Wrong photo…
March 18, 2020
A new epidemiological study (preprint) concludes that the fatality of Covid19 even in the Chinese city of Wuhan was only 0.04% to 0.12% and thus rather lower than that of seasonal flu, which has a mortality rate of about 0.1%. As a reason for the overestimated fatality of Covid19, the researchers suspect that initially only a small number of cases were recorded in Wuhan, as the disease was probably asymptomatic or mild in many people.
Chinese researchers argue that extreme winter smog in the city of Wuhan may have played a causal role in the outbreak of pneumonia. In the summer of 2019, public protests were already taking place in Wuhan because of the poor air quality.
New satellite images show how Northern Italy has the highest levels of air pollution in Europe, and how this air pollution has been greatly reduced by the quarantine.
A manufacturer of the Covid19 test kit states that it should only be used for research purposes and not for diagnostic applications, as it has not yet been clinically validated.
March 22, 2020 (III)
A model from Imperial College London predicted between 250,000 and 500,000 deaths in the UK „from“ Covid-19, but the authors of the study have now conceded that many of these deaths would not be in addition to, but rather part of the normal annual mortality rate, which in the UK is about 600,000 people per year. In other words, excess mortality would remain low.
Dr. David Katz, founding director of the Yale University Prevention Research Center, asks in the New York Times: „Is Our Fight Against Coronavirus Worse Than the Disease? There may be more targeted ways to beat the pandemic.“
According to Italian Professor Walter Ricciardi, „only 12% of death certificates have shown a direct causality from coronavirus“, whereas in public reports „all the people who die in hospitals with the coronavirus are deemed to be dying of the coronavirus“. This means that Italian death figures reported by the media have to be reduced by at least a factor of 8 to obtain actual deaths caused by the virus. Thus one ends up with at most a few dozen deaths per day, compared to an overall daily mortality of 1800 deaths and up to 20,000 flu deaths per year.
Will the Establishment's Neoliberal Model of Drug Profiteering Finally Kill Us All?
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/09/will-establishments-neoliberal-model-drug-profiteering-finally-kill-us-all
Why is there even a question as to whether any Cov19 vaccine or diagnostic test kit should be free? Vaccines and diagnostic tests are essential components of any public health program, not merely conveniences to an isolated individual. When symptomatic patients are tested for a disease, indispensable information about the spread of the disease is accumulated, with potential benefit to all of us. Vaccinations in turn protect not only the individual patient but also those who might be infected by him/her. That an administration would even consider restricting access to such indispensable instruments of public health is a sad commentary on the state of political discourse today.
Some members of both parties have demanded inexpensive access, but both parties have long been complicit in a model of drug development and pricing that makes healthcare unaffordable for some even as it makes billionaires of a select few. Contrary to the impression left by the pharmaceutical industry it has not always been that way. Other more humane and productive approaches to drug development are not only possible but have also been key moments in our own medical history.
Typically the pharmaceutical industry defends patent protection for its new drugs on the grounds that the resulting monopoly profits fund new research and development. This contention is misleading on two fronts. Much of the profits go into marketing and advertising, More scandalously the development model is not another instance of Reagan’s magic of the market mythology. Columbia economist Jeffrey Sachs puts it this way:
“The prevailing model, indeed, in plutocratic America is that taxpayers fund the vast majority of research and development (R&D) for pharmaceuticals and then the intellectual know-how is turned over, free of charge, to private industry so that it can market these drugs under 20 years of patent protection and then make a fortune at the cost of the American people.” I would add that these fortunes are also often at the expense of other nations as protection of these patent rights is the driving force behind misnamed “free trade” agreements.
Inequality and personal bankruptcies are not the only evils that flow from this system. CEPR economist Dean Baker points out that the inordinate profits flowing from these monopoly protections create an incentive to hide adverse reactions to drugs. Companies are occasionally fined, but the costs are the proverbial drop in the bucket.
Even the super-rich can see that plutocracy is flawed
Surging income inequality is a symptom of a broader transformation in how capitalism is working in the 21st century
https://gulfnews.com/opinion/op-eds/even-the-super-rich-can-see-that-plutocracy-is-flawed-1.1447052
These were the days when Mitt Romney said discussions of income inequality should be conducted only in quiet rooms and when an American private equity tycoon compared an effort to raise taxes on his industry to Hitler’s invasion of Poland.
To mention the increasing concentration of wealth at the very top was to court accusations of class envy — indeed, in his 2011 book, even Bill Clinton admonished US President Barack Obama for his tone in talking to and about America’s super-rich. After my book, Plutocrats, was published in 2012, I was even — and I know this will shock you — disinvited to a Davos dinner party!
Just three years later, inequality hasn’t merely become a subject fit for polite company, it has become de rigueur. It was a central preoccupation at a conference on inclusive capitalism at the Mansion House and Guildhall last May. The event was organised by Lady Lynn de Rothschild and the opening speaker was Prince Charles. And at Davos, income inequality went from taboo to top of the agenda.
There’s a good reason for this pivot. Rising inequality is becoming so pronounced it is impossible to ignore. The latest jaw-dropping statistic is Oxfam’s calculation that by next year, the top 1 per cent will own more of the world’s wealth than the bottom 99 per cent. What is less apparent is how those of us who have been worried about income inequality for a long time should respond to the embrace of this issue by the plutocrats themselves.
It is easy to be sceptical. But we should welcome the plutocratic critique of plutocracy. Here’s why. Surging income inequality is a symptom of a broader transformation in how capitalism is working in the 21st century. This change has brought tremendous benefits — it has helped to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the emerging markets and provided cheaper goods and services, and many brand new ones, for us in the industrialised world.
But it is also hollowing out the incomes and wealth of the western middle class, even as it enriches those at the very top. This distributional shift is the great economic and political challenge of our time. It will tear some societies apart. The successful ones will be those that figure out how to solve it together.
The technology revolution, which has been turbo-charged by globalisation, is an economic upheaval comparable in its scale and scope to the Industrial Revolution. Just as the Industrial Revolution did not bring about the end of farming, the technology revolution won’t bring about the end of manufacturing. But just as the agricultural sector shrank as a share of the overall economy, particularly in terms of employment, the relative size of the industrial sector will decline, too.
Coco Pops is racist and was always intended to be racist.
If you only knew what Rice Krispies actually was…
It's just as racist and more.