Interesting article on the role of faith leaders in the US in encouraging their congregations to get vaccinated. Many, particularly those in Southern primarily white evangelical churches, have given up the issue due to its divisiveness. One described this as a more polarizing issue than any he had seen in his time with the church, worse than sex scandals and racism.
Interesting article on the role of faith leaders in the US in encouraging their congregations to get vaccinated. Many, particularly those in Southern primarily white evangelical churches, have given up the issue due to its divisiveness. One described this as a more polarizing issue than any he had seen in his time with the church, worse than sex scandals and racism.
Interesting article on the role of faith leaders in the US in encouraging their congregations to get vaccinated. Many, particularly those in Southern primarily white evangelical churches, have given up the issue due to its divisiveness. One described this as a more polarizing issue than any he had seen in his time with the church, worse than sex scandals and racism.
Ah shit. I opened that thinking you were complaining about people being outside in groups....then I saw the parade. God I hate people. They mostly suck. These people specifically suck. I hope they have a wake up call before they influence too many others to take dumb risks.
"I can remember Rob saying: 'Yeah, someday — I'll probably get the
vaccine someday,' " she said. "But there was never a thought in his mind
that that someday had already passed until he was in the ER, not able
to breathe on his own."
There’s only two people in my family who have not been vaccinated they are both my brothers daughter! One is a senior in high school the other is 24 years old she’s refusing the vaccine, im not happy about it but there’s nothing I can do..
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
“I admire the Chinese dictatorship.” - Justine Trudeau aka “mr. blackface”
The 'desirable' outcome was just that the NRC enter arbitration to make Beijing provide a reason. How would this alter the power dynamics between Canada and China at all?
'05 - TO, '06 - TO 1, '08 - NYC 1 & 2, '09 - TO, Chi 1 & 2, '10 - Buffalo, NYC 1 & 2, '11 - TO 1 & 2, Hamilton, '13 - Buffalo, Brooklyn 1 & 2, '15 - Global Citizen, '16 - TO 1 & 2, Chi 2
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,932
Rural Kentucky health officials press on, one shot at a time
By PIPER HUDSPETH BLACKBURN
Today
TAYLORSVILLE, Ky. (AP) — John Rogers waited months after becoming eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. It was only after talking with friends that the 66-year-old retiree from rural Spencer County, Kentucky, was persuaded to get the shot.
“They said, ‘You know, the vaccine may not be 100%, but if you get COVID, you’re in bad shape,'" Rogers said. “You can die from it."
With the nation falling just short of President Joe Biden's goal of dispensing at least one shot to 70% of all American adults by the Fourth of July, public health officials in places like Spencer County have shifted the emphasis away from mass vaccination clinics toward getting more information out in a more targeted way about the benefits of getting inoculated.
Health departments have offered the vaccine at concerts, parades and fairs and plan to make it available at back-to-school events. They have encouraged local doctors to raise the issue with patients and promoted shots by way of printed materials and social media.
The hope is that word of mouth will ease fears and misperceptions about the vaccine and change people's minds, one person at a time if necessary.
That’s especially important in places like Spencer County, an area of rolling green hills and farmland southeast of Louisville, where the state reports that about 22% of eligible adults are at least partially vaccinated. Public health officials there think the numbers are improving and may already be higher.
Biden administration officials are increasingly turning their attention nationwide to some 55 million unvaccinated adults seen as persuadable, a group they have dubbed the “movable middle."
Many of those being targeted are under 30, an age group that has an especially low vaccination rate. But they also include people like Rogers, who said many people in his community are hesitant to get shots because “they just don’t trust the government.”
Rogers, who worked for a packaging supplier in nearby Shelbyville, said he shook off the skepticism and is now looking forward to a summer of “things going back to normal as they can be.”
Nationally, resistance to getting vaccinated tends to run higher in conservative and rural parts of the country. Overall, 49% of all Kentuckians have received at least one dose, compared with about 55% nationwide.
Stephanie Lokits, who oversees vaccination efforts in the county for the public health department, has watched immunizations slow since a peak in March, when clinics drew hundreds of residents. Now only 10 to 20 trickle through a weekly vaccine clinic held in the county seat of Taylorsville, a town of 1,600 with an old theater, a courthouse, some empty storefronts and a few small businesses slowly finding their way out of the pandemic.
While Kentucky has seen a decline in cases in the past seven weeks, nearly all confirmed infections and deaths reported in the past month have been in unvaccinated residents.
