Coronavirus

[whuben]

Remember kids, if you don't test you can't catch it.

Anyway, I'm off to sunny Spain this Friday for some sun, sea and sangria. I'm assuming masks required on the plane, which will make the obligatory G&T at 6:30am difficult.

.

[szola]

it sounds easy, but tbh it never is.

Even before covid I had to go in to work when i had a cold or even mild flu. As for insurance, you'd never get anywhere near what you paid in, might be fine for those on big bucks and some savings stashed away, but for the majority of the working population would be a waste of money, an unwanted additional expense, etc.

I didn't say it was easy on the purse.

The choice is still, do I want to get my co-workers and co-commuters sick vs. not.

I know we're protected from serious illness now but I don't want to be catching this every year. I never seem to get the easy going version.

Get well soon!

[bonzosbeard]

I didn't say it was easy on the purse.

The choice is still, do I want to get my co-workers and co-commuters sick vs. not.



Get well soon!

Better already but for 4/5 days felt done in. Wife got it for 3rd time in a year. I think that's a bit concerning.

I expect the Autumn illness will be quite high in terms of numbers as we basically just get on with it now so it will spread quick. Of course vast majority will be quite safe but people won't feel well.

[Cuenca 'ammer]

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/1 ... s-00053969

interesting read..

TIFWIW..

How Bill Gates and partners used their clout to control the global Covid response — with little oversight

From America to Europe to Asia, they veered from minimizing the threat to closing their borders in ill-fated attempts to quell a viral spread that soon enveloped the world. While the most powerful nations looked inward, four non-governmental global health organizations began making plans for a life-or-death struggle against a virus that would know no boundaries.

What followed was a steady, almost inexorable shift in power from the overwhelmed governments to a group of non-governmental organizations, according to a seven-month investigation by POLITICO journalists based in the U.S. and Europe and the German newspaper WELT. Armed with expertise, bolstered by contacts at the highest levels of Western nations and empowered by well-grooved relationships with drug makers, the four organizations took on roles often played by governments — but without the accountability of governments.

While nations were still debating the seriousness of the pandemic, the groups identified potential vaccine makers and targeted investments in the development of tests, treatments and shots. And they used their clout with the World Health Organization to help create an ambitious worldwide distribution plan for the dissemination of those Covid tools to needy nations, though it would ultimately fail to live up to its original promises.

The four organizations had worked together in the past, and three of them shared a common history. The largest and most powerful was the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, one of the largest philanthropies in the world. Then there was Gavi, the global vaccine organization that Gates helped to found to inoculate people in low-income nations, and the Wellcome Trust, a British research foundation with a multibillion dollar endowment that had worked with the Gates Foundation in previous years. Finally, there was the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, or CEPI, the international vaccine research and development group that Gates and Wellcome both helped to create in 2017.

Key takeaways
1 The four organizations have spent almost $10 billion on Covid since 2020 – the same amount as the leading U.S. agency tasked with fighting Covid abroad.

2 The organizations collectively gave $1.4 billion to the World Health Organization, where they helped create a critical initiative to distribute Covid-19 tools. That program failed to achieve its original benchmarks.

3 The organizations’ leaders had unprecedented access to the highest levels of governments, spending at least $8.3 million to lobby lawmakers and officials in the U.S. and Europe.

4 Officials from the U.S., EU and representatives from the WHO rotated through these four organizations as employees, helping them solidify their political and financial connections in Washington and Brussels.

5 The leaders of the four organizations pledged to bridge the equity gap. However, during the worst waves of the pandemic, low-income countries were left without life-saving vaccines.

6 Leaders of three of the four organizations maintained that lifting intellectual property protections was not needed to increase vaccine supplies – which activists believed would have helped save lives.

Civil society organizations active in poorer nations, including Doctors Without Borders, expressed discomfort with the notion that Western-dominated groups, staffed by elite teams of experts, would be helping guide life-and-death decisions affecting people in poorer nations. Those tensions only increased when the Gates Foundation opposed efforts to waive intellectual property rights, a move that critics saw as protecting the interests of pharmaceutical giants over people living poorer nations.

