January 31, 2020
By Berkeley Lovelace, Jr.
U.S. and international health officials (click here) are speeding work to create a vaccine for the deadly coronavirus spreading throughout Asia, which has already outpaced the 2003 SARS epidemic and killed at least 213 people in China.
Researchers will need to work fast. Since the first patient was identified in Wuhan on Dec. 31, the number of coronavirus cases has mushroomed to nearly 10,000 in mainland China alone as of Friday morning, up from roughly 800 the week before. While the new virus appears to be less deadly than the 2003 SARS outbreak that sickened 8,098 people and killed almost 800, it is spreading significantly faster.
Hopes to get a vaccine to market are high, but doctors want to set expectations for how quickly that can happen low. Developing, testing and reviewing any potential vaccine is a long, complex and expensive endeavor that could take months or even years, global health experts say....
SARS occurred in 2004. (click here) That was 16 years ago. The vaccine was considered unimportant because the virus was contained and the losses were acceptably within reason which could be viewed as a harsh judgement.
Now, 2020 in an atmosphere of economic disaster due to the tariffs that have caused food in China to become unaffordable, (How is Susan Collins still in the US Senate?) there is still no vaccine or treatment.
From the South China Morning Post:
5 September 2019
By Finbarr Bermingham
...With frozen Maine lobsters (click here) now attracting a tariff of 45 per cent, after an increase of 10 per cent, Canadian fishermen can look forward to more and bigger paydays ahead, leaving Maine’s political leaders to continue pondering “the blow of Chinese tariffs on a hallmark American industry that has done nothing to deserve the punishment that it is presently forced to bear”.
Soybeans, wheat and pork were also on the new tariff list, and the US’ loss will be other nations’ gain. With 1.4 billion mouths to feed, Chinese buyers are sourcing their food from nations with lower-tariff access to Chinese ports, a trend that will deepen as tariffs on the US rise.
According to Darin Friedrichs, a soybean analyst working for INTL FCStone in Shanghai, “yellow soybeans are the only ones that matter”, when it comes to US sales to China. The tariff on yellow beans has risen to 33 per cent, compared to just 3 per cent from Brazil and Argentina, China’s other major suppliers.
Unsurprisingly, US soybean farmers have fairly negative views on the trade war, which has allowed Brazilian rivals to grow their market share in China to 77 per cent over the first nine months of the 2018/19 market year, while their share has fallen to just 10 per cent, according to the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
A survey of 400 US farmers released on Tuesday found that 71 per cent are not expecting a trade war resolution soon. The survey, conducted by Purdue University in Indiana, also found that 71 per cent of farmers think that government subsidies have helped offset the effects of tariffs, while 58 per cent expect more help in 2020....
Why is it that 16 years later, the pandemic is worse and the research is still not forthcoming?
