Lawsuit alleges college textbook publishers conspired to 'monopolize the market'


Aarthi Swaminathan Reporter, Yahoo Finance•March 7, 2020

A new antitrust class action lawsuit alleges that textbook publishers and on-campus college chain bookstores conspired to monopolize the textbook market, forcing students to pay higher-than-market prices for course materials.

Plaintiffs argue that publishers built the “Inclusive Access” model — a digital textbook market in collaboration with top publishers ostensibly aimed at reducing the cost of course materials — “to monopolize the market for textbooks in Inclusive Access classes and thereby raise prices, are actionable violations of the federal antitrust laws.”

Singling out the big three publishers — Cengage, Pearson and McGraw-Hill, as well as on-campus bookstore chains — the lawsuit filed in a New Jersey federal court argues that the practice is illegal under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act.

A University of Colorado sophomore watches as employees carry away his textbooks after selling them back to the CU bookstore inside. (Photo: Jeremy Papasso/Digital First Media/Boulder Daily Camera via Getty Images)

“This suit by a student standing up for all of her peers against the the potential harms of Inclusive Access … and ultimately, like these, this suit could affect every student in America,” Kaitlyn Vitez, higher education campaign director for the progressive non-profit U.S. PIRG Education Fund, told Yahoo Finance. “We're talking about a really huge segment of America's college population.”

The textbook market — which Vitez previously called a “broken marketplace” — has been dominated for decades by a few dominant publishers that leverage deep expertise in educational materials and relationships with universities. Vitez said that the lawsuit “has the potential to really shake up the publishers’ plans to eliminate the used textbook market.”

Textbooks - Filed Complaint by Aarthi on Scribd

‘Pearson stands by the Inclusive Access model’

While the amount of money an average college student spends on textbooks has declined slightly in recent years, the lawsuit contends that the publishers’ introduction of an online model has resulted in the loss of choice.

“Inclusive Access increases students’ costs and eliminates their choices in order to increase the profits of textbook publishers and on-campus college bookstore retail chains,” the lawsuit asserts.

In response to this story, textbook publishers defended the model.

“We believe Inclusive Access benefits students by making our first-class instructional materials available to them at below competitive rates, and we believe the lawsuit has no factual or legal merit,” a McGraw-Hill spokesperson said in a statement.

A Pearson spokesperson said: “Pearson is aware of this lawsuit and is reviewing the complaint. Pearson stands by the Inclusive Access model, which offers real benefits to students, instructors and institutions.”

“Cengage is prepared to defend vigorously against these allegations,” a spokesperson from the company stated. “Cengage has been and remains a forceful advocate for student and textbook affordability.”

A student stands in from of books in a campus bookstore. (Photo by: Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
‘That’s gas money’

Online textbooks in the “Inclusive Access” model sometimes come with access codes to quizzes, homework assignments, and even exams. Some of the prices of the textbooks can run pretty steep, and in many cases, students can’t rely on a used textbook at cheaper rates.

Publishers emphasize that there’s always an “opt-out” option. But schools sometimes sign up for these textbooks in advance to secure discounted rates from the publishers and, in some cases, tacking that cost on to their students’ tuition and fees.

20-year-old University of North Carolina at Pembroke student Jorge Castillo told Yahoo Finance that as part of his school’s pilot program to increase students’ access to education materials, “one of the classes … had automatically charged me for a book. And this book — I already had bought it before.”

Castillo added that “the book that I had bought before was 50% cheaper than the book that was automatically charged to my fees. They charged me $45 on tuition and fees. Doesn't sound like a tremendous amount, but in reality, if I can get a book for $20 on Amazon, that’s gas money and money I can use for other [things].”

Follett, the company running the program, insisted that an “opt out” feature allowed students like Castillo were free to do so and buy alternative course materials at a cheaper rate.

But Castillo said it wasn’t that simple.

“It’s not easy to opt out,” he said. “So for instance, I have my school email and they sent it to another email that I normally don't use… that I had in high school.”

—

Aarthi is a writer for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.

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Power, privilege and glamour in 1920s London: Inside the glittering world of the Bright Young Things

The hedonistic youth culture of the inter-war upper crust is examined in a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery

Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things
Show all 13





The end of the First World War may have brought peace to London, but by the late 1920s the children of the elite were on a mission to stir up the rigid conventions preserved by their Victorian parents.

They threw wild parties, pranks, treasure hunts and pageants, and broke taboos with their cross-dressing and revealing outfits.

This group of young upper classes included poet John Betjeman and novelists Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, the latter of who satirised his peers in his 1930 novel Vile Bodies. Alongside the artists and Hollywood actors invited into their fold, this loose group was dubbed the Bright Young Things by the mesmerised press, who breathlessly recorded every boozy party.

