'Squid Game' is a global sensation. But at home, it's delivering hard truths.

Jennifer Jett and Stella Kim 

HONG KONG — Why are South Koreans watching “Squid Game”? Because everyone else is.

© Provided by NBC News

The nine-episode horror series on Netflix has hit No. 1 in 90 of the streaming service’s markets around the world, including South Korea, where it was made.

“I got to the point where I could not hold a conversation without watching the show,” said Jung Dunn, a security analyst in Seoul, the South Korean capital.

But the show also strikes a nerve because it unflinchingly addresses a problem that is particularly entrenched in South Korea: debt and the never-ending struggle to pay it off.

The cast of “Squid Game” features some of South Korea’s biggest stars, including Lee Jung-jae as the protagonist, Seong Gi-hun, a hopelessly indebted father who receives a business card from a stranger offering him a way out. Along with 455 other contestants — from all walks of life but all deeply in debt too — he agrees to compete for a cash prize of 45.6 billion won (about $38 million) by playing a series of traditional Korean children’s games, only to discover that elimination from each round means death.

© Youngkyu Park

 A card with a phone number on one side is given to the game's 456 participants 

“There’s this dissonance between Korean pride that this Korean show is dominating Netflix all around the world, and the discomfort with what the show appears to expose about Korea,” said CedarBough Saeji, an assistant professor of Korean and East Asian studies at Pusan National University in Busan, South Korea. “Koreans love to be No. 1, but No. 1 at the cost of kind of airing your dirty laundry is a somewhat different thing.”

That South Korea also produced “Parasite,” the 2020 Oscar winner for best picture that also focused on themes of inequality, has probably accentuated this discomfort, Saeji said.

Still, “Squid Game” is wildly popular in its home country.

The show was released on Sept. 17 just before Chuseok, a Korean holiday similar to Thanksgiving when families gather, the perfect time for binge-watching. The surge in network traffic led one internet service provider to sue Netflix to cover its costs.

The fervor has also spilled over into real life. A street vendor in Seoul who provided the makers of “Squid Game” with dalgona, a brittle sugar candy at the center of one of the games, told Reuters that he had seen a boom in business

.

© Youngkyu Park One of the games in Squid Game

Thousands of curious South Koreans also tried the eight-digit phone number that appears on the business card, which the show’s makers didn’t realize would reach an actual person. The owner of the number, and even people with similar numbers, have been inundated with calls and messages at all hours.

On Wednesday, Netflix said it was working with the show’s local production company to address the issue, including editing scenes to remove the number.

Park Sae-ha, a senior studying economics at Yonsei University in Seoul, said “Squid Game” was “spell-binding because it was so explicit and blunt.”

“Although I am young, I could easily relate to the hard reality of a very competitive society,” she said.

That intense competitiveness may be one reason South Korea has been so successful, with a period of rapid industrialization starting in the 1960s that turned it into the world’s 10th-largest economy. But as in many other countries, a university degree and a white-collar job don’t guarantee the financial security they used to, Saeji said. With an average income of about $42,000 a year, many Koreans now find they have to borrow to keep up.

Fueled by low interest rates, household debt in South Korea has grown significantly in recent years, and is now equal to the country’s annual GDP. (In the U.S., by contrast, household debt is about 80 percent of GDP.) People may rack up debt because of credit card spending, unemployment or gambling losses, but a large chunk of it is tied to real estate.

Housing prices have been rising fast, especially under President Moon Jae-in, and the average price of an apartment in Seoul is nearing $1 million. Lending curbs and efforts to cool the housing market have done little to rein in household borrowing. In addition to housing, some Koreans, especially young people, borrow money to invest in cryptocurrency.

© SeongJoon Cho People look at a city skyline from an observation deck of Woomyeon mountain at dusk in Seoul, South Korea, on July 9, 2020. (SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg via Getty Images file)

Many Koreans start out by borrowing from legitimate financial institutions like banks, said Koo Se-Woong, a commentator on Korean culture based in Germany. When that avenue is exhausted, they may move on to second-tier lenders that charge higher interest.

In the worst-case scenarios, he said, borrowers turn to loan shark operations that can charge triple-digit interest rates, “and then you are pushed into situations from which you really cannot get out.”

According to some estimates, there are 400,000 Koreans in debt to loan sharks.

“When you look at the characters in the show who are participating in this game, they represent that demographic of the Koreans who are in the worst possible situation because of their personal debt,” Koo said.

In a recent widely shared Facebook post, Koo said he was shocked when a friend told him he was living paycheck to paycheck, despite having a good job.

The friend “doesn't strike anyone as extravagant,” Koo said, but struggles to afford the trappings of middle-class life: an apartment, a car and occasional travel with his wife and children.

"It's all paid for by loans, I am telling you," Koo said his friend told him. "We just have no money."

Jung, the security analyst, said the plot of “Squid Game” was easy to accept because “it dealt with such familiar stories of debt-ridden people you come across in real life.”

© Youngkyu Park A scene from Netflix's Squid Game

“The story stems from a deeply rooted perception of how society looks at failure, especially individual financial failure,” he said.

Bankruptcy in South Korea is generally seen not as a chance to start over but as a devastating fate. That is underlined in “Squid Game,” Saeji said, when contestants are given the option to leave but choose to keep playing even at the risk of their lives.

“In the regular world it’s not just the death of their body, it’s the death of their pride. It’s the shame of having to be such an unsuccessful person in front of your family,” she said.

Viewers in South Korea say the show is all the more disturbing because it injects death and violence into playground games like Red Light, Green Light and tug of war.

The show plays on childhood nostalgia “and along with it the innocent times when you had no problems,” said Kim Hern-sik, a pop culture critic in Seoul. “Yet the story tells you that escaping from reality is not the answer.”

“Squid Game” is “fundamentally a Korean story, featuring games people would remember playing as kids,” Don Kang, vice president of Korean content at Netflix, told NBC News in an email. “So we knew it would resonate with our members here.”

