2020 COVID Diaries

Mar 3, 20216 min read

Contemporary Storytelling: Pharma in Global Public Health

I am in the last stages of a first article draft on how UK-US pharma house Burroughs Wellcome (BW) priced the first successful treatment...

Feb 1, 20214 min read

An Update on Vaccines in Japan: Summary as of Jan. ’21, Part III

As of end of January 2021, concerns in Japan grow over domestic production of vaccines, as Chief Cabinet Secretary Kato Katsunobu has...

Jan 25, 20214 min read

WHO as Global Coordinator? Data Sharing and Policy Guidance for Vaccine R&D, Pt. 2

WHO has developed an R&D Blueprint Team to globally coordinate candidate vaccines. The agency calls vaccine efforts ‘unprecedented’,...

Jan 18, 20214 min read

Pharmaceutical R&D, Mutant Strains, Vaccines: January 2021, Part I

A happy new year to all of you! I hope you all made some exciting and rejuvenating resolutions for 2021 J The COVID-19 pandemic story...

Jun 18, 20205 min read

COVID-19 Treatment and Vaccine Updates Pt. 1 mid-June 2020

I have been quite busy with book writing, but here are a few updates, starting with Japan’s public health measures after lifting the...

May 17, 20208 min read

Treatment and Vaccine Updates: A productive workplan between patented and generic?

As we get into late May and various countries are considering lifting lockdown, I’d like to post this weekend a brief overview of three...

May 13, 20201 min read

(Quick update) Testing in Japan

It was announced on 13 May 2020 that Fujirebio had developed a testing kit that can measure seropositivity in 30 minutes and will be used...

May 12, 20205 min read

Testing and Epidemiology in a Global Public Health Response

Which comes first: developing accurate diagnostic testing or accurate measures of death rates? Severity of COVID-19 fatality rates has...

May 10, 20203 min read

Pt 2: Treatments Considered in Japan

In addition to fast-tracking Remdesivir[1], other treatments and vaccines are being explored in Japan. Globally, on 8 May, Japan pledged...

May 10, 20202 min read

COVID-19 in Japan: Pt. 1 Osaka and Japan

In other news, Japan’s prolonged emergency state was recently announced to be reassessed on 14 May by an expert and the month will work...

May 5, 20202 min read

Nutrition in Emergency Disease Response (Short comment)

A quick post to share an alternative view of nutrition, immune strength and metabolic syndrome in the COVID-19 response, since much of...

May 3, 20204 min read

(Summary) Gilead’s Remdesivir

This is a brief update/summary post to follow up my first post on production capacity and Indian generics. Key to note is that...

Apr 30, 20204 min read

Indian generics, hydroxychloroquine and production capacity in global emergency

Indian generics, hydroxychloroquine and production capacity in global emergency Indian generics are currently playing an important role...

Apr 30, 20202 min read

Global Health: COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS

As a contemporary historian of the global AIDS response, I am interested in how societies across the world respond to epidemics. The...