Talking Points
- A military build-up underscored threat of Russia-Ukraine war
- In other intractable problems, Ethiopia's dam talks failed again
- Bibi Netanyahu was given a fourth shot at forming government
- Jordan's King Abdullah saw off a non-existent palace coup
- Hunger followed in the wake of insurgents in north Mozambique
- Myanmar's London embassy was seized by pro-junta diplomats
- South Korea's one-time mobile giant LG exited the handset game
- And, South Korea's ruling party was trounced in Seoul vote
- Facebook divulged the 2019 data-theft of more than 500m users
- Georgia's absurd voting law restrictions found a fan in Trump
Dive deeper
Is the AstraZeneca shot safe? The answer depends on where you get your information from, and who has earned your trust.
Vaccinated blood runs thicker than water
Admittedly, this was a much more enjoyable story to follow when AstraZeneca's vaccine development and rollout was characterised by supply-chain bumbling and public relations faux pas . Unfortunately for them (and us), the British-Swedish drugmaker is now being stalked by concerns over a potentially fatal side-effect: blood-clotting. Dozens of cases of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) and splanchnic vein thrombosis (SVT) have been discovered in the brains and abdomens of AstraZeneca vaccine recipients. These concerns have led to restrictions in Germany and a number of other European countries. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson pushed back against suggestions that the Oxford-developed shots are dangerous, despite 19 reported deaths at home.
On Wednesday night, the European Medicines Agencies said they had found a "possible" link between the AstraZeneca vaccine and the blood clots. Counterintuitively, the clots formed among those with low platelet counts : their sparse platelets interacted abnormally with white blood cells to create lumps in the blood. The EMA recommended that these unusual blood clots be listed as a very rare side-effect of the jab.
What followed was a cavalcade of restrictions, warnings, and harrumphs. In an embarrassing turn of events, British authorities recommended that those under the age of 30 should receive a different vaccine. The Netherlands and the Philippines meanwhile restricted the vaccine to only those over 60. The French have recommended an mRNA vaccine as replacement for a second AstraZeneca dose. And in Australia, the advice is that under-50s should get the Pfizer vaccine (though the rollout here has been so badly bungled that the stakes are actually quite low). Conversely, a number of other countries – and the United Nations COVAX program – have stuck to their guns.
So is this a real concern, or an overreaction? Up to the first week of April some 30 million Europeans on both sides of the Channel had received the AstraZeneca vaccine. It's estimated that just four people in every million vaccinated will suffer the blood-clotting side effect. At that rate, the risk is much lower than the 5-12 cases of blood-clotting per 100,000 people who take hormonal contraceptives . So yes, there is a risk but it is statistically lower than that of other treatments currently in use. In Britain specifically, there have been 79 blood clots and 19 deaths recorded from 20m shots .
A matter of trust
If this is just a matter of risk management? After all, risk is something we all deal with at varying levels every day. Why is there so much confusion and distrust about this particular case? Well, sadly enough, that is partly due to the warped and warping perspective of the news media. Right now every single case of blood-clotting in those inoculated with the AZ vaccine is being reported. And such stories don't just languish within state borders – they are syndicated, rewritten, and shared internationally. So each one has become another data-point in our collective threat matrix. Such reporting, which follows orthodox news values on emerging stories, is much better at stacking up individualised examples of a problem than it is qualifying the totality of them. It's the same reason why you hear about every single Tesla crash, but none of the mundane human automobile accidents. Newsrooms don't report every case of thrombosis in those who take contraceptive pills – to do so would cast unnecessary doubt on a drug used the world over (for the disproportionate benefit of the males of our species). And so it must be concluded that the foregrounding of AstraZeneca blood clot risks is muddying the entire global vaccination effort .
But it's not just the regrettable phenomenon of coronavirus click-chasing that is skewing perceptions. Public health officials all over the world have struggled to win the trust of vaccine-sceptical citizens. Some of that hesitation is genuine and based on true belief, some is not. Much of it boils down to how the authorities are viewed in other areas of public life, which by transitive property shapes their health credentials.
There is also another layer of trust issues that exists outside the closed loops of national conversations. Drug manufacturers – especially those that used mRNA treatments – are guarding patents not to unduly burden the rest of the world, but to safeguard future earnings . They have in large part not shared the knowledge, staff, and techniques that could boost vaccine manufacturing in the developing world. On top of this, the ostensible leaders of the international community have had opportunity after opportunity to temporarily prise those patents free; but have not availed them.
Worldlywise
Stumbling at the starting block
On a related note – how are the Tokyo Olympics coming along? With the July 26 opening ceremony just around the corner, the answer is not reassuring. Japan is being buffeted by a fourth wave of coronavirus cases: counts are rising across the country. Just three weeks after emerging from its last state of emergency, Tokyo is reentering yet another . Osaka, Hyogo, and Miyagi are already under restrictions and the government is expanding a state of 'quasi-emergency' to Kyoto and Okinawa. In Osaka, the soaring infections have forced the Olympic torch relay off public roads .
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga's government has had to hose down suggestions that it would prioritise vaccinations for athletes . Any such move would poison public opinion, something that can scarcely be afforded given that polls reveal weak support for the Olympics as is. Local fears that the Games could become a super-spreader event are not unfounded – infectious disease experts have argued that the prevalence of new coronavirus variants could worsen the local outbreak.
