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      in UK Politics

      Delta variant: Ministers send extra support to Greater Manchester and Lancashire to tackle surge in cases

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      Ministers have drafted in more help from the military and will provide extra testing and public health teams in parts of Greater Manchester and Lancashire after a surge in cases of the Delta coronavirus variant first identified in India.It comes as new internal NHS data shared with The Independent reveals a rise in hospital admissions in the region, with 13 new Covid-19 patients admitted to Manchester hospitals by 8am on Tuesday. The measures could help ministers decide whether to continue with the final end of social distancing rules, due to take place on 21 June.While a growing number of experts have expressed caution over the spread of the Delta variant, many Tory backbenchers are pushing for a full reopening of the economy. It was reported last night that Chancellor Rishi Sunak is willing to accept a delay of up to four weeks in the lockdown exit plan.Health secretary, Matt Hancock, said Tuesday’s new measures would include additional testing, as well as supervised in-school testing, and military support. He told MPs this approach had previously worked in south London and Bolton. Ministers have also extended their “minimise travel” advice to include Greater Manchester and Lancashire. And local directors of public health will be given discretion to reintroduce mandatory use of face coverings in communal areas in schools if they decide the measure is appropriate. But the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, called on ministers to go further and send more vaccines to the area.“We are not asking for any more vaccine here than our fair share. What we are asking for is the bringing forward of Greater Manchester’s supplies, so that we can run a surge vaccination programme over the next three weeks,” he said.He emphasised that the new system was “not a lockdown” but “advice”.Across England, the latest official data shows there were 879 Covid-19 patients in hospital, with a total of 66 new admissions in the past 24 hours to Tuesday. Across the northwest, there are 246 Covid-19 patients in hospital, with 163 across Greater Manchester.While admissions are rising, the number of hospital discharges – 101 in the past day – has meant the number of cases in hospital overall grew by just 19 in Tuesday’s figures.Mr Hancock announced the enhanced support as he told MPs the government faces a “challenging decision” over whether or not to lift remaining lockdown restrictions across England on 21 June.He also made an appeal to those living in Greater Manchester and Lancashire to get tested and to have a coronavirus vaccination as soon as they are eligible, “because that is our way out of this pandemic together”. As part of the government recommendations, those in areas affected by a rise in cases of the variant first identified in India are being urged to meet outside rather than inside where possible, to maintain social distancing and to minimise travel in and out of affected regions.The latest measures to try to halt the rise of the variant of coronavirus first identified in India will cover 10 per cent of England’s population.Official statistics released yesterday showed just a tiny number of those in hospital with the Delta variant have had two doses of the vaccine. The former health secretary Jeremy Hunt has suggested that any delay to England’s roadmap to lift lockdown would only last a couple of weeks, because of the success of the vaccination programme.Mr Hancock told MPs: “We are providing a strengthened package of support, based on what’s happening in Bolton, to help Greater Manchester and Lancashire tackle the rise in the Delta variant that we are seeing there.“This includes rapid response teams, putting in extra testing, military support and supervised in-school testing.”“I want to encourage everyone in Manchester and Lancashire to get the tests on offer,” he added. “We know that this approach can work. We’ve seen it work in south London and in Bolton in stopping a rise in the number of cases.“This is the next stage of tackling the pandemic in Manchester and Lancashire, and of course it’s vital that people in these areas, as everywhere else, come forward and get the jab as soon as they are eligible because that is our way out of this pandemic together.”The prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “We want to provide the package of support that has been effective in Bolton to a wider area … to tackle the cases of the Delta variant.” More

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      in World Politics

      The World Needs a People’s Vaccine

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      A recent Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that worries about the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States are at their lowest level since it began. Only half of Americans are either “very worried” (15%) or “somewhat worried” (35%) about the virus, while the other half are “not very worried” (30%) or “not worried at all” (20%). But the news from around the world makes it clear that this pandemic is far from over, and a story from Vietnam highlights the nature of the danger. 

