The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Members-Only Pod: Episode 17

Episode Date: April 30, 2021

This is a sample of the Munk Members-Only Podcast. The program provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. This week's Munk Members podcast features three topics in the news: India is in the midst of the worst COVID-19 outbreak of any country to date – What is driving the surge infections across the sub-continent? Are the new variants to blame or is the reopening of societies without high levels of vaccination a recipe for disaster full stop?; Canada has a new federal budget but concerns persist about what if anything it does to address the country's sluggish growth – How is growth in economies stimulated by government policy? Is too much government intervention and spending in the economy part of the problem or the solution?; and the US and Iran continue high level nuclear talks in Vienna this week – Can the Biden administration but the Iran nuclear deal back together again? Or are the political risks in American and the demands of the Iranian government a threat to recreating Obama's grand bargain with Tehran? To access the full length episode consider becoming a Munk Member. Membership is free. Simply log on to www.munkdebates.com/membership to register. Under your membership profile page you will find a link to listen to the full length editions of Munk Members Podcast. If you like what the Munk Debates is all about consider becoming a Supporting Member. For as little as $9.99 monthly you receive unlimited access to our 10+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, monthly newsletter, ticketing privileges at our live and online events and a charitable tax receipt (for Canadian residents). To explore you Munk Membership options visit www.munkdebates.com/membership. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hi, Monk podcast listeners. The following is a sample of the Monk members-only podcast. To access the full-length edition of this episode and all of our regular Monk members-only podcasts, go to our website, www.wmunkdebates.com, and register for membership. Membership is free, and it's available for you right now at www.munkdebates.com. Hope you enjoy the program. Hello, Monk members, and welcome to this, the Monk Members-only podcast. This is our weekly program where we dive into the big issues and ideas making news in the last week. We do this with Janice Gross Stein.

She's the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs, an internationally renowned author and scholar and our guide to the world as we see it this week. Janice, great to be in conversation with you again. Good to be with you, Roger, and the monk members. Each show, we like to cover three topics, promise. to do this in 30 minutes or so. We'll squeeze it in for you, I promise, as quickly and efficiently as we can. But we think there's three issues that are worthy of our attention. And number one, Janice, I think has to be what we're seeing out of India this week, really one of the worst waves cresting in any country to date in this pandemic. I mean, just mind-blowing numbers, not simply the hundreds of thousands of

infections and growing deaths, but a test positivity rate in New Delhi of 30%. So of the people lining up for tests, 30% of them are coming back positive. I want your views on what you think this means for this pandemic globally in the next period of time. Because I think what we're seeing in India now starts to suggest some interesting trend lines for how. how this pandemic could now begin to play out, unfortunately, in very pernicious and brutal ways throughout the developing world. The India, what is happening in India is so important, Richard. I think there are two big points.

The first is that the death and the carnage, really, that you're seeing coming out of overstretched Indian hospitals is horrific. So anybody with family or friends in Delhi are just getting horrific communications about what's going on. But what is also true is that it does not invalidate the science of what we know up till now. So the fact that people have had two vaccines are getting mild cases. of COVID, that was always anticipated. Everybody understood that these vaccines are 90% efficacious in preventing hospitalization death. So a great deal of attention was paid to that story this week. That's not a new story.

The fact that so few people in India are vaccinated thus far, that's what we're seeing, along with a public health infrastructure that simply has no capacity to surge, which is what ours does to meet this kind of scale. And thirdly, sadly, a tragic and massive reopening with large, large gatherings of people that faced a variant that we all know is much more contagious. That's what's produced this catastrophe. What's the other big point?

And I think this is the global point that you're making, Roger. India is not unique. In fact, India, in many senses, is better off. It has a better scientific infrastructure. It's a vaccine maker for the world. But it's been exporting its vaccines. And unfortunately, we are yet again in one of these patent struggles where the World Trade Organization has not moved fast.

to release manufacturers in the global south where levels of poverty are very high to stand up and manufacture either generic vaccines or fundamentally it's generic vaccines without a name brand because that's what India is now going to have to do. It's going to have to vaccinate a billion people when it comes out of this. Right, only 2% vaccination rates in India. And I think what's interesting here is that, you know, when the first wave went through India, everyone was struck at just how mild the effects were. And there were background serological tests.

