Kat Kline

“But as Bill Gates said to us when Mark and I met with him in his Seattle-area office, “People invest in high-probability scenarios: the markets that are there. And these low-probability things that maybe you should buy an insurance policy for by investing in capacity up front, don’t get done. Society allocates resources primarily in this capitalistic way. The irony is that there’s really no reward for being the one who anticipates the challenge.” Every time there is a new, serious viral outbreak, such as Ebola in 2012 and Zika in 2016, there is a public outcry, a demand to know why a vaccine wasn’t available to combat this latest threat. Next a public health official predicts a vaccine will be available in x number of months. These predictions almost always turn out to be wrong. And even if they’re right, there are problems in getting the vaccine production scaled up to meet the size and location of the threat, or the virus has receded to where it came from and there is no longer a demand for prevention or treatment. Here is Bill Gates again: Unfortunately, the message from the private sector has been quite negative, like H1N1 [the 2009 epidemic influenza strain]: A lot of vaccine was procured because people thought it would spread. Then, after it was all over, they sort of persecuted the WHO people and claimed GSK [GlaxoSmithKline] sold this stuff and they should have known the thing would end and it was a waste of money. That was bad. Even with Ebola, these guys—Merck, GSK, and J & J [Johnson & Johnson]—all spent a bunch of money and it’s not clear they won’t have wasted their money. They’re not break-even at this stage for the things they went and did, even though at the time everyone was saying, “Of course you’ll get paid. Just go and do all this stuff.” So it does attenuate the responsiveness. This model will never work or serve our worldwide needs. Yet if we don’t change the model, the outcome will not change, either.”
― Michael T. Osterholm, Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs

“And the best and the worst of this is
That neither is most to blame,
If you have forgotten my kisses
And I have forgotten your name.”
― Algernon Charles Swinburne

“We follow what is happening with influenza virus strains in the Southern Hemisphere when it is their fall (our spring) to predict which influenza viruses will likely be with us the next winter. Some years that educated guess is more accurate than others. So is it worth getting the vaccination each year? I give that a qualified yes. It might or might not prevent you from getting flu. But even if it is only 30 to 60 percent effective, it sure beats zero protection. What we really need is a game-changing influenza vaccine that will target the conserved—or unchanging—features of the influenza viruses that are more likely to cause human influenza pandemics and subsequently seasonal influenza in the following years. How difficult would such a game-changing influenza vaccine be to achieve? The simple truth is that we don’t know, because we’ve never gotten a prototype into, let alone through, the valley of death. We need a new paradigm—a new business model that pairs public money with private pharmaceutical company partnerships and foundation support and guidance.”
― Michael T. Osterholm, Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs

“In the mid-1950s, Governor Luther Hodges cited Aycock’s “march of progress” in his defense of Jim Crow as a system that both ensured political tranquility and enabled racial uplift. His successor in the state house, Terry Sanford, noted that Aycock famously proclaimed “as a white man, I am afraid of but one thing for my race and that is we shall become afraid to give the Negro a fair chance. The white man in the South can never attain to his fullest growth until he does absolute justice to the Negro race.” This framing enabled Hodges, Sanford, and, later, Governor Dan Moore to define the “North Carolina way” in sharp contrast with the racially charged massive resistance rhetoric that defined the approaches of Alabama under George Wallace and Mississippi under Ross Barnett. This moderate course caused early observers like V. O. Key to view the state as “an inspiring exception to southern racism.” Crucially, it operated hand-in-hand with North Carolina’s anti-labor stance to advance the state’s economic interests. Hodges, Sanford, and Moore approached racial policy by emphasizing tranquility, and thus an intolerance for political contention. These officials placed a high value on law and order, condemning as “extremists” those who threatened North Carolina’s “harmonious” race relations by advocating either civil rights or staunch segregation. While racial distinctions could not be elided in the Jim Crow South, where the social fabric was shot through with racial disparity, an Aycock-style progressivist stance emphasized the maintenance of racial separation alongside white elites’ moral and civic interest in the well-being of black residents. This interest generally took the form of a pronounced paternalism, which typically enabled powerful white residents to serve as benefactors to their black neighbors, in a sort of patron-client relationship. “It was white people doing something for blacks—not with them,” explained Charlotte-based Reverend Colemon William Kerry Jr. While often framed as gestures of beneficence and closeness, such acts reproduced inequity and distance. More broadly, this racial order served dominant economic and political interests, as it preserved segregation with a progressive sheen that favored industrial expansion.12”
― David Cunningham, Klansville, U.S.A.: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan