Britain turns it’s back on the world with its vaccination programme

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Britain turns it’s back on the world with its vaccination programme

If you wanted to be generous, you could probably have said that any government would have had a problem facing the pandemic that hit the world at the end of 2019/beginning of 2020. Indeed, it was unprecedented – a word which has been so overused (as have so many others) in the, now, just under two years. But at the same time we were told (in Britain), over many years, that the government was prepared for such an event. It’s just that when covid arrived it was ‘the wrong type of pandemic’.

From the beginning we were faced with a government which had no idea what it was doing, had no strategy (and still doesn’t) as it bounced around from decision to decision. Supposedly, decisions made ‘following the science’, but in reality they’ve been clutching at straws when it comes to the action they’ve taken.

We’ve been struck by innumerable U-turns, so many it’s impossible for most people to give you an exact number. And after such a long time Buffoon and his government seem to have become accustomed to this way of doing things. Before any decision is made there’s speculation going on for days. There’s uncertainty. There are contradictory statements being made – even at the highest levels of Government. Nobody really knows what’s happening and when there is a decision made, few people in the country really understand what’s been decided.

And this is the case with the change in the vaccination policy which has taken place in the last few days.

12- to 15-year-olds will now be vaccinated as well as something like close to half the population, getting a third, so called ‘booster’, injection.

In a sense, this was bound to happen and should come as a surprise to no one. Not because of the science, not because of how it keeps people healthy. It’s because it’s playing to the audience.

In a country of rabbits people are looking for something, anything, which will assuage their fears.

And children getting vaccinated, older people getting a third ‘booster’ jab just panders to all those fears.

But what it doesn’t do is play any role in social justice with the recognition of the fact that there are still vast parts of the world where you could count the number of those who are fully vaccinated on the fingers of one hand.

Some scientists have been arguing against this extension to the very young and the so-called ‘vulnerable’, not on esoteric grounds (i.e., that it’s the ‘right thing to do’) but that vaccinating as many people as possible in the poorer parts of the world would be, ultimately, beneficial to all, even in Britain.

But even those arguments don’t go down well in a country which has reverted to simple tribalism and narrow-minded parochialism.

Rich countries take advantage of their wealth and their accessibility to vaccines and the rest of the world can just go hang. And that’s the situation we are in in Britain at the moment – a selfish little island nation scrambling for more and more vaccines and finding the weakest ‘reasons’ to justify their approach.

It’s been quite interesting the way the vaccine rollout started with the old and ‘vulnerable’ and the age has gradually gone down to include more and more people – with more and more spurious arguments to justify it. Yes, arguments can be made for vaccinating everyone on the planet but not the least vulnerable when there are still billions of people who won’t see hide nor hair of a covid vaccine needle until well into 2022 – at the earliest.

No doubt once the 12- to 15-year-olds have been given their one jab someone will start looking at extending the programme to even younger children. After all, it’s the really young, primary school children who have been the principal vectors for the annual flu outbreaks in the past.

What is also interesting (and important) is that the extended vaccination programmes will both be using the expensive and difficult to store Pfizer Biontech vaccine.

As time has gone by the efficacy of the Pfizer vaccine has not proven itself to be any better than virtually all the other vaccines that are around. Each one seems to ‘shine’ during a different period in the life cycle of the virus and the battle against it. But what makes the Pfizer vaccine stand out is the smear campaign the company carried out (with willing accomplices such as the Zionist Settler State of Israel) to denigrate and create a climate of fear in many so that the cheaper, just as effective and more manageable AstraZeneca vaccine is being effectively shunned in the ‘civilised’ world.

So, in Britain, not only is the extension of the programme fundamentally immoral it also has the effect of, yet again, shovelling even more public money into the bank accounts of ‘Big Pharma’.

Vaccination programme in Britain ……

Take-up of second covid jab in England levelling off – concern as scientists say vaccinating adults is more important than inoculating children or booster shots.

Vaccine passports will make hesitant people ‘even more reluctant to get jabbed‘.

Mandatory jabs for health staff being considered in consultation.

