Coronavirus
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Just realised that that letter in the Financial Times of 29 January is behind a paywall for some. So here are some extracts from what Daniel Gross, of the Centre for European Poliy Studies in Brussels, wrote (emphases added):
“A major supplier, AstraZeneca, has just announced delays in its delivery schedule while the pandemic continues unabated. How did it come to this?
The EU negotiators made two mistakes. First, they concluded their contracts much later than other large buyers, for example three months after the UK (as reported by AstraZeneca). AstraZeneca could thus confidently start to prepare for increased supplies to the UK much before doing the same for the EU. Moreover, the EU haggled for a low price, creating an incentive for companies to serve first those who ordered first (and paid a higher price).
(…).
But with a constant price per dose the companies have no incentive to ramp up production overnight given that they would not be compensated for the additional costs.
Bygones are bygones. The EU is now sitting on contracts which specify a low price for a large quantity; but only “best effort” promises on timely delivery. However, something could still be done.
The EU should offer to pay AstraZeneca or BioNTech/Pfizer an additional premium for any doses delivered early.”
Yes, that’s the sort of language they’d understand. How stupid of the EU negotiators not to have realised that you only get what you pay for. I would have thought that they would have had more experience of how capitalism works to have known that.
In Los Angeles, California a group of anti-vaxxers tried to stop a vaccination site that was going to take place at the Dodger Stadium. If they do not want to get vaccinated it is their own personal problem, but they can not stop other peoples who want to do that. These religious right-wingers are a real pain on the arse. When they get infected they are the first ones who want to use human sciences and human medical services. They get infected and then they infect other innocents peoples including children, there is a family who did not want to get a mask they got infected and two of their children are paralyzed
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/30/anti-vaccine-protest-dodger-stadium/
Anyone noticed how the TV soaps are not helping? The characters treat their masks like caps: on and off, crumpled in their hands (germs on fingers). They remove them and chinwag at close quarters indoors. If this is representing how we are to behave, then the virus is rejoicing.
You do your utmost to isolate as vulnerable, yet not only do no delivery workers wear masks, they also open the letter box open and shout at you through it. Do people not give a s*** about themselves, let alone others?
A vaccine to tackle the coronavirus variants could be ready to deploy by the autumn should it be needed, the Oxford-AstraZeneca team says. Prof Andy Pollard, from Oxford University, said tweaking a vaccine was a relatively quick process and would only need small trials before roll-out.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55917793
Although it may well be small tweaks to future vaccines, it is a guaranteed income to the drug producers as is the regular tweaking of the flu jabs.
International travel had the biggest impact on Covid death rates for countries hit in the pandemic’s first wave, a study has found. Researchers in Aberdeen focused on the world’s worst affected 37 countries.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-55919040
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2021/02/second-vaccine-side-effects/617892/
Second vaccine possible side effects
Confirming yet again our earlier exchange, MS.
American Indians and Alaskan Natives are dying at almost twice the rate of white Americans, according to analysis by APM Research Lab shared exclusively with the Guardian.
Nationwide one in every 475 Native Americans has died from Covid since the start of the pandemic, compared with one in every 825 white Americans and one in every 645 Black Americans. Native Americans have suffered 211 deaths per 100,000 people, compared with 121 white Americans per 100,000.
The true death toll is undoubtedly significantly higher as multiple states and cities provide patchy or no data on Native Americans lost to Covid. Of those that do, communities in Mississippi, New Mexico, Arizona, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas have been the hardest hit.
Interesting CounterPunch piece.
People may need to get vaccinated against Covid-19 annually for the next several years, Johnson & Johnson chief executive Alex Gorsky told CNBC on Tuesday, due to mutations to the virus.
I have come across two people who have told me they are refusing the jab. One is a party member who believes in Nature Cure. The other is the daughter of an ex-party member who thinks that it is a plot by Bill Gates to reduce the world’s population. I suppose this will be a typical cross-section of the small minority of refuseniks.
There is also a repeat of what happened in South Africa during HIV/AIDS, Tanzania’s president is refusing to roll out any vaccination programme and is telling people to use local traditional medicines instead.
It’s the same in nearby Madagascar:
https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-africa-53756752
What will keep the death rate down in these countries is not these quack remedies but the fact that they have so high a proportion of young people compared to the USA, Japan and European countries. The good news is that his concoction probably won’t do any harm. It sounds as if it might make a good soft drink.
“a plot by Bill Gates to reduce the world’s population.”
He’s a bit of a tinker is that Bill Gates. Apparently he is also sticking a 5G micro chip in all of our arms through the vaccine so he can find out what everybody’s doing.I can imagine he’s thrilled with the progress of the vaccine roll out in the UK, as he will now know that a lot of the over 80’s in the UK watch Countdown in the afternoons and enjoy the occasional Werther’s Original.
I’m sure if I had $115 billion and a superyacht to travel the world in I would be focussing on finding out what time of day the average over 80 year old in the UK had a dump
In some regions around the world there is a shortage of testing kits.
South Korea will start testing their pets for covid-19
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