Beaton, pictured, was known for his shocking yet tantalising photographs (Estate of Paul Tanqueray)

Aside from the tabloids, their most ardent documenter – as well as one of their wildest members – was photographer and diarist Cecil Beaton. Beaton published his Book of Beauty in 1930 in which he describes his early obsession with glamorous society women, before musing on the modern beauties in his set. He also documented their luscious costumes and fantastical set designs; he would later go on to work at Vogue and Vanity Fair.


His archive is spotlit in the upcoming exhibition Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things at the National Portrait Gallery, bringing together what Dr Nicholas Cullinan, director of the National Portrait Gallery, says is Beaton’s rarely-seen “dazzling photographs, high on art and artifice”.

Through Beaton’s lens, we see the Young Things from the inside, as they wished to be seen – ravishingly glamourous, pushing the boundaries of fashion and taste with androgynous silhouettes and avant-garde costume ideas.

Read more

A visual history of the dark side of Los Angeles, 1920s-1950s

Their antics may look fairly harmless from a modern perspective. At the time though, public view was split between fascination over their whimsical extravagance, and disgust at the hedonistic frittering of their privileged lives. Elizabeth Ponsonby, the daughter of a baron and a leader of the Young Things, outraged the public by throwing a party in which guests drank alcohol from bottles wearing their pyjamas, a move considered scandalously degenerate. She would later hold a mock wedding in a West End restaurant, causing outrage once again. “I revel in insult,” Ponsonby said in a 1929 interview. “I crow when I hear old ladies disapprove. That part of it I love.”

The Bright Young Things’ extravagant ways fell out of favour with the onset of the Great Depression and the Second World War, when they eventually drifted apart. Beaton got a job with the British government photographing the bomb-ravaged city where he once partied; the scandalous Elizabeth Ponsonby died in 1940, a lifelong alcoholic. Yet Beaton’s photos preserve them in their moment: gorgeously decadent, frivolous and forever young.

Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things is open 12 March – 7 June 2020 at the National Portrait Gallery

Maxine Freeman-Thomas 

dressed for Ascot in the year 2000 

for the Dream of Fair Women Ball 

by Cecil Beaton, 1928

The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive

 The Bright Young Things at Wilsford 

by Cecil Beaton, 1927

The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive

 Oliver Messel in his costume for Paris in 'Helen!' 

by Cecil Beaton, 1932

The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive

Edith Sitwell at Sussex Gardens 

by Cecil Beaton, 1926

The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive

 Edward Le Bas as Mrs Vulpy 

in The Watched Pot by Cecil Beaton, 1924

The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive

 George ‘Dadie’ Rylands as the Duchess of Malfi

The Cecil Beaton Studio Archive                                                       

Experts: Cruise ships no place for a coronavirus quarantine

By JAY REEVEStoday

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FILE - In this Feb. 11, 2020, file photo, the Grand Princess cruise ship passes the Golden Gate Bridge as it arrives from Hawaii in San Francisco. Scrambling to keep the coronavirus at bay, officials ordered the cruise ship to hold off the California coast Thursday, March 5, to await testing of those aboard, after a passenger on an earlier voyage died and at least one other became infected. (Scott Strazzante/San Francisco Chronicle via AP, File)

Cruise ships hit by coronavirus outbreaks have quickly found themselves with no ports for thousands of passengers as countries on four continents have quarantined vessels or kept them at sea for days.

Keeping all the passengers on board instead of letting them disembark on land is a strategy that can backfire, however, according to experts, because the ventilation systems and close quarters of cruise ships make them ideal places for illness to jump from one person to the next.

“They’re not designed as quarantine facilities, to put it mildly,” said Don Milton, an epidemiologist with the University of Maryland.

A ship with more than 3,500 people aboard was sailing in circles off the coast of California on Saturday after 19 crew members and two passengers tested positive for the new virus. Originally bound for San Francisco, the Grand Princess might be sent instead to a non-commercial port, officials said.

While restaurants and other shipboard locations were closed, passengers were able to watch TV and use the internet, or if they were lucky enough to have one, go outside on their balcony overlooking the water.

Passenger Karen Schwartz Dever said she and her husband were enjoying their balcony and keeping themselves busy with playing cards, while meals and water were being delivered by room service. But she worried about some of the other passengers.

“I met someone who is in the middle of chemo for cancer,” she said. “There are people on oxygen. There are also children on board. I can’t imagine what it’s like if they are in an inside cabin.”

While President Donald Trump has said he doesn’t want the Grand Princess to dock, he also said he would yield to the advice of health officials. Refusing to let the ship into port for an extended period could hasten the spread of the virus on board, experts said.

Milton, who studies the spread of virus particles in the air, said recirculating air on a cruise ship’s ventilation system, along with people living in close quarters and in communal settings, make the vessels vulnerable to the spread of infection.

“You’re going to amplify the infection by keeping people on the boat,” he said.

A Purdue University air quality expert said cruise ship air conditioning systems are not designed to filter out particles as small as the coronavirus.

