Dr Paul Thomas and I discuss many different subjects including the role of vaccines in mortality in Africa, COVID, Bioterrorism. I especially liked the last 20 mins.

From the Associated Press, evening of March 31: Company producing J&J vaccine had history of violations The company at the center of quality problems that led Johnson & Johnson to discard 15 million doses of its coronavirus vaccine has a string of citations from U.S. health officials for quality control problems. Emergent BioSolutions, a little-known company vital…

A paper has been published here and, while in draft form, discussed at length here, which reanalyzes the features of Zimbabwe’s anthrax epizootic, which began in 1978 and slowly tailed off after 1980. The authors include an MD and geography specialists from the University of Nevada, Reno.  The first author, James M. Wilson, MD, has…

Reminder–from my post 6 months ago:  October 14: from FiercePharma: Emergent has two contracts with J&J. The first, for setup and tech transfer, is worth $135 million in 2020 and 2021. The second, for drug-substance manufacturing, will pay out $480 million in the first two years…  When added to the value of Emergent’s contracts with AstraZeneca…

GENEVA (AP) — The World Health Organization has rejected as “irresponsible” allegations that swine flu is a fake pandemic. WHO also dismissed claims it colluded with drug companies to bring economic benefit to the industry by playing up the danger of the new H1N1 influenza strain. WHO officials met Tuesday with the Parliamentary Assembly of…

This piece in the Lancet, authored by Cowling and Yu, discusses issues of Ebola dissemination and means to reduce spread to other countries.  Its final paragraph discusses what we do not yet know, but need to learn: There are several important near-future research needs. Perhaps most urgent is a better understanding of the effectiveness of…