UK scraps covid-19 vaccine deal with French firm Valneva – why would anyone be foolish enough to have any dealings with ‘perfidious Albion’?

….. for children ….

NHS planning covid vaccines for children from age 12.

Ministers could defy Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and go ahead with covid jabs for all 12- to 15-year-olds.

Covid-19: 12 to 15-year-olds to get ‘final say’ over covid jab if disagreement with parent occurs.

UK vaccine advisers ‘acted like medical regulators’ over covid jabs for children.

All children aged 12 to 15 in the UK will be offered one dose of the (surprise, surprise – the hugely expensive and not necessarily more efficient) Pfizer-BioNTech covid jab.

….. and/or boosters ….

Vaccine boosters are likely to increase protection against variants. Presumably, if you keep pumping all the available vaccine into the same arms you’ll eventually produce a super resistant race amongst the dead population from the rest of the world.

Britons with severely weak immune systems to be offered third covid jab.

No urgency on covid booster shots for healthy adults.

AstraZeneca bosses warn against rush for boosters.

Boosters not needed for all, says Oxford jab creator – send to countries in need, instead.

Covid booster vaccine roll out to begin next week – and the winner is ….. (surprise, surprise – again) the hugely expensive and not necessarily more efficient Pfizer formula.

….. and the rest of the world

Russia’s covid-19 response slowed by population reluctant to take domestic vaccine.

Third coronavirus vaccines aren’t ‘luxury boosters’ taken from people without their first, WHO Europe boss says – the ‘rich’ countries will always find a way to justify their greed and denial of a fair share to the rest of the world.

Why it’s time for the UK to start sharing its vaccine doses.

Israel was a leader in the covid vaccination race – so why are cases spiralling there?

Immunity?

Covid infections may give more potent immunity than vaccines – but that doesn’t mean you should try to catch it.

Four factors that increase the risk of vaccinated people getting covid.

How other countries deal with the pandemic

China crushes Delta spike after weeks of strict measures.

Against all odds: how New Zealand is bending the Delta curve – but for how long?

The ever changing virus

Covid variants: we spoke to the experts designing a single vaccine to defeat them all.

Mu: everything you need to know about the new coronavirus variant of interest.

Covid – effects on children

Long-lasting symptoms rarer in children than in adults.

The care home ‘crisis’

Volunteers may be required in staffing shortfall at English care homes.

Who is dying of covid?

Scientists are comparing the profiles of those who are dying with previous waves – here’s what they know.

What will happen in the winter?

Further lock downs unlikely but some winter restrictions are possible.

‘Collateral damage’

Front-line nurses did not receive the mental health support they deserved.

Poverty in Britain

One in three working-age families with children to be hit by cut to Universal Credit. This came from a report carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Trust. Constituency Analysis (this is an Excel file) and the Technical Appendix.

Cuts to housing benefits led to over 75,000 more overcrowded households during the pandemic.

School spending in England: trends over time and future outlook – briefing or full report.

Teachers gaming pupils’ A-level grades highlights need for fundamental change.

The effect of local housing allowance reductions on overcrowding in the private rented sector in England.

Schools in poorest areas of England to be worst hit by pupil premium change.

Ending universal credit boost will hit sickest areas the hardest.

The truth will out! Perhaps not

The Government’s refusal to make messages between ministers public is (perhaps) an indication of how thorough the inquiry into the dealing with the covid pandemic (supposed to take place some time next year, i.e., 2022) will be.

Attempt to force release of Johnson’s messages on covid in care homes fails.

British Medical Association (BMA) to issue damning critique of government over Covid crisis.

Travel tests

Ministers doing bare minimum to stop covid travel test ‘rip-offs’.

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

View of the world

Ukraine – what you’re not told

Pandemic – what pandemic?

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

View of the world

Ukraine – what you’re not told

Pandemic – what pandemic?

Surely pandemics of the past were nothing like the one the world is living through now. In previous pandemics news about what was happening on the other side of the world either just didn’t exist or would take some time to filter down to the vast majority of the population. With modern technology what happens in Australia and New Zealand, for example, can be known about almost instantly. However, the speed of communication is nothing if people don’t know how (or don’t want) to use that rapid sharing of knowledge to the advantage of all.