© Netflix The doll acts as the person who is in the game

Its popularity in the West came as more of a surprise. But Korean cultural exports have been sweeping Asia for years, and Netflix was already betting on their growing appeal. The company is spending $500 million this year on Korean content, almost as much as it spent in the last five years.

Saeji said that after decades of Western cultural influence, the success of “Squid Game” shows that South Korea can make a TV show with a Hollywood feel “and they can do it better.”

While “Squid Game” is not the first story about a fight to the death, director Hwang Dong-hyuk, who has a film degree from the University of Southern California, made it influential in his own way, said Oh Dong-jin, a prominent film critic in South Korea.

“Every movie borrows this and that from other movies. What matters, therefore, is how creatively you can borrow from different references,” he said. “So, even from this standpoint, the traditional children’s games the show uses make 'Squid Game' quite original.”

Margie Kim, a housewife in Seoul who is watching “Squid Game” with her family, said that while she enjoyed its intensity and pop-art-influenced visuals, the underlying messages were also important.

“I do feel the pain of what our society is going through,” she said. The show deals with so many pressing issues, she said—income inequality, youth unemployment, a rapidly aging society—that it’s something her entire family can relate to and talk about.

“So many middle-class, ordinary people live with so much debt,” she said. “I could totally empathize with people who joined the game.”

Jennifer Jett reported from Hong Kong, and Stella Kim reported from Los Angeles.

Six Days in Fallujah: This video game is an 'Arab murder simulator,' critics say

By Alaa Elassar, CNN 

Najla Bassim Abdulelah grew up in a war. The regular sight of dead bodies and the memory of her friend being shot next to her as they walked to school stained her childhood.

© Victura, Inc. A scene from the video game "Six Days in Fallujah."

Children's laughter was replaced with an incessant soundtrack of exploding bombs, and she lived with a crippling fear of losing her family.

So when Abdulelah, who now lives in Atlanta, Georgia, heard that "Six Days in Fallujah," a first-person shooter video game set during the Iraq War's bloodiest battle, was on the verge of being released, she was horrified.

"I am disgusted that this is something that will be producing profit when people like me suffered the consequences of this war and will have to watch people play it for fun," Abdulelah, 28, told CNN. "I just can't get past the inhumanity."

For Abdulelah and other Iraq War survivors, the imminent release of "Six Days in Fallujah" threatens to reopen old wounds and trivialize their pain.

They want the game shelved.

But the creators of the video game say it's grossly misunderstood, and that they're merely using gameplay -- the way players interact with a video game -- to teach history.

'A massive killing of Arabs'

Part documentary and part video game, "Six Days in Fallujah" uses gameplay to recount history and recreate true stories from the Second Battle of Fallujah. The offensive, code named Operation Phantom Fury, saw the US Marines lead a joint force of American, British and Iraqi troops into the ancient city.

The battle lasted from November 7 to December 23, 2004, and, according to the US Army, is widely regarded as the US' toughest urban battle since Huế, Vietnam, when ferocious fighting between American troops and North Vietnamese soldiers resulted in the deaths of hundreds -- if not thousands -- of citizens, who were buried in unmarked mass graves by the communist forces.

In Fallujah, US-led forces went house to house hunting for suspected insurgents. Fighters on both sides, as well as thousands of innocent Iraqis caught in the crossfire, did their best to avoid snipers and booby traps.

"We were told going into Fallujah, into the combat area, that every single person that was walking, talking, breathing was an enemy combatant. As such, every single person that was walking down the street or in a house was a target," Jeff Englehart, a former US soldier with the 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, said in the 2005 documentary "Fallujah, The Hidden Massacre."

© Victura, Inc. A scene from "Six Days in Fallujah." Developers say they collaborated with more than 100 service members to recreate real events.

US-led forces used more than 300 bombs, 6,000 rounds of artillery and 29,000 mortar rounds, according to the US Marines. Military officials also confirmed that troops used white phosphorous, a highly controversial incendiary weapon that burns the skin.

Ross Caputi, a former US Marine with the 1st Battalion, 8th Marines, recalls some of the controversial tactics used during the battle, including firing grenades or gun rounds into homes before entering, in case insurgents were hiding inside.

"These tactics were meant to keep us safe. But I learned later that tens of thousands of civilians were still hiding in their houses during the operation, so these tactics would have put them in a lot of danger," Caputi told CNN. "The hardship that Phantom Fury imposed on Fallujans and the destruction it caused made me feel really ashamed of what we were doing."

© Mahdi Mohammad Iraqi-American Mohammed Husain wants "Six Days in Fallujah" shelved.

In the end, more than 80 American soldiers were killed, CNN reported. The number of civilian casualties remains unknown, but at least 800 innocent Iraqis were killed, according to the Red Cross. Local NGOs estimate the battle killed up to 6,000 Iraqis, mostly civilians, The Guardian has reported.

Describing the aftermath, Englehart said, "It seemed like just a massive killing of Arabs. It looked like just a massive killing."


A 'new way to understand' history

"Six Days in Fallujah" was originally developed by Atomic Games and set to be released by Japanese game publisher Konami in 2010. But the Tokyo-based company withdrew from the project a year early due to widespread criticism that it was offensive. Atomic Games went out of business and the project was shelved.

In February 2021, developer Highwire Games and publisher Victura, founded by former Atomic Games CEO Peter Tamte, announced they were resurrecting "Six Days in Fallujah."

The game is set to be released by the end of 2021.

"It's hard to understand what combat is actually like through fake people doing fake things in fake places," Tamte said in a statement announcing the game's release. "This generation showed sacrifice and courage in Iraq as remarkable as any in history. And now they're offering the rest of us a new way to understand one of the most important events of our century. It's time to challenge stereotypes about what games can be."