“The passengers should be quarantined on shore if there is a suitable facility,” Qingyan Chen said in an email message. Grand Princess “should run 100% outdoor air in their air conditioning system and not use recirculated air.”

Top cruise line executives met Saturday with Vice President Mike Pence at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after which Pence announced “significant changes” to the industry going forward, but gave no indication what would happen next with the Grand Princess.

Pence said cruise officials agreed to enhanced entry and exit screenings and to establish shipboard testing for the virus, along with new quarantine standards established by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The industry also was asked to come up with and fund a new plan on how to transport cruise passengers who contract the disease.

Princess officials said the new protocols include asking all new passengers to sign a health declaration, and temperature screenings as passengers leave. Anyone coming from a “high-risk area is also undergoing a medical evaluation,” Dr. Grant Tarling, chief medical officer for Carnival Corporation, told reporters.

Government officials made it clear in their language that they were walking a fine line with industry officials about the best way to prevent the disease from spreading without causing significant economic hardship to cruise lines.

“We want to ensure the American people can continue, as we deal with the coronavirus, to enjoy the cruise line industry,” Pence said.

Meanwhile, Princess officials also appeared frustrated about the lack of detail on the Grand Princess’ next steps, repeatedly telling reporters they were waiting for definitive information about when and where the ship will dock, who will be tested, and whether passengers will be allowed to get off.

“We need to get the ship into a port as soon as possible,” said Jan Swartz, group president of Princess Cruises and Carnival Australia.

In Japan, leaders were criticized for confining more than 3,700 passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess for two weeks last month because of the virus. About 700 people were sickened on the ship and three died. Japanese health officials defended the quarantine as necessary and adequate.

In Asia, the Malaysian port of Penang turned away the cruise ship Costa Fortuna with 2,000 people aboard because there were 64 passengers from Italy, the center of Europe’s epidemic. It was the second port after Phuket in Thailand to reject the ship, which is now headed to Singapore.

In Egypt, a cruise ship on the Nile with more than 150 aboard was quarantined after 12 people tested positive for the virus. And on the Mediterranean in Malta, which reported its first case of the virus, the MSC Opera agreed not to enter port even though there were no infections confirmed on board.

Art Reingold, head of the epidemiology and biostatistics division at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, said the burden is on authorities to coordinate the feeding and care of so many people without spreading the infection further.

“It’s obviously going to be a real challenge,” he said. “I don’t have any doubt that crew members interact with passengers, so it seems quite plausible there could be additional transmissions.”

The challenge is not an entirely new one: Ships have previously been affected by other diseases, such as norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea and can spread quickly in the close quarters of a ship and among passengers with weakened immune system.

A view of the Costa Fortuna cruise ship, near Phuket, Thailand, Friday, March 6, 2020. Thailand has denied entry to passengers and crew of a cruise ship that arrived at the popular Andaman Sea resort island of Phuket. (AP Photo)

Frustration mounts over virus-stalled ship in California

By DAISY NGUYEN and JANIE HARan hour ago

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This photo provided by Michele Smith, shows a deserted lounge area on the Grand Princess cruise ship Friday, March 6, 2020, off the California coast. Scrambling to keep the coronavirus at bay, officials ordered a cruise ship with about 3,500 people aboard to stay back from the California coast until passengers and crew can be tested, after a traveler from its previous voyage died of the disease and at least two others became infected. A Coast Guard helicopter lowered test kits onto the 951-foot (290-meter) Grand Princess by rope as the vessel lay at anchor off Northern California, and authorities said the results would be available on Friday, March 6, 2020. Princess Cruise Lines said fewer than 100 people aboard had been identified for testing. (Michele Smith via AP)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Cruise officials and passengers confined to their rooms on a ship circling international waters off the San Francisco Bay voiced mounting frustration as the weekend wore on with no direction from authorities on where to go after 21 people on board tested positive for the new coronavirus.

The Grand Princess was forbidden to dock in San Francisco amid evidence the vessel was the breeding ground for a cluster of about 20 cases that resulted in at least one death after its previous voyage. The ship is carrying more than 3,500 people from 54 countries.

Jan Swartz, group president of Princess Cruises and Carnival Australia, told reporters Saturday that cruise officials want guests and crew off the ship so they can receive proper care and evaluation, but they are awaiting direction from federal and state officials.

“Our preference is to get the guests and crew off the Grand Princess as soon as possible,” she said.

The U.S. death toll from the virus climbed to 19, with all but three of the victims in Washington state. The number of infections swelled to more than 400, scattered across states. Pennsylvania, Indiana, Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas reported their first cases.

In California, officials to bring the 951-foot (290-meter) Grand Princess cruise ship to a non-commercial port and test those aboard.

Vice President Mike Pence said at a Saturday meeting with cruise line executives in Florida that officials were still working on a plan.

“All passengers and crew will be tested for the coronavirus and quarantined as necessary,” Pence said.

