The botched monkeypox response
Post Reports
The Washington Post
4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2022
⏱️ 21 minutes
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Summary
Today on Post Reports, how early mistakes by the Biden administration left gay and bisexual men facing the threat of an agonizing illness and the potential for broader circulation of monkeypox. Plus, an unintended consequence of overturning Roe.
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For two months, the Biden administration has been chased by headlines about its failure to order enough vaccine doses, speed treatments and make tests available to head off an outbreak that has grown from one case in Massachusetts on May 17 to more than 13,500 this week, overwhelmingly among gay and bisexual men. And 100 days after the outbreak was first detected in Europe, no country has more cases than the United States — with public health experts warning the virus is on the verge of becoming permanently entrenched here, Dan Diamond reports.
Plus, later in the show: Abortion bans and restrictions are complicating access to drugs that treat rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and even cancer. Reporter Katie Shepherd says it’s because these drugs could be used to induce abortions. For patients, doctors, and pharmacies, that’s meant confusion, fear and painful choices.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | For weeks, federal officials have been besieged by questions, why don't we have more monkey |
| 0:06.7 | pox vaccines? |
| 0:08.2 | This is Health Policy reporter Dan Diamond. |
| 0:10.9 | He has been reporting on the Biden administration's response to the monkey pox outbreak, and the |
| 0:16.1 | fact that there is an acute shortage of vaccines. |
| 0:19.6 | In this week, Dan reported a big scoop about this behind the scenes debacle over how the |
| 0:25.2 | government should use the monkey pox vaccines that they do have. |
| 0:29.3 | So in early August, they thought they'd come up with a solution. |
| 0:32.9 | They would take the vaccine doses that we had and start cutting them into fifths, essentially |
| 0:38.4 | multiplying the number of shots by five. |
| 0:42.0 | Just one problem. |
| 0:43.4 | They didn't get the support from the vaccine maker. |
| 0:46.4 | The only FDA approved vaccine, in fact, for monkey pox. |
| 0:53.0 | So after this announcement was made, the CEO of the company that makes this vaccine |
| 0:57.7 | calls up an administration official and is like, wait, what? |
| 1:01.2 | You're going to do what with our vaccine? |
| 1:03.6 | The CEO said that this was a breach of contract. |
| 1:06.9 | The vaccine had not been approved to work divided up into fifths, and he threatened to cancel |
| 1:12.4 | any future orders of vaccines for the US. |
| 1:16.0 | That caused a ripple effect across the federal government, real fear that our entire strategy |
| 1:20.9 | to fight monkey pox was now in jeopardy. |
| 1:23.9 | And Dan says that this one story tells us a lot about how decisions are being made within |
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