Left side of the road

Will the vaccines stop the pandemic – or will we go to war over their supply?

Sceptic as I am, and despising the present Government in the UK as I do, I have to admit that I’ve been (pleasantly) surprised at the ‘success’ of the vaccination programme. There were a few blips at the start but, in general, matters seemed – and continue – to go smoothly.

The spat with the European Union (EU) over supply was the modern day, State equivalent, of a spoilt child taking their ball away when the decision went against them. That seems to have calmed down a bit at the moment – the only remaining issue being the childish manner in which officials in the EU are clinging on to their (it must be said, very lucrative) jobs.

At the same time there are aspects of the vaccine acquisition that need to be considered. The ‘success’ of the vaccines – nearly all of them so far – wasn’t down to some long term programme that was getting close to an effective result. It was very much based on luck. A combination of factors came together which meant that the covid virus was vulnerable to those elements that scientists had been developing for years. Perhaps luck is the wrong word but the virus arrived at just the right time when work of the past was able to more effectively deal with it.

However, when it comes to the British Government their success rests solely upon a gamble. With public money – so none of them were out of pocket – they bought millions of doses of virtually all the vaccines that were in development in the middle of last year. Long before many other governments did so. There was no guarantee that any of these vaccines would work. The fact that they do is ‘good’ for the Buffoon and his Government, but it doesn’t detract from the fact that it was definitely by luck and not design that the vaccines are being put into the arms of the British population at this time.

But then if you bet on every horse in a race you will back the winner – but whether you have ‘won’ financially is another matter. Some might say that it was worth the gamble, and they might be right. But as these new variants come along and doubts start to be spread about the vaccines efficacy in combatting them that situation could change.

And even if some countries are doing well when it comes to their vaccination programmes (and the big hitters at the moment seem to be Britain and Israel – whilst still denying the same treatment to the Palestinians, whose country they occupy, as they do to their own population) the question of what happens about the majority of the people in the world without the finance and clout of those two countries is still in question.

Every government and politician accepts that to end the pandemic it needs to be fought on a worldwide scale but few, if any, are actually doing anything about it. As the figures of those vaccinated start to be counted in their millions in Britain they are being counted in their tens in much of the world.

100,000 and counting

The Buffoon is hoping that the relative success in the speed of the vaccination programme will make people forget about what has (or hasn’t happened) in the last year or so. So to keep the issue live;

Why the 100,000 toll is so bad.

And if we are ‘to follow the science’;

‘Poor decisions’ to blame for UK death toll, scientists say.

The ugly spat between the EU and Big Pharma

At the time of writing this issue has been ‘resolved’ – although there does seem to be a bit of ‘passing the buck’ still going on in the EU hierarchy – we live in a political culture of not taking responsibility. It wasn’t a surprise that there would be conflict once vaccines were developed, perhaps what is slightly surprising was the undignified manner in which it developed (or perhaps not).

Perhaps one of the more disturbing elements of this spat was that it made Arlene Foster, the First Minister of Northern Ireland, sound reasonable.

The story so far;

AstraZeneca defends EU vaccine roll out plan.

EU demands UK-made AstraZeneca vaccine doses.

But the Buffoon is there to calm the nation’s fears.

Was there even an issue at all? If so, what’s being done to speed up production?

EU confirms new vaccine export controls

then

Bloc backtracks on controls for Northern Ireland.

All in a matter of a couple of days. And making it a field day for the xenophobes and racists.

Preparing for the next pandemic

It’s coming (that’s if we can get rid of the present one)! It’s a matter of when, not if. But unless lessons are learnt from covid then the cosequences in the future will be much more dire – with less slack in the system to come up with sticking plaster solutions.

So some ideas that are starting to be presented.

Make hardware ‘open source’ can help us fight future pandemics.

The problem here – and probably for all such recommendations to deal with a future pandemic is that we live in a capitalist controlled society. ALL the measures that might be suggested that would have a real effect will go against the ideas of ‘liberal economics’ and the capitalist concept of ‘freedom’ – freedom to exploit workers and the situation, freedom to maximise profits. There’s a conflict from the start.