To that end, the developers say they collaborated with more than 100 service members who provided testimony, photographs and videos to recreate real events "with authenticity and respect." They also interviewed 27 Iraqis, 23 of whom are from Fallujah.

© Victura, Inc. A scene from "Six Days in Fallujah" shows a US serviceman aiming his weapon at an Iraqi man wearing a traditional headdress.

In the game, a player can choose to be a US serviceman leading a team on missions against insurgents, or an unarmed Iraqi father trying to escape with his family to safety. While playing, gamers will hear from real US service members, who narrate the missions, and Iraqi civilians, who relay their experiences.

© Courtesy Arny Soejoedi Iraqi-American Najla Bassim Abdulelah says "Six Days in Fallujah" is offensive to Iraq War survivors.

"Players will encounter civilians during gameplay, and these people also speak directly to players through video interviews," Tamte told CNN. "We want players to get to know these people as real human beings, rather than just avatars on a computer screen. And we want players to hear these Iraqis' perspectives and stories in their own words."

Developers regularly consult with Iraqis on how they are portrayed in the game, Tamte says. If a player shoots an Iraqi civilian, the mission ends in failure. The only Iraqis who are allowed to be killed are insurgents.

'An Arab murder simulator'

Abdulelah understands the premise of "Six Days in Fallujah" and Victura's rationale for releasing the game. She's a gamer herself.

But she says that taking a real life event, in which people suffered and died, and turning it into a game trivializes the experience.

There are more respectful and credible ways to learn about what happened in Fallujah, she says, pointing to news stories, books and documentaries produced about the battle.

"I got chills in my spine thinking about the idea that they can use the scenario of someone escaping something so tragic for a game," Abdulelah said, referring to the scenario in which a player can choose to be an Iraqi father fleeing with his family. "It brings me to tears. How is this okay?"

Mohammed Husain, also an Iraqi-American, says he was "hurt and disturbed" by news that the game will be released. He worries that the game will lessen the battle's significance, especially among young players.

"Instead of a historical incident, now they'll see it as a game," Husain, 26, told CNN.

Husain, whose parents are Iraq War refugees, also worries that insurgents in the game look like typical Iraqi men, which he said could lead to bias in the real world. Screenshots from the game show some insurgents distinguished by black and white headdress, which is common attire in Iraq and other Arab countries.

"It dehumanizes Iraqi people, showing how some are insurgents, some are Al-Qaeda, some are civilians, with no way of differentiating them. It desensitizes this generation to this kind of violence against our people," he said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, worries that the game could reinforce harmful stereotypes of Iraqis, as well as other Arabs and Muslims.

CAIR and Veterans for Peace (VFP) repeated calls on Friday to shelve "Six Days in Fallujah." In August, they issued a public letter denouncing it as a game that "glorifies violence that took the lives of over 800 Iraqi civilians, justifies the illegal invasion of Iraq and reinforces Islamophobic narratives."

In April, the two organizations partnered to launch a petition calling on video game companies -- including Microsoft Corporation (Xbox), Sony Interactive Entertainment (PlayStation) and Valve Corporation -- not to host or digitally distribute the game.

Garett Reppenhagen, VFP's executive director, is a former US Army sniper who served in the Sunni Triangle during the Second Battle of Fallujah.

"As a combat veteran and gamer, I find it troubling to see what amounts to an Arab murder simulator, which fails to acknowledge the impact of siege warfare against an unarmed and trapped civilian population," Reppenhagen told CNN.

When asked about criticism of "Six Days in Fallujah" and the petition, a Microsoft spokesperson told CNN: "We're aware of concerns and are looking into the content."

Neither Sony nor Valve responded to CNN's request for comment.

'How would you feel?'

Victura is standing firm in its decision to release "Six Days in Fallujah." It insists the game provides a new and exciting way for people to learn about what happened there.

"When we originally announced Six Days in Fallujah in 2009, we learned that some people believe video games shouldn't tackle real-life events. To these people, video games seem more like toys than a medium capable of communicating something insightful. We disagree," the makers said in a statement in February. "Video games can connect us in ways other media cannot."

Critics want people to learn about the tragedy that unfolded in Fallujah, too. But they say that turning it into a first-person shooter game that's played for entertainment is insensitive and disrespectful, especially when many Iraqis are still reeling from the destruction.

"Six Days in Fallujah" is a "disgrace" to the gaming industry, says Abdulelah. The trauma of Iraqis like herself, she says, should not be "turned into a show and tell."

"This isn't honoring the innocents who died. It's very disrespectful to their memory. Not to mention, this is very recent history. People are still living through and digesting the trauma they've acquired in the Iraq War," she said. "My family and I witnessed mortifying, horrible things ... It's not a memory we want to sit or revisit or talk about."

Hospitals in Fallujah have reported spikes in birth defects and cancer cases since 2005, according to a 2010 study in which some medical experts suggested the use of depleted uranium may be to blame.

Many Iraqis who lived through the war also suffer from post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and have yet to receive any type of care for their mental health, according to researchers.

A 2014 study in Baghdad showed that over 80% of the participants reported experiencing at least one traumatic event that led to them suffering from PTSD and other mental health issues.

Husain, who avoids documentaries about the war due to PTSD from his yearly trips to Iraq, including one in which he says he nearly died in a car explosion, says shelving the game "should not be a debate."

When asked if he had a message for Highwire Games and Victura, Husain posed a question of his own:

"Have you people not lost loved ones?" he asked. "How would you feel if you were on the receiving end? If you saw a game about a tragedy that impacted your family, your people? How would you feel?"

TOLD TO STEP DOWN

Iain Stewart to step down as head of Public Health Agency of Canada

CBC/Radio-Canada 

© National Research Council/Twitter Iain Stewart will leave his role as president of the Public Health Agency of Canada next week. He's being replaced by Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar, who is currently an assistant deputy minister of health.

