Coronavirus

Biden’s Intellectual Property Waiver Puts Political Symbolism Before Saving Lives

May 12, 2021

President Biden recently backed a World Trade Organization proposal to waive intellectual property protections on COVID-19 vaccines and therapies -- a move the Trump administration rejected just a few months ago. The White House's decision is a catastrophe. The waiver will do nothing to increase access to vaccines. It will,...

Sally Pipes Quoted in Newsmax, “Can We Ever Trust Our Public Health Officials Again?”

May 11, 2021

Can We Ever Trust Our Public Health Officials Again? By Marisa Herman Healthcare institutions who've historically enjoyed a high level of public trust may soon face a steep erosion of the American people's confidence after more than a year in the spotlight for a coronavirus pandemic that...

MyTurn Is Actually a Marginal Success Compared to Historic Performance of Government Technology Projects

April 29, 2021

Reports this week have put MyTurn, California’s $50 million COVID-19 scheduling website, on the long list of IT and technology blunders by government. The headline in the Sacramento Bee says it all, “California spent $50 million for a COVID vaccine scheduling website. It flopped.” The state’s...

Dr. Henry Miller – A COVID-19 Update and Progress on Vaccinations

April 26, 2021

This week’s guest is Dr. Henry Miller, PRI senior fellow in health care studies. In addition to being a physician, Dr. Miller was a former official at the FDA and founding director of the FDA’s Office of Biotechnology. Dr. Miller provides an update on...

Europe Negotiates A Poor Vaccine Rollout

April 26, 2021

Several European countries just instituted another round of lockdowns amid a new wave of Covid-19 cases. This turn of events is sobering but puzzling. Europe seemed to have Covid-19 under control a few months ago, at least compared to the United States. What happened? The countries' vaccination rates offer...

J&J Vaccine ‘Pause’ Reveals U.S. Regulators’ Abundance of Recklessness

April 21, 2021

It seems obvious that a rapid, widespread vaccination campaign offers our nation the best chance of bringing the COVID-19 pandemic to a swift end. That observation is apparently lost on federal public health officials. Last week, the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention and the...

Will Vaccine Passports Hasten California Exodus?

April 14, 2021

Orange County is testing a digital vaccine passport, but so far, there’s been no movement at the state level to require all Californians to present their papers to freely move about. Meanwhile, Texas, Florida, and Idaho have banned vaccine passports. Other red states are likely...

Time for the Roaring Twenties?

April 13, 2021

The stock market is at record highs. More than 900,000 Americans found jobs in March. Flapper models sashay down the runways of Paris and Milan. In a moment of weakness, even I turned my head at a “For Sale” classic Mercedes convertible (the last and...

Fund coronavirus research, not a climate change musical

April 08, 2021

I've been a science nerd almost all my life. In graduate school, I was the co-discoverer of a bacterial enzyme essential to DNA replication and of a key enzyme in the influenza virus. I have written more than a thousand articles concerned with science and science policy. I'm convinced that America's...

‘Rescue’ package makes poor pay for rich’s health care

April 08, 2021

President Joe Biden recently signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law. With a stroke of his pen, he claimed to put "working people in this nation first. It's not hyperbole; it's a fact." A closer look at this so-called "rescue" package suggests otherwise. Democrats tucked two...