      Pandemic Family Life: The Struggles Behind Closed Doors

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      Vietnam is a COVID success story, with one of the lowest rates of infection and death in the world. Vietnam’s excellent community-based public health system prevented the coronavirus from spreading beyond isolated cases and localized outbreaks, without a nationwide lockdown. With a population of 98 million people, Vietnam has had only 8,983 confirmed cases and 53 deaths. However, more than half of Vietnam’s cases and deaths have come in the last two months, and three-quarters of the new cases have been infected with a new “hybrid” variant that combines the two mutations detected separately in the Alpha (UK) and Delta (India) variants.

      Vietnam is a canary in the pandemic coal mine. The way this new variant has spread so quickly in a country that has defeated every previous form of the virus suggests that this one is much more infectious.

      COVID-19 Variants

      This variant must surely also be spreading in other countries, where it will be harder to detect among thousands of daily cases, and will therefore be widespread by the time public health officials and governments respond to it. There may also be other highly infectious new variants spreading undetected among the millions of cases in Latin America and other parts of the world.

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      A new study published in The Lancet medical journal has found that the Alpha, Beta (South Africa) and Delta variants are all more resistant to existing vaccines than the original COVID-19 virus, and the Delta variant is still spreading in countries with aggressive vaccination programs, including the United Kingdom. 

      The Delta variant accounts for a two-month high in new cases in Britain and a new wave of infections in Portugal, just as developed countries ease restrictions before the summer vacation season, almost certainly opening the door to the next wave. The UK, which has a slightly higher vaccination rate than the United States, had planned a further relaxation of restrictions on June 21, but that is now in question.    

      China, Vietnam, New Zealand and other countries defeated the pandemic in its early stages by prioritizing public health over business interests. The US and Western Europe instead tried to strike a balance between public health and their neoliberal economic systems, breeding a monster that has now killed millions of people. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 6 to 8 million people have died, about twice as many as have been counted in official figures. 

      Vaccinating the World

      Now, the WHO is recommending that wealthier countries that have good supplies of doses postpone vaccinating healthy young people and instead prioritize sending vaccines to poorer countries where the virus is running wild. President Joe Biden has announced that the US is releasing 25 million doses from its stockpiles, most of which will be distributed through COVAX, the WHO’s global vaccine-sharing program, with another 55 million to follow by the end of June. But this is a tiny fraction of what is needed. 

      Biden has also agreed to waive patent rights on vaccines under the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) TRIPS rules, formally known as the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights. But that has so far been held up at the WTO by Canada and right-wing governments in the UK, Germany, Brazil, Australia, Japan and Colombia. People have taken to the streets in many countries to insist that a TRIPS Council meeting on June 8-9 must agree to waive patent monopolies.

      Since all the countries blocking the TRIPS waiver are US allies, this will be a critical test of the Biden administration’s promised international leadership and diplomacy. So far, Biden’s team has taken a back seat to dangerous saber-rattling against China and Russia, foot-dragging on the nuclear deal with Iran, and war-crime-fueling weapons peddling to Israel and Saudi Arabia.

      Ending international vaccine apartheid is not just a matter of altruism or even justice. It is a question of whether we will end this pandemic before vaccine-resistant, super-spreading and deadlier variants fuel even more toxic new waves. The only way humanity can win this struggle is to act collectively in our common interest.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Public Citizen has researched what it would take to vaccinate the world and concluded that it would cost only $25 billion — 3% of the annual US budget for weapons and war — to set up manufacturing plants and distribution hubs across the world and vaccinate all of humanity within a year. Forty-two progressives in Congress have signed a letter addressed to President Biden to urge him to fund such a plan.

      If the world can agree to make and distribute a people’s vaccine, it could be the silver lining in this dark cloud. The ability to act globally and collectively in the public interest is precisely what we need to solve so many of the most serious problems facing humanity. For example, the UN Environment Program (UNEP) warns that we are in the midst of a triple crisis of climate change, mass extinction and pollution. Our neoliberal political and economic system has not just failed to solve these problems. It actively works to undermine efforts to do so, granting people, corporations and countries that profit from destroying the natural world the freedom to do so without constraint. 

      Neoliberalism

      That is the very meaning of laissez-faire — to let the wealthy and powerful do whatever they want, regardless of the consequences for the rest of us or even for life on Earth. As economist John Maynard Keynes reputedly said in the 1930s, laissez-faire capitalism is the absurd idea that the worst people, for the worst reasons, will do what is best for us all. Neoliberalism is the reimposition of 19th-century laissez-faire capitalism, with all its injustices, inequality and oppression, on the people of the 21st century, prioritizing markets, profits and wealth over the common welfare of humanity and the natural world our lives depend on.     