Vaccination Programme

Now that (in Britain) the vast majority of the ‘most vulnerable’ have been offered the vaccine it’s now open season for intetrest groups to say who should be next. (Not a judgement, just a statement of fact.)

Charity calls for homeless people to be given vaccine priority.

Older age groups in UK ‘will die’ if Covid vaccine priority goes to younger key workers.

The climate of fear

If you create a climate of fear don’t be surprised when people are fearful. UK Covid patients are dying needlessly due to unfounded fears about ventilators. (But this then gives the Government someone to blame – other than themselves – for some of the deaths.)

How the figures are used sometimes obscures the truth

On 27th January Radio 4’s More or less discussed how the figures of reported deaths are often used for shock effect by various sections of the media – and politicians.

International vaccination programmes

Israel’s vaccine roll out has been fast, so why is it controversial and what can other countries learn?

This was going to be an issue from Day 1. If a vaccine was the ‘solution’ the rich were going to get it first – despite any logic to the contrary. Welcome to the next mass extinction.

WHO (World Health Organisation) urges Britain to pause covid jabs after treating vulnerable.

This is a strange one and part of the legacy of racism. Vaccine scepticism lurks in town famous for syphilis study. And there will be many places and countries around the world where such scepticism will be encountered – as a result of imperialist interventions over centuries. Another example of ‘chickens coming home to roost’.

‘Collateral damage’

NHS will take months to return to normal in England.

Covid could cost children £350 billion in earnings due to lost learning. Read the full observation from the Institute for Fiscal Studies: The crisis in lost learning calls for a massive national policy response

Ministers accused of failure to help most deprived as covid infections fall far slower in poorest areas

Covid ‘variants’

‘Variants’ is becoming the buzz word now. South African scientists who discovered new covid-19 variant share what they know.

Is the evolution of the virus a good or a bad thing? Will coronavirus really evolve to become less deadly?

This could just as well as gone under the ‘climate of fear’ heading as such speculation certainly doesn’t help to create calm. And if the Government is concerned about eventual vaccine take-up then having someone, a so-called ‘expert’, passing aspersions on the efficacy of the present vaccines that’s not going to help. It seems that there are more people than ever after their ’15 minutes of fame’ – whatever damage that short period in the limelight might cause. Warning UK could become covid ‘melting pot’ as new mutations detected. And even if this were the case then with a population of a mere 60 million out of a world population of 8 billion then there must be other factors at work – those which can be managed – to cause this tiny island at the edge of Europe to be such a menace to the rest of the world.

Nightingale hospitals

This is an item that could well be included in the ‘preparations for the next pandemic’. These are the practical matters that have to be sorted out as soon as possible. If not the ‘Nightingale Hospitals’ then what? Something has to replace them (perhaps the concept of ‘fever hospitals’) – for long term defence capabilities of the next pandemic. It needs a radical change of thinking and the development of a clear strategy – but that may be more wishful thinking that bearing any relationship to reality.

Doctors question if London Nightingale hospital was best way to treat covid.

‘ … it [the London Nightingale Hospital] only ever treated 54 patients, was hamstrung by hospitals’ reluctance to release doctors and nurses to work there and was derided by some in the NHS as a costly gimmick.’

Infection and its consequences

Risk of severe covid established early in infection.

Testing

Testing has continued to take a back seat to the vaccination programme but if nothing is learnt from the last year and a truly viable, functioning and effective test, track and trace system cannot be established which will be able to come into full programme within a matter of days of a pandemic being identified then there will be no hope of avoiding another disaster similar to that of the last year – and this and the next?

One important aspect of effective testing is it being based locally. The situation forced on the country with the new variant might well be able to point the way forward and also show the difficulties – as well as the advantages – of the country adopting such a scheme.

South African variant of covid found in eight areas of England – door-to-door testing launched.

The rich during a pandemic

We’ll have to see how this develops – it shouldn’t be a surprise if it is just left to fall out of the news. Canadian couple who got vaccine meant for Indigenous people. They ‘might’ face gaol. We shall see.