As people pleaded Saturday with elected officials to let the ship dock, cruise officials disclosed more information about how they think the outbreak occurred.

Grant Tarling, chief medical officer for Carnival Corporation said it’s believed a 71-year-old Northern California man who later died of the virus was probably sick when he boarded the ship for a Feb. 11 cruise to Mexico.

The passenger visited the medical center the day before disembarking with symptoms of respiratory illness, he said. Others in several states and Canada who were on that voyage also have tested positive.

The passenger likely infected his dining room server, who also tested positive for the virus, Tarling said, as did two people traveling with the man. Two passengers now on the ship who have the virus were not on the previous cruise, he said.

Princess said the ship is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of San Francisco. It said a critically ill passenger was taken from the ship to a medical facility for treatment unrelated to the virus.

 

In this image from video, provided by the California National Guard, a helicopter carrying airmen with the 129th Rescue Wing flies over the Grand Princess cruise ship off the coast of California Thursday, March 5, 2020. Scrambling to keep the coronavirus at bay, officials ordered a cruise ship with 3,500 people aboard to stay back from the California coast Thursday until passengers and crew can be tested, after a traveler from its previous voyage died of the disease and at least two others became infected. Airmen lowered test kits onto the 951-foot (290-meter) Grand Princess by rope as the vessel lay at anchor off Northern California, and authorities said the results would be available on Friday. Princess Cruise Lines said fewer than 100 people aboard had been identified for testing. (California National Guard via AP)

While health officials said about 1,100 crew members will remain aboard, passengers could be disembarked to face quarantine, possibly at U.S. military bases or other sites, as were hundreds of Americans exposed to the virus on another cruise ship in January.

Passenger Karen Dever of Moorestown, New Jersey, agreed she should be tested but wants officials to let her go if her results come back negative.

“Fourteen more days on this ship, I think by the end I will need a mental health visit,” she said with a laugh. “I’m an American. I should be able to come home.”

Rex Lawson, 86, of Santa Cruz County in California, said he and his wife were lucky to have a balcony and fresh air. But he feels for travelers confined to interior rooms.

“It’s quite anxious because we don’t know what’s going on. I guess nobody knows what’s going on,” he said. “It looks like we get information from the television first and then the captain.”

President Donald Trump, speaking Friday at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, said he would prefer not to allow the passengers onto American soil but will defer to medical experts.

“I don’t need to have the numbers (of U.S. cases) double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault,” Trump said while touring the CDC in Atlanta. “And it wasn’t the fault of the people on the ship either. OK? It wasn’t their fault either.”

Another Princess ship, the Diamond Princess, was quarantined for two weeks in Yokohama, Japan, last month because of the virus. Ultimately, about 700 of the 3,700 people aboard became infected in what experts pronounced a public-health failure, with the vessel essentially becoming a floating germ factory.

Experts say recirculated air from a cruise ship’s ventilation system, plus the close quarters and communal settings, make passengers and crew vulnerable to infectious diseases.

They said cruise ship conditioning systems are not designed to filter out particles as small as the coronavirus, allowing the disease to rapidly circulate to other cabins.

“The passengers should be quarantined on shore if there is a suitable facility,” said Qingyan Chen, a Purdue University air quality expert, in an email.

Worldwide, the virus has infected 106,000 people and killed nearly 3,600, the vast majority of them in China. Most cases have been mild, and more than half of those infected have recovered.

___

A previous version of this story incorrectly reported President Trump made his comments about the cruise ship in an interview with Fox News. He said it during a tour of the CDC in Atlanta.

In this Thursday, March 5, 2020, photo, released by the California National Guard, Guardian Angels, a group of medical personnel with the 129th Rescue Wing, working alongside individuals from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, don protective equipment after delivering virus testing kits to the Grand Princess cruise ship off the coast of California. Passengers on a cruise ship off the California coast were instructed to stay in their cabins as they awaited test results Friday that could show whether the coronavirus is circulating among the more than 3,500 people aboard. (Chief Master Sgt. Seth Zweben/California National Guard via AP)

___

Associated Press writers Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; Julie Walker in New York City; Tom Strong in Washington, D.C.; Gene Johnson, Martha Bellisle and Carla K. Johnson in Seattle; Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami; and Rachel La Corte in Olympia, Washington, contributed to this report.

The Associated Press receives support for health and science coverage from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

HE MAY BE A GENIUS BUT HE IS AN IDIOT

Taleb says Musk’s comment on coronavirus panic being ‘dumb’ is what’s dumb

Mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb suggests Elon Musk doesn’t understand the spread of risk in complex systems


Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Mohd Zakir/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, whose book “The Black Swan” foreshadowed the 2008 global financial crisis, responded to Elon Musk’s tweet about what he called a panic over the coronavirus with a brief lesson on probability and human endurance over the millennia.
“[T]he coronavirus panic is dumb,” Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla TSLA, -2.90%, had said Friday on Twitter.