And while the International Olympics Committee frets over this year's Games, a cloud is gathering over the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. 180 rights organisations have cosigned a request to boycott what they call the 'Genocide Olympics' . The White House insists it has not countenanced the boycott, but at a time of growing international pressure over the detention camps in Xinjiang (and increasingly testy reactions from Beijing), this has raised hackles. More sleepless nights ahead in the soft beds of Lausanne!
"A poll-winning machine" (gun)
By any standard, India's Bharatiya Janata Party is one of the most successful political parties in modern history. The party of the current Prime Minister Narendra Modi has earned itself the moniker of "poll-winning machine". But this week, 175 million Indians in five states went to the polls in what has shaped up as a significant challenge to the BJP's saffron tide. And no race is more crucial than that of West Bengal. This state election has been elevated to national significance. Its Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, is Modi's fiercest critic . And her opponent (a former mentee) has allied himself with the BJP. The eastern state is home to 90 million Indians, including a significant muslim minority.
So reputations are on the line in West Bengal. But the vote goes deeper than that. For some, Banerjee represents a line in the sand – a popular politician grounded by secularism and tolerance of ethnic minorities. For others, her beliefs are antithetical to their interpretation of Hindutva - the muscular religio- and ethno-centrism at the heart of the BJP's vote base. Given deeply-held attachment to both religious and ethnic identity, friction has given way to fresh bouts of political violence in the battleground state. Local candidates have been attacked and their supporters killed in running street brawls. The election itself has been segmented and held in eight stages over the course of a month in the face of these security concerns.
The best of times
Pure shores
One of the Indian Ocean’s last untouched reef systems provides a safe space for threatened species to survive and thrive. The Rowley Shoals reef system , 260km off of Australia’s coast, has been under commercial fishing protection for decades. As a result, the threatened humphead wrasse (adoringly pictured above) and humphead parrotfish are able to survive in the three atolls without disturbance. On top of that, the abundance of fish remained the same over the 14-year period it was monitored by researchers. Fewer humans, more fish. Pretty simple equation, really.
A story worth our vocal support
In a world-first, surgeons have performed a complete transplant of a windpipe . The difficulty of the task lies in the organ’s complex structure of tiny blood vessels which have bedevilled efforts to restart blood flow after the transplant. However, by providing blood flow from the oesophagus and thyroid gland instead, surgeons were able to bypass the issue. It took 50 specialists 18 hours to perform the procedure. But now the 56-year-old patient from New York can breathe and eat normally again after decades of complications.
The worst of times
Raiding the nest egg
Climate change is changing – narrowing – the diets of polar bears . With sea ice dwindling across the Arctic, the ursus maritimus has less time to hunt their preferred prey (blubbery little seals). So to fill their bellies they’re raiding seabird nests for eggs . But their method of hunting eggs is extremely inefficient. Experts are unsure whether the new diet will sustain such a large animal. With fewer than 25,000 bears left in the wild , a collapse in food stocks could have a drastic impact on the survivability of this iconic species.
Clearview, full surveillance, can't win
Clearview has distributed its facial recognition tool to over 1,800 public US agencies , an investigation exposed this week. A large number of the employees at the agencies were using the technology without any supervision or training. For context, Clearview provides access to over three billion pictures of faces scraped from the internet without individuals’ permission. As a whole, facial recognition technology is unregulated on a federal level in America, which is really just a sentence one used to read in on-the-nose speculative fiction books.
Weekend Reading
The image
The quote
“I was very displeased for the humiliation that the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen had to suffer. With these dictators, let's call them what they are – who however are needed – one must be honest in expressing one's diverging ideas and views about society.”
– Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi doesn't attempt to cushion his swipe at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the "sofagate" affair. A breach in seating protocol has seen Europeans leaping off their recliners in protest; something Erdogan's crudely neo-Ottoman weltpolitik does.
The numbers
$2,000,000,000,000
- US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen thinks Biden's new tax plan could bring two trillion back within reach of the IRS . A lofty goal, but we'll believe it when we see it – corporates have historically been better at hiding profits than governments have at closing tax loopholes.
297 terrawatt-hours
- At current pace, the energy use of China's Bitcoin mining industry will exceed that of the entire nation of Italy or Saudi Arabia by 2024. Yes, yes, I know it's the future, but can't we find a more sustainable way to launder money online?
The headline
" Prehistoric cave painters were hallucinating due to lack of oxygen deep underground " – The Independent . A tradition passed down from generation to generation, as anyone who's painted the inside of their house can attest.
The special mention
This lonely, lonely interstellar visitor .
A few choice long-reads
- The one-child policy is behind China, but the national fertility rate continues a seemingly inexorable decline. Foreign Affairs delves into the numbers behind China's shrinking families.
- We do love these stories. How do you lose $20b in two days? Very carefully. Businessweek on the stupendous losses incurred by Bill Hwang's Archegos.
- The world has a gender problem. Your favoured streaming app is not immune. Financial Times on the trouble at the heart of music's newest frontier.
Tom Wharton @trwinwriting