George Osborne to join Robey Warshaw (a company involved in some of the biggest business takeovers) – and will get a lot of money for doing so.

Experiences of the pandemic

Remember people being bussed from London to Arrowe Park Hospital in Liverpool? In hindsight it wasn’t necessarily a good experience. ‘I wish I’d stayed in Wuhan and missed flight’.

A year since Britain first heard of covid-19

Posted on 25/01/2021 by Michael

A year since Britain first heard of covid-19

It was in the final week of January 2020 that people in Britain became aware of a new virus that was starting to get out of control in China. Was that the first time we came across the term covid-19? If not once we learnt that designation it should have started to ring alarm bells. We were hearing about it at the end of the first month of 2020 but it must have been around for a few months before that.

For most people it probably registered as something serious – but not that serious. We had been told for years that science knew that something like this was bound to happen at some time (we had had three or four ‘near misses’ already in the 21st century) and that our governments were aware and prepared for any such eventuality. How wrong we were.

In criticising the Buffoon and his Government for its actions (or more normally its in-actions) throughout 2020 the term ‘too little, too late’ has often been used. That critique might well have been valid since the end of March last year but it’s more important to remember what had happened (or not happened) in the years – even decades – before the dawn of 2020.

The National Health Service (NHS) had been undermined and parts of it privatised ‘secretly’ through the back door. Care of the elderly wasn’t a concern for any government, whatever their political colour, although they recognised there was a problem, said they would fix it – and never did a thing.

There was no preparation for the likes of a pandemic. No rational stock piling system of necessary equipment (which meant that some of it was ‘out of date’ when needed as there had been no rotation of materials). And, most importantly, no strategy of any kind of how to deal with such a crisis, which took into consideration the myriad of potential problems, and no structure that could be set into motion at the flick of a switch to deal with all related matters from the care of the sick to the dissemination of clear and concise information.

‘Too little, too late’ could be used to describe the situation in Britain since the 1980s.

As a consequence what do we have a year down the line?

the highest per capita death rate of any country in the world
an untold number of fatalities waiting to happen due to the health system being turned over, for months, almost exclusively to dealing with the covid virus
an NHS which is on the point of collapse
an NHS workforce that is being pushed to its limits, not just during the winter (a perennial problem for years) but throughout the year
an educational system that was unfair at the start and becoming even more so
young people totally confused about their futures
an increasing level of unemployment, the level of which we won’t know about for a good few months yet
an economy that wasn’t that healthy before now in free fall
an unimaginable debt which will be pushed into the future (on top of the debt created to pull the capitalist system out of the mire caused by its innate greed which led to the 2008 financial crisis which had also been pushed into the future) and which the young will be expected to pay for – whether they know or realise it or not
a number of vaccines which might (or might not) protect people, which might (or might not) make them less infectious, which might (or might not) deal with the many variants that are popping up everywhere, which might (or probably won’t) be distributed worldwide to populations who need the protection from a vaccine much more than the majority of people in the richer, capitalist countries

And still we’re no closer to actually placing the pandemic behind us than we were this time last year.

Will the next 12 months be like it was in the film ‘Groundhog Day’? Quite possibly. But there will almost certainly be one important difference. Bill Murray’s character learnt from the mistakes he made – the Buffoon in Britain, and all the rest of the Buffoons in government in the rest of the world, are unlikely to be as receptive.

The next pandemic

It might be strange to look at potential pandemics in the future whilst in the middle of one that has ben raging for over a year now but unless we are constantly aware that pandemics are likely to become the norm (rather than the exception) we will be in danger in forgetting how things had been managed in the past and make the same mistakes in the future.

The new mosquito bringing disease to North America – but no need to worry about malaria, this species brings with it all mosquito carrying diseases except malaria. Will that mean the world’s pharmaceutical companies will increase efforts to look for a way of combatting disease carrying insects. When it was just effecting the poor they didn’t really care. Now it might start to threaten the richer countries in the northern hemisphere it becomes a different matter. But even if they do come up with a prophylactic or cure it won’t be the poor that gets the first option – just see how matters are playing out over the covid vaccine.

