The politics of the Wuhan lab leak hypothesis
By Stephen Gowans
May 29, 2021
US president Joe Biden has ordered a “hunt for new intelligence to determine whether the Chinese government covered up an accidental leak” [1] at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory in Wuhan, the city in which the novel coronavirus was first identified. The lab is a biosafety level 4 (BSL4) facility, the highest level.
Twelve months ago, then secretary of state Mike Pompeo also “asked intelligence agencies to continue looking for any evidence to support” (what the New York Times at the time) called “an unsubstantiated theory that the pandemic might be the result of an accidental lab leak.” Times’ reporters Edward Wong and Ana Swanson added that the intelligence community had told Pompeo that “they most likely will not find proof.” [2]
At the time, some US “officials were wary of President Donald J. Trump’s motives, arguing that his interest in the origins of the pandemic was either to deflect blame from his administration’s handling of it or to punish China.” The Biden administration says that “the central goal of the new intelligence push is to improve preparations for future pandemics.” [3]
It is widely agreed that the pandemic originated in a zoonotic spillover—the transmission of the novel coronavirus from another species to humans. The spillover may have happened in nature, or it may have happened in a laboratory. A laboratory spillover would involve the accidental infection of a scientist working with live virus.
Virus hunters have “collected samples from 164,000 animals and humans and claimed to have found ‘almost 1,200 potentially zoonotic viruses, among them 160 novel coronaviruses, including multiple SARS- and MERS-like coronaviruses.’” These potential pandemic pathogens are “studied and circulated in laboratories worldwide.” [4]
In 2012, there were at least 42 facilities engaged in researching live potential pandemic pathogens, including 30 labs that were working with live SARS virus. [5]
Writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, Lynn Klotz, Senior Science Fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, warned in 2019 that “Incidents causing potential exposures to pathogens occur frequently in the high security laboratories often known by their acronyms, BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) and BSL4. Lab incidents that lead to undetected or unreported laboratory-acquired infections can lead to the release of a disease into the community outside the lab; lab workers with such infections will leave work carrying the pathogen with them. If the agent involved were a potential pandemic pathogen, such a community release could lead to a worldwide pandemic with many fatalities.” [6]
Nicholson Baker, a prolific writer of both fiction and non-fiction, wrote a long article in New York Magazine in January exploring the lab-leak hypothesis. Baker wrote that “In 2015, the Department of Defense discovered that workers at a germ-warfare testing center in Utah had mistakenly sent close to 200 shipments of live anthrax to laboratories throughout the United States and also to Australia, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and several other countries over the past 12 years. In 2019, laboratories at Fort Detrick — where ‘defensive’ research involves the creation of potential pathogens to defend against — were shut down for several months by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for ‘breaches of containment’.” They reopened in December 2019.” [7]
According to the New York Times, safety concerns “led the government to shut down research involving dangerous microbes like the Ebola virus” at the military lab in the summer of 2019. The newspaper noted that “Missteps have occurred at other government laboratories, including those at the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health.” [8]
Research was also suspended at Fort Detrick in 2009 over bio-safety concerns. [9]
China has demanded an independent inquiry of the Fort Detrick laboratories as the possible source of the novel coronavirus, [10] a demand the US news media have ridiculed, arguing there is “not a shred of evidence to support” a leak at the lab. [11]
But, as lapses at Fort Detrick demonstrate, laboratory accidents do happen, “even in high containment settings.” [12]
According to the scientific journal, Nature Reviews Microbiology, “More than twice a week in US laboratories, there is a ‘possible release event’ or a ‘possible loss event’, even if we look only at select agents — some of the most dangerous pathogens. For every 1,000 lab-years of work in BSL-3 laboratories in the United States with select agents, there are at least 2 accidental infections. This level of safety may be acceptable if the risk is to the laboratory workers only, as it is with most pathogens that are not readily transmissible. However, the same probability of an accident that could spark a global pandemic cannot be called acceptably safe.” [13]
Lynn Klotz, and Edward Sylvester, a professor at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, ask us to “consider the probability for escape from a single lab in a single year to be 0.003 (i.e., 0.3 percent)…[With] 42 labs carrying out live [potential pandemic pathogen] research, this basic 0.3 percent probability translates to an 80 percent likelihood of escape from at least one of the 42 labs every 12.8 years.” Klotz and Sylvester argue the “level of risk is clearly unacceptable.” [14]
By 2012, SARS had “escaped from laboratories three times.” [15] A “researcher at the National Institute of Virology in Beijing” was infected, and “passed it on to others, including her mother, who died from the infection.” [16] If SARS could escape three times from a laboratory, could SARS-2 have escaped one or more times?
Whether it did or didn’t, lab leaks do happen, and questions need to be raised about whether the risks involved in working with potential pandemic pathogens in the laboratory are acceptable. Many scientists, including Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, believe the consequences of a potential pandemic pathogen leaking from a lab are too great to accept the risk, no matter how small. He compares lab work with pathogens that could spark a pandemic to “looking for a gas leak with a lighted match.” [17]
Clearly, the possibility that there was a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology cannot be ruled out, any more than leaks at Fort Detrick or the dozens of other laboratories around the world that are looking for gas leaks with lighted matches can be ruled out.
And there is a surface plausibility to the Wuhan lab leak claim. As the New York Times reported, “The coronavirus first came to light in the city of Wuhan, home to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers study dozens of strains of coronaviruses collected in caves in southern China.” [18]
What’s more, according to intelligence shared with Washington by an ally, “three workers in the Wuhan virological laboratory were hospitalized with serious flulike symptoms in the autumn of 2019. [19]
However, there are also plausible alternative explanations. We don’t know whether the novel coronavirus originated in Wuhan. We only know that Wuhan is where a new form of SARS was first identified. The virus may have originated elsewhere, and the first cases misdiagnosed as pneumonia or flu, and later brought to Wuhan.
As to the lab workers who are alleged to have fallen ill in the autumn of 2019, the New York Times reported that US “intelligence officials do not know whether the lab workers contracted Covid-19 or some other disease, like a bad flu. If they did have the coronavirus, the intelligence may suggest that they could have become sick from the lab, but it also could simply mean that the virus was circulating in Wuhan” earlier than currently believed. [20]
And while the lab employees were hospitalized it “isn’t unusual for people in China to go straight to the hospital when they fall sick, either because they get better care there or lack access to a general practitioner. Covid-19 and the flu, while very different illnesses, share some of the same symptoms, such as fever, aches and a cough.” [21]
The fact of the matter is that although a lab leak is possible, including one at the Wuhan lab, there is no evidence that one happened.
“Most of the broader intelligence community, including the C.I.A. and the Defense Intelligence Agency, believe there is not yet sufficient information to draw a conclusion, even with low confidence, about the origins,” according to the New York Times. [22]
“British intelligence services” likewise “are skeptical of the lab leak theory.” [23]
Also, evidence exists that is inconsistent with the hypothesis that the novel coronavirus spilled out of the Wuhan lab. Virologist Robert Garry “observed that Chinese scientists would have to have collected SARS-CoV-2 and then grown it in a colony of cells, but somehow never publish any details of it even as they published reports on other coronaviruses for years. ‘It makes no sense to me’,” he said. [24]
Biden says that unlike Trump, he is asking the intelligence community to investigate the possibility of a lab leak in Wuhan in order to “improve preparations for future pandemics,” not to discredit China. [25] But his claim is implausible.
To show this, consider the following sets of questions. Only one of them is directly relevant to the question of how to reduce the risk of future pandemics.
Are the risks of a lab accident acceptable given the possible consequences? If not, can the risks be reduced to acceptable levels by enhancing laboratory safeguards? Or, is it the case, that the consequences of a leak could be so catastrophic, that taking any risk is foolhardy?
Did SARS-CoV-2 leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology?
If we’re genuinely interested in reducing the chances of future pandemics, we ought to answer the first set of questions. The second question is irrelevant.
Even if a lab leak didn’t happen at the Wuhan lab, the question of whether the risks of a leak from any lab are acceptable still stands. Should we be looking for gas leaks with a lit match?
And if a leak did happen in Wuhan, the first set of question still remains.
Here are two objectives. Which of these most closely match the questions above?
How can we reduce the chance of a future pandemic?
How can we blacken China’s reputation?
If Biden were genuinely interested in learning how to prevent a future pandemic he would be exploring how to prevent zoonotic spillovers, both in nature, and in the lab. On the other hand, if he’s interested in tarring the reputation of a country he has labelled a competitor, as his predecessor was, he is proceeding along the right path. Unfortunately, that path has nothing to do with protecting humanity from future pandemics.
1 Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
2 Edward Wong and Ana Swanson, “Some Trump Officials Take Harder Actions on China During Pandemic,” The New York Times, May 1, 2020
3 Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
4 Nicholson Baker, “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” New York, January 4, 2020
5 Lynn C. Klotz, Edward J. Sylvester, “The unacceptable risks of a man-made pandemic,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 7, 2012
6 Lynn Klotz , “Human error in high-biocontainment labs: a likely pandemic threat,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, February 25, 2019
7 Nicholson Baker, “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” New York, January 4, 2020
8 Denise Grady, “Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down at Army Lab Over Safety Concerns,” The New York Times, August 5, 2019
9 Denise Grady, “Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down at Army Lab Over Safety Concerns,” The New York Times, August 5, 2019
10 “Time to probe Fort Detrick biolab despite US hype: Global Times editorial, “Global Times, May 26, 2021
11 Steven Lee Myers, “China Spins Tale That the U.S. Army Started the Coronavirus Epidemic,” The New York Times, March 13, 2020
12 Gain-of-function experiments: time for a real debate, Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 13, pages 58–64 (2015)
13 Gain-of-function experiments: time for a real debate, Nature Reviews Microbiology volume 13, pages 58–64 (2015)
14 Lynn C. Klotz, Edward J. Sylvester, “The unacceptable risks of a man-made pandemic,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 7, 2012
15 Lynn C. Klotz, Edward J. Sylvester, “The unacceptable risks of a man-made pandemic,” The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, August 7, 2012
16 Carl Zimmer, James Gorman and Benjamin Mueller, “Scientists Don’t Want to Ignore the ‘Lab Leak’ Theory, Despite No New Evidence,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
17 Nicholson Baker, “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” New York, January 4, 2020
18 Carl Zimmer, James Gorman and Benjamin Mueller, “Scientists Don’t Want to Ignore the ‘Lab Leak’ Theory, Despite No New Evidence,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
19 Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
20 Michael D. Shear, Julian E. Barnes, Carl Zimmer and Benjamin Mueller, “Biden Orders Intelligence Inquiry Into Origins of Virus,” The New York Times, May 26, 2021
21 Michael R. Gordon, Warren P. Strobel and Drew Hinshaw, “Intelligence on Sick Staff at Wuhan Lab Fuels Debate on Covid-19 Origin,” The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2021
22 Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
23 Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
24 Carl Zimmer, James Gorman and Benjamin Mueller, “Scientists Don’t Want to Ignore the ‘Lab Leak’ Theory, Despite No New Evidence,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
25 Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins,” The New York Times, May 27, 2021
https://gowans.blog/author/gowans/
Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
PFIZER VACCINES CAUSE MORE DEATHS THAN ASTRAZENECA'S
May 27 , 2021 , 12:27 pm .
Greater risk of death generates the Pfizer vaccine compared to Astrazeneca. (Photo: File)
The vaccine developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer against covid-19 has caused up to three times more deaths than the drug developed by the AstraZeneca laboratory in six European countries.
This is stated in a report prepared by the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company to restore confidence in its vaccines against coronavirus, after reports of side effects in several countries that raise suspicions of a relationship between the inoculation of the AstraZeneca vaccine in patients and the subsequent development of thrombosis. .
The Sputnik agency had access to the documents :
According to the balance presented in the report of the Anglo-Swedish company on restoring confidence in anti-covid vaccines, the total number of deaths per million doses of the Pfizer vaccine administered in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway , Austria and Italy, it is almost three times higher than that caused by AstraZeneca vaccines.
In particular, in France there were 45.3 and 17.9 deaths per million administered doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca, respectively.
In Germany the figures are 29.9 for Pfizer and 6.5 for AstraZeneca; in the UK, 20.7 and 24.2; in Norway, 164.3 and 44.6; in Austria, 47.5 and 7.5; and in Italy, 10.9 and 7.3.
The fact that the UK is the only one of the six countries where the AstraZeneca vaccine caused more deaths than Pfizer's seems to have to do with the Anglo-Swedish doses being given more frequently to patients in that country.
In any case, both drugs developed by private corporations raise serious doubts about their safety for the health of people, while initiatives developed by sovereign States, questioned from the beginning for being linked to power blocs contrary to Western interests -the case of the Sputnik V vaccine created in Russia - have not had major inconveniences in its application and are foreshadowed as more effective, safer and more accessible options to combat the pandemic.
https://misionverdad.com/vacunas-de-pfi ... strazeneca
Google Translator
Wow, guess I dodged a bullet.....
Actually even those higher numbers ain't that bad except relatively, seems there are always a few adverse cases with vaccines. And it seems that more longer term effects are manifesting as time goes on, so we shall see.
BUT, this flies in the face of the propaganda Amerikans are fed, that the US made products are damn near perfect but the rest, especially those made by purported 'commies' (real or not), are 'iffy'.
'Facts' mean nothing to the US ruling class when they contradict their class interests. Trump did not invent this though he certainly exploited and advanced full on bullshit in a way that PT Barnum would swoon over. In this he shows himself a true Avatar of his class.
******************************************
Cuba Vaccinates Over 1 Million People With Soberana 02 & Abdala
More than a million Cubans have received at least one dose of Soberana02 or Abdala vaccine candidates, and of them 615,016 have received the second one and 142,390 have already completed their vaccination schedule with three doses. | Photo: Twitter/@EmbacubaChina
Published 1 June 2021
One million seventy thousand one hundred and sixty-five people in Cuba have received at least one dose of the vaccine candidates Soberana 02 and Abdala.
Of this total, 615,016 have received their second dose, and 142,390 have already completed their vaccination schedule with the three doses.
This was informed on Monday by the Minister of Public Health, José Angel Portal Miranda, at the meeting of the Temporary Working Group for the prevention and control of the new coronavirus, headed by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and the member of the Political Bureau and Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz.
In particular, Portal Miranda said that "it is progressing at a good pace," and the results are satisfactory regarding the health intervention carried out in at-risk groups and territories.
In the case of the intervention in health workers, BioCubaFarma, and other at-risk groups, 98% of the group to be vaccinated had already been reached.
In the capital municipalities of Regla, Guanabacoa, Habana del Este, and San Miguel del Padrón, where the health intervention with the Abdala candidate began last May 12, the number of vaccinated people represents 98.9% of the total planned. Recently, the municipalities of Boyeros, Arroyo Naranjo, and El Cotorro were incorporated into the health intervention, where the process is also developing according to plan.
Regarding the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud, he said that the actions are being carried out as planned, and 97.7% of the total has already been vaccinated.
In his usual update on the national epidemiological situation, the Minister of Public Health commented that, at the end of the last week, with only two days left in the month, with 33,544 people diagnosed, May has already been confirmed as the month with the highest number of infections in the country since the beginning of the epidemic.
The highest transmission levels are found in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Mayabeque, Pinar del Río, Camagüey, Matanzas, and Holguín, provinces where 81.8% of the patients reported in May are concentrated.
Expressly, about the last week, he specified that, even though 486 fewer cases were diagnosed than in the previous week, the number of infections continues to be high. The 78.5% of the cases were concentrated in the provinces of Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Mayabeque, Pinar del Río, Granma and Camagüey.
According to the report, 109 transmission events are still active in the country, of which 25 are open in different institutions of the national territory and have a high incidence in the increase of cases in some regions.
Among the eleven provinces reported during the Temporary Working Group meeting were Havana, Cienfuegos, Villa Clara, Camagüey, Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, and Ciego de Avila.
The debates of the meeting ratified, once again, that in the current epidemiological scenario that the nation is going through, discipline and responsibility are also essential to minimize the virus's spread.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cub ... -0017.html
That this nation, under the Yankee gun for 70 years, has been able to produce this technological accomplishment, like the Soviet victory over the Nazis, are topics that must be ignored or slandered by the capitalist press, they say too much.
"discipline and responsibility are also essential to minimize the virus's spread." Well, those sort of behaviors are antithetical to a consumer society and this explains a lot of the mortality differential between countries.
May 27 , 2021 , 12:27 pm .
Greater risk of death generates the Pfizer vaccine compared to Astrazeneca. (Photo: File)
The vaccine developed by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer against covid-19 has caused up to three times more deaths than the drug developed by the AstraZeneca laboratory in six European countries.
This is stated in a report prepared by the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company to restore confidence in its vaccines against coronavirus, after reports of side effects in several countries that raise suspicions of a relationship between the inoculation of the AstraZeneca vaccine in patients and the subsequent development of thrombosis. .
The Sputnik agency had access to the documents :
According to the balance presented in the report of the Anglo-Swedish company on restoring confidence in anti-covid vaccines, the total number of deaths per million doses of the Pfizer vaccine administered in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Norway , Austria and Italy, it is almost three times higher than that caused by AstraZeneca vaccines.
In particular, in France there were 45.3 and 17.9 deaths per million administered doses of Pfizer and AstraZeneca, respectively.
In Germany the figures are 29.9 for Pfizer and 6.5 for AstraZeneca; in the UK, 20.7 and 24.2; in Norway, 164.3 and 44.6; in Austria, 47.5 and 7.5; and in Italy, 10.9 and 7.3.
The fact that the UK is the only one of the six countries where the AstraZeneca vaccine caused more deaths than Pfizer's seems to have to do with the Anglo-Swedish doses being given more frequently to patients in that country.
In any case, both drugs developed by private corporations raise serious doubts about their safety for the health of people, while initiatives developed by sovereign States, questioned from the beginning for being linked to power blocs contrary to Western interests -the case of the Sputnik V vaccine created in Russia - have not had major inconveniences in its application and are foreshadowed as more effective, safer and more accessible options to combat the pandemic.
https://misionverdad.com/vacunas-de-pfi ... strazeneca
Google Translator
Wow, guess I dodged a bullet.....
Actually even those higher numbers ain't that bad except relatively, seems there are always a few adverse cases with vaccines. And it seems that more longer term effects are manifesting as time goes on, so we shall see.
BUT, this flies in the face of the propaganda Amerikans are fed, that the US made products are damn near perfect but the rest, especially those made by purported 'commies' (real or not), are 'iffy'.
'Facts' mean nothing to the US ruling class when they contradict their class interests. Trump did not invent this though he certainly exploited and advanced full on bullshit in a way that PT Barnum would swoon over. In this he shows himself a true Avatar of his class.
******************************************
Cuba Vaccinates Over 1 Million People With Soberana 02 & Abdala
More than a million Cubans have received at least one dose of Soberana02 or Abdala vaccine candidates, and of them 615,016 have received the second one and 142,390 have already completed their vaccination schedule with three doses. | Photo: Twitter/@EmbacubaChina
Published 1 June 2021
One million seventy thousand one hundred and sixty-five people in Cuba have received at least one dose of the vaccine candidates Soberana 02 and Abdala.
Of this total, 615,016 have received their second dose, and 142,390 have already completed their vaccination schedule with the three doses.
This was informed on Monday by the Minister of Public Health, José Angel Portal Miranda, at the meeting of the Temporary Working Group for the prevention and control of the new coronavirus, headed by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, and the member of the Political Bureau and Prime Minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz.
In particular, Portal Miranda said that "it is progressing at a good pace," and the results are satisfactory regarding the health intervention carried out in at-risk groups and territories.
In the case of the intervention in health workers, BioCubaFarma, and other at-risk groups, 98% of the group to be vaccinated had already been reached.
In the capital municipalities of Regla, Guanabacoa, Habana del Este, and San Miguel del Padrón, where the health intervention with the Abdala candidate began last May 12, the number of vaccinated people represents 98.9% of the total planned. Recently, the municipalities of Boyeros, Arroyo Naranjo, and El Cotorro were incorporated into the health intervention, where the process is also developing according to plan.
Regarding the special municipality of Isla de la Juventud, he said that the actions are being carried out as planned, and 97.7% of the total has already been vaccinated.
In his usual update on the national epidemiological situation, the Minister of Public Health commented that, at the end of the last week, with only two days left in the month, with 33,544 people diagnosed, May has already been confirmed as the month with the highest number of infections in the country since the beginning of the epidemic.
The highest transmission levels are found in Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Mayabeque, Pinar del Río, Camagüey, Matanzas, and Holguín, provinces where 81.8% of the patients reported in May are concentrated.
Expressly, about the last week, he specified that, even though 486 fewer cases were diagnosed than in the previous week, the number of infections continues to be high. The 78.5% of the cases were concentrated in the provinces of Havana, Santiago de Cuba, Mayabeque, Pinar del Río, Granma and Camagüey.
According to the report, 109 transmission events are still active in the country, of which 25 are open in different institutions of the national territory and have a high incidence in the increase of cases in some regions.
Among the eleven provinces reported during the Temporary Working Group meeting were Havana, Cienfuegos, Villa Clara, Camagüey, Granma, Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, and Ciego de Avila.
The debates of the meeting ratified, once again, that in the current epidemiological scenario that the nation is going through, discipline and responsibility are also essential to minimize the virus's spread.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Cub ... -0017.html
That this nation, under the Yankee gun for 70 years, has been able to produce this technological accomplishment, like the Soviet victory over the Nazis, are topics that must be ignored or slandered by the capitalist press, they say too much.
"discipline and responsibility are also essential to minimize the virus's spread." Well, those sort of behaviors are antithetical to a consumer society and this explains a lot of the mortality differential between countries.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
THE GHOST OF THE "CHINESE VIRUS" RETURNS, BIDEN VERSION
2 Jun 2021 , 11:33 am .
CoronaVac vaccine sample, produced by Sinovac (Photo: AFP / STR)
The United States returns to release the letter of the "Chinese virus", this time under the slang "intelligence evaluation" through reports from its agencies and corporate media, led by The Wall Street Journal , which produced an article alleging that there were scientists in Wuhan infected prior to the first records of covid-19 in China.
The "lab leak" theory was first raised in early 2020 by Steve Bannon, former National Security adviser to Donald Trump and other anti-China propagators in the Republican Party, the aftermath of which was tied to the ex-president's harangue. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the "Chinese virus," as senior journalist Finian Cunningham well recalls in a recent article published in Strategic Culture .
The narrative centered on the idea that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a world-class infectious disease research laboratory, released a deadly virus by accident or designed to infect the rest of the world and, in particular, decimate the economy of USA.
Taking into account that the economic and financial crisis that the United States is experiencing had already been showing forcefully prior to the registration of covid cases in China, as we well analyzed in this rostrum , "these statements were discarded last year by the Democrats and their media. communication of support as a typical unhinged conspiracy of Trump, who also believed that injecting household bleach into the human body could be a cure for COVID-19, "Cunningham comments.
A more plausible scenario, one that China and many other international experts proposed, was that the SAR-CoV-2 virus evolved in nature and was transmitted from animals to humans.
In fact, a scientific research group from the World Health Organization (WHO) reached the same conclusion after visiting Wuhan, where the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were recorded in China. Tsinghua University expert Liang Wannian, a member of this commission, said at a press conference:
"We have conducted a review of surveillance data on [...] mortality in Wuhan City and the rest of Hubei Province during the period July to December 2019. These produced little evidence of unexpected substantial fluctuations in mortality that could suggest the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. There is no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the population in the period prior to December 2019. There is insufficient evidence to determine whether SARS -CoV- 2 had spread in Wuhan before December 2019. "
The WHO recommended that more studies be carried out to locate the global origin of the disease, ruling out that China was hiding something as they allege from the United States. The level of organization of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is so high that it is difficult to think that there was a virus leak from there, determined Vladimir Dedkov, deputy director of the Pasteur Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology.
No one is sure of the exact origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Cunningham says that "it may take years of scientific research to determine the answer. More than a century after the 1918-20 influenza pandemic that caused between 17 and 100 million deaths worldwide, it is still unclear where that virus originated. "
Although, according to official sources, in China the new coronavirus was detected there for the first time, there are legitimate suspicions that the disease could have been present before in the United States and in Europe, but not diagnosed as covid but erroneously as a "new flu". "That is why a scientific effort for international cooperation is required, not a politicized agenda of prejudice," concludes the aforementioned journalist.
A study published on November 30, 2020 in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases of the University of Oxford collects an analysis of blood samples that verifies the deployment of covid-19 in the United States before that in Wuhan, reviewed by Mission Truth .
All these data indicate that one should at least doubt the version of the "laboratory leak" and suspect who broadcast that version incessantly, especially if it responds to the name of NBC, CNN and the New York Times .
The emergence of US media claims that Chinese scientists in the Wuhan lab fell ill with Covid-19 symptoms in November 2019, weeks before the public cases were reported, does not appear to have any basis. China has dismissed such accusations as false. The Wuhan laboratory has also stated that none of its scientists were sick with covid.
In this framework, President Biden ordered his intelligence community to report the origin of the coronavirus within 90 days. It is the agencies (CIA, NSA, DEA, DIA, etc.) that launched the empty shell of Russiagate and Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" into the ring together with the American corporate media .
Why is the United States coming back with a new version of the "Chinese virus" right now? Cunningham responds: "It sounds like another reprehensible recipe for selecting 'evidence' to produce an assessment that suits a political demand. And that demand is that Washington find ways to further harass China and rally American allies around a political demand. anti-China policy. "
There is no "new evidence".