“I think that the philosophy that we have really tried to go by is that every single shot that we can get administered to a person is a positive thing,” Lokits said. “I think that’s kind of the place where a lot of health departments and a lot of providers are at.”
Lauren Slone, a nurse practitioner leading the vaccine effort at a community health center in Taylorsville, said she has learned through conversations with her patients that misconceptions about long-term effects pose real problems.
She has found that most people she talks to eventually get vaccinated. The challenge, she said, is “getting people to talk to me about it in the first place."
While appointments in the center aren’t filling up as quickly as she would like, Slone thinks an effort to distribute information at local middle and high schools led to more vaccine appointments.
“I thought, you know, one way to get adults in is when teenagers know about it,“ Slone said. ”If your teenager asks to get it, then maybe that encourages you a little bit as well.”
A June drive-thru clinic held after the information push was well-attended by young adults. That's another good sign, Slone said. Only one-third of Kentuckians 18 to 29 have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 83% of residents 65 and up.
Still, getting the word out can be harder in a rural county, because some residents aren’t on social media or don't have consistent access to the internet. And in spread-out, sparsely populated places like Spencer County, some people may not feel the need to get the vaccine as quickly, said district health department director Roanya Rice.
Also, Spencer County has lower cases per-capita than neighboring counties and the state as a whole, meaning the threat can seem far away to some.
Rogers, now fully vaccinated, is enjoying the freedom to take off his mask for good, eat at a restaurant or visit with relatives without worrying.
“I waited a long time," he said. “I should have gotten it a long time ago."
__
Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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mickeyrat
up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,932
Biotech Company That Botched Vaccines Faces Investor Revolt
In the latest shareholder lawsuit, a pension fund accused executives at Emergent BioSolutions of insider trading. The company, under investigation by Congress, has halted manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines at its Baltimore factory at regulators’ request.
Last summer, investors flocked to the biotech company Emergent BioSolutions. The host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” Jim Cramer, gushed about the Maryland business, which had secured a lucrative government contract to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines for Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.
“I love this story,” Mr. Cramer said last August, hailing the company’s soaring stock price. “Why bet on the individual vaccine makers when you can bet on the arms dealer that’s working with just about everybody?”
This summer, some investors are in revolt.
Emergent has had to throw out 75 million vaccine doses because of potential contamination, and production at its Baltimore factory has been halted for more than two months as the company tries to convince regulators that it has fixed serious quality problems.
As the federal government works with Emergent in an effort to restart production, some investors are asking for their money back and seeking an overhaul of the company’s corporate governance.
With its stock price cut in half, Emergent faces several shareholder lawsuits accusing it of securities fraud, and a pension fund filed a complaint last Tuesday claiming that some executives and board members — including several former federal officials — had engaged in insider trading by unloading more than $20 million worth of stock over the past 15 months.
The executives and board members sold the stock “while in possession of material, nonpublic information that artificially inflated the price” and “profited from their misconduct and were unjustly enriched through their exploitation of material and adverse inside information,” the Illinois-based Lincolnshire Police Pension Fund asserted.
An Emergent spokesman said all of the lawsuits were “without merit” and declined to discuss them in detail.
“Our executives strictly follow the law and our own internal policies to prevent any improper securities trading,” said the spokesman, Matt Hartwig.
The litigation adds to the troubles of the politically connected company, which is also the target of a widening congressional investigation into its vaccine production problems and the favorable deals it has secured with the government.
Emergent’s fortunes soared last year when the government tapped it to be the sole domestic manufacturer of the vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. The company promoted itself with paid posts in national media outlets, including The New York Times. In an internal company presentation earlier this year, executives cited a successful “corporate reputation campaign” as one of the accomplishments justifying record bonuses, according to documents released as part of the congressional investigation.
Company officials’ boastful statements to investors have now become grist for the lawsuits. During a call with investors last July, the chief executive, Robert Kramer, highlighted the $628 million deal the company had recently struck with the federal government under Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to fast-track Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.
“Emergent is uniquely prepared to answer the call,” Mr. Kramer said, pointing to the company’s “proven manufacturing capabilities.”
In the ensuing months, executives continued to assure investors that the company’s vaccine work was on track. During an earnings call in February, one analyst asked whether Emergent was experiencing “manufacturing challenges.” The company was “right on schedule,” Mr. Kramer responded, and with other vaccine manufacturers was “on the verge of literally being able to make available hundreds of millions of doses of multiple vaccine candidates.”