That means each country is following its own road with no concern for the long term, worldwide domination of the virus. The consensus now seems to be accepting that covid will be with us forever and that attempts to achieve and maintain a zero level of infection is unlikely – although China and New Zealand still seem to be sticking with their original ‘strategy’. If different countries are shooting into different goal mouths then it doesn’t bode too well for the future.

When it comes to vaccines the selfish, ‘western’, capitalist world continues to grab as much as possible for it’s own privileged populations – the UK just in the last day or so announcing that they had ordered (and paid for) 100 million doses of the very expensive and difficult to transport Pfizer vaccine. The fine statements made at the G7 meeting in June about sharing the available vaccines with the poorer nations on the planet are conveniently forgotten. In England children are being brought into the programme and third doses are being proposed for an, as yet, indeterminate section of the population.

So the chaotic situation that has dominated the last 18 months or so has morphed into surrealism. Life ‘goes on as normal’, people go on holiday, mass sporting events go ahead and it’s difficult to remember that the virus is still with us and we still lack a real strategy to deal with it.

As has been the case for a while now there’s a great dependence being placed upon chance, that the virus will not be as virulent if it returns in a major way in the autumn. But if things do turn bad later in the year there’s no strategy to deal with another major outbreak – so, basically, nothing’s been learnt since the beginning of 2020.

Many of the world’s ‘leaders’ (and probably a sizeable proportion of the populations in the richer countries) are like ostriches with their heads buried deep in the sand. Pandemic, what pandemic?

Vaccination programme in Britain …..

UK doctors alarmed at ‘shambolic’ roll-out of covid jabs for children.

Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) ‘largely opposed’ to Covid vaccination for children under 16.

Vaccinating teenagers is beneficial, even if their vulnerability to covid-19 is low – if you ignore the moral argument about what is happening (or not) in the rest of the world.

Oxford-jab chief criticises UK’s covid booster plan.

How will covid vaccines work on compromised immune systems?

Teenage jab roll out moving cautiously.

Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine: rare blood clot syndrome has high mortality rate.

Should we tell stories of vaccine sceptics who have died of covid?

Is catching covid now better than more vaccine?

….. and the rest of the world

World Health Organisation (WHO) calls for moratorium on booster shots – is it justifiable?

How effective are covid-19 vaccines? Here’s what the stats mean … and what they don’t.

India is preparing for another covid surge but low vaccine coverage leaves it vulnerable

G7 nations will have stockpiled a billion spare covid vaccine doses by end of 2021.

India approves world’s first DNA covid vaccine.

After India’s brutal coronavirus wave, two-thirds of population has been exposed to SARS-CoV2.

Immunocompromised people make up nearly half of covid-19 breakthrough hospitalizations – an extra vaccine dose may help.

Anti-body testing

Antibody tests offered to public for first time. Is there a reason this wasn’t started a long time ago? The more information the better to deal with the pandemic, no?

The ever mutating virus

What happens if a far more lethal coronavirus emerges in pets?

SARS-CoV-2 mutations: why the virus might still have some tricks to pull.

New covid variants ‘would set us back a year’, experts warn UK government.

New wave of covid infections possible when schools and office workers return.

UK covid cases have fallen dramatically – but another wave is likely.

Jabbed adults infected with Delta ‘can match virus levels of unvaccinated’.

Self-isolation

Thousands isolated unnecessarily because of NHS covid app error.

Why are things so different in Africa?

The impact of covid-19 has been lower in Africa. Why?

What does China have to teach us?

From ground zero to zero tolerance – how China learnt from its covid response to quickly stamp out its latest outbreak.

China hits zero covid cases with a month of draconian curbs.

Hundreds quarantined in Shanghai as China nears 2 billion covid-19 vaccine doses.

British Trade Unions get to grips with the pandemic

Urgent call for covid-safe ventilation in schools.

‘Herd immunity’ – or not

Delta variant renders herd immunity from covid ‘mythical’.

Travelling in a time of covid

Ministers accused of destroying trust in England’s covid travel rules.

‘Collateral damage’

Private schools poised to widen lead over state pupils at A-level.