“What makes Bill Gates qualified to be giving advice and advising the U.S. government on where they should be putting the tremendous resources?” asked Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser for the Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign.



Soon, however, governments in the United States and Europe were offering their own crucial support to the four groups. The organizations spent at least $8.3 million lobbying the U.S. and E.U., according to an analysis of lobbying disclosures. When, this past spring, the leaders of CEPI sought to replenish the group’s coffers, it spent $50,000 in part to advocate for $200 million in yearly funding from the U.S. government, according to filings and interviews with Capitol Hill staff.

The overtures worked. While President Joe Biden’s efforts to obtain an additional $5 billion in funding for the administration’s international work combating the virus were floundering in Congress, he still managed to slip $500 million for CEPI into his budget proposal — $100 million a year for five years.


it continues..........................

[Plashet Grove Pete]

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/1 ... s-00053969

interesting read..

Yeah. That was a really interesting read. Thanks.

[simon hammer]

Bill Gates.

Never liked the bloke.

[SammyLeeWasOffside]

Surely the chips were controlling everyone anyway.

[Cuenca 'ammer]

last week Biden shouted that they had beaten big pharma..

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/02/busi ... index.html

Pfizer revenue and profits soar on its Covid vaccine business

Pfizer reported that earnings and sales more than doubled in the past quarter, and it raised its outlook for results the full year, thanks greatly to its Covid-19 vaccine.
The company reported adjusted earnings of $7.7 billion, up 133% from a year earlier. Revenue soared to $24.1 billion, up 134%. Both easily cleared results forecast by analysts.
The vaccine business alone was responsible for more than 60% of the company's sales, as vaccine revenue rose to $14.6 billion from only $1.7 billion a year earlier. The company said its Covid vaccine sales accounted for $13 billion of that revenue. Revenue outside of its Covid vaccine business was up a far more modest 7%.

This year, the Covid vaccine has brought in revenue of $24.3 billion. And Pfizer said it expects a total of $36 billion from the vaccine for all of 2021 -- nearly $12 billion more in revenue the final quarter of the year. And it said based on contracts it now has signed it expects revenue $29 billion from the Covid vaccine in 2022. And that's not necessarily all it will bring in.

"We continue to engage with governments regarding potential additional orders for 2022," said the company.

you can see why Gates and them want to stay involved...........

[Denbighammer]

To be fair, the firms that invented a vaccine to a world-crippling disease were always going to enjoy the biggest financial bonanza in history. They suddenly had a product everybody wanted.

It's like they invented air!

[Danny's Dyer Acting]

Bit of a guess here but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be Bill Gates coming up with ideas to suggest to governments. Probably the well paid/funded groups of scientists that were responsible for that.

[wolf359]

This looks like it could be fun, what next the North Korea virus.

https://www.euronews.com/next/2022/09/2 ... vid-vaccin

The bat virus, named Khosta-2, is known as a sarbecovirus – the same sub-category of coronaviruses as SARS-CoV-2 – and it displays "troubling traits," according to a new study published in the journal PLoS Pathogens.

[Crouchend_Hammer]

Bit of a guess here but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't be Bill Gates coming up with ideas to suggest to governments. Probably the well paid/funded groups of scientists that were responsible for that.

Why would you say that?
It is pretty well publicised he is the driving force behind a lot of things from the foundation.
Like many very successful people he is a megolamaniac so I would guess he absolutely loves being right at the forefront of decision making

Why else is he going to be spending all that dough? Just out of the goodness of his heart?

[Cuenca 'ammer]

To be fair, the firms that invented a vaccine to a world-crippling disease were always going to enjoy the biggest financial bonanza in history. They suddenly had a product everybody wanted.