However, China is helping other countries vaccinate their populations as the hoarding of vaccines by so-called "first world" countries runs its course. In fact, the United States has a surplus of doses that it is not willing to share even with its closest European partners.
China, for its part, contained the outbreak in its territory while the United States let 600 thousand people die under health policies harmful to the health of its population. The resurgence of the "lab leak" narrative is the damage control of these circumstances. A country demonized by the West has become an example to follow with the deployment of Chinese vaccines around the world, especially in Latin America (the supposed "backyard" of the United States).
Uruguayan analyst and journalist Raúl Zibechi reviews a report published by the Hong Kong daily, South China Morning Post , in which he affirms that Latin America "is the largest per capita recipient of Chinese vaccines, which for many countries are the only option for now" and highlights that in the region "agreements have been signed for 225 million doses of Chinese vaccines", which is equivalent to 36 doses per 100 people, ahead of Southeast Asia with 31 doses per 100 people and the Middle East with 35 doses. . For its part, Central and Eastern Europe lag behind with just six doses per 100 people, but ahead of Africa with four doses.
In addition, the CoronaVac vaccine, produced by the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech and beaten by the British Medical Journal due to its efficacy rate (50.4%), had excellent results in Serrana , a small municipality of about 50 thousand inhabitants, located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, the epicenter of the pandemic in Latin America and, with the government of Jair Bolsonaro, a close partner of the United States.
In Serrana, 97.7% of the population was vaccinated and deaths and infections from covid were reduced to almost zero. Studies suggest that if 75% of a population are vaccinated with this drug it is possible to achieve herd immunity and completely contain the virus.
These are all reasons why Biden has been as belligerent with Beijing as Trump was. "That shows that politics is fixed in Washington regardless of who actually sits in the Oval Office," confirms Cunningham, ending:
"If the Biden administration were genuinely motivated to determine the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, it would not politicize the matter with the blatant aim of smearing Beijing. Instead, Biden would be working with the WHO and China to scientifically study the pandemic. That would include conducting investigations into 'novel flu' deaths in the United States during 2019, as well as allowing inspections of biological laboratories in the country, such as the Fort Detrick military site in Maryland, and hundreds of other biological laboratories that Americans have established in Asia in recent years. As things stand, Biden is looking at China. That's political, not scientific. "
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/re ... sion-biden
Google Translator
2 Jun 2021 , 11:33 am .
CoronaVac vaccine sample, produced by Sinovac (Photo: AFP / STR)
The United States returns to release the letter of the "Chinese virus", this time under the slang "intelligence evaluation" through reports from its agencies and corporate media, led by The Wall Street Journal , which produced an article alleging that there were scientists in Wuhan infected prior to the first records of covid-19 in China.
The "lab leak" theory was first raised in early 2020 by Steve Bannon, former National Security adviser to Donald Trump and other anti-China propagators in the Republican Party, the aftermath of which was tied to the ex-president's harangue. Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on the "Chinese virus," as senior journalist Finian Cunningham well recalls in a recent article published in Strategic Culture .
The narrative centered on the idea that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a world-class infectious disease research laboratory, released a deadly virus by accident or designed to infect the rest of the world and, in particular, decimate the economy of USA.
Taking into account that the economic and financial crisis that the United States is experiencing had already been showing forcefully prior to the registration of covid cases in China, as we well analyzed in this rostrum , "these statements were discarded last year by the Democrats and their media. communication of support as a typical unhinged conspiracy of Trump, who also believed that injecting household bleach into the human body could be a cure for COVID-19, "Cunningham comments.
A more plausible scenario, one that China and many other international experts proposed, was that the SAR-CoV-2 virus evolved in nature and was transmitted from animals to humans.
In fact, a scientific research group from the World Health Organization (WHO) reached the same conclusion after visiting Wuhan, where the first cases of SARS-CoV-2 were recorded in China. Tsinghua University expert Liang Wannian, a member of this commission, said at a press conference:
"We have conducted a review of surveillance data on [...] mortality in Wuhan City and the rest of Hubei Province during the period July to December 2019. These produced little evidence of unexpected substantial fluctuations in mortality that could suggest the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. There is no evidence of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the population in the period prior to December 2019. There is insufficient evidence to determine whether SARS -CoV- 2 had spread in Wuhan before December 2019. "
The WHO recommended that more studies be carried out to locate the global origin of the disease, ruling out that China was hiding something as they allege from the United States. The level of organization of the Wuhan Institute of Virology is so high that it is difficult to think that there was a virus leak from there, determined Vladimir Dedkov, deputy director of the Pasteur Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology.
No one is sure of the exact origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Cunningham says that "it may take years of scientific research to determine the answer. More than a century after the 1918-20 influenza pandemic that caused between 17 and 100 million deaths worldwide, it is still unclear where that virus originated. "
Although, according to official sources, in China the new coronavirus was detected there for the first time, there are legitimate suspicions that the disease could have been present before in the United States and in Europe, but not diagnosed as covid but erroneously as a "new flu". "That is why a scientific effort for international cooperation is required, not a politicized agenda of prejudice," concludes the aforementioned journalist.
A study published on November 30, 2020 in the scientific journal Clinical Infectious Diseases of the University of Oxford collects an analysis of blood samples that verifies the deployment of covid-19 in the United States before that in Wuhan, reviewed by Mission Truth .
All these data indicate that one should at least doubt the version of the "laboratory leak" and suspect who broadcast that version incessantly, especially if it responds to the name of NBC, CNN and the New York Times .
The emergence of US media claims that Chinese scientists in the Wuhan lab fell ill with Covid-19 symptoms in November 2019, weeks before the public cases were reported, does not appear to have any basis. China has dismissed such accusations as false. The Wuhan laboratory has also stated that none of its scientists were sick with covid.
In this framework, President Biden ordered his intelligence community to report the origin of the coronavirus within 90 days. It is the agencies (CIA, NSA, DEA, DIA, etc.) that launched the empty shell of Russiagate and Iraq's "weapons of mass destruction" into the ring together with the American corporate media .
Why is the United States coming back with a new version of the "Chinese virus" right now? Cunningham responds: "It sounds like another reprehensible recipe for selecting 'evidence' to produce an assessment that suits a political demand. And that demand is that Washington find ways to further harass China and rally American allies around a political demand. anti-China policy. "
There is no "new evidence".
However, China is helping other countries vaccinate their populations as the hoarding of vaccines by so-called "first world" countries runs its course. In fact, the United States has a surplus of doses that it is not willing to share even with its closest European partners.
China, for its part, contained the outbreak in its territory while the United States let 600 thousand people die under health policies harmful to the health of its population. The resurgence of the "lab leak" narrative is the damage control of these circumstances. A country demonized by the West has become an example to follow with the deployment of Chinese vaccines around the world, especially in Latin America (the supposed "backyard" of the United States).
Uruguayan analyst and journalist Raúl Zibechi reviews a report published by the Hong Kong daily, South China Morning Post , in which he affirms that Latin America "is the largest per capita recipient of Chinese vaccines, which for many countries are the only option for now" and highlights that in the region "agreements have been signed for 225 million doses of Chinese vaccines", which is equivalent to 36 doses per 100 people, ahead of Southeast Asia with 31 doses per 100 people and the Middle East with 35 doses. . For its part, Central and Eastern Europe lag behind with just six doses per 100 people, but ahead of Africa with four doses.
In addition, the CoronaVac vaccine, produced by the Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac Biotech and beaten by the British Medical Journal due to its efficacy rate (50.4%), had excellent results in Serrana , a small municipality of about 50 thousand inhabitants, located in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, the epicenter of the pandemic in Latin America and, with the government of Jair Bolsonaro, a close partner of the United States.
In Serrana, 97.7% of the population was vaccinated and deaths and infections from covid were reduced to almost zero. Studies suggest that if 75% of a population are vaccinated with this drug it is possible to achieve herd immunity and completely contain the virus.
These are all reasons why Biden has been as belligerent with Beijing as Trump was. "That shows that politics is fixed in Washington regardless of who actually sits in the Oval Office," confirms Cunningham, ending:
"If the Biden administration were genuinely motivated to determine the origin of the Covid-19 pandemic, it would not politicize the matter with the blatant aim of smearing Beijing. Instead, Biden would be working with the WHO and China to scientifically study the pandemic. That would include conducting investigations into 'novel flu' deaths in the United States during 2019, as well as allowing inspections of biological laboratories in the country, such as the Fort Detrick military site in Maryland, and hundreds of other biological laboratories that Americans have established in Asia in recent years. As things stand, Biden is looking at China. That's political, not scientific. "
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/re ... sion-biden
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
Abolish vaccine patents now!
June 3, 2021
For a pharmaceutical industry under popular control and a free, universal and public vaccination system
This Manifesto was initiated by the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts (CADTM) international network. It has been signed by two hundred social organizations, coalitions, campaigns, trade unions, and citizens’ organizations from all over the world.
END THE SYSTEM OF PRIVATE PATENTS
For a pharmaceutical industry under popular control and a free, universal and public vaccination system
Thanks to a huge scientific effort based on international collaboration and historic amounts of public money, humanity has been able to develop several effective vaccines against Covid-19 in less than a year.
However, this great achievement could be totally overshadowed by the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. In a situation as critical as the present, the exceptional nature of the measures demanded from the majority of the population must also apply to the private pharmaceutical industry and its permanent thirst for profit. The suspension of the Covid-19 vaccine patents must be a priority and a first step.
But we cannot stop there. Initiatives such as COVAX or C-TAP have failed miserably, not only because of their inadequacy, but above all because they reflect the failure of the current system of global governance in which rich countries and multinationals, often in the form of foundations, seek to reshape the world order to their liking. Philanthropy and burgeoning public-private initiatives are not the answer. They are even less so in the face of today’s global challenges in a world dominated by states and industries driven solely by market forces and seeking maximum profits.
The health crisis is far from being resolved. The capitalist system and neoliberal policies have been at the helm at all stages. At the root of this virus is the unbridled transformation of the relationship between the human species and nature. The ecological and health crises are intimately intertwined. The same predatory neoliberal logic has exacerbated the consequences of both by applying, to the crises, private and competitive principles of management policy. The result is much more inequality, much more suffering and many more deaths in the name of the interests of a privileged few.
The pandemic has accelerated and deepened dangerous trends, social gaps and multidimensional phenomena that we have been observing for decades and in which the working classes, especially women and racialized people, suffer most. Women make up the majority of the health workers who have been on the front line in the pandemic, but also of those preserving life in the face of cuts to public services and social rights, of which they are the first victims.
Good health, access to health care and to vaccinations are universal human rights. Vaccines therefore should be considered a global public good. To ensure their universal accessibility, it is necessary and urgent to suspend the patents. This measure must be accompanied by mechanisms for the nationalization of private pharmaceutical industries and a strong investment in the development of public pharmaceutical industries in all countries. Decisive action is needed to enable public planning of vaccine production and distribution, developing local production capacity where possible and complementing it with binding international solidarity in other cases.
Just as viruses have no borders, the fight against them must have none. Health chauvinism is another face of the reactionary preference trend that is sweeping the world. The peoples of the South must have access to vaccines on an equal footing with the rest of the world’s inhabitants. We welcome efforts made by Cuba to develop vaccines and treatments against the pandemic with the aim of making the results available to humanity. Global challenges such as a pandemic require appropriate global responses.
The corporate economy, blind faith in the market and the pursuit of profit have proven to be incompatible with the well-being of Humanity. Health is not a commodity. Economic recovery cannot be at the expense of health or the rights of the majority. We must choose: capital or life. We must act quickly and forcefully, create a global strategy of equal access and universal guarantee to high quality health care.
For all these reasons, we demand :
The suspension of private patents on all technologies, knowledge, treatments and vaccines related to Covid-19.
The elimination of trade secrets and the publication of information on the production costs and public investments used, in a clear and publicly accessible manner.
Transparency and public scrutiny at all stages of vaccine development.
Universal, free and open access to vaccination and treatment.
The expropriation and socialization under popular control of the private pharmaceutical industry as a basis for a universal public health system that promotes the production of generic treatments and medicines.
Increased public investment and budgets for public health and community care policies, including more staff, higher salaries and improved working conditions in these sectors.
The introduction of taxes on wealth (wealth and income of the richest 1%) to finance the effort against the pandemic and to ensure a socially just and ecologically sustainable exit from the various crises of global capitalism.
The suspension of sovereign debt payments for the duration of the pandemic and the cancellation of illegitimate debts and those contracted to finance the fight against the virus.
See the full list of organizations that have signed the Manifesto here. To add your signature, email: manifiestocovid[@]gmail.com
https://www.cadtm.org/End-the-system-of-private-patents
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2021/0 ... tents-now/
June 3, 2021
For a pharmaceutical industry under popular control and a free, universal and public vaccination system
This Manifesto was initiated by the Committee for the Abolition of Illegitimate Debts (CADTM) international network. It has been signed by two hundred social organizations, coalitions, campaigns, trade unions, and citizens’ organizations from all over the world.
END THE SYSTEM OF PRIVATE PATENTS
For a pharmaceutical industry under popular control and a free, universal and public vaccination system
Thanks to a huge scientific effort based on international collaboration and historic amounts of public money, humanity has been able to develop several effective vaccines against Covid-19 in less than a year.
However, this great achievement could be totally overshadowed by the greed of the pharmaceutical industry. In a situation as critical as the present, the exceptional nature of the measures demanded from the majority of the population must also apply to the private pharmaceutical industry and its permanent thirst for profit. The suspension of the Covid-19 vaccine patents must be a priority and a first step.
But we cannot stop there. Initiatives such as COVAX or C-TAP have failed miserably, not only because of their inadequacy, but above all because they reflect the failure of the current system of global governance in which rich countries and multinationals, often in the form of foundations, seek to reshape the world order to their liking. Philanthropy and burgeoning public-private initiatives are not the answer. They are even less so in the face of today’s global challenges in a world dominated by states and industries driven solely by market forces and seeking maximum profits.
The health crisis is far from being resolved. The capitalist system and neoliberal policies have been at the helm at all stages. At the root of this virus is the unbridled transformation of the relationship between the human species and nature. The ecological and health crises are intimately intertwined. The same predatory neoliberal logic has exacerbated the consequences of both by applying, to the crises, private and competitive principles of management policy. The result is much more inequality, much more suffering and many more deaths in the name of the interests of a privileged few.
The pandemic has accelerated and deepened dangerous trends, social gaps and multidimensional phenomena that we have been observing for decades and in which the working classes, especially women and racialized people, suffer most. Women make up the majority of the health workers who have been on the front line in the pandemic, but also of those preserving life in the face of cuts to public services and social rights, of which they are the first victims.
Good health, access to health care and to vaccinations are universal human rights. Vaccines therefore should be considered a global public good. To ensure their universal accessibility, it is necessary and urgent to suspend the patents. This measure must be accompanied by mechanisms for the nationalization of private pharmaceutical industries and a strong investment in the development of public pharmaceutical industries in all countries. Decisive action is needed to enable public planning of vaccine production and distribution, developing local production capacity where possible and complementing it with binding international solidarity in other cases.
Just as viruses have no borders, the fight against them must have none. Health chauvinism is another face of the reactionary preference trend that is sweeping the world. The peoples of the South must have access to vaccines on an equal footing with the rest of the world’s inhabitants. We welcome efforts made by Cuba to develop vaccines and treatments against the pandemic with the aim of making the results available to humanity. Global challenges such as a pandemic require appropriate global responses.
The corporate economy, blind faith in the market and the pursuit of profit have proven to be incompatible with the well-being of Humanity. Health is not a commodity. Economic recovery cannot be at the expense of health or the rights of the majority. We must choose: capital or life. We must act quickly and forcefully, create a global strategy of equal access and universal guarantee to high quality health care.
For all these reasons, we demand :
The suspension of private patents on all technologies, knowledge, treatments and vaccines related to Covid-19.
The elimination of trade secrets and the publication of information on the production costs and public investments used, in a clear and publicly accessible manner.
Transparency and public scrutiny at all stages of vaccine development.
Universal, free and open access to vaccination and treatment.
The expropriation and socialization under popular control of the private pharmaceutical industry as a basis for a universal public health system that promotes the production of generic treatments and medicines.
Increased public investment and budgets for public health and community care policies, including more staff, higher salaries and improved working conditions in these sectors.
The introduction of taxes on wealth (wealth and income of the richest 1%) to finance the effort against the pandemic and to ensure a socially just and ecologically sustainable exit from the various crises of global capitalism.
The suspension of sovereign debt payments for the duration of the pandemic and the cancellation of illegitimate debts and those contracted to finance the fight against the virus.
See the full list of organizations that have signed the Manifesto here. To add your signature, email: manifiestocovid[@]gmail.com
https://www.cadtm.org/End-the-system-of-private-patents
https://climateandcapitalism.com/2021/0 ... tents-now/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
A scandal is being thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life
If a scandal is being thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, the US government is the regime, the scandal is the preventable deaths of over half a million US citizens, and the propaganda is Biden’s Wuhan lab leak hypothesis.
By Stephen Gowans
June 1, 2021
China is a paragon in dealing with the novel coronavirus pandemic—the country all others ought to emulate. Its Covid-19 elimination strategy brought community transmission to a virtual halt, allowing the country to reopen quickly and return to the path of robust economic growth.
An April 28 report in the medical journal The Lancet concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 elimination,” the strategy pioneered by China, and “not mitigation,” the US approach, creates the “best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties.” [1] The British Medical Journal concurred, concluding in a report in December that China’s elimination strategy “could be the optimal response strategy for covid-19 and other emerging pandemic diseases.” [2]
In contrast, the United States stands close to the other end of the continuum, a negative model of what countries should not do. As of May 31, there were 1,796 COVID-19 deaths per million in the United States, 558 times greater than the 3 deaths per million in China, according to Our World in Data. [3]
Had Washington acted quickly and decisively to check the spread of the virus, emulating China’s zero-COVID approach, it would have prevented more than 588,000 deaths. [4]
Even on vaccines—an area in which the United States claims leadership—China is ahead. The East Asian giant has produced more doses, and shipped more abroad, than the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal. [5]
Vaccine doses shipped abroad
China, 252M (total produced, 659M)
EU, 111M
Russia, 27M
USA, 3M (total produced, 333M)
Moreover, it has become evident that the preferred US strategy of emphasizing the development of vaccines and anti-viral drugs over non-pharmaceutical interventions—that is, a strategy of bolstering biopharma profits while continuing to starve public health–is a road to failure. As Nature reports, “Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach.” [6]
This is because, as The Lancet reported, “relying solely on COVID-19 vaccines to control the pandemic is risky due to their uneven roll-out and uptake, time-limited immunity, and the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. History shows that vaccination alone can neither single-handedly nor rapidly control a virus and that a combination of public health measures [is] needed for containment.” [7]
Humiliated by China’s superior performance, and its own abject failures, Washington retaliates. Recycling the Trump administration’s baseless claim about the virus leaking from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Biden seeks to divert attention from US failures and Chinese successes. With the aid of the Western news media, Biden shifts the story, from the genuine scandal of nearly 600,000 needless US deaths to the invented scandal of Chinese incompetence in preventing a lab leak.
Bret Stephens, the New York Times columnist, nicely summarizes the narrative the Biden administration is trying to instill in the public mind:
If it turns out that the Covid pandemic was caused by a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, it will rank among the greatest scientific scandals in history: dangerous research, possibly involving ethically dubious techniques that make viruses more dangerous, carried out in a poorly safeguarded facility, thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, catastrophic for the entire world. [8]
Stephens, by the way, notes that “this possible scandal … is as yet unproved”, which kind of gives the game away.
The US president and the Western news media want it both ways: they want to present a leak at the Wuhan lab as a possibility worthy of consideration while at the same time acknowledging there’s no evidence. But if there’s no evidence, the possibility can hardly be worthy of consideration.
Following a clear double-standard, they say there’s no evidence for China’s counter-allegation that the virus could have leaked from laboratories at the US military base, Fort Detrick, and therefore that the Chinese allegation is unworthy of consideration. Seemingly unbeknownst to Stephens, Fort Detrick is the site of dangerous research, possibly involving ethically dubious techniques that make viruses more dangerous, carried out in poorly safeguarded facilities, which on more than one occasion have been shuttered owing to biosafety concerns. Indeed, this has been reported in Stephens’ own newspaper under the headline Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down At Army Lab Over Safety Concerns. [9] [10]
Hence, if the Wuhan lab needs to be investigated once again, it seems perfectly fair and reasonable to investigate Fort Detrick as well. Given the mishaps at the US lab, there’s a more compelling reason to begin there.
Stephens’ observation that the “possible scandal…is as yet unproven” points to a favored Washington tactic: start with a desired conclusion, and work backward to collect if possible and manufacture if necessary evidence to substantiate it. Recall the WMD scandal, in which ethically dubious deceptions about Saddam concealing weapons of mass destruction were carried out and covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, which, on the basis of this deception, thuggishly murdered countless Iraqis in cold blood, tortured hundreds, toppled their government, rewrote their constitution, destroyed their livelihoods and infrastructure, and took away their independence.
The outcome of the intelligence community investigation ordered by Biden may be the kind of assessment we’ve seen in the past with allegations of Syrian chemical weapons attacks—namely, some elements of the US intelligence community will produce a document that says while they have no proof, they assess (it is their judgment) that what the White House has alleged is indeed true. Or perhaps a dodgy intelligence dossier will be conjured, recalling Colin Powell’s infamous conduct before the UN Security Council in which he produced false intelligence to suggest Iraq was secreting weapons of mass destruction.
If this plays out as it has in the past, the news media will report that the US intelligence community has concluded that the Wuhan laboratory was the source of the pandemic. The key qualifier that the conclusion is based on no proof, will be quickly passed over and eventually forgotten, and the reality that the conclusion came from the intelligence community will be adduced as its substantiation, as if US spooks are impartial arbiters of all questions of consequence, and not part of a state apparatus that has a vested interest in discrediting a country Washington deems a near-peer competitor.
Former CIA case officer Ralph McGehee’s view of his former employer suggests what outcome we can expect from Biden’s ‘find me some evidence’ order to the intelligence community. “The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a Central Intelligence Agency,” McGehee said. Instead, “it is the covert action arm of the president’s foreign policy advisers” whose role is “reporting ‘intelligence’ justifying” the president’s positions and activities. The CIA “shapes its intelligence … to support presidential policy.” McGehee concluded that disinformation is a large part of the intelligence community’s ambit, and the US population is “the primary target audience of its lies.” [11]
The catastrophe of the Covid pandemic was caused by the failure of the United States and its allies to act quickly and decisively to eliminate community transmission. In the critical month of February 2020, as China acted with resolve to smother the flames of a developing pandemic, the United States dithered, incapable of mobilizing its underfunded public health infrastructure, which barely existed, and reluctant to disrupt business activity. The result was that a small fire that could have been contained and extinguished, soon grew into a global conflagration. This ranks among the greatest failures in history: profits were prioritized over public health—a process involving ethically dubious decision-making that made the pandemic more dangerous, thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, trying to divert attention from its abject failures by falsely blaming the one country, China, that has done more than any other to bring the pandemic to a close.
1 Miquel Oliu-Barton et al., “SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties,” The Lancet, April 28, 2021, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00978-8
2 Michael G Baker, Nick Wilson, and Tony Blakely, “Elimination could be the optimal response strategy for covid-19 and other emerging pandemic diseases,” The British Medical Journal, December 22, 2020 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4907
3 COVID-19 Data Explorer – Our World in Data, accessed June 1, 2021.
4 With (a) a US population of 328.2 million and (b) 1,796.26 deaths per million to May 31, there were (a)/1,000,00 x (b) = 589,533 covid-19 deaths in the United States. If the fatality rate had been as low as that of China, there would have been (a)/1,000,00 x 3.221 = 1,057 covid-19 deaths, or 588,475 fewer.
5 Yuka Hayashi, Sabrina Siddiqui, and Andrew Restuccia, “U.S. to Increase Covid-19 Vaccine Exports Amid Global Pressure,” The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2021
6 Christie Aschwanden, “Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible,” Nature, March 18, 2021
7 Miquel Oliu-Barton et al., “SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties,” The Lancet, April 28, 2021, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00978-8
8 Bret Stephens, “Media Groupthink and the Lab-Leak Theory,” The New York Times, May 31, 2021
9 Nicholson Baker, “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” New York, January 4, 2020
10 Denise Grady, “Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down at Army Lab Over Safety Concerns,” The New York Times, August 5, 2019
11 Quoted in A.B. Abrams, Power and Primacy: The History of Western Intervention in the Asia-Pacific, Peter Laing, 2019, p. 124.
If a scandal is being thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, the US government is the regime, the scandal is the preventable deaths of over half a million US citizens, and the propaganda is Biden’s Wuhan lab leak hypothesis.
By Stephen Gowans
June 1, 2021
China is a paragon in dealing with the novel coronavirus pandemic—the country all others ought to emulate. Its Covid-19 elimination strategy brought community transmission to a virtual halt, allowing the country to reopen quickly and return to the path of robust economic growth.
