£38 billion is equivalent to the entire England national spend on public health for the next TEN years, and almost seven times the current global commitment to the Covax scheme for global vaccination.
The outsourcing to Serco, G4S, and Sitel, employing 50,000 workers has had little public health impact, abuses employees rights, and makes use of mini-umbrella companies to avoid tax.
The mini-umbrella companies, many with overseas directors, are not accountable to public health. This has all the hallmarks of a huge scam that has risked the health of millions in the UK, and might still do so if the new variant spread.
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Our thoughts and prayers are with all our colleagues and friends in India, Bangladesh and Nepal right now. This catastrophe means vaccine production MUST expand beyond the few companies who hold patents. Otherwise many MILLIONS of people across the world will die.
Covax is not enough. It is at the mercy of governments and big Pharma.They are undermining it. And World Bank loans to countries to acquire vaccines at inflated prices are stopping Covax procurement from the same companies!
World leaders have had a year to act, but done nothing on a patent waiver. Vaccines, oxygen, ventilators are a public good. They should not be provided through the highest bidders and black markets.
Let us be clear on ten reasons why the Barrington group letter to...er... the Daily Express is profoundly wrong.express.co.uk/life-style/hea…
1. They state confidently "the vaccine programme will almost totally eliminate deaths and hospitalisations from Covid-19". Yet half the UK have not yet been vaccinated, we don't know how long immunity lasts, +Brazil and India show COVID can surge again in 'immune populations'.
The European Super League appears to have been backed with $6 billion debt financing from JP Morgan Bank. Says it all...
This is corruption pure and simple. Stealing the heritage and the rules of football from the club fans.
I hope Klopp, Tuchel, Arteta, Guardiola and Solsjaer will alos express their displeasure and resign. This is about defending the integrity of football.
I respect Susan Hopkins but this troubles me. Watch from 37.04 when she is asked on isolation. She says people when contacted are already isolating and that if people have got a test the vast majority do the right thing. But the evidence is different (1) bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod…
1. No. of contacts for each COVID-19 case is 17 per case in Taiwan, 2 in the United Kingdom. 2. China had 1 LOCAL contact tracer per 1200 population in Wuhan. UK has less than one per 10,000. 3. Successful countries test contacts and use apps to monitor isolation. We don't. (2)
4. The CORSAIR study showed self-reported adherence to test, trace and isolate behaviours was very low (selfisolation) 18.2%, 95% CI 16.4% to 19.9%. gov.uk/government/pub… (3)
Remember the global financial crash? Packaged mortgage securities? The Big Short? This time the problem may be hedge funds borrowing to gamble on stocks, using the same stocks as securities.(1)
The hedge fund industry has borrowed a reported $814 billion in the past year, to gamble on stocks, a 49 per cent increase since Feb 2020. The true figure is likely much higher, into trillions. (2)
Gambling on stocks using borrowed money pushes up share prices which can then be sold. But some hedge funds may get the timing wrong, leading to big losses if the market smells a rat. This is what happened with Archegos, a relatively small family hedge fund. (3)
Covid UK: Different models make different assumptions. 'Clearly, there is a substantial amount of uncertainty about these long-term forecasts as indicated by the wide credible intervals. Part of this uncertainty is due to the fluctuations in transmission risk and mobility.' (1)
Here is the LSHTM model for a large surge in hospitalisations in September 2021 (2)
Here is the Imperial model for hospital admissions. Looks a bit worse, with an earlier even higher peak under the worst case scenario (3)