Iain Stewart is out as president of the Public Health Agency of Canada, after leading the agency through much of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Stewart was also the focus of an extraordinary moment in parliamentary history earlier this year, when he was publicly admonished by MPs in the House of Commons for failing to turn over documents related to the firing of two scientists from the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

Stewart will become president of the National Research Council of Canada, a role he previously held. Dr. Harpreet S. Kochhar, currently an assistant deputy minister of health, will replace Stewart starting next week.

Kochhar, a veterinarian by training, has served in a variety of senior roles in the public service, including as Canada's Chief Veterinary Officer and as associate vice-president of operations at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

In a news release on Friday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thanked Stewart and "recognized his leadership in successfully implementing the COVID-19 vaccine rollout."

Stewart joined PHAC from his previous role as president of the research council after his predecessor, Tina Namiesniowski, stepped down as president of PHAC in September 2020.

© Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press Stewart, right, approaches the bar in the House of Commons to be admonished by the Speaker of the House of Commons, Anthony Rota, in Ottawa on June 21, 2021.

In June 2021, he was called to appear before the bar in the House of Commons, a procedure not used against a civilian for nearly a century and intended to publicly shame a person who has committed "an offence against the dignity or authority of Parliament."

Stewart, citing privacy and security concerns also put forward by Health Minister Patty Hajdu, refused to provide unredacted documents related to the firing of scientists Xiangguo Qiu and her biologist husband, Keding Cheng, who were escorted off the premises in 2019 and officially fired in January of this year.

That question eventually wound up in court, but the case was discontinued shortly after the election call in August.

Stewart was also head of PHAC during a continuing controversy over the role of Maj.-Gen Dany Fortin as head of Canada's vaccine task force. Fortin recently argued in court he should be reinstated in a job reflecting. He was removed after being accused of sexual assault tied to an alleged incident decades ago and subsequently charged.

The move to replace Stewart as head of PHAC was part of a wider shuffle of senior public servants announced Friday.

Lisa Ling: It's time to rethink how we are teaching history in our schools

By Lisa Ling

CNN

Less than a year out of high school, I was given a book that would rock my world and propel me to question everything I ever learned about US history. It was Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States."

© Provided by CNN this is life lisa ling vincent chin clip 4_00001629.png

On the very first page, Zinn recounted what Christopher Columbus wrote in his log about the Arawak people he encountered upon reaching the new world:

"They ... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawk's bells. They willingly traded everything they owned ...They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features ...They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane ...They would make fine servants ...With fifty men we could subjugate all of them, and make them do whatever we want."

Up until that moment, Columbus Day, the second Monday in October, was in my mind always reserved for parades or barbecues -- a day to celebrate America's origins. After reading Zinn's book, the holiday became something else: a reminder of the conquest, displacement and even the genocidal origins of our nation. This knowledge would compel me to want to know more about -- and to even advocate for -- our native brothers and sisters who were violently driven off the land that we call home.

Not long after reading Zinn's book, I learned about another dark episode in American history that pertained to people who look like me -- something that took place during World War II. After the Japanese government bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 that forcibly removed Americans of Japanese descent from their homes and into prison camps.

That order imprisoned 120,000 people, including 17,000 children, for years. Across the country, fear spread that anyone who was even 1/16th Japanese could commit espionage against the United States government.

I don't have the words to describe how it made me feel as I read about this period of American history.

As a young Asian American growing up in Carmichael, California -- a less diverse suburb of Sacramento -- I was conflicted about my identity: I never felt totally American because I didn't look like most in my community, nor did I know anything about being Chinese because I wasn't from China.

There was nothing in my history books about the contributions of Asians Americans or the discrimination and violence directed at Asians dating back over 100 years. There was just nothing.

When there is no reference to one's inclusion, it can become easy to overlook and even dehumanize an entire population. One of the reasons why Asians have been so easy to scapegoat in the wake of the Covid pandemic, is because it is a community that some may not recognize as belonging here.

In June of 2020, I opened social media and I saw people posting about Juneteenth. Though I had heard the word before, I didn't realize what a significant moment in American history it was: the official end of slavery. I was ashamed to have not known about it, but I don't recall it ever being included in my history books either.

Author of the epic bestselling book, "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents," Isabel Wilkerson recently posted to her social media something that gave me immense pause: "It will not be until the year 2111 that African Americans will have been free as long as they have been enslaved. No adult alive today will see the day when African Americans will have reached parity between freedom and bondage."

That was the catalyst for wanting to dedicate this season of my show "This Is Life" to exploring events in American history that didn't make it into many history books but still impact our country today.

The inner drive I felt to revisit these histories is one reason why, to me, the current opposition to teaching what many call "Critical Race Theory" is confounding. The term, which actually applies to a set of academic principles born in legal theory, has come to mean for some the teaching of all race-related issues in school. When immigration and race have played such significant roles in the evolution of our nation, what happens when we are afraid to address past errors around these issues head on?

My high school US history classroom experience was pretty limited. Upon getting seated in class, I would listen as my teacher would assign a couple of chapters of a dryly written history textbook. We were instructed to answer the questions at the end of each one. Much of what I read highlighted the country's pioneers, the victors, the politicians, the heads of industry and inventors.

It wasn't that these historical figures didn't deserve to occupy space in my textbooks. In fact, as I write this, I am sitting on an airplane flying from the West Coast to the East Coast and marveling at the ingenuity of my means of transport.

But it never occurred to me as a school-aged girl that there might be other sides to the stories I learned in my history class -- the stories of the enslaved, the immigrants, the imprisoned, and the exploited.

As Americans, we must continue to ask ourselves: In our quest to democratize this nation and even dominate the world, whose sacrifices may have been overlooked? How can we ensure their stories are never left behind?

When we leave out large swathes of stories of the diverse peoples who call our country home, we effectively erase their contributions and their struggles -- and it becomes a lot easier to continually repeat the same mistakes.