An April 28 report in the medical journal The Lancet concluded that “SARS-CoV-2 elimination,” the strategy pioneered by China, and “not mitigation,” the US approach, creates the “best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties.” [1] The British Medical Journal concurred, concluding in a report in December that China’s elimination strategy “could be the optimal response strategy for covid-19 and other emerging pandemic diseases.” [2]
In contrast, the United States stands close to the other end of the continuum, a negative model of what countries should not do. As of May 31, there were 1,796 COVID-19 deaths per million in the United States, 558 times greater than the 3 deaths per million in China, according to Our World in Data. [3]
Had Washington acted quickly and decisively to check the spread of the virus, emulating China’s zero-COVID approach, it would have prevented more than 588,000 deaths. [4]
Even on vaccines—an area in which the United States claims leadership—China is ahead. The East Asian giant has produced more doses, and shipped more abroad, than the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal. [5]
Vaccine doses shipped abroad
China, 252M (total produced, 659M)
EU, 111M
Russia, 27M
USA, 3M (total produced, 333M)
Moreover, it has become evident that the preferred US strategy of emphasizing the development of vaccines and anti-viral drugs over non-pharmaceutical interventions—that is, a strategy of bolstering biopharma profits while continuing to starve public health–is a road to failure. As Nature reports, “Even with vaccination efforts in full force, the theoretical threshold for vanquishing COVID-19 looks to be out of reach.” [6]
This is because, as The Lancet reported, “relying solely on COVID-19 vaccines to control the pandemic is risky due to their uneven roll-out and uptake, time-limited immunity, and the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants. History shows that vaccination alone can neither single-handedly nor rapidly control a virus and that a combination of public health measures [is] needed for containment.” [7]
Humiliated by China’s superior performance, and its own abject failures, Washington retaliates. Recycling the Trump administration’s baseless claim about the virus leaking from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Biden seeks to divert attention from US failures and Chinese successes. With the aid of the Western news media, Biden shifts the story, from the genuine scandal of nearly 600,000 needless US deaths to the invented scandal of Chinese incompetence in preventing a lab leak.
Bret Stephens, the New York Times columnist, nicely summarizes the narrative the Biden administration is trying to instill in the public mind:
If it turns out that the Covid pandemic was caused by a leak from a lab in Wuhan, China, it will rank among the greatest scientific scandals in history: dangerous research, possibly involving ethically dubious techniques that make viruses more dangerous, carried out in a poorly safeguarded facility, thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, catastrophic for the entire world. [8]
Stephens, by the way, notes that “this possible scandal … is as yet unproved”, which kind of gives the game away.
The US president and the Western news media want it both ways: they want to present a leak at the Wuhan lab as a possibility worthy of consideration while at the same time acknowledging there’s no evidence. But if there’s no evidence, the possibility can hardly be worthy of consideration.
Following a clear double-standard, they say there’s no evidence for China’s counter-allegation that the virus could have leaked from laboratories at the US military base, Fort Detrick, and therefore that the Chinese allegation is unworthy of consideration. Seemingly unbeknownst to Stephens, Fort Detrick is the site of dangerous research, possibly involving ethically dubious techniques that make viruses more dangerous, carried out in poorly safeguarded facilities, which on more than one occasion have been shuttered owing to biosafety concerns. Indeed, this has been reported in Stephens’ own newspaper under the headline Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down At Army Lab Over Safety Concerns. [9] [10]
Hence, if the Wuhan lab needs to be investigated once again, it seems perfectly fair and reasonable to investigate Fort Detrick as well. Given the mishaps at the US lab, there’s a more compelling reason to begin there.
Stephens’ observation that the “possible scandal…is as yet unproven” points to a favored Washington tactic: start with a desired conclusion, and work backward to collect if possible and manufacture if necessary evidence to substantiate it. Recall the WMD scandal, in which ethically dubious deceptions about Saddam concealing weapons of mass destruction were carried out and covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, which, on the basis of this deception, thuggishly murdered countless Iraqis in cold blood, tortured hundreds, toppled their government, rewrote their constitution, destroyed their livelihoods and infrastructure, and took away their independence.
The outcome of the intelligence community investigation ordered by Biden may be the kind of assessment we’ve seen in the past with allegations of Syrian chemical weapons attacks—namely, some elements of the US intelligence community will produce a document that says while they have no proof, they assess (it is their judgment) that what the White House has alleged is indeed true. Or perhaps a dodgy intelligence dossier will be conjured, recalling Colin Powell’s infamous conduct before the UN Security Council in which he produced false intelligence to suggest Iraq was secreting weapons of mass destruction.
If this plays out as it has in the past, the news media will report that the US intelligence community has concluded that the Wuhan laboratory was the source of the pandemic. The key qualifier that the conclusion is based on no proof, will be quickly passed over and eventually forgotten, and the reality that the conclusion came from the intelligence community will be adduced as its substantiation, as if US spooks are impartial arbiters of all questions of consequence, and not part of a state apparatus that has a vested interest in discrediting a country Washington deems a near-peer competitor.
Former CIA case officer Ralph McGehee’s view of his former employer suggests what outcome we can expect from Biden’s ‘find me some evidence’ order to the intelligence community. “The CIA is not now nor has it ever been a Central Intelligence Agency,” McGehee said. Instead, “it is the covert action arm of the president’s foreign policy advisers” whose role is “reporting ‘intelligence’ justifying” the president’s positions and activities. The CIA “shapes its intelligence … to support presidential policy.” McGehee concluded that disinformation is a large part of the intelligence community’s ambit, and the US population is “the primary target audience of its lies.” [11]
The catastrophe of the Covid pandemic was caused by the failure of the United States and its allies to act quickly and decisively to eliminate community transmission. In the critical month of February 2020, as China acted with resolve to smother the flames of a developing pandemic, the United States dithered, incapable of mobilizing its underfunded public health infrastructure, which barely existed, and reluctant to disrupt business activity. The result was that a small fire that could have been contained and extinguished, soon grew into a global conflagration. This ranks among the greatest failures in history: profits were prioritized over public health—a process involving ethically dubious decision-making that made the pandemic more dangerous, thuggishly covered up by a regime more interested in propaganda than human life, trying to divert attention from its abject failures by falsely blaming the one country, China, that has done more than any other to bring the pandemic to a close.
1 Miquel Oliu-Barton et al., “SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties,” The Lancet, April 28, 2021, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00978-8
2 Michael G Baker, Nick Wilson, and Tony Blakely, “Elimination could be the optimal response strategy for covid-19 and other emerging pandemic diseases,” The British Medical Journal, December 22, 2020 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m4907
3 COVID-19 Data Explorer – Our World in Data, accessed June 1, 2021.
4 With (a) a US population of 328.2 million and (b) 1,796.26 deaths per million to May 31, there were (a)/1,000,00 x (b) = 589,533 covid-19 deaths in the United States. If the fatality rate had been as low as that of China, there would have been (a)/1,000,00 x 3.221 = 1,057 covid-19 deaths, or 588,475 fewer.
5 Yuka Hayashi, Sabrina Siddiqui, and Andrew Restuccia, “U.S. to Increase Covid-19 Vaccine Exports Amid Global Pressure,” The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2021
6 Christie Aschwanden, “Five reasons why COVID herd immunity is probably impossible,” Nature, March 18, 2021
7 Miquel Oliu-Barton et al., “SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties,” The Lancet, April 28, 2021, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00978-8
8 Bret Stephens, “Media Groupthink and the Lab-Leak Theory,” The New York Times, May 31, 2021
9 Nicholson Baker, “The Lab-Leak Hypothesis,” New York, January 4, 2020
10 Denise Grady, “Deadly Germ Research Is Shut Down at Army Lab Over Safety Concerns,” The New York Times, August 5, 2019
11 Quoted in A.B. Abrams, Power and Primacy: The History of Western Intervention in the Asia-Pacific, Peter Laing, 2019, p. 124.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
ABOUT THE BIDEN ANTICOVID VACCINE ENDOWMENT PLAN
DONATIONS AND THE ETHICS OF CRUELTY
William Serafino
The United States is faithful to its imperial-colonial tradition in the field of donating anticovid vaccines (Photo: Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post
7 Jun 2021 , 9:32 am .
On June 3, the Biden administration announced the donation of 25 million anticovid vaccines to other countries, this within the framework of a surplus distribution strategy that could reach a total of 80 million doses in the long term. The day before, on his first official trip to Latin America to Costa Rica, Secretary of State Antony Blinken set this figure as a goal to be met by the end of 2022.
Donations are destined for countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, including the COXAX mechanism, which will receive about 75% of the drugs from the United States. In Latin America, a total of 6 million anticovid vaccines, according to the official note from the White House, will be distributed with little detailed criteria among Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama , Haiti and the Caribbean countries of the Caricom.
In March, Washington took the first steps of its donation campaign when it announced the shipment of 1.5 million doses to Canada and 2.5 million to Mexico of the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca. The Cambridge-based pharmaceutical company has not yet received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for use in the United States, therefore, a significant batch of vaccines in storage in Ohio, it was used by the Biden administration to announce the deliveries, given that the drugs will not be used for the time being.
Previously, Washington joined the COVAX mechanism and in February, during the first (virtual) G7 summit in which Joe Biden participated, the president reported that the United States was committed to injecting 4 billion dollars into the instrument launched by the WHO, amount that would be distributed in various tranches until 2022.
"If we have surpluses, we are going to share them with the rest of the world, " Joe Biden said in March, indirectly responding to the claims of Tedros Adhanom, WHO director general, who demanded that rich countries donate 10 million vaccines . Since the beginning of the frankly uneven race for global immunity, WHO has been seriously concerned about the viability of the COVAX mechanism, designed to immunize 20% of the population of 91 low- and middle-income countries that remain. excluded from the first supplies put on the market.
In May, Tedros Adhanom again insisted in the same direction, this time asking that countries with the largest stocks of available vaccines prioritize donations abroad before immunizing children and adolescents.
In statements reported by the BBC, the CEO stated :
"In low- and lower-middle-income countries, the supply of vaccines against COVID-19 has not been enough to even immunize health workers, and hospitals are being flooded with people who need urgent assistance to save their lives [... ] I understand that some countries want to vaccinate their children and adolescents, but I urge you to reconsider and instead donate more doses to COVAX. "
However, and although it could be thought that it was the product of one of his many mental follies, Joe Biden's statements about the surplus anticovid vaccines were a mixture of cynicism and misinformation.
The United States, through advance purchases and lobbying efforts with Western pharmaceutical companies, secured a stock of more than 800 million vaccines , with the option of doubling its stock once drug production increases. Despite having supplies of 600 million doses through initial contracts with Pfizer and Moderna, more than enough to immunize their entire population, 100 million doses were also placed in advance orders from Johnson & Johnson, including orders from Novavax. and AstraZeneca.
Although the US policy of hoarding began with Trump, it was continued by Joe Biden as soon as he took official possession of the White House. In February, the new president formalized an order for an additional 200 million doses after expanding contracts with Pfizer and Moderna.
The accumulation of vaccines by the Global North has forged a picture of unacceptable inequality, sharpening the dividing lines of power, class and money that have shaped the global evolution of neoliberal capitalism in recent decades. Consequently, the asymmetries derived from the hoarding of the richest countries have reached abysmal levels, to the point that only 0.4% of the drugs have been administered in low-income countries, while the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have vaccines enough to immunize their populations multiple times.
Therefore, the donations presented under an altruistic discourse have their material origin in the monopolistic capture of supplies, without which the United States would not have a surplus of 300 million vaccines, according to a special report from Duke University reviewed by the press. last April.
Seen in another way, donations would not be necessary, or at least their profile would not be conditioned by a premise of absolute dependence, if instead of starting a selfish race for vaccines, multilateral mechanisms of equitable distribution had been implemented in order to achieve goals balanced global immunization.
The United States donation campaign, which has received such good publicity, shows how fractured the international system born from the postwar period is and how weak the negotiating capacity of the States has been against the arbitration power of the rich countries and the Big Pharma. That right now the possibility of survival of billions of people depends on the "good will" and the exclusive criteria of the Western powers, while mortality intensifies, the collapse of the health system and the appearance of more lethal variants, indicates us how far the existential crisis of a universe of world institutions has advanced, representative of a mosaic of sovereignties weakened in their material constitution, which have finally been co-opted by the power of money.
The problematic issue of donations is not the act itself, much less its effective contribution to raising the immunity rates of countries that have no other option but to accept them, but what it reveals about the balance of power left by the pandemic: the distribution of life and death, under business and geopolitical parameters, according to the scheme of allies and enemies of the leading powers in the hoarding of anticovid vaccines. It is about the emergence of an ethic of cruelty brought to the frontier of life in its biological sense, mobilized by devices of power impregnated with modern colonialism.
However, there are other technical difficulties related to donations and delays associated with monopoly purchases from the Global North. In April a batch of 75,000 doses of AstraZeneca, nearing its expiration date, arrived in Jamaica following a donation from the African Platform for Medical Supplies. Although there are still no conclusive studies on whether the expiration of drugs determines their effectiveness, the case was an example of how the delays generated by the saturation of orders create political turbulence for the governments that receive them. At the other end of the Atlantic, 16,000 AstraZeneca doses donated to Malawiby the African Union, they were destroyed for being expired, amid the anxiety of the authorities. South Sudan, for the same reason, joined Malawi and destroyed 60,000 doses of AstraZeneca as well.
These cases showed that donations only give a partial response to a strategic problem. As stated by Adrián Alonso, researcher at the Geneva Center for Global Health for El Diario de España:
"Donating sends a message of solidarity, but from a technical point of view there are problems [...] the efficiency in the supply chain has to be very high so that they do not expire or do not arrive in a short time frame".
On the other hand, the clearest demonstration that US donations are politically conditioned came from James Story, an "ambassador" not recognized by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Story affirmed that Venezuela was excluded from the list of recipient countries due to the "lack of transparency" of the Venezuelan government, dismantling the falsely philanthropic rhetoric of Biden, who affirmed that "the donations" were not intended to "receive political favors to change". Clearly, the US government conditions the shipment of vaccines to Venezuela from the utilitarian view that this would not translate into a symbolic victory for the Guaidó project.
It is also evident that the Biden administration seeks a change in international perception with respect to the previous government, for this reason it has supported the possibility of making patents more flexible, finances the COVAX mechanism and seeks to lead the campaign of donations of anticovid vaccines in an attempt to rebuild relations with the WHO, practically destroyed during the Trump administration.
But the recent past shows that such a turn is artificial and only seeks geopolitical advantages. The current ruling Democratic Party never showed its opposition when the Trump administration seized health supplies sent to other countries, when it blocked the export of N95 masks produced by the 3M company or when the intense campaign of punitive "sanctions" against Venezuela and Iran, under the modality of "maximum pressure", to derail the health response of both States in the face of the pandemic.
The destructive "sanctions" of the Trump administration against Venezuela, and the fierce conditions for the seizure of liquid and patrimonial assets of the Venezuelan State, have not been modified or relaxed by Biden, an action that reveals the cruel calculation of continuing to undermine the capacity of Venezuela to access the anticovid vaccines by its own means. The exclusion of Venezuela from the list of countries receiving vaccination, in this sense, added a new attempt to humiliate the entire country.
The donations raised by the United States masked under a falsely altruistic rhetoric imply the establishment of new canons of dependency and tutelage over the countries of the Global South. It is also a problem of an ethical nature, since the gesture highlights the spirit of geopolitical "superiority" of the Western powers, which, after having excluded low-income countries from the opportunity to access vaccines through hoarding practices, are now they present as their saviors, with warehouses full of unused anticovid vaccines that will be distributed according to openly politicized criteria.
The symbolic message of dependence and submission is clear, and points directly against the States of the Global South: with donations, dozens of governments are being told that with their own means they cannot serve their citizens, and that the only option is to wait. a work of goodwill, as long as the political behavior of those governments corresponds to the interests of the donor.
Robert Hugh Benson, in his famous novel Lord of the World (1907), described a dystopian world where the evil represented by the antichrist justifies each of his actions from a well-intentioned narrative.
Evil changes its face, but it always follows the same pattern.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/do ... a-crueldad
Google Translator
DONATIONS AND THE ETHICS OF CRUELTY
William Serafino
The United States is faithful to its imperial-colonial tradition in the field of donating anticovid vaccines (Photo: Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post
7 Jun 2021 , 9:32 am .
On June 3, the Biden administration announced the donation of 25 million anticovid vaccines to other countries, this within the framework of a surplus distribution strategy that could reach a total of 80 million doses in the long term. The day before, on his first official trip to Latin America to Costa Rica, Secretary of State Antony Blinken set this figure as a goal to be met by the end of 2022.
Donations are destined for countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, including the COXAX mechanism, which will receive about 75% of the drugs from the United States. In Latin America, a total of 6 million anticovid vaccines, according to the official note from the White House, will be distributed with little detailed criteria among Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama , Haiti and the Caribbean countries of the Caricom.
In March, Washington took the first steps of its donation campaign when it announced the shipment of 1.5 million doses to Canada and 2.5 million to Mexico of the vaccine produced by AstraZeneca. The Cambridge-based pharmaceutical company has not yet received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for use in the United States, therefore, a significant batch of vaccines in storage in Ohio, it was used by the Biden administration to announce the deliveries, given that the drugs will not be used for the time being.
Previously, Washington joined the COVAX mechanism and in February, during the first (virtual) G7 summit in which Joe Biden participated, the president reported that the United States was committed to injecting 4 billion dollars into the instrument launched by the WHO, amount that would be distributed in various tranches until 2022.
"If we have surpluses, we are going to share them with the rest of the world, " Joe Biden said in March, indirectly responding to the claims of Tedros Adhanom, WHO director general, who demanded that rich countries donate 10 million vaccines . Since the beginning of the frankly uneven race for global immunity, WHO has been seriously concerned about the viability of the COVAX mechanism, designed to immunize 20% of the population of 91 low- and middle-income countries that remain. excluded from the first supplies put on the market.
In May, Tedros Adhanom again insisted in the same direction, this time asking that countries with the largest stocks of available vaccines prioritize donations abroad before immunizing children and adolescents.
In statements reported by the BBC, the CEO stated :
"In low- and lower-middle-income countries, the supply of vaccines against COVID-19 has not been enough to even immunize health workers, and hospitals are being flooded with people who need urgent assistance to save their lives [... ] I understand that some countries want to vaccinate their children and adolescents, but I urge you to reconsider and instead donate more doses to COVAX. "
However, and although it could be thought that it was the product of one of his many mental follies, Joe Biden's statements about the surplus anticovid vaccines were a mixture of cynicism and misinformation.
The United States, through advance purchases and lobbying efforts with Western pharmaceutical companies, secured a stock of more than 800 million vaccines , with the option of doubling its stock once drug production increases. Despite having supplies of 600 million doses through initial contracts with Pfizer and Moderna, more than enough to immunize their entire population, 100 million doses were also placed in advance orders from Johnson & Johnson, including orders from Novavax. and AstraZeneca.
Although the US policy of hoarding began with Trump, it was continued by Joe Biden as soon as he took official possession of the White House. In February, the new president formalized an order for an additional 200 million doses after expanding contracts with Pfizer and Moderna.
The accumulation of vaccines by the Global North has forged a picture of unacceptable inequality, sharpening the dividing lines of power, class and money that have shaped the global evolution of neoliberal capitalism in recent decades. Consequently, the asymmetries derived from the hoarding of the richest countries have reached abysmal levels, to the point that only 0.4% of the drugs have been administered in low-income countries, while the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom have vaccines enough to immunize their populations multiple times.
Therefore, the donations presented under an altruistic discourse have their material origin in the monopolistic capture of supplies, without which the United States would not have a surplus of 300 million vaccines, according to a special report from Duke University reviewed by the press. last April.
Seen in another way, donations would not be necessary, or at least their profile would not be conditioned by a premise of absolute dependence, if instead of starting a selfish race for vaccines, multilateral mechanisms of equitable distribution had been implemented in order to achieve goals balanced global immunization.
The United States donation campaign, which has received such good publicity, shows how fractured the international system born from the postwar period is and how weak the negotiating capacity of the States has been against the arbitration power of the rich countries and the Big Pharma. That right now the possibility of survival of billions of people depends on the "good will" and the exclusive criteria of the Western powers, while mortality intensifies, the collapse of the health system and the appearance of more lethal variants, indicates us how far the existential crisis of a universe of world institutions has advanced, representative of a mosaic of sovereignties weakened in their material constitution, which have finally been co-opted by the power of money.
The problematic issue of donations is not the act itself, much less its effective contribution to raising the immunity rates of countries that have no other option but to accept them, but what it reveals about the balance of power left by the pandemic: the distribution of life and death, under business and geopolitical parameters, according to the scheme of allies and enemies of the leading powers in the hoarding of anticovid vaccines. It is about the emergence of an ethic of cruelty brought to the frontier of life in its biological sense, mobilized by devices of power impregnated with modern colonialism.
However, there are other technical difficulties related to donations and delays associated with monopoly purchases from the Global North. In April a batch of 75,000 doses of AstraZeneca, nearing its expiration date, arrived in Jamaica following a donation from the African Platform for Medical Supplies. Although there are still no conclusive studies on whether the expiration of drugs determines their effectiveness, the case was an example of how the delays generated by the saturation of orders create political turbulence for the governments that receive them. At the other end of the Atlantic, 16,000 AstraZeneca doses donated to Malawiby the African Union, they were destroyed for being expired, amid the anxiety of the authorities. South Sudan, for the same reason, joined Malawi and destroyed 60,000 doses of AstraZeneca as well.
These cases showed that donations only give a partial response to a strategic problem. As stated by Adrián Alonso, researcher at the Geneva Center for Global Health for El Diario de España:
"Donating sends a message of solidarity, but from a technical point of view there are problems [...] the efficiency in the supply chain has to be very high so that they do not expire or do not arrive in a short time frame".
On the other hand, the clearest demonstration that US donations are politically conditioned came from James Story, an "ambassador" not recognized by the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Story affirmed that Venezuela was excluded from the list of recipient countries due to the "lack of transparency" of the Venezuelan government, dismantling the falsely philanthropic rhetoric of Biden, who affirmed that "the donations" were not intended to "receive political favors to change". Clearly, the US government conditions the shipment of vaccines to Venezuela from the utilitarian view that this would not translate into a symbolic victory for the Guaidó project.
It is also evident that the Biden administration seeks a change in international perception with respect to the previous government, for this reason it has supported the possibility of making patents more flexible, finances the COVAX mechanism and seeks to lead the campaign of donations of anticovid vaccines in an attempt to rebuild relations with the WHO, practically destroyed during the Trump administration.
But the recent past shows that such a turn is artificial and only seeks geopolitical advantages. The current ruling Democratic Party never showed its opposition when the Trump administration seized health supplies sent to other countries, when it blocked the export of N95 masks produced by the 3M company or when the intense campaign of punitive "sanctions" against Venezuela and Iran, under the modality of "maximum pressure", to derail the health response of both States in the face of the pandemic.
The destructive "sanctions" of the Trump administration against Venezuela, and the fierce conditions for the seizure of liquid and patrimonial assets of the Venezuelan State, have not been modified or relaxed by Biden, an action that reveals the cruel calculation of continuing to undermine the capacity of Venezuela to access the anticovid vaccines by its own means. The exclusion of Venezuela from the list of countries receiving vaccination, in this sense, added a new attempt to humiliate the entire country.
The donations raised by the United States masked under a falsely altruistic rhetoric imply the establishment of new canons of dependency and tutelage over the countries of the Global South. It is also a problem of an ethical nature, since the gesture highlights the spirit of geopolitical "superiority" of the Western powers, which, after having excluded low-income countries from the opportunity to access vaccines through hoarding practices, are now they present as their saviors, with warehouses full of unused anticovid vaccines that will be distributed according to openly politicized criteria.
The symbolic message of dependence and submission is clear, and points directly against the States of the Global South: with donations, dozens of governments are being told that with their own means they cannot serve their citizens, and that the only option is to wait. a work of goodwill, as long as the political behavior of those governments corresponds to the interests of the donor.
Robert Hugh Benson, in his famous novel Lord of the World (1907), described a dystopian world where the evil represented by the antichrist justifies each of his actions from a well-intentioned narrative.
Evil changes its face, but it always follows the same pattern.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/do ... a-crueldad
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
How deadly has Covid-19 been compared to the United States’ major wars?
Stephen Gowans COVID-19 June 9, 2021 5 Minutes
There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. – Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947
June 9, 2021
By Stephen Gowans
The quote above from Albert Camus’s 1947 novel, The Plague, implicitly categorizes plagues and wars as congeneric events—what I’ll call death events.
Five great wars in US history have produced major US fatalities. The deadliest was the Civil War, which claimed 620,000 lives, more than perished in WWI, WWII, Korea, or Vietnam.
How do these wars compare to the Covid-19 pandemic?
In absolute number of deaths, the pandemic has been more deadly in the United States than four of the five great wars, with only the Civil War producing more deaths. More have died to June 7 (almost 600,000, with more deaths to follow) than died in WWII (418,500).
But comparing absolute numbers presents a problem. The longer a death event lasts, the greater the opportunity for fatalities to accumulate. In order to compare like to like, we need to place fatalities on a common scale. One way is to look at the average number of deaths per day over a death event’s course.
When death events are examined this way, the pandemic reveals itself to be more deadly than the great wars. Over 1,100 US citizens have died daily, on average, from Covid-19, from 19 January 2020, the day the first Covid-19 case was confirmed in the United States, to 7 June 2021. The deadliest war, the Civil War, at 427 deaths per day on average, is a distant second.
Covid-19 vs. war deaths, United States
Deaths Days Deaths per day, (avg.)
Covid-19* 597,592 524 1,140
Civil War 620,000 1,451 427
WWII 418,500 1,365 307
WWI 116,516 591 197
Korea 36,516 1,127 32
Vietnam 58,209 4,380 13
*Jan 19, ’20 – June 7, ’21
And while US politicians and journalists speak as if the pandemic is all but over in their country (and many US citizens act as if this is true), the numbers suggest the celebration is premature. The average number of Covid-19 deaths per day from June 1 to June 7 was 324, according to Our World in Data, greater than the average daily number of US fatalities in WWII. This means that US citizens are dying today from Covid-19 at a greater daily rate than US soldiers perished in combat every day from late 1941 to late summer 1945.