      Berkeley and Princeton political theorist Sheldon Wolin called the US political system, which facilitates this neoliberal economic order, “inverted totalitarianism.” Like classical totalitarianism, it concentrates ever more wealth and power in the hands of a small ruling class, but instead of abolishing parliaments, elections and the superficial trappings of representative government as classical totalitarianism did, it simply coopts them as tools of plutocracy, which has proved to be a more marketable and sustainable strategy.

      But now that neoliberalism has wreaked its chaos for a generation, popular movements are rising up across the world to demand systemic change and to build new systems of politics and economics that can actually solve the huge problems that neoliberalism has produced. 

      In response to the 2019 uprising in Chile, its rulers were forced to agree to an election for a constitutional assembly, to draft a constitution to replace the one written during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, one of the vanguards of neoliberalism. That election has now taken place, and the ruling party of President Sebastian Pinera and other traditional parties won less than a third of the seats. So, the constitution will instead be written by a super-majority of citizens committed to radical reform and social, economic and political justice.

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      In Iraq, which was also swept by a popular uprising in 2019, a new government seated in 2020 has launched an investigation to recover $150 billion in Iraqi oil revenues stolen and smuggled out of the country by the corrupt officials of previous governments. In 2003, former exiles flew into Iraq on the heels of the US-led invasion “with empty pockets to fill,” as a Baghdad taxi driver told a Western reporter at the time. While American forces and US-trained Iraqi death squads destroyed their country, they hunkered down in the Green Zone in Baghdad and controlled and looted Iraq’s oil revenues for the next 17 years. Now, maybe Iraq can recover the stolen money its people so desperately need and start using its oil wealth to rebuild that shattered country.

      In Bolivia, also in 2019, a US-backed coup overthrew its popular indigenous president, Evo Morales. But the people of Bolivia rose up in a general strike to demand a new election and Morales’ Movement for Socialism (MAS) party was restored to power. Now, Luis Arce, the economy minister under Morales, is Bolivia’s president.

      Around the world, we are witnessing what can happen when people rise up and act collectively for the common good. That is how we will solve the serious problems we face, from the COVID-19 pandemic to the climate crisis to the terminal danger of nuclear war. Humanity’s survival into the 22nd century and all our hopes for a bright future depend on building new political and economic systems that will simply and genuinely “do what is best for all of us.”