Moderna, Racing for Profits, Keeps Covid Vaccine Out of Reach of Poor

Rebecca Robbins 
.The New York Times

© Simon Maina/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A Moderna Covid-19 vaccination in Nairobi, Kenya, a middle-income country where the United States has donated doses.

Moderna, whose coronavirus vaccine appears to be the world’s best defense against Covid-19, has been supplying its shots almost exclusively to wealthy nations, keeping poorer countries waiting and earning billions in profit.

After developing a breakthrough vaccine with the financial and scientific support of the U.S. government, Moderna has shipped a greater share of its doses to wealthy countries than any other vaccine manufacturer, according to Airfinity, a data firm that tracks vaccine shipments.

About one million doses of Moderna’s vaccine have gone to countries that the World Bank classifies as low income. By contrast, 8.4 million Pfizer doses and about 25 million single-shot Johnson & Johnson doses have gone to those countries

Of the handful of middle-income countries that have reached deals to buy Moderna’s shots, most have not yet received any doses, and at least three have had to pay more than the United States or European Union did, according to government officials in those countries.

Thailand and Colombia are paying a premium. Botswana’s doses are late. Tunisia couldn’t get in touch with Moderna.

Unlike Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca, which have diverse rosters of drugs and other products, Moderna sells only the Covid vaccine. The Massachusetts company’s future hinges on the commercial success of its vaccine.

“They are behaving as if they have absolutely no responsibility beyond maximizing the return on investment,” said Dr. Tom Frieden, a former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Moderna executives have said that they are doing all they can to make as many doses as possible as quickly as possible but that their production capacity remains limited. All of the doses they produce this year are filling existing orders from governments like the European Union.

Even so, the Biden administration has grown increasingly frustrated with Moderna for not making its vaccine more available to poorer countries, two senior administration officials said. The administration has been pressing Moderna executives to increase production at U.S. plants and to license the company’s technology to overseas manufacturers that could make doses for foreign markets.

Moderna is now scrambling to defend itself against accusations that it is putting a priority on the rich.

On Friday, after The New York Times sent detailed questions about how few poor countries had been given access to Moderna’s vaccine, the company announced that it was “currently investing” to increase its output so it could deliver one billion doses to poorer countries in 2022. The company also said this past week that it would open a factory in Africa, without specifying when.

© Luke Dray/Getty Images The United States wants Moderna to provide more doses for low-income countries like Uganda, where a Kampala site took registrations for Pfizer’s vaccine.

Moderna executives have been talking with the Biden administration about selling low-cost doses to the federal government, which would donate them to poorer countries, as Pfizer has agreed to do, the two senior officials said. The negotiations are continuing.

In an interview on Friday, Moderna’s chief executive, Stéphane Bancel, said “it is sad” that his company’s vaccine had not reached more people in poorer countries but that the situation was out of his control.

He said that Moderna tried and failed last year to get governments to kick in money to expand the company’s scant production capacity and that the company decides how much to charge based on factors including how many doses are ordered and how wealthy a country is. (A Moderna spokeswoman disputed Airfinity’s calculation that the company had provided 900,000 doses to low-income countries, but she didn’t provide an alternate figure.)

© Fethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In Tunis, medics prepared Moderna doses donated by the United States through Covax.

Nearly a year after Western countries began sprinting to vaccinate their populations, the focus in recent months has shifted to the severe vaccine shortages in many parts of the world. Dozens of poorer countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East, had vaccinated less than 10 percent of their populations as of Sept. 30.

In August, for example, Johnson & Johnson faced rebukes from the director general of the World Health Organization and public health activists after The Times reported that doses of that shot produced in South Africa were being exported to wealthier countries.

Biden administration officials are especially frustrated with what they see as Moderna’s lack of cooperation, because the U.S. government has provided the company with critical assistance.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health worked with the company to develop the vaccine. The United States kicked in $1.3 billion for clinical trials and other research. And in August 2020, the government agreed to preorder $1.5 billion of the vaccine, guaranteeing that Moderna would have a market for what was an unproven product.

While clinical trials last year found that the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines were similarly effective, more recent studies suggest that Moderna’s shot is superior. It offers longer-lasting protection and is easier to transport and store.

Moderna’s shot is “essentially the premium vaccine,” said Karen Andersen, an industry analyst at Morningstar. “They’re in a position where they probably don’t need to sacrifice too much on pricing in a lot of these deals.”

There is limited public information about the deals that Moderna has struck with individual governments. Of the 22 countries, plus the European Union, to which Moderna and its distributors have reported selling the shots, none are low income, and only the Philippines is classified as lower middle income. (Six are upper middle income.)

Pfizer, by comparison, said it had agreed to sell its vaccine at discounted prices to 12 upper-middle-income countries, five lower-middle-income governments and one poor country, Rwanda. (Tunisia, for example, is paying about $7 per dose.)

Only a handful of governments have disclosed how much they’re paying for Moderna doses. The United States paid $15 to $16.50 for each shot, on top of the $1.3 billion the government gave Moderna to develop its vaccine. The European Union has paid $22.60 to $25.50 for its Moderna doses.

Botswana, Thailand and Colombia, which the World Bank classifies as upper-middle-income countries, have said they are paying $27 to $30 per Moderna dose.

The lack of transparency about how much other governments are paying has put relatively poor countries in a weak bargaining position. They are “negotiating totally in the dark,” said Kate Elder, who advises Doctors Without Borders on vaccine policy.

In some cases, Moderna has offered to provide poorer countries the vaccine at relatively low prices, but only after it has fulfilled other countries’ orders.

In May, Moderna offered the African Union doses for about $10 each, according to a bloc official involved in the discussions. But the doses wouldn’t be available until next year, causing the talks to fall apart, according to two African Union officials.

Dr. Ayoade Alakija, who helps run the African Union’s vaccine delivery program but was not involved in the procurement discussions, said Moderna’s attitude amounted to: “We’re here to make money. We’ve stumbled upon a good thing, and we’re not even trying to pretend that we’re trying to save the world.”