Months earlier, millions of AstraZeneca doses had been discarded because of contamination or suspected contamination, The Times reported in April. And in March, the company learned that a batch of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been contaminated. After federal inspectors found serious quality-control deficiencies at the site, Emergent halted production in April at the request of the Food and Drug Administration.
The agency has since allowed about 40 million Johnson & Johnson doses manufactured at the factory to be distributed for use — but with a warning that regulators couldn’t guarantee that Emergent had followed good manufacturing practices. Even with the latest batch cleared for release on Friday, Johnson & Johnson remains nearly 40 million doses short of the 100 million doses called for in its federal contract.
The rosy picture painted by Emergent executives before the contamination was publicly known — as reported by The Times on March 31 — was a deception, the shareholder suits assert.
A series of audits conducted during the summer of 2020 by customers, federal officials and Emergent’s own quality evaluators flagged serious quality problems, including inadequate procedures to prevent contamination.
Rather than inform investors of the problems, executives and board members enriched themselves by selling company stock while the price remained high, the police pension fund lawsuit asserts. Emergent’s founder and chairman, Fuad El-Hibri, sold shares worth $42 million during 2020, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The suit also highlights some more recent stock sales — including trades in January and February by Mr. Kramer that were worth more than $10 million, as well as trades worth a total of about $10.5 million by a half-dozen board members since April 2020. Among them were sales of about $3 million in stock in September by Dr. Louis Sullivan, who served as secretary of health and human services under former President George H.W. Bush and joined Emergent’s board in 2006.
Dr. Sullivan could not be reached for comment. Mr. Hartwig, the Emergent spokesman, reiterated that no improper trading occurred and that the litigation was without merit.
In all, Emergent is facing at least four shareholder lawsuits, including three that are seeking class-action status. The plaintiffs include both individuals and institutional investors, such as retirement and pension funds.
Such lawsuits are not uncommon, and if shareholders win, they often recover just pennies on the dollar. But James Park, a law professor specializing in securities litigation at the University of California, Los Angeles, said they could have a deterrent effect on companies.
“The idea is that you’re going to try to convey the seriousness of these types of violations by imposing financial penalties,” he said.
In addition to money damages, the police pension fund is looking to force reforms to internal Emergent policies to improve board oversight and ensure that recent problems aren’t repeated.
The litigation could also create headaches for Emergent executives, who may have to give sworn testimony and turn over documents. A shareholder suit in 2016 forced Emergent to disclose emails detailing its lobbying efforts on a previous federal contract.
Despite its troubles, Emergent recently told investors it expected record revenues this year. The company’s stock price, however, has been hovering around $60 — about half of what it was when CNBC’s Mr. Cramer championed the company last summer.
In May, Emergent came up again on the show.
“That’s a disaster,” Mr. Cramer told his viewers, “and I’m being really, really nice.”
Chris Hamby is an investigative reporter. He won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2014 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2017. @ChrisDHamby
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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Kat
There's a lot to be said for nowhere. Posts: 4,774
I'm all for anything that will help people to not get sick and/or die or spread the virus to others who could get sick and/or die.
The ironic thing about Fox News promoting vaccine rejection is that it will hurt their audience & republicans the most.
It doesn't make much sense to me, but little does these days.
I feel like the rationale for this that they want to keep the pandemic going because 1) they thrive on the division that it causes and 2) if it's raging, their people will vote in person on the day of, which is the only kind of votes they anticipate being counted. The number of deaths is negligible to their viewership, the MAGA base, and the voting numbers (particularly if #2 works like they want it to).
I know it seems crazy, but I legitimately believe the right does not want the pandemic to end.
1995 Milwaukee 1998 Alpine, Alpine 2003 Albany, Boston, Boston, Boston 2004 Boston, Boston 2006 Hartford, St. Paul (Petty), St. Paul (Petty) 2011 Alpine, Alpine 2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
The ironic thing about Fox News promoting vaccine rejection is that it will hurt their audience & republicans the most.
It doesn't make much sense to me, but little does these days.
I feel like the rationale for this that they want to keep the pandemic going because 1) they thrive on the division that it causes and 2) if it's raging, their people will vote in person on the day of, which is the only kind of votes they anticipate being counted. The number of deaths is negligible to their viewership, the MAGA base, and the voting numbers (particularly if #2 works like they want it to).