Covid is making a summer break something only the rich can afford.

Could NHS waiting lists really reach 13 million?

England’s pandemic crisis of child abuse, neglect and poverty.

Almost 1.2 million people waiting at least six months for vital NHS services in England.

Working from home has created an ‘overtime epidemic’.

A million jobs in peril as one in 16 UK firms say they are at risk of closure.

How the pandemic exposed the crisis in children’s social care. (Links to a podcast.)

Record number of young people wait for eating disorder treatment in England.

The pandemic transformed how social work was delivered – and these changes could be here to stay.

How decades of Neoliberalism left the NHS on the brink.

Poverty in Britain

The National Housing Federation released a report in July 2021 about the experiences of social housing tenants in claiming Universal Credit during the present covid pandemic entitled ‘Universal Credit: claiming during the coronavirus pandemic – A survey of housing association tenants claiming Universal Credit in 2020/21. In comes in two versions, the Executive Report and the Technical (full) Report.

Cuts to Universal Credit will leave children hungry.

Who’s making it big in Pandemic Britain?

Covid contracts: inquiry to look into use of WhatsApp, says Information Commissioners Office – they knew they were doing something illicit hence trying to do business through less traceable forms of communication.

‘Lost samples and late results’: the Tory donor, his son and their travel-test firms.

Church leader who sold £91 bogus covid remedy appears in court. This was first highlighted here about a year ago – so things aren’t moving particularly fast.

Mask wearing – after the pandemic?

Will mask wearing still be common in Britain after the pandemic is over?

Impossible to get the testing right – or how to make easy money

Anger at overflowing covid test drop boxes.

PCR tests for travel: Competition watchdog to investigate if excessive profits are being made.

Ministers face calls to intervene in ‘scam’ covid travel test system.

UK watchdog (Competition and Markets Authority – CMA) vows to help fight rip-off covid test firms.

Government warns covid test firms over misleading prices.

How are the ‘strategies’ working in other countries?

Has the Delta variant derailed Australia’s zero-covid strategy? (Podcast.)

New Zealand borders to remain closed for rest of the year.

Why I no longer think we can eliminate covid – public health expert.

New Zealand pandemic strategy in doubt amid Delta spread.

What will happen when it’s all over?

Plagues and classical history – what the humanities will tell us about covid in years to come.

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

View of the world

Ukraine – what you’re not told

England on the eve of ‘Freedom Day’

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

View of the world

Ukraine – what you’re not told

England on the eve of ‘Freedom Day’

In less than an hour Britain (or at least the English part of it) will enter a watershed moment for 00.00 on Monday 19th July 2021 will see the end of all restrictions under which the country has been living for the last 16 months. Or it won’t. (It also should be the end of this Journal of the Plague Years 2020-202? – but it won’t.)

(There are even nightclubs waiting to open up, with queues forming, as I write, to enter on the stroke of midnight.)

Legal restrictions will be lifted but that doesn’t mean that local restrictions won’t remain in place. For example, masks will not be obligatory on some forms of public transport but will be on others and it varies between different parts of the country (England) and matters won’t be changing on the 19th in the other constituent nations of the so-called ‘United Kingdom’. And worse still some areas seem to be following a ‘wait and see’ approach before making a final decision.

The uncertainty and confusion that has beset the whole approach to dealing with the pandemic is now being carried over into the ‘new normal’. Having had no strategy to deal with the consequences of the covid virus since March 2020 the government of the Buffoon is basically giving up and hoping for the best – more or less what they have been doing since the pandemic hit.

When it comes to the science people can get proof of their approach whatever it might be. Some scientists are predicting the end of civilisation as we know it, others are arguing the ‘if not now, when’ approach. No doubt all will eventually be proved correct, at least in their own eyes.

From the beginning we have been arguing here that there must be a better way of dealing with a pandemic than following the tactics that were adopted 700 years ago during the time of the ‘Black Death’ (bubonic plague) that swept through Europe. But that would require a strategy which has been sorely lacking. At the same time it cannot be denied that the ‘collateral damage’ caused by the lack of a clear and carefully thought out strategy has been, is and will be in the near to long-term future, immense.