Moderna’s Covid vaccine has been transformative for the company and its leaders. The company has said it expects its vaccine to generate at least $20 billion in revenue this year, which would make it one of the most lucrative medical products in history. Ms. Andersen, the Morningstar analyst, projected that the company’s profits on the vaccine could be as high as $14 billion. In 2019, Moderna reported total revenue of $60 million.

Moderna’s market value has nearly tripled this year to more than $120 billion. Two of its founders, as well as an early investor, this month made Forbes magazine’s list of the 400 richest people in the United States.

As the coronavirus spread in early 2020, Moderna raced to design its vaccine — which uses a new technology known as messenger RNA — and to plan a safety study. To manufacture the doses for that trial, the company received $900,000 from the nonprofit Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations.

The nonprofit group said Moderna had agreed to its “equitable access principles.” That meant, according to the coalition, that the vaccine would be “first available to populations when and where they are needed and at prices that are affordable to the populations at risk, especially low- and middle-income countries or to public sector entities that procure on their behalf.”

Moderna agreed in May to provide up to 34 million vaccine doses this year, plus up to 466 million doses in 2022, to Covax, the struggling United Nations-backed program to vaccinate the world’s poor. The company has not yet shipped any of those doses, according to a Covax spokesman, although Covax has distributed tens of millions of Moderna doses donated by the United States.

Mr. Bancel said that many more doses would have gone to Covax this year had the two parties reached a supply deal in 2020. Aurélia Nguyen, a Covax official, denied that, saying, “It became clear early on that the best we could expect was minimal doses in 2021.”

Late last year, the Tunisian government was hoping to order Moderna doses. Dr. Hechmi Louzir, who led Tunisia’s vaccine procurement efforts, didn’t know how to contact Moderna to begin talks and asked the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia for help, he said. Officials there contacted Moderna, he said, but nothing came of it.

“We were very interested in Moderna,” Dr. Louzir said. “We tried.”

In Thailand, where about 32 percent of people are fully vaccinated, a government spokeswoman said the government was paying Moderna about $28 per dose for one million shots that are designated for vulnerable people. Deliveries from that order will start next year.

In Botswana, the health minister told Parliament in July that the government had ordered 500,000 shots from Moderna, at nearly $29 per dose — enough to fully vaccinate about 10 percent of the population. (That would roughly double the number of Botswanans who are fully vaccinated.) A spokesman for the Health Ministry said that the doses were expected to start arriving in August, but that none had yet arrived.

Colombia ordered 10 million shots from Moderna. The government budgeted about $30 per dose, a price that may include the cost of transportation and other logistics, according to Finance Ministry documents. The country’s health minister, Dr. Fernando Ruiz, said Moderna’s vaccine was the most expensive among the Covid shots that Colombia had ordered.

There were some initial delays, Dr. Ruiz said: The first deliveries, expected in early June, came in August. About 2.3 million had arrived as of Friday.

Reporting was contributed by Noah Weiland, Mitra Taj, Elian Peltier, Jason Gutierrez, Daniel Politi, Flávia Milhorance and Muktita Suhartono.

It’s Time to Confront the Canadian Fashion Industry’s Startling Secret


Sponsored by:




Amanda Gomm

Campaigner, Oxfam Canada

Oxfam Canada’s What She Makes campaign is tackling inequality in the fashion industry and urging Canadian brands to pay workers living wages.

In today’s world, would you be able to live on $0.60 an hour? No? Neither can the Bangladeshi women who are making the clothes you’re wearing. Imagine trying to feed yourself or your family on so little. And yet, in stark contrast, it would take just over four days for a top fashion CEO to earn what a Bangladeshi woman working in the garment industry would earn in her entire lifetime.

There’s deep inequality in the fashion industry, and many Canadians are shocked to find out that while companies profit, the workers who make their clothes aren’t paid anything close to a living wage.

Systemic exploitation and widespread poverty wages in the fashion industry are denying the women who make our clothes basic human rights and decent lives, and Canadian brands are part of this problem.

Tackling inequality in the Canadian fashion industry

“What She Makes is a newly-launched campaign from Oxfam Canada that’s seeking to change the practices of big Canadian fashion brands,” says Amanda Gomm, a What She Makes campaigner at Oxfam Canada, one of 21 organizations worldwide that make up Oxfam International. Together they work in more than 90 countries to fight inequality. “Systemic exploitation and widespread poverty wages in the fashion industry are denying the women who make our clothes basic human rights and decent lives, and Canadian brands are part of this problem,” says Gomm.

Oxfam Canada believes that Canadian fashion brands have the potential to be a catalyst for good, and the organization is urging five companies — Joe Fresh, Roots, lululemon, Herschel Supply Co., and Aritzia — to make a commitment to pay the women who make our clothing a living wage.

The fashion industry’s gender imbalance

Women are the threads that hold the garment industry together. Approximately 80 percent of garment workers are women. Unfortunately, these women are an especially vulnerable group. They often come from poverty and lack basic education, having done low-skilled work since they were children. The pandemic has only worsened their situation.

“Before the pandemic, I used to get $154,” says 35-year-old garment worker Reshma. “Prices of daily groceries and everything have increased. The money I receive isn’t sufficient to run my family.”

“I feel tired all the time,” says Taslima, 21. “As I cannot afford proper food with my wages, I’m becoming weak. Everything is expensive now, including vegetables and potatoes. Some days I just eat rice with salt.”

Oxfam focuses on promoting the rights of women and girls in its mission to build lasting solutions to poverty and injustice, understanding that ending global poverty begins with women’s rights.

Standing up for Canadian clothing without poverty woven into its fabric

With their influencing power in the garment industry’s buyer’s market, Canadian fashion brands have a responsibility to make a change. We must support ethical fashion — and consumers have a role to play in this, too. When consumers speak up and let their favourite brands know that responsible consumerism matters to them, these companies will be encouraged to change their practices.