I know it seems crazy, but I legitimately believe the right does not want the pandemic to end.
They’re hoping for mandatory vaccinations so that their/there/they’re delusions of black helicopters and FEMA camps come true so they can foment and armed rebellion and say, “see, we told you so.” Get your MREs while you can. And gold coins, don’t forget the gold coins.
The ironic thing about Fox News promoting vaccine rejection is that it will hurt their audience & republicans the most.
It doesn't make much sense to me, but little does these days.
I feel like the rationale for this that they want to keep the pandemic going because 1) they thrive on the division that it causes and 2) if it's raging, their people will vote in person on the day of, which is the only kind of votes they anticipate being counted. The number of deaths is negligible to their viewership, the MAGA base, and the voting numbers (particularly if #2 works like they want it to).
I know it seems crazy, but I legitimately believe the right does not want the pandemic to end.
I agree... especially about them thriving on division... it's not just Fox either, stoking white grievance was trump's key to success; he plays middle & lower class white America like f'ing fiddles.
The ironic thing about Fox News promoting vaccine rejection is that it will hurt their audience & republicans the most.
It doesn't make much sense to me, but little does these days.
I feel like the rationale for this that they want to keep the pandemic going because 1) they thrive on the division that it causes and 2) if it's raging, their people will vote in person on the day of, which is the only kind of votes they anticipate being counted. The number of deaths is negligible to their viewership, the MAGA base, and the voting numbers (particularly if #2 works like they want it to).
I know it seems crazy, but I legitimately believe the right does not want the pandemic to end.
They’re hoping for mandatory vaccinations so that their/there/they’re delusions of black helicopters and FEMA camps come true so they can foment and armed rebellion and say, “see, we told you so.” Get your MREs while you can. And gold coins, don’t forget the gold coins.
Comments
astoria 06
albany 06
hartford 06
reading 06
barcelona 06
paris 06
wembley 07
dusseldorf 07
nijmegen 07
this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
astoria 06
albany 06
hartford 06
reading 06
barcelona 06
paris 06
wembley 07
dusseldorf 07
nijmegen 07
this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
astoria 06
albany 06
hartford 06
reading 06
barcelona 06
paris 06
wembley 07
dusseldorf 07
nijmegen 07
this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
astoria 06
albany 06
hartford 06
reading 06
barcelona 06
paris 06
wembley 07
dusseldorf 07
nijmegen 07
this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
So are we to assume that with Delta strain spreading through out the unvaccinated this could get bad come fall.
Canada didn't invoke dispute clause when Chinese vaccine deal fell apart, documents reveal
50% efficacy?
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
EV
Toronto Film Festival 9/11/2007, '08 - Toronto 1 & 2, '09 - Albany 1, '11 - Chicago 1
TAYLORSVILLE, Ky. (AP) — John Rogers waited months after becoming eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. It was only after talking with friends that the 66-year-old retiree from rural Spencer County, Kentucky, was persuaded to get the shot.
“They said, ‘You know, the vaccine may not be 100%, but if you get COVID, you’re in bad shape,'" Rogers said. “You can die from it."
With the nation falling just short of President Joe Biden's goal of dispensing at least one shot to 70% of all American adults by the Fourth of July, public health officials in places like Spencer County have shifted the emphasis away from mass vaccination clinics toward getting more information out in a more targeted way about the benefits of getting inoculated.
Health departments have offered the vaccine at concerts, parades and fairs and plan to make it available at back-to-school events. They have encouraged local doctors to raise the issue with patients and promoted shots by way of printed materials and social media.
The hope is that word of mouth will ease fears and misperceptions about the vaccine and change people's minds, one person at a time if necessary.
That’s especially important in places like Spencer County, an area of rolling green hills and farmland southeast of Louisville, where the state reports that about 22% of eligible adults are at least partially vaccinated. Public health officials there think the numbers are improving and may already be higher.
Biden administration officials are increasingly turning their attention nationwide to some 55 million unvaccinated adults seen as persuadable, a group they have dubbed the “movable middle."
Many of those being targeted are under 30, an age group that has an especially low vaccination rate. But they also include people like Rogers, who said many people in his community are hesitant to get shots because “they just don’t trust the government.”
Rogers, who worked for a packaging supplier in nearby Shelbyville, said he shook off the skepticism and is now looking forward to a summer of “things going back to normal as they can be.”