The noted mathematician’s equally terse reply:
‘Saying the coronavirus panic is dumb is dumb.’— Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Musk didn’t elaborate in his tweet, which came the same day as the S&P 500 SPX, -1.70% fell another 1.7% to finish the week 12% below its Feb. 19 closing record, with the period between that date and Friday marked by some of the biggest swings in stock prices since the darkest days of 2008.

Companies from Apple AAPL, -1.32% to Alphabet GOOG, -1.56% GOOGL, -1.44% said over the past few days that they’d close their offices and ask employees to work from home to curtail the spread of the novel virus, which has led to more than 3,000 deaths around the world since the beginning of January.

Shoppers in the U.S. cleared store shelves of food, disinfectants and toilet paper amid concern that supply chains will be disrupted. Meanwhile, President Trump signed an $8 billion–plus emergency package to combat the coronavirus outbreak.

Taleb, a professor and investor whose work has focused on the risks of unexpected events, followed up in a Saturday tweet: “If the word ‘panic’ means ‘exaggerated’ reaction, could be so at the individual level but NOT at the collective one. ... We have survived for zillion years thanks to ‘irrational’ ‘panics.’”

To act “rational” during a viral outbreak that has few consequences for the individual could lead to greater overall death, Taleb explained.

That’s because if one fails to panic and act in an “ultraconservative” manner, he said in a Twitter thread that links to a March 5 tweet, a virus can spread more easily and become a “severe” source of risk for the entire system — or, in this case, society.

Musk, meanwhile, was preparing on Friday for the final mission of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft, which has been delivering cargo to the International Space Station since the company won a NASA contract in 2008.

The SpaceX founder’s eventual goal is to colonize Mars to save humanity. As he said Sept. 27, 2016, at the 67th annual International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, if humans don’t populate another planet, “[w]e stay on Earth forever, and some eventual extinction event wipes us out.”

These nine companies are working on coronavirus treatments or vaccines — here’s where things stand

The list includes Gilead Sciences Inc. and Moderna Inc. along with smaller biotechs

March 8, 2020 By Jaimy Lee

Getty Images

A mix of legacy drugmakers and small startups have stepped forward with plans to develop vaccines or treatments that target the infection caused by the novel coronavirus.

COVID-19, which was first detected in December in Wuhan, China, has sickened more than 100,000 people worldwide and killed at least 3,400. There are no Food and Drug Administration-approved vaccines or therapies for the disease.

In the U.S., the companies that are initiating development have received funding from two organizations: the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), which is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), a division of the National Institutes of Health. Some companies have received funding from Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), a global organization based in Oslo. Other companies are funding trials by themselves or through partnerships with other life sciences companies.


Here are some of the companies developing treatments or vaccines in the U.S. for COVID-19:

Company: Gilead Sciences Inc. GILD, +5.37%


Type: Treatment

Stage: Phase 3 clinical trials

Name: remdesivir

Background: Gilead is a longtime drug maker that is best known for developing the first major cure for hepatitis-C in Sovaldi, a therapy that changed the standard of care for that disease but also kicked off the national debate about drug pricing. The company has experience developing and marketing HIV drugs, including Truvada for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), its preventive HIV medicine. Along with U.S. trials, Gilead is conducting a randomized, controlled clinical trial in Wuhan, testing remdesivir as a treatment for mild to moderate forms of pneumonia in people with the virus. The trial was given the go-ahead by China’s Food and Drug Administration in February.

Clinical trials:

1. On Feb. 21, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases started enrolling patients in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial evaluating 394 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 at up to 50 sites worldwide. The trial is expected to conclude April 1, 2023. Sites include the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., (not recruiting), the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha (recruiting), the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (not recruiting), and Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane (recruiting).

2. On March 3, Gilead said a randomized, open-label Phase 3 trial will evaluate remdesivir in 600 patients with moderate COVID-19. The trial is expected to start enrolling patients in March, with results to come in May.

3. On March 3, Gilead said a randomized, open-label Phase 3 trial will evaluate remdesivir in 400 patients with severe COVID-19. The trial is expected to start enrolling patients in March, with results in May.

Year-to-date stock performance: Shares of Gilead are up 17.6%.


Company: GlaxoSmithKline GSK, -0.49%
Type: Pandemic adjuvant platform for vaccines

Name: AS03 Adjuvant System

Background: GSK is another leading vaccine maker, having brought to market vaccines for human papillomavirus (HPV) and the seasonal flu, among others. On Feb. 3, it said the CEPI-funded University of Queensland will have access to the British drugmaker’s vaccine adjuvant platform technology, which is believed to both strengthen the response of a vaccine and limit the amount of vaccine needed per dose. On Feb. 24, GSK said that Clover Biopharmaceuticals Inc., a Chinese biotechnology company, is also using adjuvant technology in combination with its vaccine candidate, COVID-19 S-Trimer, in preclinical studies. Dr. Thomas Breuer, chief medical officer for GSK Vaccines, is leading work on vaccines and the adjuvant platform.