The cost shouldn’t be put on consumers, either. Gomm notes that they believe the cost of paying a living wage can be absorbed in the supply chain.

“Even if we’re able to get one or two major fashion retailers to commit, this could affect the lives of potentially hundreds of thousands of women and their families,” she adds.

To get involved and make a change, visit oxfam.ca to sign Oxfam’s pledge demanding brands pay a living wage and use the hashtag #WhatSheMakes on social media.

Author
Tania Amardeil, ca.editorial@mediaplanet.com

A podcast for retail workers is calling out the 'soul-defeating' industry for harsh management, abusive customers, and poverty wages

insider@insider.com (Áine Cain) 

© iStock; Skye Gould/Insider iStock; Skye Gould/Insider

Retail Warzone is a new podcast that focuses on the plight of retail workers.

Co-host Steve Rowland was a longtime retail manager who got laid off during the pandemic.

He is now focused on shining a light on industry "horror stories."

At the returns desk of a home decór store, a woman brought in flower pot writhing with gray maggots in its base. She was furious when an employee said the store would be unable to process the return, given the larvae-infested state of the product.

Steve Rowland, a manager, watched back footage of the exchange like game tape, wondering where the employee went wrong. The customer, who eventually called up the corporate office, hadn't followed the simple instructions to drill drainage holes in the pot. Still, Rowland was told by a district manager to reprimand the employee for the interaction, despite the fact he'd followed the company's guidelines. The customer eventually received a full refund and an additional $50 store credit.

For Rowland and his staff, it was just another morale-deadening example of management siding against employees who were just following company rules.

After 33 years in retail, Rowland was laid off from his job due to COVID-19. So in February 2021, he did what many others have done: He started a podcast. "Retail Warzone" is hosted by Rowland and Alex Rowland (no relation). The podcast showcases workers' "horror stories" each week and advocates for pro-worker changes within the sector.

"Retail in general is very soul-defeating," Rowland told Insider. "It breaks your spirit after a certain amount of time."

And the state of retail jobs affects a large swath of the labor force. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2020 there were about 4 million retail sales jobs, 3.4 million cashier gigs, and 4.4 million food server posts in the United States.

"That's a lot of people getting stomped on," Rowland said.

The pandemic has shone a light on the plight of many service workers. Retail workers have contended with workplace violence, often at the hands of enraged shoppers convinced that "the customer is always right." Rage-quitting and ghosting have become common practices, as a result of these conditions. Many work for low pay, as the federal minimum wage hasn't risen from $7.25 since 2009 and has failed to keep up with housing costs and productivity. Outsiders levy criticisms about retail workers being lazy, due to the labor shortage.

When he started out in retail in 1988, Rowland said customers would still cross a store to put back items that they decided against purchasing. Over the years, he felt himself watching "the wheels come off the wagon" as "society basically devolved in real time." Rowland said he blames retailers valuing "profits over people" and rewarding bad behavior from shoppers.

"Customers have become more entitled, more emboldened to treat retail employees, hospitality employees, and grocery employees like servants," he said. "You're not paid enough to be a punching bag for the customer. But corporations are willing to sacrifice the mental health and safety of an employee for avoiding getting a bad review on Facebook or Amazon."

According to Rowland, the result for workers is burnout and depression, on top of issues like low pay, poor benefits, and a lack of professional stability. The podcast host said that, thanks to the hiring crunch, "the workforce has more power right now than they ever have in the history of the retail industry." Still, he's upset by the lack of appreciation that frontline workers have received during the pandemic, even after being declared "essential."

"Retail workers got a little bit of a break in 2020 from the abuse," Rowland said. "But as soon as we turned the corner into 2021, everybody forgot that and the treatment got worse."
Read the original article on Busines

THIS ALSO HAPPENED IN CHINA EARLIER THIS YEAR

Dozens of runners were rescued from a northern Utah mountain after extreme winter weather

By Andy Rose, CNN 

A 50-mile race in the mountains of north of Salt Lake City, Utah, was cut short Saturday morning after more than 80 runners found themselves in dangerous winter conditions, the Davis County Sheriff's Office said.

© Davis County Sheriff's Office A screenshot from a video posted by the Davis County Sheriff's Office shows the weather conditions.

"There were white-out conditions and 12 to 18 inches of snow," Sheriff Kelly Sparks told CNN.

The DC Peaks 50 "ultra marathon" began at a park in the foothills of the Wasatch Mountains and organizers were unaware of the winter conditions quickly developing up higher, the sheriff told CNN.

According to the official website of the event, the start of the line "has an elevation of 4,888'" while the average elevation of the race if 6,604 feet.

"Venturing onto the mountains, trails, and bodies of water at this time of year can be dangerous because the weather changes rapidly and conditions can quickly become life-threatening. Even a mild rain in the valley can translate to blizzard conditions at higher elevations," Kelly said in a statement included in a news release.

Race organizers suspended the race at the top of Farmington Canyon and authorities, aided by search and rescue teams, worked "for several hours" to get the runners safely off the mountain, the news release said

"A few" runners were treated for hypothermia and released at the scene, and one person treated for hypothermia and a minor injury was also released at the scene, the release added.

By 2:45 p.m. -- a little more than five hours after authorities were first notified of the situation -- all runners were accounted for and off the mountain, the sheriff's office said.

"The rapid and collaborative response of our Search and Rescue volunteers, race organizers, and first responders from multiple agencies, resulted in minimal injuries and all runners returning home safely today," the sheriff said in the statement. "I extend my deep gratitude to everyone involved in this rescue effort."

GAIA LIVES!

Volcanic ash meets Saharan Air Layer in unique display over La Palma

Nathan Howes 

The Weather Network

Mother Nature can toil in mysterious ways to create a work of art out of something that appears to be nothing out of the ordinary.