Modern societies just can’t close down with the hope the virus will run its course and eventually disappear. If that thought did exist at the beginning of 2020 the hope has all but been dispelled by the general argument now that ‘we will have to live to learn with the virus and that it will be with us (probably) forever’.

However important it might be for British society to get back to normal (with all its problems of inequality, racism and poverty) it would have been useful if lessons of mistakes made in the last 18 months had been learnt so the country was more prepared for what is to come – an uncertain future for sure.

But in England (and it’s not really any better in the rest of the UK) that’s not the case.

On the very eve of ‘Freedom Day’ the Buffoon makes even yet another U-turn (this time one of the quickest ever, timed at less than three hours) over the matter of self isolation of himself and his spendthrift neighbour. But it wasn’t just the changing of approach to self isolation (‘one law for us and one law for them’) it was the way it was explained away.

In the same way that the Buffoon has lied and blustered his way through events of the last year and a bit he turned his lack of strategy on to the population of England. His video speech explaining the change in approach consisted in mainly saying that we all have to be follow a sensible lifestyle in the coming weeks and months and ignoring the chaos that his own actions (and that of the rich and powerful) in the last 18 months has just created confusion in the minds of some, incredulity in those of others, and downright antagonism in the minds of the rest.

We didn’t enter the pandemic all together and we’re not moving out of it (however temporary it might be) as a united force that would be the only hope, if not a guarantee, of success.

From tomorrow the debate will change, accusations will be liberally thrown around and politicians will be seeking to score points for their own short-term ends. ‘I told you so’ will become the most oft quote phrase and chaos will reign.

How well or badly we in Britain will get through this crisis is still in the balance. But the same question that was posed at the beginning of 2020 is still valid so many months later. The ruling class in Britain (and the rest of the world) have shown themselves incapable of dealing with such a crisis – apart from filling the banks accounts of their cronies and allies with public wealth.

Are working people willing and able to do better?

Vaccination programme in Britain

Covid-19 vaccine boosters: is a third dose really needed?

Most covid deaths in England now are in the vaccinated – here’s why that shouldn’t alarm you.

Can ‘viral shedding’ after the covid vaccine infect others? That’s a big ‘no’.

Pressure builds on ministers to reach a decision on covid vaccines for children. This decision will be based upon politics and will have nothing to do with science – or the ‘data’. There is in Britain – as in virtually all the wealthier countries – no real concern for situation in the poorer countries where many millions of the ‘most vulnerable’ are still from being protected. The Buffoon will be playing to the selfish gallery.

Freedom Day … or perhaps not

End to Covid rules for England ‘leaves 3.8 million vulnerable people feeling abandoned’.

UK faces a difficult summer.

Confusion continues to reign

UK government under fire for mixed remote work messaging.

The ever-changing virus

Lambda variant is now in 29 countries, but what evidence do we have that it’s more dangerous?

Consequences of the virus

Younger adults still at risk of serious organ damage.

Long covid has more than 200 symptoms.

The argument over masks

Seven reasons mask wearing in the west was unnecessarily delayed.

Who gains from pandemics (and in any other health care situation)?

UK drug companies fined £260 million for inflating prices for National Health Service.

Test and trace

More than half a million people in England pinged by NHS test and trace app in a week, the highest figure recorded.

Wealth distribution in Britain

The Resolution Foundation produced a report, (Wealth) gap year: The impact of the coronavirus crisis on UK household wealth and there was a discussion around the findings of this report in a webinar on 12th July.

The masters of the U-turn

Buffoon and chancellor to self-isolate in U-turn. This one in less than three hours.

Vaccine ‘passports’

Are covid-19 vaccine passports fair?

Poverty in Britain

More than 1million children from key worker families living in poverty, says Trades Union Congress. So when are the unions going to do something about it?

The Joseph Rowntree Trust has published another report into poverty in Britain entitled A Minimum Income Standard for the United Kingdom in 2021. Also just the findings.

The expiry of the Universal Credit uplift: impacts and policy options, from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

More on covid pandemic 2020-2?

View of the world

Ukraine – what you’re not told