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in UK Politics

      Will lockdown be lifted on 21 June? Everything we know so far

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      The UK government’s hopes of scrapping the final social restrictions imposed on the public to tackle the coronavirus pandemic appear to be fading fast as the Delta variant of the disease continues to drive up infections.As it stands, Boris Johnson’s roadmap ends on 21 June when the last precautionary measures are due to be lifted but the threat posed by the new strain – now thought to be 40 per cent more transmissible than the first – is raising doubts about the wisdom of pressing ahead.While there is significant pressure for a return to normality as the summer weather finally arrives and after more than 14 months of hardship, frustration and uncertainty, the prime minister has previously promised to be guided by “data, not dates” in his decision-making and, at present, the former is not looking good.In his latest comments on the question, health secretary Matt Hancock said on Sky News on Sunday: “It is too early to make a final decision. We’ll keep watching the data for another week or so and, critically, watching that link on the number of cases to the number of people who end up in hospital. “And it is absolutely true that the number of people ending up in hospital is broadly flat at the moment.”But the UK recorded 5,341 new infections on Sunday as the caseload continues to rise, plus four more deaths within 28 days of testing positive, bringing the total number of fatalities since the pandemic began to 127,840.The increase has been sufficient to cause NHS staff to come forward to warn that frontline workers in particular have been “broken” by the pandemic and are “close to burnout”.“Everyone in the NHS at the moment is kind of terrified,” said Dr Megan Smith, legal and policy officer for campaign group EveryDoctor.Dr Emily Bell, a GP from the northwest of England, added: “We know there’s still a lot of unclear messaging going on, and I think unfortunately people’s behaviour has been relaxing.” “And then the beaches are packed, nobody’s wearing a mask, there’s no social distancing, and you just want to weep.“The NHS is still in crisis and we cannot cope as it is. Unlocking poses a real threat to it just collapsing, and my biggest concern is patient safety.”The public has also expressed anxiety to The Independent in a new poll that found 65 per cent of people saying they were “worried” about dropping social distancing mandates. A number of experts have also sounded the alarm about the risk involved in pushing on with stage four of the easing process.Sir David King, former chief scientific adviser to the government and chair of the independent Sage group, told Sky on Monday morning: “There are 5,300 new cases of the disease per day in the United Kingdom and we’re up about 2,000 on last week.“Now we’ve been discussing whether or not we’re going into a serious third wave and I don’t think we can possibly wait any longer. This is the evidence of another wave appearing.”“I think there’s a significant chance that [the date] could change,” Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, told the same network last week.“We’re better off being cautious at this point and being able to progressively unlock ourselves than to overdo it and then end up having to lockdown fully all over again.”His comments followed those of Professor Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group counselling the government, who told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Bank Holiday Monday that the UK is now in the grip of an “early” third wave of Covid-19 infections spearheaded by the Delta variant.“There has been exponential growth in the number of the new cases and at least three-quarters of them are the new variant,” the University of Cambridge academic said.“Of course the numbers of cases are relatively low at the moment – all waves start with low numbers of cases that grumble in the background and then become explosive, so the key here is that what we are seeing here is the signs of an early wave.“It will probably take longer than earlier waves to emerge because of the fact that we do have quite high levels of vaccination in the population, so there may be a false sense of security for some time, and that’s our concern.”Prof Gupta pointed out that Mr Johnson’s roadmap was formulated before the existence of the variant was known and backed delaying the final easing by “a few weeks” to allow more people to be vaccinated against it.“If you look at the costs and benefits of getting it wrong, I think it is heavily in favour of delay, so I think that’s the key thing,” he said.“People are not saying we should abandon the 21 June date altogether but just to delay it by a few weeks while we gather more intelligence and we can look at the trajectory in a clearer way.”A number of other leading experts have agreed that the current date for relaxation is inadvisable given the current evidence but, so far, none are advocating new lockdowns – either national or local to hotspots like the hardest-hit north west, Midlands and London.Instead, they are united in calling for stage four to be temporarily delayed and for the public to be patient one final time in order to avoid a fresh setback that could undo much of the good work this year’s successful vaccine rollout has achieved.However, indecision over the extent of the delay required is causing fresh exasperation in some quarters, with Professor Robert Dingwall of Nottingham Trent University complaining on Times Radio on Tuesday morning that the government’s critics “can’t even agree on what delay they’d like.” More

    • 150 Shares159 Views

      in UK Politics

      UK Covid hospital admissions: Latest figures as concerns grow over lockdown easing

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      The UK government’s hopes of bringing an end to the social restrictions imposed on the public since 23 March 2020 to tackle the coronavirus pandemic appear to be fading as the Delta variant of the disease continues to drive up infections across the country.As it stands, Boris Johnson’s roadmap ends on 21 June when the last precautionary measures are due to be lifted. But the threat posed by the new strain – now thought to be 40 per cent more transmissible than the first – is raising doubts about the wisdom of pressing ahead.Both NHS professionals and members of the public have expressed their anxiety about the prospect of ending restrictions, with a clear majority favouring the temporary prolonging of the status quo to allow for more people to get vaccinated against the virus. Health secretary Matt Hancock told Sky News on Sunday: “It is too early to make a final decision. We’ll keep watching the data for another week or so and, critically, watching that link on the number of cases to the number of people who end up in hospital.“And it is absolutely true that the number of people ending up in hospital is broadly flat at the moment.”With Mr Hancock making clear that hospital admissions will be a key determining factor in government decision-making, here’s a graph plotting the number of people who have received medical attention after contracting Covid since Mr Johnson’s announcement of the first national lockdown last spring, based on the very latest government data. As you can see, the graph is currently registering its first uptick in weeks, a worrying development that could represent a further setback to the dreams of millions desperate for a (relatively) normal summer. More