Yet, no matter how deadly the current pandemic has proved to be, there was one more deadly: the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. That pandemic killed an estimated 675,000 US citizens, or 1,232 per day on average, somewhat higher than the daily number killed to date by the novel coronavirus.
Covid-19 vs. 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, United States
Deaths Days Deaths per day, (avg.)
Influenza pandemic 1918-1919 675,000 548 1,232
Covid-19* 597,592 524 1,140
*Jan 19, ’20 – June 7, ’21
The rough parity in deaths between the two pandemics is misleading. The US population was much smaller in 1918. Adjusting for population growth, the influenza pandemic was much more deadly, carrying away a greater percentage of the population than Covid-19 has. How do the various death events compare if historical differences in population size are taken into account?
Looking at fatalities per million, the Civil War is by far the deadliest event in US history*, both in the cumulative number of deaths and the average number of deaths per day. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 comes second, while the Covid-19 pandemic comes a distant third. The coronavirus pestilence and the twentieth century wars comprise a class of their own, much less deadly than the Civil War and the 1918-1919 influenza. Even so, compared to the wars of the last century, the current pandemic is more deadly, even controlling for population growth.
Pandemic vs. war deaths, United States, per million
Deaths Days Deaths per day, (avg.)
Civil War 19,726 1,451 13.6
Influenza pandemic 1918-1919 6,541 548 11.9
Covid-19* 1,796 524 3.4
WWII 3,137 1,365 2.3
WWI 1,128 591 1.9
Korea 240 1,127 0.2
Vietnam 303 4,380 0.1
*Jan 19, ’20 – June 7, ’21
What these findings reveal is that the Covid-19 pandemic is a major death event. More US citizens have perished in the pandemic to date than in any of the four major twentieth century wars, controlling for the number of days the death event lasted and population size.
They also show that notwithstanding the unduly sanguine pronouncements of the pandemic’s imminent end in the United States, the rate of mortality continues to be high relative to the major wars of the last century. Only by redefining “almost over” to mean a death rate better than abysmal but still higher than WWII—and no better than that of the world as a whole, as the chart below shows—can the pandemic be said to be nearly over. If deaths per million in the United States have reached a point where this is true, then the pandemic can also be said to be nearly over in the world as a whole, since deaths per million globally are at the same level. But who believes that on a world scale, the pandemic’s demise is imminent?
The figures also confirm, for the Covid-19 pandemic, the observation implicit in Camus’s words, namely, that plagues and wars are, in their deadliness, of the same sort.
A caveat: The United States is an anomaly, and the findings above cannot be considered as representative of the world in toto.
First, US fatalities in major wars have been very low by comparison with other belligerents, and have comprised but a very tiny fraction of total, word-wide, deaths.
Second, US authorities have exhibited considerable ineptitude in meeting the challenge of the pandemic. Favoring a pharmaceutical solution (which offers a cornucopia of profits to the biopharma industry) over a zero-Covid public health approach (which, through business closures, would have severely attenuated profits in the larger business community temporarily but whose efficacy was demonstrated early on by the Communist-led Chinese government), deaths accumulated to a level commensurate with what would be expected from a failed state. The conclusion is that capitalism is a comorbidity–a condition whose presence amplifies the deadly effects of the pandemic.
Only now, nearly a year and a half after Washington should have taken swift and decisive action to smother the infant pandemic in its cradle, is the roll out of vaccines starting to have an effect. This is hardly a consolation for the loved ones of the nearly 600,000 US citizens whose deaths could have been prevented.
Embarrassed by its abject failure to contain the pandemic, especially in light of Communist successes in China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea, Washington has redefined success; it now means the fruition of its strategy, namely, the mass uptake of vaccines, but this metric bears little relation to the question of whether the virus continues to scythe through the population, which it does, as this analysis has shown.
And it’s doubtful that Washington’s pharmaceuticalization strategy will succeed. No pathogen has ever been eliminated by vaccination alone, and nor does it seem likely that Washington is about to set a precedent, given the realities of vaccine hesitancy, the expectation that it will be two or more years before low income countries are fully vaccinated, and the expected continued emergence of variants—some of which may prove resistant to current vaccines.
For these reasons—the US anomalies of low war fatalities and high Covid-19 deaths—US figures cannot be taken as indicative of what is true of the world as a whole. In a follow-up post, I’ll examine the question globally, comparing the death event of Covid-19 with the death events of WWI and WWII.
*In terms of absolute number of deaths, the genocide of the Amerindians and the slave trade, the foundations of US capitalism, almost certainly preponderate the death events examined here.
https://gowans.blog/2021/06/09/how-dead ... ajor-wars/
*****************************************************
Washington’s Lab Leak Playbook Revealed?
Stephen Gowans China, COVID-19 June 7, 2021 8 Minutes
By Stephen Gowans
June 7, 2021
On June 5, Joe Biden wrote an editorial in the Washington Post in which he reiterated what has long been apparent: that Washington regards China as an enemy. [1]
Biden says China’s enemy status is based on Beijing’s rejection of “market democracy” and adoption of what he calls ‘authoritarianism.’ But this can’t be true.
The United States counts a number of ‘authoritarian’ governments among its most cherished allies (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain, and so on).
Washington was quite willing to pursue amicable relations with China for many years, from the point Beijing opened the country to US trade and investment and became a cornucopia of profits for corporate USA, until Chinese capitalism became a rival to, rather than a prop for, US capitalism. During this period, Washington had no trouble befriending China despite Beijing’s authoritarianism.
What has changed is that China has rejected its place in the global economy as a low-wage manufacturing appendage of the US economy. In pursuit of its goal of building a prosperous, independent, China, the Communist Party has presided over a mixed economy and dirigiste capitalism which has come to challenge Wall Street’s primacy. That’s the source of Washington’s hostility.
There are other reasons for Washington to take an inimical stance to China. Not only does corporate USA face stiff competition from the East Asian giant, but a Communist-led China is challenging Washington in other ways, too.
Beijing has lifted countless millions out of poverty, and Chinese citizens face the future with optimism, expecting their standard of living to continue to rise. Meanwhile, US citizens are pessimistic, as US capitalism leaves millions behind, in low-wage, precarious work, with little hope for a bright future.
What’s more, Washington’s self-proclaimed leadership role in the world has been badly damaged by its failure to deal competently with the Covid-19 pandemic. While US newspapers hubristically declare that, with the roll out of vaccines, the end of the pandemic is imminent, in terms of Covid-19 deaths per million, the United States has only gone from being a failed state to no better than the rest of the world.
In contrast, China acted swiftly and decisively to eliminate community transmission of the virus, allowing Beijing to reopen its economy quickly. As an article in the medical journal The Lancet concluded, the model pursued by China has been superior to the model of inaction and privileging profits over public health favored by US authorities. The model’s superiority is evident in better health and economic outcomes, and (because the Chinese approach allowed the country to reopen quickly) better civil liberty outcomes. [2] Had Washington emulated China, it would have prevented over 550,000 Covid-19 deaths. [3] A government that caters to business interests before public health hardly has the moral standing to claim world leadership.
Even on the matter of vaccines, on which the United States professes leadership, it has produced fewer doses than China, and exported fewer to other countries. [4]
Clearly, if Washington wants to claim global leadership in the face of its own failures and China’s undeniable successes, it is going to have to turn the tables on China.
Part of the fight back is positive. The Biden administration plans to emulate China through a program of industrial planning and major investments in infrastructure to “deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world.” [5] The program might be called Meeting the China Challenge.
Another part is negative. It involves efforts to undermine China’s economic growth through tariffs, target Chinese companies like Huawei for destruction, block Chinese investors from buying Western economic assets, and prevent Western investors from investing in a number of Chinese firms.
Additionally, Washington seeks to discredit China. One way to do so is to blame Beijing for the pandemic. Trump made early efforts in this direction, referring to Covid-19 as the Wuhan flu, the kung flu, and the China virus. His state department insinuated that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab. Biden—different from Trump in style but largely continuous with the previous administration on foreign policy—has resurrected Trump’s lab leak theory.
Insight into Washington’s playbook on discrediting China may have been provided by Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, who wrote an editorial in The Washington Post on June 4. It was titled “China could pay if nations come to believe the virus leaked from a lab.” [6]
The Council on Foreign Relations is a Wall Street funded and directed think tank that provides policy advice to the State Department. It is firmly interlocked with the US foreign policy establishment and the Biden administration. Typically, members of the council fill top cabinet positions. The current secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and commerce are members of the council, as are the UN ambassador, the national security advisor, CIA director, Indo-Pacific czar, and chief of staff, among others. [7] As A.B. Abrams explained in Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power (Clarity Press, 2020, p. 453)
The CFR’s members were described by the Washington Post as ‘the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States’ and includes almost all CIA Directors, National Security Advisors, UN Ambassadors, Federal Reserve Chairs, World Bank Presidents, and Directors of the National Economic Council, several presidents and vice-presidents, the majority of state secretaries … and many high ranking NATO and military commanders. According to the Post, the council members were part of a foreign policy establishment with shared values and world views, whose role was not limited to analyzing foreign policy but also included taking an active hand in shaping it. … Stephen F. Cohen [himself once a member] described the council as ‘America’s single most important non-governmental foreign policy organization,’ with the power to ‘define the accepted, legitimate, orthodox parameters of discussion.’
Huang’s editorial at the very least reflects the kind of thinking that takes place in US foreign policy circles and may in fact reveal a playbook the CFR-interlocked Biden administration is actually following to turn the tables on China.
Huang notes that “China has, until now, enjoyed prestige on the world stage for its containment of the pandemic, especially compared with many Western countries” but adds that “if missteps by Chinese scientists” were seen to be “the cause of that pandemic, such praise would quickly fade.”
“Even a belief in a coverup without firm evidence of wrongdoing would be damaging”, he says. Moreover, if US intelligence were seen as exposing a coverup, it could re-establish “America’s reputation for competence.”
Huang believes that fostering a belief in a Chinese coverup, even without firm evidence, would:
“Precipitate a free fall in China’s relationship with the outside world”;
Provide a pretext for the United States to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics;
Raise questions in China about whether the Communist Party is fit to rule;
Force China to close in on itself in a fit of angry isolation as it is shunned by the rest of the world.
In other words, there are strong reasons for Washington, which makes no secret about viewing China as an enemy to be contained and countered, to manufacture a belief in a coverup.
However, US intelligence is of the view that it is unlikely that firm evidence of a lab leak can be obtained [8]. Accordingly, the pursuit of these policy benefits will depend on innuendo. Western journalists are working diligently to provide it, and, writing dozens of features in which, claiming powers of ratiocination equivalent to those of a Sherlock Holmes, they claim to have deduced Chinese culpability (see, for example, Nicholas Wade in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist.) Of course, all of this is nonsense. There is no evidence for a lab leak, and no matter how brilliant some journalists believe their powers of deduction are, their exercises in ratiocination remain pure speculation. Speculation is not evidence. Speculative arguments can also be constructed on the other side, and have been. [9]
The Wuhan lab leak theory has, within the context of US foreign policy, become the equivalent of the magician’s misdirection; it draws attention from the deception that the Western model works. The model, as it relates to the pandemic, has clearly failed.
It is clarifying to consider that in the rush to create a misdirection, two separate questions are being conflated:
Where did the virus come from?
How did the pandemic start?
We don’t know where the virus came from, and may never know. We still don’t know where the virus came from that killed tens of millions of people worldwide in the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 to 1920 .
But we do know how the Covid-19 pandemic started, which is the more consequential question. The pandemic started when “Chinese doctors and scientists working in international collaborations,” provided information “showing a deadly virus had emerged that had no treatment and could be passed between people”, and the United States, Canada, and Europe did precious little with this information, failing to act, unwilling to disrupt business activity and the continued tranquil digestion of profits, as the Lancet’s editor Richard Horton has pointed out. [10][11] Had these countries acted as swiftly and decisively to eliminate community transmission as China did, not only would they have been able to safely open their own economies long ago, they would have spared the world a deadly pandemic, which has already claimed the lives of more than 3.7 million people, and will carry off many more.
Much as Washington professes to disdain conspiracy theories, it is one the world’s principal creators of them, and vehicles for their propagation, amply aided by the Western mass media. The paragon case is the Washington-manufactured conspiracy theory about Saddam Hussein covering up weapons of mass destruction. As the Council on Foreign Relation’s Yanzhong Huang makes clear, a lab leak conspiracy theory has the potential to pay substantial dividends to the US position in the world, one badly bruised by China’s successes and Washington’s abject failures.
[1] Joe Biden, “Joe Biden: My trip to Europe is about America rallying the world’s democracies,” The Washington Post, June 5, 2021
[2] Miquel Oliu-Barton et al., “SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties,” The Lancet, April 28, 2021, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00978-8
[3] With (a) a US population of 328.2 million and (b) 1,796.26 deaths per million to May 31, there were (a)/1,000,00 x (b) = 589,533 covid-19 deaths in the United States. If the fatality rate had been as low as that of China, there would have been (a)/1,000,00 x 3.221 = 1,057 covid-19 deaths, or 588,475 fewer.
[4] Yuka Hayashi, Sabrina Siddiqui, and Andrew Restuccia, “U.S. to Increase Covid-19 Vaccine Exports Amid Global Pressure,” The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2021
[5] Biden.
[6] Yanzhong Huang, “The origin of the virus is a scientific question — but one with huge political implications.” The Washington Post, June 4, 2021.
[7] See Laurence H. Shoup, “The Council on Foreign Relations, the Biden Team, and Key Policy Outcomes,” Monthly Review, May 2021.
[8] Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins,” New York Tines, May 27, 2021.
[9] See for example Angela L. Rasmussen and Stephen A. Goldstein, “Labs like the one in Wuhan are essential to preparing for future pandemics,” The New York Times, June 4, 2021.
[10] “Lancet editor Richard Horton quoted in “West suffering because it failed to listen to China on COVID-19, says Lancet editor,” CGTN, May 3, 2020
[11] “COVID-19 in the USA: a question of time,” The Lancet, April 18, 2020
https://gowans.blog/2021/06/07/washingt ... -revealed/
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We need an inquiry into the origins of the pandemic
By Stephen Gowans
June 5, 2021
On 4 March of this year, two dozen scientists, social scientists, and science journalists from the United States and allied countries—countries whose governments are engaged in various maneuvers to ‘contain’ a rising China—released an open letter attacking the WHO-convened mission which inquired into the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This letter is widely cited in Western journalism that now accepts the once discredited Wuhan lab leak theory as credible and worthy of consideration.
The WHO mission had concluded that the virus likely originated in bats and spread to an unidentified second species before spilling over into humans. It concluded that spillover through a laboratory accident was very unlikely.
The authors of the open letter said they released the letter to raise public awareness of the fact that half of the WHO team was comprised of Chinese citizens and that the scientific independence of these team members may have been limited. They did not question the scientific independence of other members of the team, implying that the Chinese members were partial but that the other members were not.
The motive for the letter appeared to be unease with the WHO mission’s conclusion that a lab leak was very unlikely. The authors called for a new inquiry to consider five possible pathways, all but one of which, if found to be the cause, would implicate employees connected with Wuhan laboratories.
The authors listed the following as the possible origins of the virus.
A pure zoonosis event with/without intermediate host;
Infection at a sampling site of a lab employee or of some accompanying non-lab personnel;
Infection during transport of collected animals and/or samples;
Lab Acquired Infection (LAI);
Lab-escape without LAI.
To be sure, all of these are possible pathways for SARS-CoV-2, and for other zoonoses, as well. It is unnecessary, however, to know which of these possible causes, if any, lie at the heart of the SARS-CoV-2 spillover to know that any of these, generalizing from Wuhan labs to all labs, could be the possible cause of a future spillover. What measures, therefore, ought to be taken to close or at least severely restrict these possible pathways? The authors of the letter do not say.
While the signatories urge that a new inquiry be undertaken because “Finding the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is critically important to both better addressing the current pandemic and reducing the risks of future ones”, they offer no explanation for how identifying the specific actual causes of this pandemic will help reduce the risk of future ones; (there are multiple possible causes of zoonotic spillovers, and those involved in a future spillover may be different from the causes underlying the current one.) What’s more, it is unclear how finding the origins of SARS-Cov-2 will help better address the current pandemic; (discovering the ingress point for a mouse into your house won’t help catch it.)
The cause of the pandemic, not the original outbreak, but the development of a potentially controllable zoonosis into an outbreak of global reach, is already known: It was the failure of the United States and its allies to take quick and decisive action in February 2020 at a time the catastrophe in embryo could have been aborted. Rather than mobilize public health measures to extinguish small fires and prevent their spread, as Beijing did, the United States, and countries that followed its lead, did precious little, unwilling to disrupt business activity and the continued tranquil digestion of profits. It is US and allied non-feasance—that is, human inaction—that transformed a preventable catastrophe into a full blown calamity that so far has produced over 3.7 million deaths.
As the editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, Richard Horton, recalled: “The United States of America wasted the whole of February and early March before they acted. That is the human tragedy of COVID-19. Thanks to the work of Chinese doctors and scientists working in international collaborations, all of this info [showing a deadly virus had emerged that had no treatment and could be passed between people] was known in January but for reasons that are difficult to understand, the world did not pay attention.”
But Horton had offered a clue as to why Washington failed to act, in an editorial he wrote for The Lancet.
“The degree to which the USA stalled in taking aggressive action to curtail the spread of COVID-19 is directly the product of an administration marked by consistently poor timing, intent on making decisions in favor of economic interests instead of those that are guided by science and to protect health. The rush to reopen the country [put] dollars over deaths.“
Zoonotic spillovers in nature may be infrequent, but they do occur. So, too, do lab leaks. To be sure, measures need be taken to reduce these events. But the events by themselves do not inevitably precipitate pandemics. Pandemics, like conflagrations, require a spark, but also kindling, and at times, firefighters who fail to act.
An unrestricted international investigation, guided by the goal of learning how to better address the current pandemic and reduce the risks of future ones, unquestionably needs to be undertaken. But the investigation, if it is to be meaningful (and not a fishing expedition to gather data with the aim of pillorying a near-peer competitor), must inquire, not into what we already know—that certain events are possible causes of zoonotic spillovers—but into what we are not clear about, namely, the institutional forces that stopped the United States and its followers from acting decisively to avert an impending public health disaster. In other words, the inquiry must identify why the United States, and many other countries under its sway, followed not the dictum, public health is the highest law, but the principle, private profit is the highest good.
It is the answer to that question that must be known if we are to reduce the risk of future pandemics and better address the current one.
https://gowans.blog/2021/06/05/we-need- ... -pandemic/.
Stephen been busy...and as usual is astute.
Stephen Gowans COVID-19 June 9, 2021 5 Minutes
There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise. – Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947
June 9, 2021
By Stephen Gowans
The quote above from Albert Camus’s 1947 novel, The Plague, implicitly categorizes plagues and wars as congeneric events—what I’ll call death events.
Five great wars in US history have produced major US fatalities. The deadliest was the Civil War, which claimed 620,000 lives, more than perished in WWI, WWII, Korea, or Vietnam.
How do these wars compare to the Covid-19 pandemic?
In absolute number of deaths, the pandemic has been more deadly in the United States than four of the five great wars, with only the Civil War producing more deaths. More have died to June 7 (almost 600,000, with more deaths to follow) than died in WWII (418,500).
But comparing absolute numbers presents a problem. The longer a death event lasts, the greater the opportunity for fatalities to accumulate. In order to compare like to like, we need to place fatalities on a common scale. One way is to look at the average number of deaths per day over a death event’s course.
When death events are examined this way, the pandemic reveals itself to be more deadly than the great wars. Over 1,100 US citizens have died daily, on average, from Covid-19, from 19 January 2020, the day the first Covid-19 case was confirmed in the United States, to 7 June 2021. The deadliest war, the Civil War, at 427 deaths per day on average, is a distant second.
Covid-19 vs. war deaths, United States
Deaths Days Deaths per day, (avg.)
Covid-19* 597,592 524 1,140
Civil War 620,000 1,451 427
WWII 418,500 1,365 307
WWI 116,516 591 197
Korea 36,516 1,127 32
Vietnam 58,209 4,380 13
*Jan 19, ’20 – June 7, ’21
And while US politicians and journalists speak as if the pandemic is all but over in their country (and many US citizens act as if this is true), the numbers suggest the celebration is premature. The average number of Covid-19 deaths per day from June 1 to June 7 was 324, according to Our World in Data, greater than the average daily number of US fatalities in WWII. This means that US citizens are dying today from Covid-19 at a greater daily rate than US soldiers perished in combat every day from late 1941 to late summer 1945.
Yet, no matter how deadly the current pandemic has proved to be, there was one more deadly: the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919. That pandemic killed an estimated 675,000 US citizens, or 1,232 per day on average, somewhat higher than the daily number killed to date by the novel coronavirus.
Covid-19 vs. 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, United States
Deaths Days Deaths per day, (avg.)
Influenza pandemic 1918-1919 675,000 548 1,232
Covid-19* 597,592 524 1,140
*Jan 19, ’20 – June 7, ’21
The rough parity in deaths between the two pandemics is misleading. The US population was much smaller in 1918. Adjusting for population growth, the influenza pandemic was much more deadly, carrying away a greater percentage of the population than Covid-19 has. How do the various death events compare if historical differences in population size are taken into account?
Looking at fatalities per million, the Civil War is by far the deadliest event in US history*, both in the cumulative number of deaths and the average number of deaths per day. The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 comes second, while the Covid-19 pandemic comes a distant third. The coronavirus pestilence and the twentieth century wars comprise a class of their own, much less deadly than the Civil War and the 1918-1919 influenza. Even so, compared to the wars of the last century, the current pandemic is more deadly, even controlling for population growth.
Pandemic vs. war deaths, United States, per million
Deaths Days Deaths per day, (avg.)
Civil War 19,726 1,451 13.6
Influenza pandemic 1918-1919 6,541 548 11.9
Covid-19* 1,796 524 3.4
WWII 3,137 1,365 2.3
WWI 1,128 591 1.9
Korea 240 1,127 0.2
Vietnam 303 4,380 0.1
*Jan 19, ’20 – June 7, ’21
What these findings reveal is that the Covid-19 pandemic is a major death event. More US citizens have perished in the pandemic to date than in any of the four major twentieth century wars, controlling for the number of days the death event lasted and population size.
They also show that notwithstanding the unduly sanguine pronouncements of the pandemic’s imminent end in the United States, the rate of mortality continues to be high relative to the major wars of the last century. Only by redefining “almost over” to mean a death rate better than abysmal but still higher than WWII—and no better than that of the world as a whole, as the chart below shows—can the pandemic be said to be nearly over. If deaths per million in the United States have reached a point where this is true, then the pandemic can also be said to be nearly over in the world as a whole, since deaths per million globally are at the same level. But who believes that on a world scale, the pandemic’s demise is imminent?
The figures also confirm, for the Covid-19 pandemic, the observation implicit in Camus’s words, namely, that plagues and wars are, in their deadliness, of the same sort.
A caveat: The United States is an anomaly, and the findings above cannot be considered as representative of the world in toto.
First, US fatalities in major wars have been very low by comparison with other belligerents, and have comprised but a very tiny fraction of total, word-wide, deaths.
Second, US authorities have exhibited considerable ineptitude in meeting the challenge of the pandemic. Favoring a pharmaceutical solution (which offers a cornucopia of profits to the biopharma industry) over a zero-Covid public health approach (which, through business closures, would have severely attenuated profits in the larger business community temporarily but whose efficacy was demonstrated early on by the Communist-led Chinese government), deaths accumulated to a level commensurate with what would be expected from a failed state. The conclusion is that capitalism is a comorbidity–a condition whose presence amplifies the deadly effects of the pandemic.
Only now, nearly a year and a half after Washington should have taken swift and decisive action to smother the infant pandemic in its cradle, is the roll out of vaccines starting to have an effect. This is hardly a consolation for the loved ones of the nearly 600,000 US citizens whose deaths could have been prevented.
Embarrassed by its abject failure to contain the pandemic, especially in light of Communist successes in China, Vietnam, Cuba, and North Korea, Washington has redefined success; it now means the fruition of its strategy, namely, the mass uptake of vaccines, but this metric bears little relation to the question of whether the virus continues to scythe through the population, which it does, as this analysis has shown.
And it’s doubtful that Washington’s pharmaceuticalization strategy will succeed. No pathogen has ever been eliminated by vaccination alone, and nor does it seem likely that Washington is about to set a precedent, given the realities of vaccine hesitancy, the expectation that it will be two or more years before low income countries are fully vaccinated, and the expected continued emergence of variants—some of which may prove resistant to current vaccines.
For these reasons—the US anomalies of low war fatalities and high Covid-19 deaths—US figures cannot be taken as indicative of what is true of the world as a whole. In a follow-up post, I’ll examine the question globally, comparing the death event of Covid-19 with the death events of WWI and WWII.
*In terms of absolute number of deaths, the genocide of the Amerindians and the slave trade, the foundations of US capitalism, almost certainly preponderate the death events examined here.
https://gowans.blog/2021/06/09/how-dead ... ajor-wars/
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Washington’s Lab Leak Playbook Revealed?