Nationally, resistance to getting vaccinated tends to run higher in conservative and rural parts of the country. Overall, 49% of all Kentuckians have received at least one dose, compared with about 55% nationwide.
Stephanie Lokits, who oversees vaccination efforts in the county for the public health department, has watched immunizations slow since a peak in March, when clinics drew hundreds of residents. Now only 10 to 20 trickle through a weekly vaccine clinic held in the county seat of Taylorsville, a town of 1,600 with an old theater, a courthouse, some empty storefronts and a few small businesses slowly finding their way out of the pandemic.
While Kentucky has seen a decline in cases in the past seven weeks, nearly all confirmed infections and deaths reported in the past month have been in unvaccinated residents.
“I think that the philosophy that we have really tried to go by is that every single shot that we can get administered to a person is a positive thing,” Lokits said. “I think that’s kind of the place where a lot of health departments and a lot of providers are at.”
Lauren Slone, a nurse practitioner leading the vaccine effort at a community health center in Taylorsville, said she has learned through conversations with her patients that misconceptions about long-term effects pose real problems.
She has found that most people she talks to eventually get vaccinated. The challenge, she said, is “getting people to talk to me about it in the first place."
While appointments in the center aren’t filling up as quickly as she would like, Slone thinks an effort to distribute information at local middle and high schools led to more vaccine appointments.
“I thought, you know, one way to get adults in is when teenagers know about it,“ Slone said. ”If your teenager asks to get it, then maybe that encourages you a little bit as well.”
A June drive-thru clinic held after the information push was well-attended by young adults. That's another good sign, Slone said. Only one-third of Kentuckians 18 to 29 have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 83% of residents 65 and up.
Still, getting the word out can be harder in a rural county, because some residents aren’t on social media or don't have consistent access to the internet. And in spread-out, sparsely populated places like Spencer County, some people may not feel the need to get the vaccine as quickly, said district health department director Roanya Rice.
Also, Spencer County has lower cases per-capita than neighboring counties and the state as a whole, meaning the threat can seem far away to some.
Rogers, now fully vaccinated, is enjoying the freedom to take off his mask for good, eat at a restaurant or visit with relatives without worrying.
“I waited a long time," he said. “I should have gotten it a long time ago."
__
Hudspeth Blackburn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Biotech Company That Botched Vaccines Faces Investor Revolt
In the latest shareholder lawsuit, a pension fund accused executives at Emergent BioSolutions of insider trading. The company, under investigation by Congress, has halted manufacturing of Covid-19 vaccines at its Baltimore factory at regulators’ request.
By Chris Hamby
Last summer, investors flocked to the biotech company Emergent BioSolutions. The host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” Jim Cramer, gushed about the Maryland business, which had secured a lucrative government contract to manufacture Covid-19 vaccines for Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca.
“I love this story,” Mr. Cramer said last August, hailing the company’s soaring stock price. “Why bet on the individual vaccine makers when you can bet on the arms dealer that’s working with just about everybody?”
This summer, some investors are in revolt.
Emergent has had to throw out 75 million vaccine doses because of potential contamination, and production at its Baltimore factory has been halted for more than two months as the company tries to convince regulators that it has fixed serious quality problems.
As the federal government works with Emergent in an effort to restart production, some investors are asking for their money back and seeking an overhaul of the company’s corporate governance.
With its stock price cut in half, Emergent faces several shareholder lawsuits accusing it of securities fraud, and a pension fund filed a complaint last Tuesday claiming that some executives and board members — including several former federal officials — had engaged in insider trading by unloading more than $20 million worth of stock over the past 15 months.
The executives and board members sold the stock “while in possession of material, nonpublic information that artificially inflated the price” and “profited from their misconduct and were unjustly enriched through their exploitation of material and adverse inside information,” the Illinois-based Lincolnshire Police Pension Fund asserted.
An Emergent spokesman said all of the lawsuits were “without merit” and declined to discuss them in detail.
“Our executives strictly follow the law and our own internal policies to prevent any improper securities trading,” said the spokesman, Matt Hartwig.
The litigation adds to the troubles of the politically connected company, which is also the target of a widening congressional investigation into its vaccine production problems and the favorable deals it has secured with the government.
Emergent’s fortunes soared last year when the government tapped it to be the sole domestic manufacturer of the vaccines developed by Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca. The company promoted itself with paid posts in national media outlets, including The New York Times. In an internal company presentation earlier this year, executives cited a successful “corporate reputation campaign” as one of the accomplishments justifying record bonuses, according to documents released as part of the congressional investigation.