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      in UK Politics

      Will the UK go back into lockdown? Everything we know so far

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      The UK government’s hopes of scrapping the final social restrictions imposed on the public to tackle the coronavirus pandemic appear to be fading fast as the Indian variant of the disease continues to drive up infections.As it stands, Boris Johnson’s roadmap ends on 21 June when the last precautionary measures are due to be lifted but the threat posed by the new strain – thought to be more highly transmissible than the first – is raising doubts about the wisdom of pressing ahead.While there is significant pressure for a return to normality as the summer weather finally arrives and after more than 14 months of hardship, frustration and uncertainty, the prime minister has previously promised to be guided by “data, not dates” in his decision-making and, at present, the former is not looking good.The UK recorded 3,383 new infections on Monday, its sixth consecutive day hitting more than 3,000 cases, a rate not seen since early April.The rise has been sufficient to provoke concern among the experts, several of whom have sounded the alarm about the risk involved in pushing on with stage four of the easing process.“I think there’s a significant chance that [the date] could change,” Professor Adam Finn, a member of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, told Sky News.“We’re better off being cautious at this point and being able to progressively unlock ourselves than to overdo it and then end up having to lockdown fully all over again.”His comments followed those of Professor Ravi Gupta, a member of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group counselling the government, who told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Bank Holiday Monday that the UK is now in the grip of an “early” third wave of Covid-19 infections spearheaded by the Indian variant.“There has been exponential growth in the number of the new cases and at least three-quarters of them are the new variant,” the University of Cambridge academic said.“Of course the numbers of cases are relatively low at the moment – all waves start with low numbers of cases that grumble in the background and then become explosive, so the key here is that what we are seeing here is the signs of an early wave.“It will probably take longer than earlier waves to emerge because of the fact that we do have quite high levels of vaccination in the population, so there may be a false sense of security for some time, and that’s our concern.”Prof Gupta pointed out that Mr Johnson’s roadmap was formulated before the existence of the variant was known and backed delaying the final easing by “a few weeks” to allow more people to be vaccinated against it.“If you look at the costs and benefits of getting it wrong, I think it is heavily in favour of delay, so I think that’s the key thing,” he said.“People are not saying we should abandon the 21 June date altogether but just to delay it by a few weeks while we gather more intelligence and we can look at the trajectory in a clearer way.”A number of other leading experts have agreed that the current date for relaxation is inadvisable given the current evidence but, so far, none are advocating new lockdowns – either national or local to hotspots like the hardest-hit north west, Midlands and London.Instead, they are united in calling for stage four to be temporarily delayed and for the public to be patient one final time in order to avoid a fresh setback that could undo much of the good work this year’s successful vaccine rollout has achieved. More

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      in World Politics

      Why the US Will Not Achieve Herd Immunity

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      The problem with the COVID-19 pandemic is that we don’t know if we’re coming or going. It’s as if we’re swimming far from shore, overwhelmed by one wave after another, and we’re unsure if we’re heading toward land or away from it.

      China was the early face of COVID-19, but it hasn’t faced many infections since spring 2020. Europe, like the United States, has experienced successive outbreaks. Brazil continues to be hit hard, while Turkey is seeing a reduction of cases from a mid-April surge. Thailand and Cambodia are only now dealing with their first major upticks in the disease.

      Where India Went Wrong

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      But the real surprise has been India. Early on in the pandemic, journalists and scientists were trying to figure out why the coronavirus had made so little mark on the subcontinent and left so few deaths in its wake. Now, after a collective sigh of relief following a modest surge in late summer and fall last year, India is now overwhelmed by over 400,000 cases and more than 4,000 deaths a day, which are both likely to be undercounts.

      There are several reasons for India’s current catastrophe. A more infectious variant started to appear in the population, which the World Health Organization this week labeled a global health risk. The Indian government was not only unprepared for the crisis, but it was dangerously cavalier in its approach to the disease. After last year’s surge, it grew lax on testing and contact tracing. Nor did it put resources into the country’s inadequate medical system or in stockpiling key supplies like oxygen.

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      Then there are the errors of commission. The government did nothing, for instance, to prevent Kumbh Mela, a Hindu religious event last month that drew millions of pilgrims to a holy location on the Ganges, from turning into the largest super-spreader event on the planet. Prime Minister Narendra Modi even continued to hold mass political rallies as the COVID numbers began to rise.

