In Part One of this two part series, we cited author Rosemary Gibson's congressional testimony from 2019 elaborating on points from her book, "China Rx."
Lets switch our attention now back to China's stated mandate to be the world's pharmaceutical supplier by 2025, which she discusses at length both in her book and in her congressional testimony.
API's is the term the pharmaceutical industry uses for the phrase, Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients.
These are the raw materials used in the making of drugs, such as antibiotics and much of the generic medicines sold in the United States, particularly those required by our elderly. Why this is a particularly relevant link in our supply chain is because of the regulatory red-tape surrounding pharmaceutical manufacturing. A medicine — or vaccine — approved by the FDA (or another nation's agency equivalent) may not be approved if one of its ingredients is switched out for a replacement.
At best, the approval process can take months, sometimes even years.
"The pharmaceutical industry is also very interesting, because there, a lot of the active pharmaceutical ingredients...In fact, China supplies 40% of the world's APIs, and those APIs then go into the making of the finished drugs, it could be generic prescription drugs or medicines.
"They supply to pharmaceutical companies all over the world. In those situations,finding alternative sources of supply is even more complicated because you've got to go through regulatory approvals for every new medicine or every new ingredients manufactured in every new location and sometimes getting through the regulatory paperwork can take months, if not years." — Razat Guarav on BBC Radio, who is the CEO of Llamasoft.com.
About two weeks ago, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, made an announcement from the White House declaring that a medicine, Remdesivir, is proving to be instrumental in recovery from the Coronavirus.
He firmly clarified that it is not a vaccine. But that in (short-term) clinical tests so far, it has proved to hasten recovery from the deadly virus.
The manufacturer of Remdesivir is a U.S. company.
Just a day before, the Chinese issued a study finding that this very drug, Remdesivir, has not been proven to be at all effective in hastening recovery from the virus. In their study they cite numbers of patients who were administered this drug, showing no positive signs of recovery.
In the United States, infectious disease specialists, doctors, and pharmaceutical researchers are cautiously optimistic about our recent Remdesivir findings.
They don't know how to square them with the Chinese findings in a purportedly similar study.
Though I will dare to say that at this point, the world is not surprised by disparate data coming out of China in regards to this COVID19 pandemic.
We are still far from having a vaccine.
Experts in the medical and pharmaceutical industries agree on that. Some say at least six months, others say possibly 4 years, if ever, until we have a trusted vaccine for this deadly virus.
In the meantime, make no mistake, two superpowers are in a breakneck competition to discover and develop a medicine that will at least hasten recovery of this deadly virus, on the path towards responsibly developing a globally available vaccine for it.
They are joined, of course, by other countries advanced in pharmacological research including France, the UK, Germany, and more.
Of the two superpowers, one superpower is flawed, granted, but its flagpole is anchored in freedom, democracy and governmental checks and balances. The other superpower is rooted in authorianism; its leader recently proclaimed himself ruler for life.
Even the doctor who initially sounded the alarm about this deadly virus was arrested, silenced, and is now dead.
As a response to the U.S. State Department's recent assertions the Chinese government released this mocking video, the Statue of Liberty acting as the identifying landmark for our country. In the video, Americans and our government are portrayed as rather bumbling idiots, albeit freedom-loving.
So it would appear now that this pandemic has degenerated into a war of ideology.
Where authoritarian governments and regimes prone to imposing tracking and tracing onto their individual citizens are using their puported "success rates" at containing the virus as a kind of justification for the superiority of authoritarianism over freedom and democracy.
It's a pivotal point on the planet.
So, you choose.
Enslavement to a foreign authoritarian government by threat of deadly viral diseases and a monopoly on their vaccines and pharmaceutical raw ingredients. Or, flawed and messy as it may be, a country and a people still clinging to the principles of life, liberty, and happiness for all.
If you choose the latter, then our single most important collective mission today as a society, and as a people, is to do whatever it takes to responsibly and quickly come up with a vaccine that will be widely and affordably available to all the world's peoples.
Paige Donner has contributed to Newsmax since 2018. She's a media expert, commentator, novelist, and serial entrepreneur. She founded the company, Paris Food And Wine in 2013. In 2018, she founded IoTShipping, a supply chain logistics startup that uses the Internet of Things (IoT) for precision traceability of shipped goods. Paige began her journalism career in Paris, France in 1990. Her first job out of university was with Time-Life's rue Fbg. St. Honore offices. Within the next two years, she took freelancing work as a copy editor for the International Herald Tribune, now re-branded the International New York Times, as well as writing assignments for Variety — the film and television trade magazine. Paige has also clerked for the Senate President of the Hawaii State Legislature. A filmmaker, she has written several television pilots as well as directed television commercials and film shorts. She also contributed to American Cinematographer, the Los Angeles Times, Daily Variety, Huffpost, and a film production trade magazine, Below The Line. As of 2010, Paige has again made Paris, France her home. She has also written for the International New York Times. Since 2013, she has been the sole regular local editor/photographer contributor based in Paris, France for USA Today. Read Paige Donner's Reports — More Here.
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