Stephen Gowans China, COVID-19 June 7, 2021 8 Minutes
By Stephen Gowans
June 7, 2021
On June 5, Joe Biden wrote an editorial in the Washington Post in which he reiterated what has long been apparent: that Washington regards China as an enemy. [1]
Biden says China’s enemy status is based on Beijing’s rejection of “market democracy” and adoption of what he calls ‘authoritarianism.’ But this can’t be true.
The United States counts a number of ‘authoritarian’ governments among its most cherished allies (e.g., Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Bahrain, and so on).
Washington was quite willing to pursue amicable relations with China for many years, from the point Beijing opened the country to US trade and investment and became a cornucopia of profits for corporate USA, until Chinese capitalism became a rival to, rather than a prop for, US capitalism. During this period, Washington had no trouble befriending China despite Beijing’s authoritarianism.
What has changed is that China has rejected its place in the global economy as a low-wage manufacturing appendage of the US economy. In pursuit of its goal of building a prosperous, independent, China, the Communist Party has presided over a mixed economy and dirigiste capitalism which has come to challenge Wall Street’s primacy. That’s the source of Washington’s hostility.
There are other reasons for Washington to take an inimical stance to China. Not only does corporate USA face stiff competition from the East Asian giant, but a Communist-led China is challenging Washington in other ways, too.
Beijing has lifted countless millions out of poverty, and Chinese citizens face the future with optimism, expecting their standard of living to continue to rise. Meanwhile, US citizens are pessimistic, as US capitalism leaves millions behind, in low-wage, precarious work, with little hope for a bright future.
What’s more, Washington’s self-proclaimed leadership role in the world has been badly damaged by its failure to deal competently with the Covid-19 pandemic. While US newspapers hubristically declare that, with the roll out of vaccines, the end of the pandemic is imminent, in terms of Covid-19 deaths per million, the United States has only gone from being a failed state to no better than the rest of the world.
In contrast, China acted swiftly and decisively to eliminate community transmission of the virus, allowing Beijing to reopen its economy quickly. As an article in the medical journal The Lancet concluded, the model pursued by China has been superior to the model of inaction and privileging profits over public health favored by US authorities. The model’s superiority is evident in better health and economic outcomes, and (because the Chinese approach allowed the country to reopen quickly) better civil liberty outcomes. [2] Had Washington emulated China, it would have prevented over 550,000 Covid-19 deaths. [3] A government that caters to business interests before public health hardly has the moral standing to claim world leadership.
Even on the matter of vaccines, on which the United States professes leadership, it has produced fewer doses than China, and exported fewer to other countries. [4]
Clearly, if Washington wants to claim global leadership in the face of its own failures and China’s undeniable successes, it is going to have to turn the tables on China.
Part of the fight back is positive. The Biden administration plans to emulate China through a program of industrial planning and major investments in infrastructure to “deliver real results for our people in a rapidly changing world.” [5] The program might be called Meeting the China Challenge.
Another part is negative. It involves efforts to undermine China’s economic growth through tariffs, target Chinese companies like Huawei for destruction, block Chinese investors from buying Western economic assets, and prevent Western investors from investing in a number of Chinese firms.
Additionally, Washington seeks to discredit China. One way to do so is to blame Beijing for the pandemic. Trump made early efforts in this direction, referring to Covid-19 as the Wuhan flu, the kung flu, and the China virus. His state department insinuated that the virus leaked from a Wuhan lab. Biden—different from Trump in style but largely continuous with the previous administration on foreign policy—has resurrected Trump’s lab leak theory.
Insight into Washington’s playbook on discrediting China may have been provided by Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations, who wrote an editorial in The Washington Post on June 4. It was titled “China could pay if nations come to believe the virus leaked from a lab.” [6]
The Council on Foreign Relations is a Wall Street funded and directed think tank that provides policy advice to the State Department. It is firmly interlocked with the US foreign policy establishment and the Biden administration. Typically, members of the council fill top cabinet positions. The current secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and commerce are members of the council, as are the UN ambassador, the national security advisor, CIA director, Indo-Pacific czar, and chief of staff, among others. [7] As A.B. Abrams explained in Immovable Object: North Korea’s 70 Years at War with American Power (Clarity Press, 2020, p. 453)
The CFR’s members were described by the Washington Post as ‘the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States’ and includes almost all CIA Directors, National Security Advisors, UN Ambassadors, Federal Reserve Chairs, World Bank Presidents, and Directors of the National Economic Council, several presidents and vice-presidents, the majority of state secretaries … and many high ranking NATO and military commanders. According to the Post, the council members were part of a foreign policy establishment with shared values and world views, whose role was not limited to analyzing foreign policy but also included taking an active hand in shaping it. … Stephen F. Cohen [himself once a member] described the council as ‘America’s single most important non-governmental foreign policy organization,’ with the power to ‘define the accepted, legitimate, orthodox parameters of discussion.’
Huang’s editorial at the very least reflects the kind of thinking that takes place in US foreign policy circles and may in fact reveal a playbook the CFR-interlocked Biden administration is actually following to turn the tables on China.
Huang notes that “China has, until now, enjoyed prestige on the world stage for its containment of the pandemic, especially compared with many Western countries” but adds that “if missteps by Chinese scientists” were seen to be “the cause of that pandemic, such praise would quickly fade.”
“Even a belief in a coverup without firm evidence of wrongdoing would be damaging”, he says. Moreover, if US intelligence were seen as exposing a coverup, it could re-establish “America’s reputation for competence.”
Huang believes that fostering a belief in a Chinese coverup, even without firm evidence, would:
“Precipitate a free fall in China’s relationship with the outside world”;
Provide a pretext for the United States to boycott the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics;
Raise questions in China about whether the Communist Party is fit to rule;
Force China to close in on itself in a fit of angry isolation as it is shunned by the rest of the world.
In other words, there are strong reasons for Washington, which makes no secret about viewing China as an enemy to be contained and countered, to manufacture a belief in a coverup.
However, US intelligence is of the view that it is unlikely that firm evidence of a lab leak can be obtained [8]. Accordingly, the pursuit of these policy benefits will depend on innuendo. Western journalists are working diligently to provide it, and, writing dozens of features in which, claiming powers of ratiocination equivalent to those of a Sherlock Holmes, they claim to have deduced Chinese culpability (see, for example, Nicholas Wade in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist.) Of course, all of this is nonsense. There is no evidence for a lab leak, and no matter how brilliant some journalists believe their powers of deduction are, their exercises in ratiocination remain pure speculation. Speculation is not evidence. Speculative arguments can also be constructed on the other side, and have been. [9]
The Wuhan lab leak theory has, within the context of US foreign policy, become the equivalent of the magician’s misdirection; it draws attention from the deception that the Western model works. The model, as it relates to the pandemic, has clearly failed.
It is clarifying to consider that in the rush to create a misdirection, two separate questions are being conflated:
Where did the virus come from?
How did the pandemic start?
We don’t know where the virus came from, and may never know. We still don’t know where the virus came from that killed tens of millions of people worldwide in the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 to 1920 .
But we do know how the Covid-19 pandemic started, which is the more consequential question. The pandemic started when “Chinese doctors and scientists working in international collaborations,” provided information “showing a deadly virus had emerged that had no treatment and could be passed between people”, and the United States, Canada, and Europe did precious little with this information, failing to act, unwilling to disrupt business activity and the continued tranquil digestion of profits, as the Lancet’s editor Richard Horton has pointed out. [10][11] Had these countries acted as swiftly and decisively to eliminate community transmission as China did, not only would they have been able to safely open their own economies long ago, they would have spared the world a deadly pandemic, which has already claimed the lives of more than 3.7 million people, and will carry off many more.
Much as Washington professes to disdain conspiracy theories, it is one the world’s principal creators of them, and vehicles for their propagation, amply aided by the Western mass media. The paragon case is the Washington-manufactured conspiracy theory about Saddam Hussein covering up weapons of mass destruction. As the Council on Foreign Relation’s Yanzhong Huang makes clear, a lab leak conspiracy theory has the potential to pay substantial dividends to the US position in the world, one badly bruised by China’s successes and Washington’s abject failures.
[1] Joe Biden, “Joe Biden: My trip to Europe is about America rallying the world’s democracies,” The Washington Post, June 5, 2021
[2] Miquel Oliu-Barton et al., “SARS-CoV-2 elimination, not mitigation, creates best outcomes for health, the economy, and civil liberties,” The Lancet, April 28, 2021, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(21)00978-8
[3] With (a) a US population of 328.2 million and (b) 1,796.26 deaths per million to May 31, there were (a)/1,000,00 x (b) = 589,533 covid-19 deaths in the United States. If the fatality rate had been as low as that of China, there would have been (a)/1,000,00 x 3.221 = 1,057 covid-19 deaths, or 588,475 fewer.
[4] Yuka Hayashi, Sabrina Siddiqui, and Andrew Restuccia, “U.S. to Increase Covid-19 Vaccine Exports Amid Global Pressure,” The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 2021
[5] Biden.
[6] Yanzhong Huang, “The origin of the virus is a scientific question — but one with huge political implications.” The Washington Post, June 4, 2021.
[7] See Laurence H. Shoup, “The Council on Foreign Relations, the Biden Team, and Key Policy Outcomes,” Monthly Review, May 2021.
[8] Julian E. Barnes and David E. Sanger, “U.S. Is Said to Have Unexamined Intelligence to Pore Over on Virus Origins,” New York Tines, May 27, 2021.
[9] See for example Angela L. Rasmussen and Stephen A. Goldstein, “Labs like the one in Wuhan are essential to preparing for future pandemics,” The New York Times, June 4, 2021.
[10] “Lancet editor Richard Horton quoted in “West suffering because it failed to listen to China on COVID-19, says Lancet editor,” CGTN, May 3, 2020
[11] “COVID-19 in the USA: a question of time,” The Lancet, April 18, 2020
https://gowans.blog/2021/06/07/washingt ... -revealed/
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We need an inquiry into the origins of the pandemic
By Stephen Gowans
June 5, 2021
On 4 March of this year, two dozen scientists, social scientists, and science journalists from the United States and allied countries—countries whose governments are engaged in various maneuvers to ‘contain’ a rising China—released an open letter attacking the WHO-convened mission which inquired into the origins of SARS-CoV-2. This letter is widely cited in Western journalism that now accepts the once discredited Wuhan lab leak theory as credible and worthy of consideration.
The WHO mission had concluded that the virus likely originated in bats and spread to an unidentified second species before spilling over into humans. It concluded that spillover through a laboratory accident was very unlikely.
The authors of the open letter said they released the letter to raise public awareness of the fact that half of the WHO team was comprised of Chinese citizens and that the scientific independence of these team members may have been limited. They did not question the scientific independence of other members of the team, implying that the Chinese members were partial but that the other members were not.
The motive for the letter appeared to be unease with the WHO mission’s conclusion that a lab leak was very unlikely. The authors called for a new inquiry to consider five possible pathways, all but one of which, if found to be the cause, would implicate employees connected with Wuhan laboratories.
The authors listed the following as the possible origins of the virus.
A pure zoonosis event with/without intermediate host;
Infection at a sampling site of a lab employee or of some accompanying non-lab personnel;
Infection during transport of collected animals and/or samples;
Lab Acquired Infection (LAI);
Lab-escape without LAI.
To be sure, all of these are possible pathways for SARS-CoV-2, and for other zoonoses, as well. It is unnecessary, however, to know which of these possible causes, if any, lie at the heart of the SARS-CoV-2 spillover to know that any of these, generalizing from Wuhan labs to all labs, could be the possible cause of a future spillover. What measures, therefore, ought to be taken to close or at least severely restrict these possible pathways? The authors of the letter do not say.
While the signatories urge that a new inquiry be undertaken because “Finding the origins of SARS-CoV-2 is critically important to both better addressing the current pandemic and reducing the risks of future ones”, they offer no explanation for how identifying the specific actual causes of this pandemic will help reduce the risk of future ones; (there are multiple possible causes of zoonotic spillovers, and those involved in a future spillover may be different from the causes underlying the current one.) What’s more, it is unclear how finding the origins of SARS-Cov-2 will help better address the current pandemic; (discovering the ingress point for a mouse into your house won’t help catch it.)
The cause of the pandemic, not the original outbreak, but the development of a potentially controllable zoonosis into an outbreak of global reach, is already known: It was the failure of the United States and its allies to take quick and decisive action in February 2020 at a time the catastrophe in embryo could have been aborted. Rather than mobilize public health measures to extinguish small fires and prevent their spread, as Beijing did, the United States, and countries that followed its lead, did precious little, unwilling to disrupt business activity and the continued tranquil digestion of profits. It is US and allied non-feasance—that is, human inaction—that transformed a preventable catastrophe into a full blown calamity that so far has produced over 3.7 million deaths.
As the editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, Richard Horton, recalled: “The United States of America wasted the whole of February and early March before they acted. That is the human tragedy of COVID-19. Thanks to the work of Chinese doctors and scientists working in international collaborations, all of this info [showing a deadly virus had emerged that had no treatment and could be passed between people] was known in January but for reasons that are difficult to understand, the world did not pay attention.”
But Horton had offered a clue as to why Washington failed to act, in an editorial he wrote for The Lancet.
“The degree to which the USA stalled in taking aggressive action to curtail the spread of COVID-19 is directly the product of an administration marked by consistently poor timing, intent on making decisions in favor of economic interests instead of those that are guided by science and to protect health. The rush to reopen the country [put] dollars over deaths.“
Zoonotic spillovers in nature may be infrequent, but they do occur. So, too, do lab leaks. To be sure, measures need be taken to reduce these events. But the events by themselves do not inevitably precipitate pandemics. Pandemics, like conflagrations, require a spark, but also kindling, and at times, firefighters who fail to act.
An unrestricted international investigation, guided by the goal of learning how to better address the current pandemic and reduce the risks of future ones, unquestionably needs to be undertaken. But the investigation, if it is to be meaningful (and not a fishing expedition to gather data with the aim of pillorying a near-peer competitor), must inquire, not into what we already know—that certain events are possible causes of zoonotic spillovers—but into what we are not clear about, namely, the institutional forces that stopped the United States and its followers from acting decisively to avert an impending public health disaster. In other words, the inquiry must identify why the United States, and many other countries under its sway, followed not the dictum, public health is the highest law, but the principle, private profit is the highest good.
It is the answer to that question that must be known if we are to reduce the risk of future pandemics and better address the current one.
https://gowans.blog/2021/06/05/we-need- ... -pandemic/.
Stephen been busy...and as usual is astute.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
A medical worker tends to a patient suffering from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), inside the ICU ward at a hospital in New Delhi, India, April 29, 2021. Credit: Arunava Das, “COVID-19 takes a toll on India’s doctors as virus inflicts deep pain,” China Daily, June 6, 2021.
Rob Wallace on the political economy of pandemics
Posted Jun 18, 2021 by Rob Wallace, Jipson John, Jitheesh P. M.
Originally published: Frontline (July 02, 2021 ) |
<snip>
The world has been living with the coronavirus for more than a year now. Although different vaccines are available, countries have still failed to contain the virus. What do you think about the future?
COVID-19 will likely continue to slosh around for years to come, evolving new variants. The pathogen eventually may attenuate to a less deadly clinical course, but it may take years, even decades. The danger of the virus is that we can’t predict its evolution. That’s why we must bring down the hammer of global solidarity to block the virus from what appears its repeated egress as it finds one susceptible population after another. China first. The U.S. yesterday (and in its poorest parts still today even with the vaccine). India and Brazil today (without widespread vaccination), maybe other countries in the global South tomorrow. Then back to China and the U.S. Working together the world over is our only option.
That flight plan doesn’t even speak to the other SARS-like [severe acute respiratory syndrome] coronaviruses gearing up (one or two of which are even now likely already starting to circulate in human populations). Or the next Ebola strain. Or Nipah virus. Or African swine fever. Or, our old friends, avian and swine influenza.
Capitalism drives both ends of the process. Global expropriation drives the land use and deforestation leading to the disease spillover events plaguing us with novel deadly pathogens. And it drives the refusal to protect millions of people with biomedical prophylaxes and the simplest of non-pharmaceutical [interventions] like masks and paid time off from work. Populations are treated as mere markets. And markets that can’t pay for medical commodities (or vacation time) aren’t thought of as people.
Pathogens shrug their shoulders at such omissions. The bugs infect anyone capital refuses to protect, only to splash back into even the wealthiest. [Brazil’s President Jair] Bolsonaro, [former U.S. President Donald] Trump, [the United Kingdom’s Prime Minister] Boris Johnson and such leaders across the world are malicious miscreants, convening necropolitical death cults. But the alternatives, also tied to capitalist sociopathy, are only a little bit better. Our “progressives” worship at the altar of the circuits of capital.
The god of capital
Could you please explain what you mean by that last sentence?
If worship is expressing obedience or adoration to a deity, then many a liberal bows to the god of capital. Capitalism is the dark star around which all bourgeois politics—from liberalism to the nastiest fascism—orbits. Capital isn’t just a point of reference. It acts on people moment to moment in the every day. To add another metaphor, capital is like an acid. It eats through all human relations, contracting even the family as a means by which to reproduce the labour force. While all well and good on their own terms, human rights, individualistic humanism and parliamentarianism emerged largely as bargaining chips by which a variety of populations that objected to being treated as chattel—from feudal peasants turned into an unmoored army of labour to former slaves and the millions dispossessed of their land by primitive accumulation—could be folded back into production. Such expropriation is treated as if [it is] the natural order of things.
Many scholars, even before Marx, described the social origins of such an order. That work continues. Among the more recent scholarship, the sociologist Marc Aziz Michael described the hard work that went into training millions of people the world over into accepting their dispossession by the market as if [it was] a visceral instinct like hunger or the libido. It took three centuries to get everyday people to accept such evisceration. Money itself took over the biological imperative of reproduction, placing itself first before even millions of people’s very lives. To grasp that foundational point, India needs only to look around its own pandemic ruins as [Prime Minister Narendra] Modi and [Home Minister] Amit Shah, yes, but also, as the historian Tithi Bhattacharya describes it, all the way back through to the INC [Indian National Congress] and CPI(M) [Communist Party of India (Marxist)] pushed back against their own constituents by placing accumulation before the social commons.
Do you expect a more intensive wave of infection to come? How optimistic are you about the various vaccine development programmes and vaccination?
The future of COVID-19 is bright and shiny. The virus has many more millions of people to infect. The vaccines developed do work, but the countries of the global North are more willing to protect their corporate patents than to protect humanity by getting the world inoculated as fast as possible. Even as the vaccines were developed in part by testing them on people of the global South.
As the various variants evolve and spread, they’re already showing themselves capable of evolving resistance to the vaccines. The B.1.351 variant [documented first in South Africa and called the Beta variant according to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) new nomenclature] is nearly entirely resistant to the AstraZeneca vaccine and somewhat against the Pfizer vaccine. P.1 in Brazil [the Gamma variant] is also showing some resistance to the Pfizer vaccine. Most Americans polled agree that the vaccine ingredients and recipes should be handed over for generic development in India and elsewhere. But the American people don’t necessarily run their government. It’s more governance by the corporation for the corporation.
Such machinations explain why epidemiologists make a distinction between vaccine efficaciousness and vaccine efficiency. The former speaks to whether the vaccine works in the body. The latter speaks to whether the vaccine works in the body politic. Can we deliver the vaccine worldwide? Under rapacious capitalism, the answer appears no.
<snip>
Field theory of COVID-19 origins
COVID-19 was first reported in China and then spread all over the world. A strong case was made for the theory that the virus initially spread from the Wuhan seafood market. But there is also another argument or allegation that the virus leaked from a virology laboratory in Wuhan. What do you think about the origins of the novel coronavirus?
The case for COVID-19 origins in Wuhan’s Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market is weak. Only 40 per cent of positive samples in the market were found in market streets where wildlife were housed. A quarter of the original human infectees never visited the market or appeared directly exposed. Some of the genetic evidence rolling in appears instead to support the possibility that COVID-19 was circulating in humans for years before the Wuhan outbreak. I’m a supporter of this kind of field theory of COVID-19’s origins.
That set of hypotheses suggests the virus emerged in the course of circulating out of encroached-upon populations of horseshoe bats in central and south China—along the lines of the land use origins we already spoke of—and into local populations of traditional livestock, wild food animals and the labour that tend them. Even now, the various coronaviruses are conducting thousands, if not millions, of experiments across non-bat species, in the course of which they are learning how to crack the human immune system. COVID-19 may have done so over the course of several years on its way to Wuhan.
There is an alternative hypothesis. The lab leak theory presumes a SARS-like strain escaped out the back door of one of the two governmental biosafety labs in Wuhan, not far from the Huanan Market. There are some terribly gauche versions of the theory we can dismiss. Trumpists and their liberal opponents here in the U.S. both love to bash China. And then can’t understand why Asian Americans are getting beaten up in the streets here. But there are more credible versions of the hypothesis. I’ve unpacked one of the better versions, pointing out its various problems (and promises). But against the recent WHO report, which the WHO’s own leadership rejected, I don’t think a lab leak beyond the realm of extreme possibility.
In 2013, a Princeton University team mapped the expansive wave of new biosafety labs built since 9/11 and, earlier, H5N1, the first of the century’s celebrity viruses. The team showed [that] thousands of BSL-3 [biosafety level] and -4 labs working on some of the world’s deadliest pathogens have been built, often with little regulation, in or near some of the world’s major cities, including Wuhan, Pune and Bhopal. When given such increasing opportunity, the risk of such a rare event bends toward inevitability. That doesn’t mean that a lab leak is what happened in Wuhan. It just means that the lab leak theory is indeed a possibility worth greater investigation even as I remain a proponent of the field theory of COVID-19’s origins.
Spillover from ‘neoliberal frontiers’
You have argued that “Some pathogens emerge right out of centres of production. Food-borne bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter come to mind. But many like COVID-19 originate on the frontiers of capital production.” Could you explain this?
Pathogens emerge in different ways depending upon the species, place and commodity. But all now are connected within the same web of environmental damage and global expropriation, which explains the cross-continental nature of new pathogens. SARS in China. MERS [Middle East respiratory syndrome] in the Middle East [West Asia]. Zika in Brazil. H5Nx in Europe. Swine flu in North America. And it isn’t just industrialising agriculture. Dam and irrigation construction drives malaria outbreaks in India and elsewhere.
Extractive capitalism is finding its way into the last of the rainforests and savannahs, anywhere, really, that hasn’t been looped into a circuit of production. And where global capital finds resistance, it sicks the state on those indigenous [people] and smallholders who resist. One thinks of Operation Green Hunt [in Chhattisgarh] and bauxite in the hills of Odisha. As a result the world is ringed by a daisy chain of these regional circuits of production. Each circuit typically runs from the deepest forest through the peri-urban continuum to a local regional capital. Monoculture agriculture, mining and logging gouge the circuit along the way. The people living there are pushed out or proletarianised into cheap labour.
At forest edges subjected to development, what geographers call the “neoliberal frontier”, novel zoonotic pathogens are spilling over out of previously marginalised reservoirs of wild hosts and, as we previously described, into local livestock, wild food animals and the farm workers or wranglers who tend them. Some diseases such as the Nipah virus [infection], coronavirus [infections] and Ebola spill at these points of disruption. Previous ecologies that marginalised these pathogens to a select few hosts are unplugged and then reconnected in such a way that the pathogens have new exits out through the circuit of production they didn’t have before. The pathogens make their way to a regional capital and some to the world.
Other pathogens emerge at the other end of the circuit of production, in, for instance, outer-ring megafarms supplying urban centres. So, food-borne bacteria or avian influenzas, for instance, are able to surf through the thousands of poultry and livestock raised to feed urban consumers, sometimes picking up in deadliness barn to barn, before spilling over into humans. Of the 39 documented transitions from low to high deadliness in avian influenzas from 1959 onwards, all but two occurred in commercial poultry operations, typically of tens or hundreds of thousands of birds. Intensive operations are so inundated with circulating avian and swine influenza that they now serve as their own reservoirs for new strains. Populations of wild waterfowl are no longer the only source.
COVID-19’s origins are something of a mixture of these two ends of our circuits of production, the forest and the industrial farm. Coronaviruses are hosted by bats around the world. But the strains that horseshoe bats host in China appear to hit humans worse once they successfully jump species. That wasn’t a problem until recently. The environment in which these bats live has changed in foundational ways.
Upon its economic liberalisation post-Mao [Zedong], China undertook the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] route of development, intent on feeding its own people with its own natural resources. Millions were pulled out of poverty. Millions were left behind. Pro or con, in taking this course, Chinese agribusiness and an increasingly capitalised wild foods sector cut into the landscape of central and south China where many of these bat populations are located. As with Ebola, the interfaces among the bats, livestock, wild food animals, farmers and miners on this commodity frontier expanded, boosting the traffic of various SARS-like coronaviruses.
Systemic reasons for pandemic
The mainstream view treats each new virus attack as a purely biological phenomenon detached from systemic causes that underlie societal life. But you and your colleagues have written extensively about these systemic reasons. Pathogens were there in the pre-capitalist period too. Why do you call “the age of capitalism” “the age of pandemic”?
If you like the system, or benefit from it, you don’t blame the system for the damage it causes. You blame the victims or you blame the enemy or you blame the non-human. In the case of COVID-19, those in power have blamed all three. Blame poor people living crowded together instead of the failure of the state to provide adequate housing. Blame China (or Pakistan or Maoists or Muslims). Or blame the virus itself.