Infection and mortality rates

Ten months since the first lock down the same slogans are being revived. If everything that people are expected to do now, so long after the first infections were identified in the country, is merely to achieve the same aim, that is, to avoid the NHS from being overwhelmed, then really we’re no further forward than we were in spring of 2020. It means that we have just being playing a waiting game in the hope that the virus would ‘tire and just go away’, burn itself out. By not being pro-active and basically marching on the spot we are no better off than those in the 17th century who prayed to the Lord for salvation from the Plague. The risk averse approach of most scientists to lock everything down (and the criticism that we haven’t locked down society enough) also shows that progress in science and medicine over the centuries hasn’t been able to come up with strategies which use that increase in knowledge for the overall benefit of society. Crossing our fingers and praying that all would turn out well would have been as effective.

Mixed messages have been emanating from the Buffoon and his Government since the pandemic hit Britain ten months (or so) ago. This has only served to cause confusion and despair – and not least one of the reasons some people are not sticking to the restrictions. One of the tactics the Government has been using from the very beginning to get compliance is by promoting an environment of fear amongst a sizeable proportion of the population – and they seem incapable of not stoking those fears (even if they are not based upon any identifiable factual information).

Such is the situation over the new ‘variants’. New UK covid variant may be 30% more deadly, says Johnson. But the following day; ‘More deadly’ UK variant claim played down by scientists. Following the science – or what?

Number of patients on ventilators passes 4,000 for first time. Going back six months or so it was stated that knowledge gained at the beginning of the pandemic had meant fewer people were being put on ventilators. The numbers are announced but not the reasons for this going back to the original approach.

How is the virus changing

There’s a new variant almost every day now. Will this make it harder to get to ‘herd immunity’? Perhaps – but there is still hope.

After the virus being ‘stable’ for the best part of a year it’s now throwing up potential problems by having to be described by its various ‘variants’. How did they evolve and what do they mean?

Why being more transmissible rather than more deadly isn’t good news.

The Vaccination Programme

I’m sure there’s going to be many strange stories in relation to the vaccination programme/s in Britain and other parts of the world. So this one to start.

Doctors told to throw away leftover covid vaccines rather than giving second doses. But then it does come from The Telegraph.

The British Government is intent on going for the big centres (ten more to open in England – and presumably more to follow) rather than concentrate on a local level. It might be a short term ‘solution’ – we’ll have to see how matters pan out over the next few months – but it might be missing a golden opportunity to develop a structure that can respond to such epidemics in the future.

The jockeying for position in the ‘vaccination queue’ – and also a cynical opportunity to gain some level of popularity. Priti Patel ‘working to get jabs to front-line roles’.

Now there might be justice and validity in many of these preferences but such a discussion shouldn’t be just out for the loudest to get what they want. Once a vaccine was considered the only get out of the pandemic there should have been a ‘task force’ which looked at all the options and could come out with arguments for why the the roll out was focussing on some groups rather than others.

In a rational society that would include not vaccinating some people in the UK until more vulnerable people in other parts of the world had been vaccinated first. But no British government would ever have the nerve to stick to a principled stance. This is even though a pandemic means that if we don’t get to grips with the virus in all parts of the world the chances of a future outbreak can never be ruled out.

UK to look ‘very carefully’ at vaccine dosing after concerns raised over level of protection. But when Israel is involved in the issue it would be useful to remember that the country is basically Pfizer’s poodle and will say anything to keep on the right side of the pharmaceutical giant – as long as it doesn’t involve extending the vaccination programme to Palestinians.

Queue jumping becoming more common – and inevitable as long as there’s no proper and clear strategy about vaccination and as long as the ‘free market’ is allowed to determine matters. Wheelchair firm tells of access to jabs ‘through a back door’.

On 21st January Radio 4’s World at One aired various views on the question of ‘one dose or two’ – and the gap between them.

The North/South divide hasn’t gone away. Claims supplies ‘diverted from the North’ raise concerns.

Why combining the Oxford vaccine with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine could make it more effective.

Why the UK’s ‘lumpy’ roll out shouldn’t be a concern – this article also addresses the matter of the moral obligation of vaccines being sent to poorer countries.