These cool looking cloud rings have some very special ingredients

In the case of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain, a stunning cloud ripple recently formed above it amid the ongoing eruptions.

The Volcanology Institute (INVOLCAN) observed a rise in explosive activity on Oct. 2, and in the midst of the elevated activity, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured a unique image showing a dense plume of ash streaming south just two days later.

SEE ALSO: Take a photo tour of the Canary Islands, a region shaped by volcanoes

According to the Toulouse Volcanic Ash Advisory Center, the plume soared to three kilometres in the air on Oc. 4, creating a hazard to aircraft nearby. Even though the activity spiked, volcanologists still assessed Cumbre Vieja’s volatile state as moderate -- garnering a 2 out of 8 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI).

According to NASA's Earth Observatory, the bull’s-eye-shaped cloud resulted from a rising column of superheated ash and gases -- known as the eruption column.

© Provided by The Weather Network(NASA)

The floating pillar of water vapour and other gases arose rapidly upward until it clashed with a drier, warmer layer of the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) at roughly 5.3 kilometres altitude, according to INVOLCAN.

"A handful of incredibly unique ingredients all came together to create an amazing display on the Spanish island of La Palma as an incredibly active volcano erupted," said Jessie Uppal, a meteorologist at The Weather Network.

The abnormally warm air situated atop a temperature inversion acted like a lid, stopping the volcanic plume from going any higher. As a result, it just levelled out and spread horizontally.

© Provided by The Weather Network(Daniel Lopez/Storyful)

"We know warm air naturally rises into the atmosphere where the cooler air is surrounding it. This is exactly how we get the development of thunderstorms, but in this case, we have an eruptive volcano," says Uppal.

The inversion is a layer within the atmosphere that temperatures typically increases with height, Uppal said, and that's why "we see that column of volcano plume stop right there and ripple its way out."

"Since volcanic eruptions typically have natural ebbs and flows in their intensity, pulses in the upward flow of the volcanic column created concentric gravity waves as they hit the temperature inversion and spread outward. The process is similar to the way a stone dropped in a pond creates ripples that spread outward," NASA's Earth Observatory explained.

© Provided by The Weather Network

The good news about the particular eruption that yielded the picturesque sight was its lack of energy to send large amounts of ash and gases into the stratosphere, NASA said, where it can have "strong and lasting effects on weather and climate."

With files from Jessie Uppal, a meteorologist at The Weather Network.
Follow Nathan Howes on Twitter.

Volcanic lava in Spain's La Palma engulfs more houses, land

Lava burns buildings following the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano, in Tacande

Silvio Castellanos and Juan Medina
Sat, October 9, 2021

LA PALMA, Spain (Reuters) -Red-hot lava engulfed the land Jose Roberto Sanchez inherited from his parents on Saturday and lightning flashed around the rim of the volcano that has been erupting on the Spanish island of La Palma for almost three weeks.

There were 37 seismic movements on Saturday, with the largest measuring 4.1, the Spanish National Geological Institute said, but La Palma's airport reopened after being closed since Thursday because of ash, Spanish air traffic operator Aena said. All other Canary Islands airports are open.


The magma streaming down the hillside from the Cumbre Vieja volcano destroyed at least four village buildings, some of nearly 1,150 buildings and surrounding land destroyed since the volcano began erupting on Sept. 19.

"The memories of my parents, the inheritance I had there, it’s all gone," Sanchez told Reuters of the land his parents owned in Todoque in the west of the island.

Lava has engulfed 493 hectares (1,218 acres) of land, Miguel Ángel Morcuende, technical director of the Canary Islands Volcanic Emergency Plan (Pevolca) organisation, said.

Some people, like Clara Maria, 70, who also lives in Todoque, have so far escaped the impact.

"The lava has not yet reached my house. (It) was 50 years of sacrifice, stone by stone we built it. I have hope and faith that it will be saved," she said.

About 6,000 people have been evacuated from their homes on La Palma, which has about 83,000 inhabitants.

Lightning flashes were seen near the eruption early on Saturday. A study published in 2016 by the journal Geophysical Research Letters found lightning can be produced during volcanic eruptions because the collision of ash particles creates an electrical charge.

Airlines flying to the Canary Islands were advised to load extra fuel in case planes had to change course or delay landing because of ash, said a spokesman for Enaire, which controls navigation in Spanish airspace.

(Reporting by Silvio Castellanos, Juan Medina, Graham KeeleyEditing by Jason Neely, Frances Kerry and Philippa Fletcher)

 

 

 

EXXON IS UNION BUSTING

Exxon discusses new terms with union representing locked-out Texas refinery workers


(Reuters) - Exxon Mobil Corp said on Saturday it and the United Steelworkers union, the union representing workers locked out of a Texas refinery, discussed terms of a proposed labor contract 

(A LOCK OUT IS THE BOSS BARGAINING IN BAD FAITH)

.

© Reuters/ERWIN SEBA FILE PHOTO: 

Exxon Mobil Beaumont locks out refinery workers

Exxon said it provided clarifications to its latest proposal and rejected the union's proposed changes to that offer, saying they would raise its costs.

"Union provided a one-pager with 24 proposed items they requested be included in our offer ... the majority of the items increase cost to the Company, and as we told the Union, we are not interested in including them in our offer," Exxon said.

It has been over five months since Exxon locked some 650 workers out at the Beaumont, Texas, plant, replacing them with temporary workers. SCABS

The new proposal came at a time when at least 30% of workers represented by United Steelworkers union local 13-243 signed a petition to the U.S. National Labor Relations Board to force a vote on removing the union.

The union on Friday accused the company of misleading people with confusing statements regarding the union, negotiations and the company's lockout.

Exxon also said the union refused to say whether it would seek a vote on the latest offer and the next bargaining meeting was not scheduled.

(Reporting by Maria Ponnezhath in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Gary McWilliams; Editing by Chris Reese)