The last, of course, causes the infection, but pinning causality to the object involved allows those in power, and the epidemiologists who serve them, to avoid discussion of the broader political economy—the field of causality—that sets the opportunities and barriers a pathogen faces. In the end, pathogens spread much the way water flows through cracks in ice. The infrastructure of power collectively arrives at decisions about how many, and where, the cracks in societal ice emerge. And not just during a plague year or across an electoral cycle but going back decades. Do you have a well-funded national health service (which takes decades to build and billions in rupees to maintain)? Does your population have access to clean water and nutritious food? Do you have social services such that should a disaster arrive, people can shelter in place and not worry about paying bills? What kind of access to non-pharmaceutical interventions do you have in place? China, Vietnam, New Zealand, Cuba, Uruguay and Taiwan—all very different political systems—were able to initially defeat their outbreaks without a vaccine. Did India take the neoliberal or denialist route that the U.S. and Brazil took? Does that explain its present outbreak?
Yes, outbreaks have happened before. Indeed, infectious diseases have been the main source of mortality since humans began civilisation, when we moved from a migratory life into towns with population concentrations large enough to support more acute infections. But just because diseases circulated among human populations before does not mean capitalism isn’t causing novel outbreaks now.
Pathogens, like humans, have histories. They have their origins, their diasporic migration, their classical eras, Dark Ages and Industrial Revolutions. And as human pathogens evolve and spread in a world of our own making, these eras often coincide with our own. For instance, for most of its history, the cholera bacterium made its living eating plankton in the Ganges delta. Only once humanity became urbanised and, later, interwoven together by 19th century transport was cholera able to make its way to the world’s cities. The bacterium was able to transform from a marginal bug into a roaring success when municipalities began drawing drinking water from the same place they dumped their sewage.
Despite our scientific understanding and the latest [advances] in medical technology, humanity finds itself on a terrible epidemiological precipice. And it has everything to do with how we organise ourselves as societies. Our institutions are in some ways more important a prophylaxis than whatever biomedical innovation we devise, how[ever] important those remain.
Right now, neoliberal capitalism, the world’s dominant paradigm, is organised around rolling back the public commons—for instance, the water treatment that helps control cholera—in favour of limiting governance to propping up corporate productivity. That’s being done at the national level but also at the intergovernmental level. The World Bank and IMF [International Monetary Fund] demand of countries that accept loans [that they] engage in the structural adjustment that reduces domestic supports and lets multinationals in and reduces public health outlays in favour of austerity budgets. Letting multinationals off the leash leads to treating land as a source of export-led profit rather than as a regenerative bread basket that feeds millions of people generation after generation. When companies ruin a landscape—including the work that local ecologies conduct boxing in wildlife diseases that might spill over—capital moves on to the next landscape over and starts extraction all over again.
So even as the present megafarms and livestock feedlots don’t explain past outbreaks, it doesn’t mean they’re not responsible for our current batch. That’d be like arguing oil isn’t a cause for war today because the Romans never fought for it. We acknowledge our own historical trajectories. We should be able to acknowledge those of our pathogens as well. And right now, as the scientific literature shows, we are producing more documented outbreaks, extending farther and faster, as capitalists lead the way wrecking our ecologies for profit.
<snip>
U.S., global exporter of swine flu
When the swine flu (H1N1) broke out in 2009, you called it the NAFTA flu. Could you speak about this particular case and also about the role of such trade in causing and spreading the viruses?
Under neoliberalism’s free trade push, global circuits of capital multiply in distance and connectivity. Landscape production is increasingly defined by relational geographies wherein what happens in a local landscape is tied to capital accumulation in countries halfway around the world that supplied the finance driving deforestation and development.
Such circuits are imprinting themselves on the evolution and spread of pathogens. One team of evolutionary biologists was able to infer the spatial jumps country to country as counted through all swine influenza evolutionary trees: all genomic segments, all lineages, from one location to another. The team showed that unlike for poultry and for hogs, China is not an important source of swine influenzas on the global stage as most of its hogs are purchased domestically. The U.S. on the other hand, the leading global exporter of hogs, is also the leading global exporter of swine flu.
NAFTA offered a regional example. The free trade agreement brought down the economic borders between the U.S., Mexico and Canada. U.S. agricultural companies began to dump cheap meat (and other food commodities) on to the Mexican market at a financial loss as a way of driving Mexican domestic companies out of business. That changed the way the livestock sector was structured in Mexico. Mexican operations could either wave the white flag and sell their operations to American multinationals or consolidate to grow large enough to compete with the multinationals. U.S. companies like Smithfield began to ship their own hogs into Mexico and to set up intensive piggeries down there too.
By the same technique, the team of evolutionary biologists tracked the migration events that led to the emergence of what became swine flu out of this new agriculture, showing the U.S. and Canada, seeding multiple genomic segments of that new flu in Mexican States with the greatest hog concentrations, including Jalisco, Puebla and Sonora. In other words, the notion of a NAFTA flu I proposed in 2009 was subsequently supported by the very genetic sequences of the virus itself.
We can generalise such trends. Such circuits of capital back an increasing volume of trade in live animals, produce, processed food and germplasm, helping spread zoonotic and foodborne pathogens around the world. The increasing distance food animals are shipped country to country has expanded the diversity of the genetic segments that pathogens exchange, increasing the rate and combinations over which diseases explore their evolutionary possibilities. The greater the variation in their genetics, the faster pathogens evolve. And the more likely deadlier variants are converged upon.
<snip>
What are the lessons humanity has to learn from the present pandemic and how to prepare to face future challenges?
As I’ve already offered some practical interventions, I’ll make this summing up short. In the course of industrialising livestock production on the multinational model, we industrialised the pathogens that circulate among them. So to stop the queue of deadly pathogens already inside our door, we need to end agribusiness as we know it. Humanity must reintegrate itself back into the ecology it will always depend upon anyway. Protect the forests and savannahs through which the deadlier pathogens circulate among their wildlife reservoirs. Let forests work for us in their natural succession, padding pathogens in the complexity of ecological relationships we should avoid disrupting. We can still appropriate resources from nature to survive. But we should retire from expropriating nature to our very extinction.
The future isn’t written in stone, but it calls upon all of us to meet the historical moment with the bravery and verve and ingenuity it is asking. Not just in response to the geological forces we have unleashed but to the rich and their well-paid minions who, sociopathic as a matter of principle, are prepared to promote and protect capitalism at the cost of the very planet upon which we depend. Are we ready to revolt?
https://mronline.org/2021/06/18/rob-wal ... pandemics/
Much more to this.(It wouldn't fit) See Link. Italics added.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
COVAX: FROM GOOD INTENTIONS TO THE BRINK OF FAILURE
25 Jun 2021 , 8:39 am .
The mechanism's goals include vaccine doses for at least 20% of the world's population (Photo: Ragul Krishnan / Covax)
Humanity has regularly faced the threat of epidemics and pandemics throughout history. Attempts to protect populations were initially successful, with the development of new vaccines, such as those for plague and cholera, under the leadership of bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine. Also setbacks that have been serious like some experiences in Africa and Asia.
Smallpox and rinderpest have been significantly reduced, as have diphtheria, typhoid, polio, and Haemophilus influenzae type B meningitis . Some coronaviruses that seasonally infect humans causing mild symptoms have been identified, but the appearance of novel zoonotic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has rapidly triggered the current coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) as a global pandemic responsible for widespread mortality.
The severe expressions of covid-19 resemble a previous infectious threat that was initially designated as hospital fever and puerperal fever, currently known as sepsis. Research affirms that SARS-CoV-2 infection has often been considered a form of viral sepsis (due to the common characteristics with bacterial sepsis), but it is also associated with a number of specific and unique symptoms.
Rapid advances in the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, in particular the design of effective recombinant messenger RNA (mRNA) and adenovirus vaccines, have been crucial to curbing the pandemic, yet they have become a demonstrative example of how the global power moves and predatory nature of globalized capitalism.
COVAX IS FULL OF GOOD INTENTIONS
What in English has been called Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) is an initiative of the Global Access Fund for Covid-19 Vaccines, an alliance of 190 countries promoted by public and private actors with the aim of guaranteeing equitable access to the vaccines that can be developed against covid-19.
It is led by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the World Health Organization (WHO), and is "one of the pillars of Accelerated Access to Tools Against COVID-19, an alliance launched in April 2020 by the World Health Organization, the European Commission and the Government of France. "
The Covax mechanism has been one of the most advanced initiatives, according to experts, because it is designed for the collective benefit of the countries involved through efficient distribution processes (Photo: GAVI)
The GAVI website says that "it is the only truly global solution to this pandemic because it is the only effort to ensure that people in all corners of the world have access to COVID-19 vaccines once they are available, regardless. of their wealth. "
Your goals are:
*Vaccine doses for at least 20% of the population of the countries.
*A diversified and actively managed portfolio of vaccines.
*Deliver vaccines as soon as they are available.
*End the acute phase of the pandemic.
*Rebuild economies.
This platform aims to support the research, development and manufacture of a wide range of covid-19 vaccine candidates, and negotiate their prices. All participating countries, regardless of their income levels, would have equal access to these vaccines once they were developed.
The initial goal was to have 2 billion doses available by the end of 2021, which should be enough to protect high-risk and vulnerable people, as well as front-line healthcare workers.
The mechanism would benefit rich and poor countries alike because it would reduce the chances of regrowth by ensuring that the rest of the world also has access to doses amid a pandemic that is costing the world economy $ 375 billion every month. .
On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies have been unwilling to risk expanding their infrastructures until their vaccine candidates demonstrate efficacy and are licensed, leading to a significant delay and initially vaccine shortages.
The mechanism therefore set out to provide investment and incentives to ensure that manufacturers were ready to produce the necessary doses as soon as a vaccine was approved. It would also use the collective purchasing power that derives from the participation of so many countries to negotiate highly competitive prices from manufacturers that would then be transferred to the participants.
WHEN REALITY ARRIVES
Various academic and political spokespersons have condemned Covax's failure, the most publicized being that of an opinion article in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet signed by Ann Danaiya Usher. There, rich countries are harshly criticized, blaming them for the failure of the mechanism.
He states that the initiative was created to supply covid-19 vaccines for all on the basis of solidarity and equity: "Instead it is based on the willingness of rich countries to share their doses."
In a statement last May, the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore, said that the Covax program, designed to ensure equitable access to vaccines, would soon deliver its 65 millionth dose ( to this date it has distributed 72 million), but should have delivered at least 170 million. He predicted that as the deadly tide continues in India and its neighbors, the deficit would be 190 million doses by the time the G7 leaders meet in early June.
The WHO estimates that 11 billion vaccines are needed to end the pandemic and Covax would distribute 2 billion to cover 30% of all doses required by 92 low-income countries, which is, at this point, impossible. So far, 2 billion doses have been distributed but unevenly, Covax was responsible for less than 4%.
It seemed more difficult to achieve the goal of raising 8 thousand 300 million dollars, however, it has already raised more than 6 thousand 600 million, 80% of what was proposed.
Even the countries that have already benefited from the mechanism are at risk of not complying with the second dose, between 30 and 40 countries do not have this capacity because they lack it.
African countries like Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi and Rwanda have exhausted all the vaccines they received through Covax. Seven more countries, including Angola, Uganda, Ethiopia and Egypt, have used more than 80% of supplies, according to WHO (Photo: GAVI)
He quotes researcher Gavin Yamey from Duke University (Durham, NC, USA), who participated in the design of the Covax mechanism and said that "even with full funding", the deployment of Covax was "much slower than in the countries of high income "and" today, ten countries have administered 75% of all vaccines against covid-19, but, in poor countries, health workers and people with underlying diseases cannot access them. "
While the countries that could pay for the vaccines signed bilateral contracts with the pharmaceutical companies "they secured a place at the front of the line" and Covax, having no means to compete, "was relegated," the article says.
The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's largest vaccine manufacturer that would supply 900 million more doses, announced that it would not be able to send Covax, or any other overseas customer, more batches of its vaccines until the end of the year due to the increase in cases and deaths due to the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.
In August 2020, while Trump was reneging on the closure and protection measures, the United States had already reached seven agreements with six companies, with which it would obtain 800 million doses, enough to vaccinate 140% of its population; The United Kingdom, for its part, reached five agreements that would reach it to vaccinate 225% of its population; and the European Union signed two agreements that assured it 500 million doses. These early investments allowed rich countries to earn top spots for vaccines when they were ready.
As the text notes: "Thirty countries bypassed Covax and made big deals directly with the labs" and "were very lucky the vaccines worked. And since they emptied the shelves, there weren't enough doses left for Covax."
A DECREED FAILURE?
The US transnational Pfizer agreed in January to provide 40 million doses in 2021 to Covax, but by mid-May it had only shipped 1.25 million fewer doses than it produces in a single day. It has agreed to supply the European Union with 1.8 billion doses, until beyond the middle of the year 2023.
Covax has other agreements, some of which were announced in May during the G20 meeting, but few or no doses have been shipped:
*Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson pledged to donate 3.5 billion doses to the most disadvantaged countries between 2021 and 2022. This year about 1.3 billion doses would be delivered and in 2022, the rest.
*Pfizer would provide 2 billion doses.
*Modern "up to" 995 million.
*Johnson & Johnson "up to 500 million."
*The European Union (EU) announced it would offer 100 million doses, Italy 300 million euros ($ 365 million) and France 30 million doses, all through Covax.
*350 million doses of the Novavax vaccine, to be delivered from late 2021 to 2022.
However, in Latin America and the Caribbean the reality continues to be the following:
Last April, some political spokesmen such as the presidents of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, Alejandro Giammattei and Luis Abinader, respectively, called the mechanism a "failure" . This is what they said in their speech at the talk of the Ibero-American Business Meeting that was held in Andorra.
Giammattei called "a small group of countries that have all vaccines while a large number of countries have none" as irresponsible, while announcing that he had just bought Russian Sputnik V vaccines: "The Covax system is a failure."
Abinader called for the reflection of all countries to analyze what has been done wrong and how to work better, and said he shared with Giammattei "the failure of the Covax system." He recalled that the Dominican Republic requested an agreement with the patents of pharmaceutical companies to be able to produce vaccines in the country and supply other countries, and added: "We understand that countries want to vaccinate their own first," but has insisted on giving the opportunity others to be able to produce vaccines.
A fact that has confirmed the seriousness of the Covax state has been the failure to deliver 5 million vaccines to Venezuela, although the payment of 120 million dollars was made entirely by the national government.
As announced on June 10 by the Executive Vice President of the Republic, Delcy Rodríguez, the last four payments of the Venezuelan government to Covax to acquire the vaccines against covid-19 have been blocked and are "under investigation". immunization in the country.
It is about 10 million dollars blocked by the UBS Bank that complies with the unilateral coercive measures of the United States against the country.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced on June 9 that the Covax vaccine allocation or availability processes for Venezuela "are underway," but the country would still need $ 10 million to complete the payment to the mechanism.
"At this moment we do not have confirmation that the payment has been completed. There is still a balance of 10 million dollars and we hope that the decision of the Covax mechanism will be favorable for the Venezuelan population and all the countries of the region. That decision will be linked to other internal processes, "said PAHO Director of Health Emergencies, Ciro Ugarte.
Venezuela had requested 5 million doses of the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine from Covax. Even though the funds are being blocked by the influence of the United States and anti-Chavismo, the mechanism has not agreed to dispatch the drugs.
"That they give us back the money and with that we buy the vaccines from Russia, China, Cuba or whoever it may concern," said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza from the Valdai International Discussion Club in Moscow.
He reiterated how around 6 billion dollars are still blocked, preventing the country from acquiring medicines and supplies to combat the pandemic.
"We have suffered a lot as a people thanks to unilateral coercive measures (...) Not only do the businessmen and their workers suffer, the 30 million Venezuelans suffer from the shortage, the lack of medicines. It has been a collective punishment," he said.
Faced with a historical challenge such as the one facing humanity in the midst of the global pandemic, the Covax mechanism is only one angle of the problem, robust health systems are required and focused on a non-commercialized vision of health. However, the consolidation of the aforementioned mechanism is vital to overcome the obstacle of second and even third waves of the pandemic in poor countries.
Its failure would be the failure of the human species, also of a configuration of the State system continually assailed by imperial and (neo) colonial tensions and pretensions of unipolar control and domination.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/co ... el-fracaso
Google Translator
25 Jun 2021 , 8:39 am .
The mechanism's goals include vaccine doses for at least 20% of the world's population (Photo: Ragul Krishnan / Covax)
Humanity has regularly faced the threat of epidemics and pandemics throughout history. Attempts to protect populations were initially successful, with the development of new vaccines, such as those for plague and cholera, under the leadership of bacteriologist Waldemar Haffkine. Also setbacks that have been serious like some experiences in Africa and Asia.
Smallpox and rinderpest have been significantly reduced, as have diphtheria, typhoid, polio, and Haemophilus influenzae type B meningitis . Some coronaviruses that seasonally infect humans causing mild symptoms have been identified, but the appearance of novel zoonotic severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has rapidly triggered the current coronavirus disease 2019 (covid-19) as a global pandemic responsible for widespread mortality.
The severe expressions of covid-19 resemble a previous infectious threat that was initially designated as hospital fever and puerperal fever, currently known as sepsis. Research affirms that SARS-CoV-2 infection has often been considered a form of viral sepsis (due to the common characteristics with bacterial sepsis), but it is also associated with a number of specific and unique symptoms.
Rapid advances in the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, in particular the design of effective recombinant messenger RNA (mRNA) and adenovirus vaccines, have been crucial to curbing the pandemic, yet they have become a demonstrative example of how the global power moves and predatory nature of globalized capitalism.
COVAX IS FULL OF GOOD INTENTIONS
What in English has been called Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access (Covax) is an initiative of the Global Access Fund for Covid-19 Vaccines, an alliance of 190 countries promoted by public and private actors with the aim of guaranteeing equitable access to the vaccines that can be developed against covid-19.
It is led by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and the World Health Organization (WHO), and is "one of the pillars of Accelerated Access to Tools Against COVID-19, an alliance launched in April 2020 by the World Health Organization, the European Commission and the Government of France. "
The Covax mechanism has been one of the most advanced initiatives, according to experts, because it is designed for the collective benefit of the countries involved through efficient distribution processes (Photo: GAVI)
The GAVI website says that "it is the only truly global solution to this pandemic because it is the only effort to ensure that people in all corners of the world have access to COVID-19 vaccines once they are available, regardless. of their wealth. "
Your goals are:
*Vaccine doses for at least 20% of the population of the countries.
*A diversified and actively managed portfolio of vaccines.
*Deliver vaccines as soon as they are available.
*End the acute phase of the pandemic.
*Rebuild economies.
This platform aims to support the research, development and manufacture of a wide range of covid-19 vaccine candidates, and negotiate their prices. All participating countries, regardless of their income levels, would have equal access to these vaccines once they were developed.
The initial goal was to have 2 billion doses available by the end of 2021, which should be enough to protect high-risk and vulnerable people, as well as front-line healthcare workers.
The mechanism would benefit rich and poor countries alike because it would reduce the chances of regrowth by ensuring that the rest of the world also has access to doses amid a pandemic that is costing the world economy $ 375 billion every month. .
On the other hand, pharmaceutical companies have been unwilling to risk expanding their infrastructures until their vaccine candidates demonstrate efficacy and are licensed, leading to a significant delay and initially vaccine shortages.
The mechanism therefore set out to provide investment and incentives to ensure that manufacturers were ready to produce the necessary doses as soon as a vaccine was approved. It would also use the collective purchasing power that derives from the participation of so many countries to negotiate highly competitive prices from manufacturers that would then be transferred to the participants.
WHEN REALITY ARRIVES
Various academic and political spokespersons have condemned Covax's failure, the most publicized being that of an opinion article in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet signed by Ann Danaiya Usher. There, rich countries are harshly criticized, blaming them for the failure of the mechanism.
He states that the initiative was created to supply covid-19 vaccines for all on the basis of solidarity and equity: "Instead it is based on the willingness of rich countries to share their doses."
In a statement last May, the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Henrietta Fore, said that the Covax program, designed to ensure equitable access to vaccines, would soon deliver its 65 millionth dose ( to this date it has distributed 72 million), but should have delivered at least 170 million. He predicted that as the deadly tide continues in India and its neighbors, the deficit would be 190 million doses by the time the G7 leaders meet in early June.
The WHO estimates that 11 billion vaccines are needed to end the pandemic and Covax would distribute 2 billion to cover 30% of all doses required by 92 low-income countries, which is, at this point, impossible. So far, 2 billion doses have been distributed but unevenly, Covax was responsible for less than 4%.
It seemed more difficult to achieve the goal of raising 8 thousand 300 million dollars, however, it has already raised more than 6 thousand 600 million, 80% of what was proposed.
Even the countries that have already benefited from the mechanism are at risk of not complying with the second dose, between 30 and 40 countries do not have this capacity because they lack it.
African countries like Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi and Rwanda have exhausted all the vaccines they received through Covax. Seven more countries, including Angola, Uganda, Ethiopia and Egypt, have used more than 80% of supplies, according to WHO (Photo: GAVI)
He quotes researcher Gavin Yamey from Duke University (Durham, NC, USA), who participated in the design of the Covax mechanism and said that "even with full funding", the deployment of Covax was "much slower than in the countries of high income "and" today, ten countries have administered 75% of all vaccines against covid-19, but, in poor countries, health workers and people with underlying diseases cannot access them. "
While the countries that could pay for the vaccines signed bilateral contracts with the pharmaceutical companies "they secured a place at the front of the line" and Covax, having no means to compete, "was relegated," the article says.
The Serum Institute of India (SII), the world's largest vaccine manufacturer that would supply 900 million more doses, announced that it would not be able to send Covax, or any other overseas customer, more batches of its vaccines until the end of the year due to the increase in cases and deaths due to the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2.
In August 2020, while Trump was reneging on the closure and protection measures, the United States had already reached seven agreements with six companies, with which it would obtain 800 million doses, enough to vaccinate 140% of its population; The United Kingdom, for its part, reached five agreements that would reach it to vaccinate 225% of its population; and the European Union signed two agreements that assured it 500 million doses. These early investments allowed rich countries to earn top spots for vaccines when they were ready.
As the text notes: "Thirty countries bypassed Covax and made big deals directly with the labs" and "were very lucky the vaccines worked. And since they emptied the shelves, there weren't enough doses left for Covax."
A DECREED FAILURE?
The US transnational Pfizer agreed in January to provide 40 million doses in 2021 to Covax, but by mid-May it had only shipped 1.25 million fewer doses than it produces in a single day. It has agreed to supply the European Union with 1.8 billion doses, until beyond the middle of the year 2023.
Covax has other agreements, some of which were announced in May during the G20 meeting, but few or no doses have been shipped:
*Pfizer / BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson pledged to donate 3.5 billion doses to the most disadvantaged countries between 2021 and 2022. This year about 1.3 billion doses would be delivered and in 2022, the rest.
*Pfizer would provide 2 billion doses.
*Modern "up to" 995 million.
*Johnson & Johnson "up to 500 million."
*The European Union (EU) announced it would offer 100 million doses, Italy 300 million euros ($ 365 million) and France 30 million doses, all through Covax.
*350 million doses of the Novavax vaccine, to be delivered from late 2021 to 2022.
However, in Latin America and the Caribbean the reality continues to be the following:
Last April, some political spokesmen such as the presidents of Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, Alejandro Giammattei and Luis Abinader, respectively, called the mechanism a "failure" . This is what they said in their speech at the talk of the Ibero-American Business Meeting that was held in Andorra.
Giammattei called "a small group of countries that have all vaccines while a large number of countries have none" as irresponsible, while announcing that he had just bought Russian Sputnik V vaccines: "The Covax system is a failure."
Abinader called for the reflection of all countries to analyze what has been done wrong and how to work better, and said he shared with Giammattei "the failure of the Covax system." He recalled that the Dominican Republic requested an agreement with the patents of pharmaceutical companies to be able to produce vaccines in the country and supply other countries, and added: "We understand that countries want to vaccinate their own first," but has insisted on giving the opportunity others to be able to produce vaccines.
A fact that has confirmed the seriousness of the Covax state has been the failure to deliver 5 million vaccines to Venezuela, although the payment of 120 million dollars was made entirely by the national government.
As announced on June 10 by the Executive Vice President of the Republic, Delcy Rodríguez, the last four payments of the Venezuelan government to Covax to acquire the vaccines against covid-19 have been blocked and are "under investigation". immunization in the country.
It is about 10 million dollars blocked by the UBS Bank that complies with the unilateral coercive measures of the United States against the country.
The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) announced on June 9 that the Covax vaccine allocation or availability processes for Venezuela "are underway," but the country would still need $ 10 million to complete the payment to the mechanism.
"At this moment we do not have confirmation that the payment has been completed. There is still a balance of 10 million dollars and we hope that the decision of the Covax mechanism will be favorable for the Venezuelan population and all the countries of the region. That decision will be linked to other internal processes, "said PAHO Director of Health Emergencies, Ciro Ugarte.
Venezuela had requested 5 million doses of the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) vaccine from Covax. Even though the funds are being blocked by the influence of the United States and anti-Chavismo, the mechanism has not agreed to dispatch the drugs.
"That they give us back the money and with that we buy the vaccines from Russia, China, Cuba or whoever it may concern," said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza from the Valdai International Discussion Club in Moscow.
He reiterated how around 6 billion dollars are still blocked, preventing the country from acquiring medicines and supplies to combat the pandemic.
"We have suffered a lot as a people thanks to unilateral coercive measures (...) Not only do the businessmen and their workers suffer, the 30 million Venezuelans suffer from the shortage, the lack of medicines. It has been a collective punishment," he said.
