), because there were indeed six interceptions by fighters from Norway, Britain, Belgium, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria and Italy. (It was, preposterously, a bold Italian fighter jet that “intercepted” the unarmed Il-38 maritime patrol aircraft over the Baltic.) The entire aerial pantomime was performed for media headlines.

On the other hand, there have not been many headlines concerning Russia’s development of the Sputnik V anti-Covid vaccine, because this has been a success, and the West’s mainstream media do not report Russian successes. The site Spaceflight Now does carry details concerning launches of Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station, but there is only rarely a mention of this vital shuttle service in such outlets as the Washington Post, which prefers to give prominence to the U.S. private company SpaceX which, although it has managed to conduct space station dockings, is experiencing a series of failures. As one UK newspaper reported the most recent disaster, “SpaceX said the SN11 [rocket] ‘experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly’. In other words, it blew up.” If it had been a Russian rocket there would have been rather different publicity.

There has been U.S.-Russia space cooperation for about 25 years, and Reuters reported on April 3 that “the Russian government approved extending an agreement on cooperation in space with the United States until December 2030”, which is an admirable and important initiative that will attract no approval or even attention in the halls of the Capitol or the wires of the mainstream media. And to be fair, there is no attempt on the part of Uncle Joe’s administration in Washington to disguise its loathing of Moscow. His Secretary of Defence, General Lloyd Austin, on April 1 “reaffirmed unwavering U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and Euro-Atlantic aspirations. He condemned recent escalations of Russian aggressive and provocative actions in eastern Ukraine, and he offered condolences to the minister on the deaths of four Ukrainian soldiers on the 26th of March.”

The Pentagon’s spokesman was far from being concise and enlightening when posed a question about this censure. Specifically he was asked “you said that the Secretary condemned the recent Russian actions… can you be a little more specific one more time about what he is condemning?” The reply rambled but had the merit of publicising the Pentagon’s unquestioning support of the corrupt government in Kiev. His stumbling response was “As I said yesterday, I mean, we’re monitoring the situation with respect to Ukrainian military reports of Russian military placements and forces along the border. We’re — these are Ukrainian military reports. We’re monitoring that very, very closely and we certainly call on the Russians to be more transparent about what this is about but we’ve learned from bitter history not to just take at face value Russian claims of their intentions.”

The Pentagon’s eager acceptance of “Ukrainian military reports” is a prime indicator of U.S. national policy, and it cannot be expected that this will alter, any more than the anti-Russia views of ultra-nationalists in England, one of whom, on the same day as General Austin’s war drumming pronouncements, wrote that “Brussels can’t call itself a force for good when its members are prepared to deal with Putin on vaccines. The EU’s top leaders are warming towards the Russian-made jab, in a propaganda coup for Vladimir Putin.” It is barely believable that a major newspaper such as the Daily Telegraph would countenance publication of such overt malevolence, but in spite of the fact that the Sputnik V vaccine has been approved by 58 countries (although still waiting formal endorsement by the European Medicines Agency), the blinkered bigots are determined to intensify their campaign of hatred. To them it does not matter that such crusades cause deaths.

While many Europeans dislike the policies of Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, it is difficult to disagree with his statement about Sputnik V that “There must be no geopolitical blinkers regarding vaccines. The only thing that must count is whether the vaccine is effective and safe.”

Absolutely right. But try telling that to the confrontationists and propagandists whose aim is to encourage the overthrow of leaders who disagree with their policies. Their silly fandangos in the air are intended to increase tension with Russia — and China — and the campaign against Russia’s vaccine has struck a new low in international relations. The Biden administration is brandishing the cudgels of confrontation and the world is a more dangerous place for that.