Vaccinations in the rest of the world

Surprise! Surprise! The richer countries are grabbing all the stocks of vaccines and ignoring the (probably) most needy in the world. The World Heath Organisation (WHO) calls this a ‘catastrophic moral failure’.

This issue was discussed on Radio 4’s World at One on 18th January.

So, how and when will lower-income countries get access?

Israel has become the ‘poster boy’ when it comes to the speed in vaccinating it’s population. But always with Israel, what you see is only the tip of a very dirty iceberg. Some of those details came out on Radio 4’s World at One on 18th January.

On 19th January Radio 4’s World at One looked at the Israeli response to its ‘obligations’ to the people who’s land they illegally occupy and proposals for vaccinating Palestinians against covid. In this short piece its interesting how the Israelis cite an agreement of the 1990s but ignore how their actions in the intervening 25 years have made any commitments to the health service in Palestine an almost impossibility. For a deeper look at Israeli attitudes to the Palestinian people the report by B’Tselem makes interesting reading.

This one for EU bashers. EU vaccine woes mount as new delays emerge.

Testing

Even with a number of vaccines the general (scientific) consensus is that testing is also needed to get on top of the pandemic. In the UK it’s almost impossible to know where we stand on this issue. Plans are made, ambitious goals are set, failure is the result. Now to add to the general confusion in the education sector Ministers are now set to halt plans for daily covid tests in English schools.

‘Collateral damage’

The ‘vulnerable’ old are dying, the young are getting the dirty end of the stick from the ‘efforts’ by governments to cope with the pandemic. If a measure of a society is how it deals with its old and young then Britain doesn’t (not surprisingly after so many years of institutionalised selfishness) come out too well. Another report emphasises this by coming to the conclusion that one in four UK young people have felt ‘unable to cope’ in pandemic.

One law for the rich and ‘famous’ – one for the rest of us

This story got worse as the days wore on but initially tennis stars’ arrival angers stranded Australians. Even those so-called ‘celebrities’ that come from humble backgrounds rapidly take on the spoilt brat approach when they have a healthy bank account.

Politicians drank on Senedd (the devolved Welsh Parliament) premises despite booze ban. Probably wanting to avoid waste!

(This eventually led to a few resignations. However the point isn’t what they did it’s the idea that there are those who think that because of their position in society they are not covered by the same restrictions as the vast majority of the population. Here I’m not referring to young people going to raves – they’re doing it because they don’t trust those in government and are prepared to take risks.)

The issue of masks

From arguments way back in March that mask wearing possibly had more negatives that positives we are getting to a situation where some high-tech (and more expensive) mask is the way forward. Wear medical-grade masks if you can’t socially distance, Britons told. Whether this will take supplies from places where it might be more useful or who will actually have to pay for this more expensive equipment is not addressed. We will soon have a situation in Britain as it was in World War Two with people walking around with a gas mask in a box hanging from their shoulders.

Poverty in Britain

Poverty is easy to resolve – you just stop al the wealth being collected into a few hands and create a society which works for the benefit of the majority. I accept easier to say than do – and experienmts in the past have not achieved what they set out to do. But what is certain is that there will never be a solution to poverty under capitalism – it’s very existence depends upon inequality. And even if some ‘go up’ it only means that others will have to ‘go down’.

But that doesn’t stop the likes of the privileged Buffoon coming up with another meaningless and impractical suggestion. His latest is that girls’ education is the key to ending poverty.

At the beginning of January the Resolution Foundation brought out a report of how 2021 will be for the poorest in society, in their report The Living Standards Outlook.

Poorer pupils falling behind during lock down. Again, Surprise! Surprise! But nothing gets done about it, such as general provision of computers and connectivity.

Travel restrictions

This is another of the ‘will they, won’t they’ stories. UK shuts travel corridors and requires negative covid tests to enter. Whether at this stage of the pandemic this will have any real effect must be debatable. What is not debatable is that this provides an ideal opportunity for bandits around the world to make money out of the crisis with the provision of expensive tests to those who ‘need’ to travel.