Company officials’ boastful statements to investors have now become grist for the lawsuits. During a call with investors last July, the chief executive, Robert Kramer, highlighted the $628 million deal the company had recently struck with the federal government under Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s effort to fast-track Covid-19 vaccines and treatments.
“Emergent is uniquely prepared to answer the call,” Mr. Kramer said, pointing to the company’s “proven manufacturing capabilities.”
In the ensuing months, executives continued to assure investors that the company’s vaccine work was on track. During an earnings call in February, one analyst asked whether Emergent was experiencing “manufacturing challenges.” The company was “right on schedule,” Mr. Kramer responded, and with other vaccine manufacturers was “on the verge of literally being able to make available hundreds of millions of doses of multiple vaccine candidates.”
Months earlier, millions of AstraZeneca doses had been discarded because of contamination or suspected contamination, The Times reported in April. And in March, the company learned that a batch of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine had been contaminated. After federal inspectors found serious quality-control deficiencies at the site, Emergent halted production in April at the request of the Food and Drug Administration.
The agency has since allowed about 40 million Johnson & Johnson doses manufactured at the factory to be distributed for use — but with a warning that regulators couldn’t guarantee that Emergent had followed good manufacturing practices. Even with the latest batch cleared for release on Friday, Johnson & Johnson remains nearly 40 million doses short of the 100 million doses called for in its federal contract.
The rosy picture painted by Emergent executives before the contamination was publicly known — as reported by The Times on March 31 — was a deception, the shareholder suits assert.
A series of audits conducted during the summer of 2020 by customers, federal officials and Emergent’s own quality evaluators flagged serious quality problems, including inadequate procedures to prevent contamination.
Rather than inform investors of the problems, executives and board members enriched themselves by selling company stock while the price remained high, the police pension fund lawsuit asserts. Emergent’s founder and chairman, Fuad El-Hibri, sold shares worth $42 million during 2020, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The suit also highlights some more recent stock sales — including trades in January and February by Mr. Kramer that were worth more than $10 million, as well as trades worth a total of about $10.5 million by a half-dozen board members since April 2020. Among them were sales of about $3 million in stock in September by Dr. Louis Sullivan, who served as secretary of health and human services under former President George H.W. Bush and joined Emergent’s board in 2006.
Dr. Sullivan could not be reached for comment. Mr. Hartwig, the Emergent spokesman, reiterated that no improper trading occurred and that the litigation was without merit.
In all, Emergent is facing at least four shareholder lawsuits, including three that are seeking class-action status. The plaintiffs include both individuals and institutional investors, such as retirement and pension funds.
Such lawsuits are not uncommon, and if shareholders win, they often recover just pennies on the dollar. But James Park, a law professor specializing in securities litigation at the University of California, Los Angeles, said they could have a deterrent effect on companies.
“The idea is that you’re going to try to convey the seriousness of these types of violations by imposing financial penalties,” he said.
In addition to money damages, the police pension fund is looking to force reforms to internal Emergent policies to improve board oversight and ensure that recent problems aren’t repeated.
The litigation could also create headaches for Emergent executives, who may have to give sworn testimony and turn over documents. A shareholder suit in 2016 forced Emergent to disclose emails detailing its lobbying efforts on a previous federal contract.
Despite its troubles, Emergent recently told investors it expected record revenues this year. The company’s stock price, however, has been hovering around $60 — about half of what it was when CNBC’s Mr. Cramer championed the company last summer.
In May, Emergent came up again on the show.
“That’s a disaster,” Mr. Cramer told his viewers, “and I’m being really, really nice.”
Chris Hamby is an investigative reporter. He won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 2014 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in international reporting in 2017. @ChrisDHamby
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
www.headstonesband.com
It doesn't make much sense to me, but little does these days.
I know it seems crazy, but I legitimately believe the right does not want the pandemic to end.
2013 Wrigley 2014 St. Paul 2016 Fenway, Fenway, Wrigley, Wrigley 2018 Missoula, Wrigley, Wrigley 2021 Asbury Park 2022 St Louis 2023 Austin, Austin
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
Prague Krakow Berlin 2018. Berlin 2022
EV, Taormina 1+2 2017.
I wish i was the souvenir you kept your house key on..