It's like they invented air!

absolutely do not disagree at all.

however, and I honestly have no idea whatsoever, but..

is the virus still so bad that we're encouraged to have the fourth fifth and I presume not far off, the 6th booster ?

we had an awful time actually getting vacs. mostly ours was the Sinovac until we finally got access to the American and European versions. we're still wearing masks although it isn't mandatory just advised.

we actually did a pretty good job containing the thing overall, but it mean a total country lock down for about 5 months. a lock down, and I mean a lock down from 2 p.m. until 5 a.m. next day. no flights in or out of the country except relief flights returning citizens and residents. and that was maybe 1 every 2 weeks or less. no buses. no taxis.
masks and chemically spraying at every attendance into a Supermarket. what that will produce 10 years down the road, I really have no idea.

they say that we have contained the virus until it's almost negligible. but.

we're still being advised to have our 4th shot and more than likely soon a 5th one. I had a double shot because to be honest, I couldn't access a store to buy food unless I did. proof of vaccination was required.

anyway. I'm not having any more. I don't think I'm at risk. I don't know anyone other than a friend and his wife who contracted it while on a visit to New York to see their daughter.

yet still my friends are having the 4th shot.

babies having shots at 6 months ? I'm not convinced. but that's me.

now I heard a radio conversation that was mentioning that these shots don't last longer than 6 months (effectively) so we need a booster every 6 months.

how much money are Big Pharma going to make out of this lot ? is it necessary ? people at the top, are advocating it. my guess is also that they have some kind of financial incentive for doing this. just my opinion of course.

follow the money.

[EvilC]

What is the basis for you believing that you don't think you are at risk?

[Cuenca 'ammer]

What is the basis for you believing that you don't think you are at risk?

what makes you think that I am at risk ?

[EvilC]

what makes you think that I am at risk ?

Everyone faces increased risk due to COVID, some more than others.

Please can you answer the question? Or don't, I don't really care.

[Cuenca 'ammer]

okay I should have said "particularly" at risk.

does that answer your question ?

I'm also in danger of getting run over, hit by lightning, killed by some idiot with a gun or a knife, struck down with some other rare disease, get diagnosed with some form of cancer or have a heart attack.

should I live in a bubble ? should have so many boosters that in 10 years they find out that there are awful side effects that no one really discovered because that they didn't have time to run through clinical trials that every other vaccination normal has.

[CarltonColesLeftFoot]

I'm also in danger of getting run over, hit by lightning, killed by some idiot with a gun or a knife, struck down with some other rare disease, get diagnosed with some form of cancer or have a heart attack.

If there was an injection you could take that would mean you are more likely to survive being run over, hit by lightning, shot & stabbed, die of a disease, cancer or have a heart attack. Would you not take it?

[EvilC]

okay I should have said "particularly" at risk.

does that answer your question ?

I'm also in danger of getting run over, hit by lightning, killed by some idiot with a gun or a knife, struck down with some other rare disease, get diagnosed with some form of cancer or have a heart attack.

should I live in a bubble ? should have so many boosters that in 10 years they find out that there are awful side effects that no one really discovered because that they didn't have time to run through clinical trials that every other vaccination normal has.

No, it doesn't answer my question.

Take your choice, vaccinate or don't, but should you be unfortunate enough to get long COVID, or suffer a stroke or heart attack afterwards, be a good lad and don't burden your health service afterwards since you were happy to roll the dice and not vaccinate.

What clinical trials did COVID go through before it was released? No need to answer, it was none. There are plenty of potentially awful side effects to COVID that you seem happy to ignore.

[Crouchend_Hammer]

What will be interesting 10, 20, 30 years down the line is to compare groups of people who have had zero Covid vaccinations (like my wife) vs 2 jabs (like me) vs 4 jabs vs 8 (or whatever number it gets to)

It will be interesting to see if there ended up being any difference in how many times they caught Covid and how serious it ended up being if they did, based on the number of jabs they had

In addition, did number of COvid jabs have any impact on other health related (physical or mental) issues people suffered from