Year-to-date stock performance: Shares of GSK have tumbled 12.8%.


Company: Inovio Pharmaceuticals Inc. INO, +43.77%

Type: DNA-based vaccine

Stage: Preclinical

Name: INO-4800

Background: Another CEPI grantee, Inovio has said it already began preclinical testing and small-scale manufacturing.

Timeline: Inovio develops immunotherapies and vaccines but hasn’t yet had a product approved for treatment. For INO-4800, preclinical testing was performed between Jan. 23 and Feb. 29. The company plans to begin clinical trials in the U.S. with 30 participants in April. It also plans to launch human trials in China and South Korea that same month, and that it has a total of 3,000 doses prepared for the trials in the three countries. Inovio said it expects to have the first results from the trial in the fall and to have 1 million does of the vaccine ready for additional clinical trials or emergency use by the end of the year.

Year-to-date stock performance: Shares of Inovio have soared 278.2%.


Company: Johnson & Johnson JNJ, +0.01%

Type: Vaccine

Name: TBD (“We are still in the process of identifying a vaccine candidate, so no there is no name at this time,” a spokesman said March 4.)

Background: On Feb. 11, J&J said it is working with BARDA to test its vaccine candidate, with both organizations providing funding for research and development and the public-health organization funding the Phase 1 trials. Similar to GSK, J&J’s AdVac and PER. C6 technologies are used to improve the development process for a vaccine and were also used to develop J&J’s experimental Ebola vaccine. “We are also in discussions with other partners, that if we have a vaccine candidate with potential, we aim to make it accessible to China and other parts of the world,” Dr. Paul Stoffels, J&J’s chief scientific officer, said in a statement. J&J also said Feb. 18 that it is partnering with BARDA on a project that aims to screen existing antiviral medications, including experimental or approved therapies, that may be effective against COVID-19.

Timeline: The company aims to start a Phase 1 clinical trial by the end of 2020, “compared to the typical five to seven years it takes for this milestone in vaccine development,” Stoffels said on Dr. Paul Stoffels, J&J’s chief scientific officer and leader of J&J’s global COVID-19 response, said March 2.

Year-to-date stock performance: Shares of J&J are down 4.8%.


Company: Moderna Inc. MRNA, +5.71%

Type: RNA-based vaccine candidate

Stage: Preclinical

Name: mRNA-1273

Background: On Jan. 23, Moderna received funding from CEPI to develop an mRNA vaccine against COVID-19. On Feb. 24, it said it had shipped the first batch of mRNA-1273 to the NIAID for a Phase 1 clinical trial in the U.S.

Clinical trials: On Feb. 21, the NIAID said it would begin enrolling 45 healthy adult patients in an open-label Phase I clinical trial at one location to test mRNA-1273 as a vaccine for COVID-19 on March 19. The trial is expected to conclude June 1, 2021. Participants will be followed for one year. The trial will be conducted at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.

Year-to-date stock performance: Moderna’s shares have gained 45.7%.


Company: Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. REGN, +1.28%

Type: Treatment

Stage: Preclinical

Name: No name yet

Background: On Feb. 4, Regeneron announced it is working on developing monoclonal antibodies as treatments for COVID-19. The company’s VelocImmune platform uses genetically-engineered mice with humanized immune systems in preclinical testing. “We are aiming to have hundreds of thousands of prophylactic doses ready for human testing by end of August,” a spokesperson said. Christos Kyratsous, VP of infectious disease R&D and viral vector technology, is running the project.

Year-to-date stock performance: Regeneron’s shares are up 27.8%.

Company: Sanofi SNY, -3.00%

Type: Vaccine

Stage: Preclinical

Name: No name yet

Background: Starting Feb. 18, Sanofi is working with BARDA to test a preclinical vaccine candidate for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) for COVID-19 using its recombinant DNA platform. It has a long history of producing vaccines in its Sanofi Pasteur business and acquired this candidate through its 2017 acquisition of Protein Sciences for $750 million. The French drugmaker previously worked with the organization on flu vaccines. Scientists in Meriden, Ct., are working on the vaccine; David Loew, Sanofi Pasteur’s EVP, is leading the project.

Timeline: A spokesperson said Sanofi aims to put a vaccine into a Phase 1 clinical trial between March 2021 and August 2021.

Year-to-date stock performance: Shares of Sanofi are down 4.3%.


Company: Takeda Pharmaceutical Company Ltd. TAK, +0.78%

Type: Treatment

Stage: Preclinical

Name: TAK-888

Background: Takeda is one of the most recent entrants to the race to develop a treatment for COVID-19. The Japanese drugmaker said March 4 it plans to test hyperimmune globulins for people who are at high risk for infection. As part of its research, which will be performed in Georgia, Takeda said it would need access to plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 or those who have received a vaccine if one is developed. Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, president of Takeda’s vaccine business, is the co-lead of the company’s COVID-19 response team. Like J&J, Takeda plans to examine whether other therapies, both experimental or with regulatory approval, may have treatment potential.