Faced with a historical challenge such as the one facing humanity in the midst of the global pandemic, the Covax mechanism is only one angle of the problem, robust health systems are required and focused on a non-commercialized vision of health. However, the consolidation of the aforementioned mechanism is vital to overcome the obstacle of second and even third waves of the pandemic in poor countries.
Its failure would be the failure of the human species, also of a configuration of the State system continually assailed by imperial and (neo) colonial tensions and pretensions of unipolar control and domination.
https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/co ... el-fracaso
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Socialist Demands for the COVID-19 Crisis
Pitchfork Cosmonaut June 27, 2021
What we already knew about Britain's Covid failures
Dominic Cummings speaking at a press conference in the Rose Garden at 10 Downing Street after breaching lockdown, 25th of May 2020
The Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, blew the whistle on government handling of the pandemic over a month ago. He spent several hours in front of a committee of MPs giving a seemingly devastating indictment of the government as a whole and the Prime Minister and then Health Secretary in particular. Allegations included ignoring scientific evidence, brazen lying, and reckless endangerment of the British public. He said that Boris Johnson ranted that he never should have implement the first lockdown and regarded the whole thing as a massive ‘scare story’, and that another cabinet secretary (Mark Sedwill) suggested telling the public to intentionally go out and get the disease ‘like the old chicken pox parties’.
Cummings admitted that ‘tens of thousands of people died, who didn’t need to die’, that ‘the government rhetoric was “we put a shield around the care homes, blah blah blah” – that was complete nonsense … Quite the opposite of putting a shield round them, we sent people with Covid back to the care homes’ – although he also tried to claim Johnson and himself were ignorant of this policy to seed the virus in care homes. Did they not read their own guidance? And if they were ignorant and only later realised, why did the policy continue past September 2020?
The media response has generally been to point out that these claims have not been backed up with proof. Cummings has promised to reveal such proof via a paid-for newsletter, however, this isn’t really necessary – all we need to do is look at the facts of government policy in 2020 and compare to countries who successfully suppressed the virus and protected their populations from a lethal virus.
The British state and its media are desperate to put this behind us and focus on vaccinations, but the government has known a virus like Covid-19 was the number one national risk for a decade at least, and once the pandemic had begun for real the government had weeks to prepare – time given by the prompt response and transparency of China. Vietnam, which had far less time to prepare with a larger population, and which even shares a border with China, sprang into action. With a population 22 times smaller than Vietnam, Laos, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, and China put together, Britain had 14 times the death toll. China itself has 20 times the population of Britain, yet by the end of 2020 Britain had over 25 times the amount of Covid cases that China had. The facts show conclusively the superior capacity of socialist systems over capitalist ones to overcome such crises that face society as a whole. These failures of Britain can be considered in terms of, firstly, its inconsistent lockdown, secondly, an impaired NHS, thirdly, deficient PPE, fourthly, insufficient Test & Trace system, fifthly, unreliable statistics, and finally, its inadequate furlough scheme.
Lockdown
This is how it began: on the 23rd of January the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) started advising against non-essential travel to Wuhan and the clock started ticking. On the 27th, then Health Secretary Matt Hancock offered repatriation to 200 Brits from Wuhan – breaching China’s lockdown and undermining their efforts to contain the virus. British Airways suspended all flights both to and from China on the 29th of January, and by the 31st the first cases in the UK were confirmed with Britain suffering its first death on March 5th. By the 11th of November Britain was just the fifth nation to record 50,000+ deaths after the US, Brazil, India, and Mexico – all with vastly larger populations. In January 2021, Britain was the fifth country to record 100,000 mortalities with one of the worst death tolls in both absolute terms and per capita in the world.
It wasn’t until the 2nd of March that the government even held an emergency meeting to discuss possible responses to the virus, and a report from the meeting shows that they considered scenarios including a ‘severe prolonged pandemic as experienced in 1918’, and that a fifth of the workforce could be absent during its peak. Yet it wasn’t until the 8th of June that arrivals from overseas were required to undergo a 14-day quarantine; it wasn’t until the 24th of July that face masks became mandatory in shops across England, under threat of £100 fines; and it wasn’t until July 30th that people testing positive or showing symptoms had to self-isolate and only for 10 days, rather than 14 (from the 12th of March people were merely advised to self-isolate for seven days). To put this into perspective, Professor Neil Ferguson – a scientist who advised the government on lockdown measures – stated on the 10th of June that half of the lives lost could have been saved if measures were introduced just a week earlier. This view was reinforced on the 5th of August by the Home Affairs committee which admitted the spread could have been slowed by earlier implementation of quarantine on overseas arrivals.
Lockdown didn’t begin until the 23rd of March 2020, when the public was restricted to their homes except to go food shopping, to exercise outdoors once a day, to travel to work or for medical care, while all non-essential shops were closed and gatherings of more than two were banned. The death toll was already over a thousand only a few days later.
Restrictions eased on the 10th of May, allowing unlimited exercise outdoors and garden centres to reopen; they eased again on the 28th of May as groups of six could meet, and from the 1st of June all shops reopened provided they met a set of five criteria. Elite sport events restarted behind closed doors and primary school children would return to the classroom, with some high school students also returning on the 15th of June. On the 3rd of July the government scrapped the two-week quarantine for 73 popular holiday destinations, and the day after pubs reopened and weddings resumed.
In August the government actively paid £522 million for people to go out and mix in restaurants and pubs with their ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme, which offered half-price meals up to the amount of £10. A study conducted by Warwick University found that up to 17% of new infection clusters could be linked to the scheme. On August 24th Boris Johnson pleaded with parents to send their kids back to school when they reopened because the ‘life chance of a generation are at stake’. Meanwhile the opposition leader, Starmer, chimed in with a tweet saying he doesn’t just want children back in school, he ‘expects’ them back. The first week in September the government actually launched a drive to encourage people back to their workplaces as well.
From the 22nd of September a 10pm curfew was announced for pubs and bars in England, but it wasn’t until the 14th of October that a new lockdown with three-tier regulations came into force, with at first only Liverpool being assigned the strictest tier – Leicester, Manchester, parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire had been under continual targeted lockdown throughout the intervening period – and then on the 5th of November a second nationwide lockdown commenced. The government had ignored warnings from:
● England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer (Professor Van Tam) who alerted on the 30th of May that Britain was facing a ‘very dangerous moment’ with easing restrictions.
● Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, who as early as the 14th of July forecast a second wave hitting in winter and taking between 24,500 and 251,000 lives. He later admitted that he was rebuked by government officials for favouring lockdown early on in the pandemic.
● On the 4th of August, scientists warned that test and trace provisions were inadequate to prevent the second wave after schools reopened in September.
● On the 5th of September, a leading epidemiologist warned that reopening universities was a ‘critical moment’ as three days later the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) issued a warning on ITV News that cases were ‘increasing exponentially’.
China realised that the virus was transmissible from human to human on the 20th of January 2020 and they locked down the city of Wuhan three days later; after eight days, the entire province comparable to the population of Britain (58 million people) was quarantined. In Vietnam, preparations were implemented an entire month before the World Health Organization (WHO) even declared it a pandemic. Britain, on the other hand, was weeks and even months late with responses – and when the response did finally come, it was utterly inadequate.
The NHS
A 2011 National Security Risk Assessment detailed exactly the threat of this kind of pandemic. And yet, knowing this, the government cut thousands of key staff, cut 25% of funding since 2015, cut thousands of beds, failed to stock adequate resources and equipment (such as ventilators), and decentralised responsibility for such a crisis. From the start of the pandemic the government didn’t buy ventilators for 7 weeks. While on the 16th of March the NHS had a deficit of over 20,000 ventilators, the government merely called on businesses to support supply. Instead of requisitioning private hospital beds, the government rented them for £2.4m a day.
The government policy was centred around ringfencing the NHS to keep it from collapsing under the crisis. The result was that the NHS was used as minimally as possible to combat the pandemic, while at the same time the NHS became pretty much inaccessible for anything else. Much fanfare was raised about Nightingale hospitals dedicated to fighting Covid-19, but in the end they were hardly used at all, only treating a few hundred patients between them.
In Cuba, Vietnam, and China all Covid-19 cases were treated in proper healthcare settings – not discharged to rot in care homes (where they further spread the virus and culled more than 10% of the care home population) or patients’ own homes. China built two emergency quarantine hospitals in Wuhan from foundations up in just 10 days.
PPE
On the 8th of April 2020 the Royal College of Nursing warned that the lack of PPE was ‘fundamentally compromising’ NHS frontline staff and their patients, and just a week later the government was telling NHS frontline workers to reuse gowns or wear ‘other’ kit as they resorted to wearing bin bags. Sky News reported that the government pressured the Health and Safety Executive to declare untested PPE as safe and, to top it all off, NHS staff were censored from discussing PPE shortages. Only 2.6 billion items out of a required 32 billion were delivered to frontline organisations between February and July.
It turns out that PPE supplies, vital to saving lives, were transformed into a money-making, price-gouging bonanza for mates of Tory politicians. According to the National Audit Office, suppliers with ‘political connections’ were 10 times more likely to be awarded contracts – and prices soared by up to 1,310% as the Tories ended up spending £10 billion more of taxpayers’ money than it would have ordinarily done. In the context of withholding basic protective gear from healthcare workers and forcing them to wear bin bags, the state-led ‘clap for carers’ came across as cynical and sarcastic.
Test & Trace
Testing and tracing is possibly the most important part of containing a pandemic – to find exactly how many have the virus and where they are is a necessary prerequisite to treating patients and isolating them so that it is contained. Yet Public Health England stopped bothering to perform contact tracing as early as the 12th of March when capacity was overwhelmed. By the 1st of April, only 2,000 NHS staff had been tested from a workforce of 1.2 million. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove’s excuse was that there was a shortage of chemical reagents, but the Chemical Industries Association contradicted this – there was no shortage and the government had not even tried to find out about potential supply problems.
On the 2nd of April, Hancock set the goal of reaching 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month. By the 23rd of April, capacity had already maxed out at 51,000 and by the 28th capacity had reached only 73,000 per day. It wasn’t until the 18th of May that people with symptoms were made eligible for testing, not till the 23rd of April for key workers and a few days even later for care home workers. After just a dozen or so cases showed up in Qingdao in October, China tested the entire city of nine million in five days.
Then there’s tracking and tracing. The Tory government had to abandon its first attempt to build a tracking app in June after months of development and the app was finally made available on the 24th of September, though only two days into its use errors left users unable to input results.
A senior civil servant admitted in July that the system was only finding 37% of people ‘we really should be finding’. SAGE estimated that at least 80% of a case’s contacts need to isolate for the system to be worthwhile, yet, apart from those not contacted, rates of self-isolation were below 20%. A major factor in this is working class people not having the resources to isolate, whereas in China all testing and treatment is completely free for patients and the Communist Party forced all businesses to pay employees as normal who had to stay home during quarantine.
Meanwhile, back on plague island, a data blunder caused nearly 16,000 cases to go unreported in England during September. Dido Harding, Tory peer and head of NHS Test and Trace, apologised on the 3rd of September about the state of testing, where some people were having to travel several hundred miles, and up to three quarters of those wanting tests were not able to get them, she admitted. Many of the labs had simply hit capacity. Many people had to be turned away from test centres for not showing symptoms, despite having been in contact with an infected person.
In China there were temperature checks at the entrance of every public building and they set up 1,800 five-person teams to identify clusters, trace contacts and arrange isolation. In Vietnam, contacts with infected people were traced to the fourth layer and isolated, their neighbourhoods given targeted lockdowns and sanitised. They’ve performed more tests per confirmed case than any other country. In Cuba, medics actively screen all homes on the island every single day. They literally knock on everyone’s door, anyone who tests positive gets hospital treatment until they’ve recovered and are no longer contagious. They can do this because they have the highest doctor-to-patient ratio in the world, even without counting the 10,000+ Cuban doctors performing international healthcare duties.
Figures
Britain’s government and media were trigger happy with accusations of other countries supposedly fudging the figures – yet official statistics in Britain did not even include deaths outside of hospitals until the 29th of April. Even the Financial Times published a study on the 22nd of April based on figures from the Office for National Statistics which showed the government was hiding approximately half the death toll. With negligible testing, it was inevitable that the case count was massively underestimated. In July, Hancock ordered an urgent review and so limited deaths to count as Covid-19 only if the patient had tested positive within the last 28 days. While official numbers had Britain passing the 50,000 mark on the 11th of November, the Guardian had estimated this toll had been passed as early as the 2nd of June. Case and death figures in care homes were particularly murky. Care England, the UK’s largest care home representative body, estimated on April 18th that deaths of residents were closer to 7,500 than the official figure of 1,400. There were 18,000 excess deaths in care homes during April, only 8,000 of which were recorded as Covid-19 related.
Furlough
Covid-19 has had a huge amount of knock-on effects for ordinary people. Many of these would have been mitigated by adequate financial support from the government. Even those who escape the virus were plagued by anxieties surrounding health, work, loved ones, disrupted routine, accessing essential food, services and medication, and so no wonder that suicide rates spiked. For the 1.5 million people in Britain with an intellectual disability these effects were intensified, as well as for those in general who need care and have physical disabilities. Not to mention the homeless, migrants and prison populations.
All this is intersected by factors of gender, sexuality, disability and race. Workers of colour have been disproportionately affected and both the media and politicians have attempted to explain this away with race science as if they are innately more susceptible than white people. A quick glance outside Britain is enough to dispel this myth and realise that structural racism is really the factor that explains this.
Many people have had the awful choice to make of staying home and using up very limited sick leave or staying in work and putting themselves at enormous risk. The government guaranteed 80% of wages for employees being furloughed and 80% of earnings for the self-employed in March 2020, but while there was a temporary rent amnesty and £1.6 billion was earmarked for local authorities to support homeless people and adult social care, this wasn’t much good for the unemployed, those on zero-hours contracts or those on below a living wage to begin with. And it was only a stay of execution for tenants whose rent continued to accumulate and homeless people who would eventually be turfed back out onto the streets.
Meanwhile £330 billion was earmarked for bailouts for businesses! Richard Branson, worth over £4 billion, demanded £7.5 million worth of emergency credit, having already sent thousands of workers home for eight weeks unpaid leave and slashed sick pay from six months full pay to just 12 weeks. You have to question the foundations of the kind of society which allows this.
Other countries – such as China, Vietnam, and Cuba in particular – have shown that there is a simple strategy to contain the virus and protect people from it. They have been able to do this because of central planning and socialist control of the economy. In Cuba, neighbourhood organisations (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución) are mobilised to provide community services; similarly in China Communist Party members have volunteered en masse to combat the pandemic, and Vietnamese factories are able to be repurposed to produce the necessary PPE. Capitalist countries are not capable of this type of collective effort because the power dynamic is in reverse: state forces are at the service of capitalism, rather than the people. Thus, the British government has put us all in jeopardy and made a conscious choice not to implement mass testing, a choice not to implement mass decontamination of public areas, not to trace and isolate cases, not to nationalise and requisition private healthcare, and not to mass produce the necessary medical equipment and PPE, and it chose not to take care of those who needed help to cope with the crisis. All this can be explained by the explicit eugenicist ideology that pervades Britain’s ruling class and the Conservative Party in particular, and by its prioritisation of business above peoples’ lives and welfare.
Whether Boris Johnson said the words 'let the bodies pile high in their thousands' is immaterial, his policies caused exactly that. The recent testimony of Dominic Cummings only confirms what was there to see from the start: herd immunity by September was ‘literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings’. He also shared a photo of a whiteboard laying out an early Covid plan asking ‘who do we not save?’. It should be no surprise that the government now has 150,000 deaths on its hands, as the Labour Party stood to one side and watched. If you’re not raging at the British government’s total disregard for our lives, you’re not paying attention.
https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/wha ... d-failures
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Sobyanin called the virus "very deadly" and changed the mode of operation of ambulances
06/28/2021
What would the authorities have done 60 years ago?
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that the situation with the spread of coronavirus in the capital remains extremely difficult. In this regard, the head of the city transferred the Moscow "ambulance" to a special regime: now the dispatchers will only accept emergency calls, "really on the verge between life and death," Readovka reports.
“Over the past week, we have broken new records in the number of hospitalizations, people in intensive care, as well as the number of deaths from coronavirus,” Sobyanin said.
The official noted that this is why significant restrictions were introduced related to vaccinations and access to cafes and restaurants.
“I repeat once again that we are dealing with a new and more infectious strain, very deadly. I ask everyone to take care of themselves and get vaccinated at the first opportunity, ”the mayor emphasized.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, according to official statistics, 22,210 patients have died in Russia.
The population is not vaccinated because it does not trust the authorities; the way out is to break people over the knee, threaten to lose their jobs, wages, vacations. The population continues to get sick and die from diseases associated with the coronavirus; the way out is to continue to optimize healthcare, so as not to spend budgetary funds on it, which can be used to support the oil and gas and construction sectors. The population complains about the authorities because of the inability of the latter to cope with the problem; the way out is to introduce measures that are observed both by the state and by business only on paper.
And even the mode of operation of the ambulances did not have to be changed.
https://www.rotfront.su/sobyanin-nazval ... n-smertel/
Google Translator
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Cinicial trials of Soberana-Pediatria in children 3-11 years of age begin
The study of the Cuban anti-COVID candidate vaccine will include 350 children and adolescents, 50 in Phase I and 300 in Phase II, conducted in an overlapping and gradual process, in strict compliance with protocols and best practices
Author: Walkiria Juanes Sánchez | internet@granma.cu
june 28, 2021 15:06:27
Photo: Ismael Batista
Following verification of the candidate’s safety in a group of adolescents aged 12 to 18, clinical trials of Soberana-Pediatria continue with the inclusion of a second group of volunteers in the three to 11 age group, Yury Valdes Balbin, assistant director of the Finlay Vaccine Institute, reported.
The results of the security investigation revealed no adverse side effects, thus allowing for younger children to be included and the group of volunteers expanded to 150.
Specialists at the Finlay Institute explained that this is an open study with no placebos administered, and also adaptive, meaning that modifications can be made, if elements appear that indicate a change in the study’s design.
The trials will be conducted at several sites, with the first phase at Juan Manuel Marquez Pediatric Hospital and the second at the primary care level, involving several community polyclinics.
The study of the Cuban anti-COVID candidate vaccine will eventually include 350 children and adolescents, 50 in Phase I and 300 in Phase II, conducted in an overlapping and gradual process of three doses, in strict compliance with protocol and best practices.
http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-06-28/cin ... -age-begin
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US black legend journalism blunders in attempt to discredit Chinese vaccine
Stephen Gowans China June 28, 2021 5 Minutes
Stephen Gowans
June 28, 2021
A Wall Street Journal article has attempted to discredit the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine, even though the article presents data which show the vaccine to be highly effective, but does so in a way that conceals the shot’s efficacy and suggests the vaccine has largely failed.
The article is emblematic of black legend journalism aimed at China—the Western media practice of painting a defamatory picture of the Communist country in order for Washington to better battle it, and to discourage other countries that may be seeking to engage more deeply with Beijing, especially in trade and investment.
Among the defamations are claims that China is perpetrating a genocide against the Uyghur people, is exploiting coerced labor in Xinjiang, is engaged in covering up a coronavirus lab leak, and, now, is peddling ineffective vaccines across the global south.
More than one hundred years ago, Lenin identified the practice of black legend journalism aimed at China. “At the present time, the press is conducting a campaign against the Chinese,” he wrote in 1900, in connection with the Boxer Rebellion. “Journalists who crawl on their bellies before the government and the money-bags are straining every nerve to arouse the hatred of the people against China.”
The latest attempt to inspire enmity against a country which Washington has issued a virtual declaration of war against, is Jon Emont’s June 27, 2021 Wall Street Journal article titled “Covid-19 Killed 26 Indonesian Doctors in June—at Least 10 Had Taken China’s Sinovac Vaccine.”
According to Emont, “At least 10 of the 26 doctors in Indonesia who died from Covid-19 this month had received both doses of the vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd.”, raising “questions about the Chinese-made shot that is being used in many parts of the developing world.”
Rounding out his attack on CoronaVac, the name of Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine, Emont went on to quote two professors, one from the UK, who opined that “the Sinovac vaccine was ‘probably not as effective a vaccine as most of the other vaccines that are on the market’,” and another from Hong Kong, who recommended that Indonesian medical workers be given “a U.S.-developed shot to ensure stronger protection.”
Emont’s message is clear: The Sinovac vaccine is largely ineffective, US-developed vaccines are superior, and Chinese vaccines are leaving the global south unprotected.
The problem is that the data in Emont’s report make a stronger case that the Sinovac vaccine is highly effective than largely ineffective.
According to his reporting, “Around 90% of Indonesian doctors—roughly 160,000 in all—have been vaccinated with Sinovac’s shot.” This information, along with Emont’s lead that at least 10 of the 26 doctors who died had been vaccinated, is all that is needed to estimate the efficacy of Sinovac’s vaccine in reducing Covid-19 mortality among Indonesian doctors. However, while having the data at hand, Emont didn’t estimate the shot’s efficacy, preferring instead to limit his analysis to a subset of the data that appears to show the vaccine works poorly.
The table below assembles the data Emont provided. Figures marked by an asterisks were directly cited in his article. The remainder are arithmetic deductions (e.g., if 10 of 26 doctors who died were vaccinated, then 26 – 10 = 16 were not vaccinated.)
The first thing that is evident is that, at less than one two-hundredths of one percent, the Covid-19 mortality rate among Indonesian physicians is vanishingly small. It’s questionable that a Covid-19 mortality rate this miniscule merits an article in a major US newspaper. Lenin’s imagery of journalists “straining every nerve” is highly relevant here.
Second, it’s clear than the mortality rate is much smaller among vaccinated than unvaccinated doctors. In fact, doctors who were vaccinated with CoronaVac were more than fourteen times less likely to die from Covid-19 compared to unvaccinated physicians. This translates into an efficacy rate of 93 percent, using a formula analogous to the one used to calculate vaccine efficacy (see the note at the end).
Emont blundered by restricting his analysis to doctors who died, rather than comparing the mortality rate of unvaccinated physicians to those who received the vaccine. Because the vast majority of Indonesian doctors are vaccinated, most Covid-19 deaths are going to happen in this group by the sheer volume of their numbers.
Emont’s error is tantamount to arguing that most people who die in traffic accidents were wearing seatbelts, therefore seatbelts are ineffective. Since most people wear seatbelts, it’s likely that most traffic deaths will happen among this majority group. To know how effective seat belts are, traffic accident fatality rates must be compared between two groups: those who wear seat belts and those who don’t. When the analysis is done properly, the conclusion is that seatbelts are effective.
Likewise, to examine the efficacy of a vaccine, those who are vaccinated must be compared with those who aren’t. When the analysis is done this way, it appears that Sinovac’s vaccine has worked well.
It’s possible that Emont is numerically and logically inept, and that he made an honest error, but then we would have to conclude that his editors are equally inept, also a possibility. However, just as some stories are too good to check, so too is some stupidity too good to correct. I have had opportunity on countless occasions to see research of low quality receive unqualified praise when it corroborated a desired political position, while research of high quality was torn apart that challenged the same stance.
It’s possible that Emont’s blunder was overlooked because it said what the Wall Street Journal’s editors and owners, the US government, Wall Street money-bags, and not least, those with investments in Western vaccines, wanted to hear. Or it could have been a crafty construction of a defamatory anti-Chinese message. Whatever the case—stupidity allowed by a system of propaganda to evade all checks, or a deception deliberately constructed to fit such a system—Sinovac’s vaccine, appears to have been effective in protecting Indonesian doctors from Covid-19 mortality.
Blunders of this sort, along with shoddy reporting on the Uyghurs and alleged coerced labor in Xinjiang, all of which rely on patently biased sources, along with the resurrection of a conspiracy theory about a lab leak that is manifestly inspired by the political goal of diverting attention from Washington’s abject pandemic failures, can’t help but recall Lenin’s imagery of journalists crawling on their bellies before the government and the money-bags, straining every nerve to rouse the hatred of the people against China.
Notes
1 The formula used to calculate the efficacy of CoronaVac in reducing Covid-19 mortality among Indonesian doctors is:
Efficacy = (mru – mrv) / mru X 100%
where
mru is the mortality rate among the unvaccinated
mrv is the mortality rate among the vaccinated
2 My analysis of CoronaVac’s efficacy in reducing mortality among Indonesian doctors departs from a proper analysis, which would require random assignment of doctors to vaccinated and non-vaccinated groups. Assuming this didn’t happen, the Indonesian doctors who weren’t vaccinated may be different in important ways from those who were–in ways that make them more or less likely to be exposed to the Covid-19 virus or die from the disease. It cannot, therefore, be concluded from my analysis that CoronaVac is highly effective, but the analysis strongly challenges Emont’s reporting and is far more supportive of the idea that CoronaVac works well in reducing Covid-19 mortality than doesn’t.
https://gowans.blog/2021/06/28/us-black ... e-vaccine/
What we already knew about Britain's Covid failures
Dominic Cummings speaking at a press conference in the Rose Garden at 10 Downing Street after breaching lockdown, 25th of May 2020
The Prime Minister’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, blew the whistle on government handling of the pandemic over a month ago. He spent several hours in front of a committee of MPs giving a seemingly devastating indictment of the government as a whole and the Prime Minister and then Health Secretary in particular. Allegations included ignoring scientific evidence, brazen lying, and reckless endangerment of the British public. He said that Boris Johnson ranted that he never should have implement the first lockdown and regarded the whole thing as a massive ‘scare story’, and that another cabinet secretary (Mark Sedwill) suggested telling the public to intentionally go out and get the disease ‘like the old chicken pox parties’.