So they were looking in a sense at blood samples in large Indian cities for antibodies. And we're finding upwards of 40, 50 percent of these cities that have intense crowding, people with antibodies, very low documented cases and very low deaths in the first wave. Now with the second wave, it seems a bit like the story of South Africa. again, your first wave of immunity is no protection against the variant. The variant rips through that naturally acquired immunity and lessens the efficacy, just like the South African virus variant does, too. It lowers the efficacy of the drug. So unfortunately, doctors and medical professionals, while not becoming severely ill or becoming ill enough that they're unable to work, putting further strain

on the system. And I guess what concerns me about what we're seeing in India is, is Africa is another fascinating example of a continent with very low reported deaths per capita. And again, that could be partly underreporting, but it's not just under reporting. And now, are we now at risk of seeing these new variants create a wave of casualties, suffering, and deaths throughout the developed world when, as you say, the rollout of vaccines on the scale that is required to inoculate, the billions of people in the proverbial south, I mean, that is a task of not months,

but that's a task of years. And it makes one think that COVID well, blessfully, may be leaving the more advanced economies who have access to top-notch vaccines. This could be around for a very long time. You are making a fundamental point there, Richard. COVID is a global disqualmie. disease. And unless there's a global solution to this, we in the rich, privileged world,

who've had privileged access to vaccines, you know, the leading technologies were developed in the wealthy world of vaccine manufacturing was stood up in the developed world. And if you look at the rates of vaccination, you know, we in Canada complain all the time. We're something like 35% of adults right now and on our way to go much, much faster by the end of May, you compare that to even a country like India with a really good scientific establishment. It's 2% travel, right? So we had flights coming from India and Pakistan over the last month. They were just stopped.

But they're not only going to Canada, they're going to the UK, they're going to Europe, you cannot wall off any longer one part of the world from what is a global problem. And that's why, you know, probably the biggest single thing that has to happen are two things. One, COVAX, which is a global vaccine distribution agency, has to get more vaccines, which is going to have to spread to high-risk countries in the south. We haven't really started on that. And the second even bigger one to me is we did this with HIV-8s. We had exactly the same problem.

We had an out-of-control epidemic. What broke that one was when the patent restrictions were lifted for countries at serious risk who could not afford to pay. And that's where, in a sense, you got, that's the start. That was the spurt for the Indian. vaccine manufacturing sector, which has been manufacturing vaccines and selling them. Some of our vaccine in this country, Canada, came from Indian manufacturers who were not, who had nothing left, you know, the words, to meet what they,

right, and now India, India is imposing export controls on the, on the very Seren Institute that manufactured previous doses of the AstraZeneca. Yeah, I think this is something for people to watch carefully over the coming weeks because it could suggest, you know, there's that expression long COVID for people who are kind of suffering from longer term effects of the virus. Well, the world could have its own version of long COVID. And while it's great to see reports on CNN of traffic jams in New York City, I'm very jealous here in Toronto as we contemplate a seemingly indefinite. lockdown, the rest of the world is not going to be in that position, again, I think, potentially for years. I mean, because you also have to anticipate that even if you get the vaccine, you're talking

about countries with an absence of public health infrastructure. You've got to figure out ways to get those vaccines to people. And I just think there's a slightly, I don't know, dystopian scenario here of pretty, persistent reinfection, waves of variants going through the developing world, repeatedly attacking vulnerable populations, creating death and misery in their wake, disrupting global trade, global travel. This could have bigger, long-term effects on global growth. So it's fantastic that our economies are bouncing back.

But at the end of the day, we have to realize just as if the virus doesn't protect us, on the basis of borders, our economies are also not protected on the basis of our own borders, certainly not an export-led economy like Canada. You know, again, it's impossible to emphasize strongly enough how much this is a global problem and how impossible. As you just said, Roger, it is to wall yourself off, either your society or your economy from those issues. You couldn't do that when there was no air. travel and we didn't have global supply change. That world is gone and we are really interconnected. But I can't leave our members with your dystopian view. There has to be a little

bit of a corrective here. So one of the things that's played remarkable, and again, how do we know this from the HIV AIDS epidemic? One of the things that was really remarkable, how the capacity in countries have a very, very limited public health infrastructure to get the vaccine out and distribute. What do they use? They use religious institutions, so churches and temples and mosques and village leaders. And the two game changer vaccines here,

AstraZeneca and J&J, and J&J in particular, one shot doesn't need refrigeration, I think, you know, the resilience and the innovativeness in these societies to get those vaccines out greater than we think, Roger. You've been listening to a sample of the Monk Members Only podcast. To access the rest of the episode, consider becoming a member. Membership is free and available at www.w monkdebates.com. Once you've joined as a member, go to your membership profile to access the rest of this episode.

episode and all of our monk members podcasts. Thanks for listening.