Year-to-date stock performance: Shares of Takeda are down 8.7%.

Company: Vir Biotechnology Inc. VIR, +4.38%

Type: Treatment

Stage: Preclinical

Background: Vir said Feb. 25 it is collaborating with Shanghai-based WuXi Biologics to test monoclonal antibodies as a treatment for COVID-19. If the treatment is approved, WuXi will commercialize it in China, while Vir will have marketing rights for the rest of the world. The preclinical company is run by George Scangos, the former CEO of Biogen.

Year-to-date stock performance: Vir shares have jumped 279%.

'Staggering failure': Environmentalists slam House Democratic flagship climate bill

by Abby Smith WASHINGTON EXAMINER| March 09, 2020 

Climate activists are issuing a warning shot to Democratic lawmakers, calling for them to propose dramatically more aggressive policies to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

The flagship climate bill House Democrats are promoting thus far, the CLEAN Future Act from lawmakers on the Energy and Commerce Committee, “represents a staggering failure of ambition and leadership,” write a coalition of environmental groups in a letter Monday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The legislation, led by Chairman Frank Pallone, a New Jersey Democrat, jeopardizes Pelosi’s promise of "ambitious leadership on climate" during her second tour as speaker, the groups write. The coalition includes Friends of the Earth, Center for Biological Diversity, 350.org, and the New Jersey chapters of the Sunrise Movement.

Their letter comes as the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis is preparing to release its report later this month, in which they’re expected to propose broad policy approaches to tackle greenhouse gas emissions. Democratic Florida Rep. Kathy Castor, who's chairwoman of the committee, is copied on the letter to Pelosi.

Pallone’s proposal “set the starting point for the Democratic position on climate in 2021 and beyond. He set that starting point in the worst possible place imaginable,” said Lukas Ross, a senior policy analyst at Friends of the Earth.

“Frankly, we badly want the House select committee and Congresswoman Castor to succeed where he so clearly failed,” Ross added.

Ross outlined three major areas where he and other activists would like to see Democrats outline stronger policy. First, the 2050 deadline set in the CLEAN Future Act is way too late, he said, arguing for a 2030 deadline that progressive lawmakers like New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have set in their proposals.

The House Energy and Commerce bill also shouldn’t rely on market mechanisms to reduce emissions, Ross added, pointing in particular to the clean electricity standard the bill would set up to target carbon emissions from the power sector.

That program would require utilities to produce 100% clean power by 2050, and it sets up a trading scheme to allow companies flexibility in how they comply. Any company that fails to meet its targets under the program would pay “alternative compliance payments” that would contribute to a fund used to support clean energy projects.

Ross said analysis shows, though, that the way the program is currently set up in the bill would reduce power sector emissions little beyond business as usual.

“Nothing would be required to happen beyond today’s announced retirements” of coal-fired power plants, said Bruce Buckheit, former director of the air enforcement division at the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton years. Buckheit is consulting with Friends of the Earth, and he conducted an analysis on the CLEAN Future Act’s clean electricity program.

What he found is that the program, as written in the draft bill, wouldn’t get any additional emissions reductions through 2030 over what is projected by the Energy Information Administration’s Annual Energy Outlook.

That’s because the carbon intensity rate used by the Democrats’ program would allow natural gas to earn credits as “clean” generation, Ross said.

According to Buckheit, that means the program would squeeze states such as Montana, West Virginia, and Missouri that have a lot of coal-fired power, but “essentially lets the Northeast off the hook.”

It also isn’t clear to Buckheit that any company would have to pay alternative compliance payments.

“Today’s market forces continue to lead the operations of those coal plants to reduce utilization and ultimately retire,” he said. “That is expected to continue, which frees up allowances for some period of time and leads to a glut.”

Buckheit acknowledged that “some of the drafting in the bill is poor, and I don’t know exactly what they mean to accomplish.” He said he has sent House Energy and Commerce Committee staff suggestions to correct the program.

But as written, “this build a bridge to a world of nuclear, renewables, and natural gas,” he said. “At the end of the day, this is not carbon neutral.” The overall stated goal of the CLEAN Future Act is to bring the U.S. economy to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

Ross, of Friends of the Earth, was more directly critical. He pointed to draft legislation from Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is vying for the Democratic nomination, that would outright ban fracking.

Compared to the Energy and Commerce bill, that draws a stark contrast “around what climate leadership looks like and what we expect from our climate champions,” Ross said. “We want a ban on fracking, not a bill that would subsidize fracking.”

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Lack of paid leave will leave millions of US workers vulnerable to coronavirus

Low-wage workers in service industries without proper medical benefits and sick leave will risk getting sick or spreading the virus

Many low-wage workers, such as airport workers, are on the 

frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak, yet are left unprotected

 from contracting the virus. 

Photograph: Elaine Thompson/AP

Michael Sainato Published Mon 9 Mar 2020

For over 30 years, Joyce Barnes has worked as a home healthcare aide in Richmond, Virginia without any paid sick days. She makes $8.25 an hour and often works through illnesses because she can’t afford to lose income from taking the time off.

“I can’t afford to miss pay so I have gone to work before several times sick as a dog, masked up so my patients wouldn’t catch what I have,” Barnes said. “Everyday I pray and I ask God to give me strength that I won’t get sick so I can keep on making it and that’s the way we have to do it.”

Last July, Barnes contracted an illness from one of her patients that caused her a stay in a hospital for over a week. She relied on family members to help with bills to make up for the income she lost from missing work, and still has to make regular monthly payments toward the thousands of dollars of medical debt she accrued, despite having health insurance.


“I have a lot of medical debt I have to pay. They had to do a test on my stomach when I was sick. That one test cost me $3,000 and I’m still paying it because I can’t afford to pay everything back,” Barnes added.

As the coronavirus outbreak (Covid-19) has begun to spread through the United States, millions of low-wage workers in service industries are left vulnerable due to lack of proper medical benefits and paid sick leave. There are growing concerns that these workers will be extra vulnerable to the disease themselves, or, due to lack of health insurance and poverty, help its spread by continuing to work while ill.

Over 32 million workers in the US have no paid sick days off, and low-wage workers are least likely to have paid sick time. These workers are also significantly less likely to have access to healthcare and medical benefits, making them potentially especially vulnerable to the coronavirus outbreak as it spreads.

According to the latest data available from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 69% of low-wage workers, those in the tenth lowest percentile of median wage earners in the US civilian workforce, do not receive paid sick leave benefits.

“Their earnings are low so they can’t afford to take unpaid leave and when they are sick they have to keep working and expose other people in the process,” said Harry Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University.

“That’s the reason advocates for paid leave make the case, it’s not just for the worker, it’s for the public good. There’s a reason for the government to help provide it.”

Dr Erica Groshen, a senior extension faculty member at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, explained changes in technology have made it easier for more professional workers to work from home, making them less vulnerable to getting sick and able to cope with the potential quarantine conditions of a coronavirus epidemic. Already King County in Washington state – which includes Seattle – has recommended its residents work from work.

But low-wage workers are increasingly more vulnerable as they feel the pressure of the threat of having their work outsourced to contractors. They also often do work – fast food jobs, manual labor, care work – that cannot be done from home. That means the coronavirus could cost them their livelihoods, as well as their health.

“That’s what we’re seeing, a widening of inequality on that front,” said Dr. Groshen.

Many low-wage workers, such as airport workers, are on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak, yet are left unprotected from contracting the virus or receiving adequate medical treatment.

Leila Benitez, an airplane cabin cleaner at Miami International Airport for eight years, has no health insurance or paid sick leave.

“When I finally do take a day off because I’m so sick, I have to pay hundreds of dollars in medical bills to get a doctor’s note,” said Benitez. She often travels to the Dominican Republic, where she is from, to receive medical care because treatment and prescriptions costs a fraction of prices in the US.

“When I’m cleaning the planes, there are bodily fluids, trash, dirty tissues. We don’t get enough time to wash our hands in between planes. The protective gloves are thin, and often don’t fit correctly.”

Several states and cities around the US have passed laws mandating employers provide workers with paid sick leave. A 2017 study published in the Journal of Public Economics found US cities that mandated sick leave for workers experienced up to 40% declines in seasonal flu rates. But many low-wage workers in these areas are still in positions where they have to work through an illness.

In Maryland, the state passed a paid sick leave law in 2018 under which employers must provide one hour of paid sick leave for every thirty hours worked, but adjunct professors often only accrue a few hours every semester and have restrictions on when and how they can use it.

“This past month, I had to teach while sick and it prolonged my illness. I was worried my students were going to contract it. I felt like I couldn’t take off because I can’t afford to lose the money,” said Val Pappas-Brown, an adjunct professor in the Baltimore area for two years.

Joan Bevelaqua, an adjunct professor at several different colleges in Maryland for 20 years, explained she has never taken sick time off for fear of losing income. She currently has health insurance through medicare, but is now missing work due to a fractured femur.

She is currently trying to schedule extra courses to teach over the summer to try to make up for the income she is losing this semester, while pushing state legislators to pass the Time to Care Act, which would set up a sick leave insurance program for workers in Maryland.

“Being an adjunct, we all went into this profession hoping to become full-time professors and more and more you remain an adjunct,” she added. “We are much cheaper, they don’t pay benefits, and we don’t have adequate sick leave so we come to school sick.”

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