Cummings admitted that ‘tens of thousands of people died, who didn’t need to die’, that ‘the government rhetoric was “we put a shield around the care homes, blah blah blah” – that was complete nonsense … Quite the opposite of putting a shield round them, we sent people with Covid back to the care homes’ – although he also tried to claim Johnson and himself were ignorant of this policy to seed the virus in care homes. Did they not read their own guidance? And if they were ignorant and only later realised, why did the policy continue past September 2020?
The media response has generally been to point out that these claims have not been backed up with proof. Cummings has promised to reveal such proof via a paid-for newsletter, however, this isn’t really necessary – all we need to do is look at the facts of government policy in 2020 and compare to countries who successfully suppressed the virus and protected their populations from a lethal virus.
The British state and its media are desperate to put this behind us and focus on vaccinations, but the government has known a virus like Covid-19 was the number one national risk for a decade at least, and once the pandemic had begun for real the government had weeks to prepare – time given by the prompt response and transparency of China. Vietnam, which had far less time to prepare with a larger population, and which even shares a border with China, sprang into action. With a population 22 times smaller than Vietnam, Laos, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Cuba, and China put together, Britain had 14 times the death toll. China itself has 20 times the population of Britain, yet by the end of 2020 Britain had over 25 times the amount of Covid cases that China had. The facts show conclusively the superior capacity of socialist systems over capitalist ones to overcome such crises that face society as a whole. These failures of Britain can be considered in terms of, firstly, its inconsistent lockdown, secondly, an impaired NHS, thirdly, deficient PPE, fourthly, insufficient Test & Trace system, fifthly, unreliable statistics, and finally, its inadequate furlough scheme.
Lockdown
This is how it began: on the 23rd of January the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) started advising against non-essential travel to Wuhan and the clock started ticking. On the 27th, then Health Secretary Matt Hancock offered repatriation to 200 Brits from Wuhan – breaching China’s lockdown and undermining their efforts to contain the virus. British Airways suspended all flights both to and from China on the 29th of January, and by the 31st the first cases in the UK were confirmed with Britain suffering its first death on March 5th. By the 11th of November Britain was just the fifth nation to record 50,000+ deaths after the US, Brazil, India, and Mexico – all with vastly larger populations. In January 2021, Britain was the fifth country to record 100,000 mortalities with one of the worst death tolls in both absolute terms and per capita in the world.
It wasn’t until the 2nd of March that the government even held an emergency meeting to discuss possible responses to the virus, and a report from the meeting shows that they considered scenarios including a ‘severe prolonged pandemic as experienced in 1918’, and that a fifth of the workforce could be absent during its peak. Yet it wasn’t until the 8th of June that arrivals from overseas were required to undergo a 14-day quarantine; it wasn’t until the 24th of July that face masks became mandatory in shops across England, under threat of £100 fines; and it wasn’t until July 30th that people testing positive or showing symptoms had to self-isolate and only for 10 days, rather than 14 (from the 12th of March people were merely advised to self-isolate for seven days). To put this into perspective, Professor Neil Ferguson – a scientist who advised the government on lockdown measures – stated on the 10th of June that half of the lives lost could have been saved if measures were introduced just a week earlier. This view was reinforced on the 5th of August by the Home Affairs committee which admitted the spread could have been slowed by earlier implementation of quarantine on overseas arrivals.
Lockdown didn’t begin until the 23rd of March 2020, when the public was restricted to their homes except to go food shopping, to exercise outdoors once a day, to travel to work or for medical care, while all non-essential shops were closed and gatherings of more than two were banned. The death toll was already over a thousand only a few days later.
Restrictions eased on the 10th of May, allowing unlimited exercise outdoors and garden centres to reopen; they eased again on the 28th of May as groups of six could meet, and from the 1st of June all shops reopened provided they met a set of five criteria. Elite sport events restarted behind closed doors and primary school children would return to the classroom, with some high school students also returning on the 15th of June. On the 3rd of July the government scrapped the two-week quarantine for 73 popular holiday destinations, and the day after pubs reopened and weddings resumed.
In August the government actively paid £522 million for people to go out and mix in restaurants and pubs with their ‘Eat Out to Help Out’ scheme, which offered half-price meals up to the amount of £10. A study conducted by Warwick University found that up to 17% of new infection clusters could be linked to the scheme. On August 24th Boris Johnson pleaded with parents to send their kids back to school when they reopened because the ‘life chance of a generation are at stake’. Meanwhile the opposition leader, Starmer, chimed in with a tweet saying he doesn’t just want children back in school, he ‘expects’ them back. The first week in September the government actually launched a drive to encourage people back to their workplaces as well.
From the 22nd of September a 10pm curfew was announced for pubs and bars in England, but it wasn’t until the 14th of October that a new lockdown with three-tier regulations came into force, with at first only Liverpool being assigned the strictest tier – Leicester, Manchester, parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire had been under continual targeted lockdown throughout the intervening period – and then on the 5th of November a second nationwide lockdown commenced. The government had ignored warnings from:
● England’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer (Professor Van Tam) who alerted on the 30th of May that Britain was facing a ‘very dangerous moment’ with easing restrictions.
● Chief Scientific Adviser, Patrick Vallance, who as early as the 14th of July forecast a second wave hitting in winter and taking between 24,500 and 251,000 lives. He later admitted that he was rebuked by government officials for favouring lockdown early on in the pandemic.
● On the 4th of August, scientists warned that test and trace provisions were inadequate to prevent the second wave after schools reopened in September.
● On the 5th of September, a leading epidemiologist warned that reopening universities was a ‘critical moment’ as three days later the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) issued a warning on ITV News that cases were ‘increasing exponentially’.
China realised that the virus was transmissible from human to human on the 20th of January 2020 and they locked down the city of Wuhan three days later; after eight days, the entire province comparable to the population of Britain (58 million people) was quarantined. In Vietnam, preparations were implemented an entire month before the World Health Organization (WHO) even declared it a pandemic. Britain, on the other hand, was weeks and even months late with responses – and when the response did finally come, it was utterly inadequate.
The NHS
A 2011 National Security Risk Assessment detailed exactly the threat of this kind of pandemic. And yet, knowing this, the government cut thousands of key staff, cut 25% of funding since 2015, cut thousands of beds, failed to stock adequate resources and equipment (such as ventilators), and decentralised responsibility for such a crisis. From the start of the pandemic the government didn’t buy ventilators for 7 weeks. While on the 16th of March the NHS had a deficit of over 20,000 ventilators, the government merely called on businesses to support supply. Instead of requisitioning private hospital beds, the government rented them for £2.4m a day.
The government policy was centred around ringfencing the NHS to keep it from collapsing under the crisis. The result was that the NHS was used as minimally as possible to combat the pandemic, while at the same time the NHS became pretty much inaccessible for anything else. Much fanfare was raised about Nightingale hospitals dedicated to fighting Covid-19, but in the end they were hardly used at all, only treating a few hundred patients between them.
In Cuba, Vietnam, and China all Covid-19 cases were treated in proper healthcare settings – not discharged to rot in care homes (where they further spread the virus and culled more than 10% of the care home population) or patients’ own homes. China built two emergency quarantine hospitals in Wuhan from foundations up in just 10 days.
PPE
On the 8th of April 2020 the Royal College of Nursing warned that the lack of PPE was ‘fundamentally compromising’ NHS frontline staff and their patients, and just a week later the government was telling NHS frontline workers to reuse gowns or wear ‘other’ kit as they resorted to wearing bin bags. Sky News reported that the government pressured the Health and Safety Executive to declare untested PPE as safe and, to top it all off, NHS staff were censored from discussing PPE shortages. Only 2.6 billion items out of a required 32 billion were delivered to frontline organisations between February and July.
It turns out that PPE supplies, vital to saving lives, were transformed into a money-making, price-gouging bonanza for mates of Tory politicians. According to the National Audit Office, suppliers with ‘political connections’ were 10 times more likely to be awarded contracts – and prices soared by up to 1,310% as the Tories ended up spending £10 billion more of taxpayers’ money than it would have ordinarily done. In the context of withholding basic protective gear from healthcare workers and forcing them to wear bin bags, the state-led ‘clap for carers’ came across as cynical and sarcastic.
Test & Trace
Testing and tracing is possibly the most important part of containing a pandemic – to find exactly how many have the virus and where they are is a necessary prerequisite to treating patients and isolating them so that it is contained. Yet Public Health England stopped bothering to perform contact tracing as early as the 12th of March when capacity was overwhelmed. By the 1st of April, only 2,000 NHS staff had been tested from a workforce of 1.2 million. Cabinet Minister Michael Gove’s excuse was that there was a shortage of chemical reagents, but the Chemical Industries Association contradicted this – there was no shortage and the government had not even tried to find out about potential supply problems.
On the 2nd of April, Hancock set the goal of reaching 100,000 tests a day by the end of the month. By the 23rd of April, capacity had already maxed out at 51,000 and by the 28th capacity had reached only 73,000 per day. It wasn’t until the 18th of May that people with symptoms were made eligible for testing, not till the 23rd of April for key workers and a few days even later for care home workers. After just a dozen or so cases showed up in Qingdao in October, China tested the entire city of nine million in five days.
Then there’s tracking and tracing. The Tory government had to abandon its first attempt to build a tracking app in June after months of development and the app was finally made available on the 24th of September, though only two days into its use errors left users unable to input results.
A senior civil servant admitted in July that the system was only finding 37% of people ‘we really should be finding’. SAGE estimated that at least 80% of a case’s contacts need to isolate for the system to be worthwhile, yet, apart from those not contacted, rates of self-isolation were below 20%. A major factor in this is working class people not having the resources to isolate, whereas in China all testing and treatment is completely free for patients and the Communist Party forced all businesses to pay employees as normal who had to stay home during quarantine.
Meanwhile, back on plague island, a data blunder caused nearly 16,000 cases to go unreported in England during September. Dido Harding, Tory peer and head of NHS Test and Trace, apologised on the 3rd of September about the state of testing, where some people were having to travel several hundred miles, and up to three quarters of those wanting tests were not able to get them, she admitted. Many of the labs had simply hit capacity. Many people had to be turned away from test centres for not showing symptoms, despite having been in contact with an infected person.
In China there were temperature checks at the entrance of every public building and they set up 1,800 five-person teams to identify clusters, trace contacts and arrange isolation. In Vietnam, contacts with infected people were traced to the fourth layer and isolated, their neighbourhoods given targeted lockdowns and sanitised. They’ve performed more tests per confirmed case than any other country. In Cuba, medics actively screen all homes on the island every single day. They literally knock on everyone’s door, anyone who tests positive gets hospital treatment until they’ve recovered and are no longer contagious. They can do this because they have the highest doctor-to-patient ratio in the world, even without counting the 10,000+ Cuban doctors performing international healthcare duties.
Figures
Britain’s government and media were trigger happy with accusations of other countries supposedly fudging the figures – yet official statistics in Britain did not even include deaths outside of hospitals until the 29th of April. Even the Financial Times published a study on the 22nd of April based on figures from the Office for National Statistics which showed the government was hiding approximately half the death toll. With negligible testing, it was inevitable that the case count was massively underestimated. In July, Hancock ordered an urgent review and so limited deaths to count as Covid-19 only if the patient had tested positive within the last 28 days. While official numbers had Britain passing the 50,000 mark on the 11th of November, the Guardian had estimated this toll had been passed as early as the 2nd of June. Case and death figures in care homes were particularly murky. Care England, the UK’s largest care home representative body, estimated on April 18th that deaths of residents were closer to 7,500 than the official figure of 1,400. There were 18,000 excess deaths in care homes during April, only 8,000 of which were recorded as Covid-19 related.
Furlough
Covid-19 has had a huge amount of knock-on effects for ordinary people. Many of these would have been mitigated by adequate financial support from the government. Even those who escape the virus were plagued by anxieties surrounding health, work, loved ones, disrupted routine, accessing essential food, services and medication, and so no wonder that suicide rates spiked. For the 1.5 million people in Britain with an intellectual disability these effects were intensified, as well as for those in general who need care and have physical disabilities. Not to mention the homeless, migrants and prison populations.
All this is intersected by factors of gender, sexuality, disability and race. Workers of colour have been disproportionately affected and both the media and politicians have attempted to explain this away with race science as if they are innately more susceptible than white people. A quick glance outside Britain is enough to dispel this myth and realise that structural racism is really the factor that explains this.
Many people have had the awful choice to make of staying home and using up very limited sick leave or staying in work and putting themselves at enormous risk. The government guaranteed 80% of wages for employees being furloughed and 80% of earnings for the self-employed in March 2020, but while there was a temporary rent amnesty and £1.6 billion was earmarked for local authorities to support homeless people and adult social care, this wasn’t much good for the unemployed, those on zero-hours contracts or those on below a living wage to begin with. And it was only a stay of execution for tenants whose rent continued to accumulate and homeless people who would eventually be turfed back out onto the streets.
Meanwhile £330 billion was earmarked for bailouts for businesses! Richard Branson, worth over £4 billion, demanded £7.5 million worth of emergency credit, having already sent thousands of workers home for eight weeks unpaid leave and slashed sick pay from six months full pay to just 12 weeks. You have to question the foundations of the kind of society which allows this.
Other countries – such as China, Vietnam, and Cuba in particular – have shown that there is a simple strategy to contain the virus and protect people from it. They have been able to do this because of central planning and socialist control of the economy. In Cuba, neighbourhood organisations (Comités de Defensa de la Revolución) are mobilised to provide community services; similarly in China Communist Party members have volunteered en masse to combat the pandemic, and Vietnamese factories are able to be repurposed to produce the necessary PPE. Capitalist countries are not capable of this type of collective effort because the power dynamic is in reverse: state forces are at the service of capitalism, rather than the people. Thus, the British government has put us all in jeopardy and made a conscious choice not to implement mass testing, a choice not to implement mass decontamination of public areas, not to trace and isolate cases, not to nationalise and requisition private healthcare, and not to mass produce the necessary medical equipment and PPE, and it chose not to take care of those who needed help to cope with the crisis. All this can be explained by the explicit eugenicist ideology that pervades Britain’s ruling class and the Conservative Party in particular, and by its prioritisation of business above peoples’ lives and welfare.
Whether Boris Johnson said the words 'let the bodies pile high in their thousands' is immaterial, his policies caused exactly that. The recent testimony of Dominic Cummings only confirms what was there to see from the start: herd immunity by September was ‘literally the official plan in all docs/graphs/meetings’. He also shared a photo of a whiteboard laying out an early Covid plan asking ‘who do we not save?’. It should be no surprise that the government now has 150,000 deaths on its hands, as the Labour Party stood to one side and watched. If you’re not raging at the British government’s total disregard for our lives, you’re not paying attention.
https://www.ebb-magazine.com/essays/wha ... d-failures
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Sobyanin called the virus "very deadly" and changed the mode of operation of ambulances
06/28/2021
What would the authorities have done 60 years ago?
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said that the situation with the spread of coronavirus in the capital remains extremely difficult. In this regard, the head of the city transferred the Moscow "ambulance" to a special regime: now the dispatchers will only accept emergency calls, "really on the verge between life and death," Readovka reports.
“Over the past week, we have broken new records in the number of hospitalizations, people in intensive care, as well as the number of deaths from coronavirus,” Sobyanin said.
The official noted that this is why significant restrictions were introduced related to vaccinations and access to cafes and restaurants.
“I repeat once again that we are dealing with a new and more infectious strain, very deadly. I ask everyone to take care of themselves and get vaccinated at the first opportunity, ”the mayor emphasized.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, according to official statistics, 22,210 patients have died in Russia.
Journalists complain that if the situation with coronavirus cannot be reversed in the coming days, places in covid hospitals will run out.The Readovka telegram channel shares information that at the moment the dispatchers of Moscow ambulances do not accept calls of medium severity, sending an ambulance only in emergency cases. Dispatchers refer those who applied to polyclinics so that the doctor would suggest how to be treated at home.
The population is not vaccinated because it does not trust the authorities; the way out is to break people over the knee, threaten to lose their jobs, wages, vacations. The population continues to get sick and die from diseases associated with the coronavirus; the way out is to continue to optimize healthcare, so as not to spend budgetary funds on it, which can be used to support the oil and gas and construction sectors. The population complains about the authorities because of the inability of the latter to cope with the problem; the way out is to introduce measures that are observed both by the state and by business only on paper.
“Every day, 1.5 million people were vaccinated in Moscow and the suburbs! Within six days of a frantic race with death, it was all over. The doctors won - by mid-February, the outbreak of smallpox in the capital of the USSR was eliminated. Everything about everything took less than a month, and millions of people were vaccinated in just a few days. Officially, 45 infected people were identified, of which, including Kokorekin, four died, ”the Onliner portal tells about this outbreak.It is good that the Bolsheviks were not blamed for the pandemic. However, in 1959, having coped with the beginning of the terrible epidemic of smallpox in less than a month, the Soviet authorities showed that they were able to defeat much more serious diseases than the coronavirus.
And even the mode of operation of the ambulances did not have to be changed.
https://www.rotfront.su/sobyanin-nazval ... n-smertel/
Google Translator
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Cinicial trials of Soberana-Pediatria in children 3-11 years of age begin
The study of the Cuban anti-COVID candidate vaccine will include 350 children and adolescents, 50 in Phase I and 300 in Phase II, conducted in an overlapping and gradual process, in strict compliance with protocols and best practices
Author: Walkiria Juanes Sánchez | internet@granma.cu
june 28, 2021 15:06:27
Photo: Ismael Batista
Following verification of the candidate’s safety in a group of adolescents aged 12 to 18, clinical trials of Soberana-Pediatria continue with the inclusion of a second group of volunteers in the three to 11 age group, Yury Valdes Balbin, assistant director of the Finlay Vaccine Institute, reported.
The results of the security investigation revealed no adverse side effects, thus allowing for younger children to be included and the group of volunteers expanded to 150.
Specialists at the Finlay Institute explained that this is an open study with no placebos administered, and also adaptive, meaning that modifications can be made, if elements appear that indicate a change in the study’s design.
The trials will be conducted at several sites, with the first phase at Juan Manuel Marquez Pediatric Hospital and the second at the primary care level, involving several community polyclinics.
The study of the Cuban anti-COVID candidate vaccine will eventually include 350 children and adolescents, 50 in Phase I and 300 in Phase II, conducted in an overlapping and gradual process of three doses, in strict compliance with protocol and best practices.
http://en.granma.cu/cuba/2021-06-28/cin ... -age-begin
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US black legend journalism blunders in attempt to discredit Chinese vaccine
Stephen Gowans China June 28, 2021 5 Minutes
Stephen Gowans
June 28, 2021
A Wall Street Journal article has attempted to discredit the effectiveness of China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine, even though the article presents data which show the vaccine to be highly effective, but does so in a way that conceals the shot’s efficacy and suggests the vaccine has largely failed.
The article is emblematic of black legend journalism aimed at China—the Western media practice of painting a defamatory picture of the Communist country in order for Washington to better battle it, and to discourage other countries that may be seeking to engage more deeply with Beijing, especially in trade and investment.
Among the defamations are claims that China is perpetrating a genocide against the Uyghur people, is exploiting coerced labor in Xinjiang, is engaged in covering up a coronavirus lab leak, and, now, is peddling ineffective vaccines across the global south.
More than one hundred years ago, Lenin identified the practice of black legend journalism aimed at China. “At the present time, the press is conducting a campaign against the Chinese,” he wrote in 1900, in connection with the Boxer Rebellion. “Journalists who crawl on their bellies before the government and the money-bags are straining every nerve to arouse the hatred of the people against China.”
The latest attempt to inspire enmity against a country which Washington has issued a virtual declaration of war against, is Jon Emont’s June 27, 2021 Wall Street Journal article titled “Covid-19 Killed 26 Indonesian Doctors in June—at Least 10 Had Taken China’s Sinovac Vaccine.”
According to Emont, “At least 10 of the 26 doctors in Indonesia who died from Covid-19 this month had received both doses of the vaccine developed by Sinovac Biotech Ltd.”, raising “questions about the Chinese-made shot that is being used in many parts of the developing world.”
Rounding out his attack on CoronaVac, the name of Sinovac’s Covid-19 vaccine, Emont went on to quote two professors, one from the UK, who opined that “the Sinovac vaccine was ‘probably not as effective a vaccine as most of the other vaccines that are on the market’,” and another from Hong Kong, who recommended that Indonesian medical workers be given “a U.S.-developed shot to ensure stronger protection.”
Emont’s message is clear: The Sinovac vaccine is largely ineffective, US-developed vaccines are superior, and Chinese vaccines are leaving the global south unprotected.
The problem is that the data in Emont’s report make a stronger case that the Sinovac vaccine is highly effective than largely ineffective.
According to his reporting, “Around 90% of Indonesian doctors—roughly 160,000 in all—have been vaccinated with Sinovac’s shot.” This information, along with Emont’s lead that at least 10 of the 26 doctors who died had been vaccinated, is all that is needed to estimate the efficacy of Sinovac’s vaccine in reducing Covid-19 mortality among Indonesian doctors. However, while having the data at hand, Emont didn’t estimate the shot’s efficacy, preferring instead to limit his analysis to a subset of the data that appears to show the vaccine works poorly.
The table below assembles the data Emont provided. Figures marked by an asterisks were directly cited in his article. The remainder are arithmetic deductions (e.g., if 10 of 26 doctors who died were vaccinated, then 26 – 10 = 16 were not vaccinated.)
Vaccinated (90%)* Not vaccinated (10%) Total (100%)
[A] Died from Covid-19 10* 16 26*
Didn’t die from Covid-19 159,990 17,762 177,752
Total 160,000* 17,778 177,778
Mortality rate [A/B] 0.0063% 0.0900% 0.0146%
The first thing that is evident is that, at less than one two-hundredths of one percent, the Covid-19 mortality rate among Indonesian physicians is vanishingly small. It’s questionable that a Covid-19 mortality rate this miniscule merits an article in a major US newspaper. Lenin’s imagery of journalists “straining every nerve” is highly relevant here.
Second, it’s clear than the mortality rate is much smaller among vaccinated than unvaccinated doctors. In fact, doctors who were vaccinated with CoronaVac were more than fourteen times less likely to die from Covid-19 compared to unvaccinated physicians. This translates into an efficacy rate of 93 percent, using a formula analogous to the one used to calculate vaccine efficacy (see the note at the end).
Emont blundered by restricting his analysis to doctors who died, rather than comparing the mortality rate of unvaccinated physicians to those who received the vaccine. Because the vast majority of Indonesian doctors are vaccinated, most Covid-19 deaths are going to happen in this group by the sheer volume of their numbers.
Emont’s error is tantamount to arguing that most people who die in traffic accidents were wearing seatbelts, therefore seatbelts are ineffective. Since most people wear seatbelts, it’s likely that most traffic deaths will happen among this majority group. To know how effective seat belts are, traffic accident fatality rates must be compared between two groups: those who wear seat belts and those who don’t. When the analysis is done properly, the conclusion is that seatbelts are effective.
Likewise, to examine the efficacy of a vaccine, those who are vaccinated must be compared with those who aren’t. When the analysis is done this way, it appears that Sinovac’s vaccine has worked well.
It’s possible that Emont is numerically and logically inept, and that he made an honest error, but then we would have to conclude that his editors are equally inept, also a possibility. However, just as some stories are too good to check, so too is some stupidity too good to correct. I have had opportunity on countless occasions to see research of low quality receive unqualified praise when it corroborated a desired political position, while research of high quality was torn apart that challenged the same stance.
It’s possible that Emont’s blunder was overlooked because it said what the Wall Street Journal’s editors and owners, the US government, Wall Street money-bags, and not least, those with investments in Western vaccines, wanted to hear. Or it could have been a crafty construction of a defamatory anti-Chinese message. Whatever the case—stupidity allowed by a system of propaganda to evade all checks, or a deception deliberately constructed to fit such a system—Sinovac’s vaccine, appears to have been effective in protecting Indonesian doctors from Covid-19 mortality.
Blunders of this sort, along with shoddy reporting on the Uyghurs and alleged coerced labor in Xinjiang, all of which rely on patently biased sources, along with the resurrection of a conspiracy theory about a lab leak that is manifestly inspired by the political goal of diverting attention from Washington’s abject pandemic failures, can’t help but recall Lenin’s imagery of journalists crawling on their bellies before the government and the money-bags, straining every nerve to rouse the hatred of the people against China.
Notes
1 The formula used to calculate the efficacy of CoronaVac in reducing Covid-19 mortality among Indonesian doctors is:
Efficacy = (mru – mrv) / mru X 100%
where
mru is the mortality rate among the unvaccinated
mrv is the mortality rate among the vaccinated
2 My analysis of CoronaVac’s efficacy in reducing mortality among Indonesian doctors departs from a proper analysis, which would require random assignment of doctors to vaccinated and non-vaccinated groups. Assuming this didn’t happen, the Indonesian doctors who weren’t vaccinated may be different in important ways from those who were–in ways that make them more or less likely to be exposed to the Covid-19 virus or die from the disease. It cannot, therefore, be concluded from my analysis that CoronaVac is highly effective, but the analysis strongly challenges Emont’s reporting and is far more supportive of the idea that CoronaVac works well in reducing Covid-19 mortality than doesn’t.
https://gowans.blog/2021/06/28/us-black ... e-vaccine/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."