      When it comes to vaccines, the government has been slow to order doses, distribute them to the population and secure the raw materials to scale up manufacturing. Although India is the world’s largest producer of COVID vaccines, less than 3% of Indians are fully inoculated against the disease.

      Well, that’s India, you might be saying to yourself. They have a Trump-like fanatic for a leader. Their medical system has long been inadequate. It’s an obvious place for COVID to have a final encore.

      In the United States, meanwhile, the number of cases has fallen dramatically since January. Hospitals no longer face overcrowding. More than a third of the population is fully vaccinated. The Biden administration is expecting that the country will return to some semblance of normality this July. But wasn’t it a similar complacency that proved India’s undoing? So, is India the ghost of America’s past or a taste of things to come.

      Our Herd Problem

      In early 2020, the scientific community went into hyperdrive to develop not one but several vaccines against COVID-19. In the US, the government and the medical community worked overtime to set up the infrastructure to get doses into arms around the country. Clinics and volunteers have jumped into action at a community level to make sure, as of this week, that 58% of adults have gotten at least one shot and over 70% of those older than 65 are fully vaccinated.

      But all this effort is now hitting up against resistance. Or hesitancy. Or barriers to access. States are cutting back on their vaccine orders from the federal authorities. Daily vaccination rates have dropped nearly 20% from last week. Employers are basically bribing people to get their shots. Millions of people aren’t even bothering to show up for their second doses.

      Barriers to access is perhaps the easiest problem to address. According to a recent survey, 72% of African-Americans and Latinos want to get vaccinated, but 63% reported that they didn’t have enough information about where to get a shot.

      While lack of information may well be the reason why some Americans have yet to sign up for their vaccinations, a hard-core resistance has developed to vaccines in this country — and COVID vaccines in particular. According to polling in April, around 45% of Republicans report that they’ll never get the vaccine. In all, as much as 37% of Americans are now saying that they’re going to opt-out. That means that tens of millions of doses are now chasing the remaining 5% of Americans who want to be vaccinated and haven’t yet gotten their first shot.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This resistance has nothing to do with a lack of information about how to sign up for a shot. It’s all about misinformation: that the vaccine is unnecessary, that it’s dangerous, that it comes with a microchip that will track you forever.

      Recently, Republican pollster Frank Luntz set up a focus group of vaccination-hesitant, Donald Trump voters to see what it would take to convince them to get shots. It was not an easy crowd. The husband of one of the participants had gotten seriously ill from COVID — and she stilldidn’t want to get vaccinated. In over two hours of discussion, Luntz brought in such vaccine-boosters as a former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Senator Bill Cassidy, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy — and still, the participants barely budged.

      Only after several emotional stories from former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and a final round of facts from the CDC official did they start to change their minds. “I would say I was probably 80% against when this started today,” one man said. “Now I’m probably 50-50-ish.”

      Luntz considered that a success. But in this age of Twitter, it’s not a workable model to expect skeptics to sit still for more than two hours while Republican Party grandees and noted doctors barrage one small group after another with stories and facts.

      A more representative reaction to such attempts by Republican Party influencers is what happened when Ivanka Trump posted selfies of her own vaccination. Twitter responses included: “‘Love your family but this is a huge NO for me & my family. Will be praying you do not get any of the horrible [side-effects].’ Others replied, ‘Please stop promoting this nonsense,’ ‘HARD PASS,’ and ‘Sorry, don’t trust it.’”

      Even more concerning, some anti-vaxxers are already planning to use fake vaccination cards to get into public events. Hundreds of sellers have appeared on eBay, Facebook and Twitter to hawk such cards. In this way, “live free or die” is quickly becoming “live free and kill.”

      In a nutshell, the US won’t achieve herd immunity because a significant portion of the herd is suffering from mad cow disease. Whatever the reasons for this obstinacy — anti-government, anti-science, anti-liberal — it will ensure that large pockets of this country will continue to play host to a very infectious disease.

      This resistance potentially puts the US in the same category as the Seychelles. An island nation in the Indian Ocean, the Seychelles has the highest rate of vaccination in the world. More than 60% of the population is fully vaccinated. But that still hasn’t been enough to ward off COVID. The Seychelles is now experiencing its largest outbreak, which, on a per capita basis, is even larger than what has overtaken India.

      The same thing might happen again in America, for instance in states with very low vaccination rates, like Mississippi and Idaho. When it comes to COVID-19, the US is only as strong as its weakest links.

      Perennial Pandemic

      When I lived in New York City, I used to wonder why my apartment was so overheated in the winter. It turns out that the heating systems in old buildings had been designed (or redesigned) to accommodate open windows in winter. During the flu pandemic in 1918-19, open windows and greater circulation of air were supposed to guard against infection.

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      Modern societies were once structured to handle periodic outbreaks of infectious diseases, from the steam heating in buildings to the TB sanatoriums that dotted the landscape. Americans braced for outbreaks with greater frequency than the cyclical reappearance of the cicadas. Three major waves of cholera struck the United States between 1832 and 1866. Typhoid killed 25,000 people in New York in 1906-07. The flu in 1918, diphtheria in the 1920s, polio in the first half of the 20th century: Americans became accustomed to infectious diseases as a way of life.

      COVID-19 isn’t going to disappear completely. It will return, again and again, just like variants of the flu or that other coronavirus, the common cold. If we’re lucky, it will come back in a less virulent form or the antibodies in our systems — those of us who received vaccinations — will render it so. If we’re not lucky, COVID-19 will generate ever more infectious strains that overwhelm us on a periodic basis.

      In the best-case scenario, what’s happening in India today is COVID-19’s last gasp. With the worst-case scenario, India is our future. So, don’t delete your Zoom app or give up your home office. Don’t throw away those masks. When it comes to infectious disease, we are all dependent on the herd.

      That’s great if you’re living in South Korea or New Zealand where compliance is second nature. But in America, the home of the free, the brave and the stupid, the herd may prove to be our collective undoing.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

    • 150 Shares179 Views

      in UK Politics

      New laws could lead to politicisation of the NHS, leading MPs warn

      by

      Extra powers for the health secretary under new NHS reform plans could open the door to more politicisation of the NHS, MPs have warned.The Commons health select committee said the planned new powers that would be granted to Matt Hancock under proposed changes legislation lack the necessary safeguards or detail on how the powers would be used.The committee demanded more transparency over the power of the secretary of state to appoint senior NHS managers, the ability of ministers to intervene in local reconfigurations and service closures and the power to change the role of national organisations without primary legislation. The government has said the planned reforms, which will be the first major change to the NHS in more than a decade, will help local NHS services to join up with local councils, social care and other services.It will create new integrated care organisations which will aim to deliver services for people across regions.But the proposed legislation, which was confirmed in the Queen’s Speech this week, include a host of so-called Henry VIII powers that the health secretary will be able to use without needing a vote in the House of Commons. NHS Providers chief executive Chris Hopson, who represents the views of NHS trusts, said: “Trust leaders are pleased to see the committee share their concerns over proposals in the white paper to give extensive new powers to the secretary of state. We wholeheartedly support the committee’s recommendation that further safeguards are put in place to protect the NHS’s operational independence and to ensure the power to intervene in local health services does not lead to the politicisation of the NHS.“It is inappropriate for party politicians to be able to solely determine how NHS funds are allocated across each region and constituency and which NHS managers should be hired and fired. They should not also be able to stop much needed changes to improve the quality and safety of local health services without good reason.”The committee also criticised the current lack of ambition on solving the workforce crisis in the NHS caused by widespread vacancies for nurses, doctors and other staff.The new health bill requires the government to publish updates on workforce planning once every five years.The MPs said this was not an “adequate response” and ministers should include a requirement to publish annual reports on workforce shortages and future staffing requirements that cover the next five, 10 and 20 years, together with an assessment of whether enough staff are being trained.The cross-party group of MPs also warned the government it would be “extremely disappointed” if Boris Johnson fails to deliver on his promise to produce a long-term plan for social care by the end of the year.It said the lack of a plan could undermine the ambitions for the NHS and the new Health and Care Bill should include a duty to publish a 10-year plan for social care within six months of the bill become law.Mr Johnson, originally promised to “fix” the system when he entered No 10 in July 2019, but the government has only promised to bring forward proposals “later in the year”.In its report, the committee said: “The absence of a fully funded plan for social care has the potential to destabilise integrated care systems and undermine their success.”Without secure, long-term funding, the problems that have bedevilled the care sector over the last two decades will not be solved.”The committee chairman, former health secretary Jeremy Hunt, said: “If such issues are addressed, the government has an opportunity to deliver a post-pandemic watershed 1948 moment for the health and care system, matching the significance of the year the NHS was founded.”But if they are not, it will be a wasted opportunity to deliver the truly integrated care required by an aging population.” More

    • 63 Shares109 Views

      in World Politics

      After Long Wavering, a Waiver

      by

      During last year’s presidential election campaign, candidate Joe Biden promised “absolutely” and “positively” to support the waiver of US patents to permit the unencumbered manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines in the rest of the world. Once Biden was elected, the words “absolutely” and “positively” apparently lost some of their absoluteness and positivity, becoming synonyms of “possibly” and “hopefully.” The hesitation ended on Wednesday when the US committed to back the idea of a temporary patent waiver.

      The New York Times legitimately called Biden’s unexpected agreement with a principle promoted by more than 100 countries “a breakthrough,” after noting that until Wednesday the US had been “a major holdout at the World Trade Organization over a proposal to suspend intellectual property protections in an effort to ramp up vaccine production.” Biden’s representative to the WTO, Katherine Tai, nevertheless emphasized that this dramatic reversal should be thought of as exceptional: “This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures. The administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for Covid-19 vaccines.”

      For a Few Billion Dollars More

      READ MORE

      Digging a little deeper into the perspective for change, Michael Safi at The Guardian offered the Biden administration “two cheers” rather than the three The Times appears to believe it deserves. This follows from Tai’s realistic assessment of how things are likely to play out: “Those negotiations will take time given the consensus-based nature of the institution and the complexity of the issues involved.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Consensus-based:

      Designed to protect vested interests, even in the face of a majority and the logic of history and health itself

      Contextual Note

      Times reporters Thomas Kaplan and Sheryl Gay Stolberg remain faithful to the patented meliorist approach the paper applies to nearly all policies conducted by a Democratic president. They emphasize the constructive process now underway at the WTO in a piece that echoes The Beatles song, “Getting Better All the Time.” The Biden administration seems to be telling the world: I’m changing my scene and doing the best that I can.

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      In contrast, the coverage by The Washington Post (owned by Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos) spends most of its ink suggesting the proposed waiver probably is fundamentally a flawed idea, leaving the impression that not much if anything will come of it. According to its pessimistic take, “Tai cautioned that the discussions to proceed with negotiations over the waiver’s text would ‘take time.’ Current and former officials said that a final agreement could differ significantly from the proposed waiver, which India and South Africa first introduced in October, and that deliberations could fall apart entirely.”

      CNN more prudently highlights the fact that the US proposal “is preliminary and will not guarantee the global patent rules are lifted right away. But the Biden administration’s signal of support amounts to a major step that aid groups and Democrats had been pressing for.” It nevertheless appears to offer Biden his third cheer when it explains that the president “ultimately decided to support the waiver in line with his campaign pledge.” It quotes US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s claim that Biden “put people over patents.” 

      But CNN points clearly to the true obstacle: “Members of the WTO must unanimously decide whether to loosen the restrictions. And while the US had been a hold out, other countries — including the European Union and Switzerland — have also resisted the step.” In other words, Biden may have killed two birds with one stone. By letting Europeans do the dirty work, he could save his standing with Big Pharma — surely the main reason for his hesitation — while appearing to stay true to the progressive principle of putting people over patents. Interestingly, France’s President Emmanuel Macron may be playing the same game.

      Historical Note

      The Guardian reminds its readers that the proposal is limited to “waiving patents on Covid vaccines — but not on treatments or other technology used to fight the disease.” Whereas the US media presented the question as one of moral duty versus economic interest, both The Guardian and Al Jazeera point to the practical question implied by the waiver: “If approved, the waiver would theoretically allow drugmakers around the world to produce coronavirus jabs without the risk of being sued for breaking IP rules.” For the developing world, feeling free from an imminent attack by corporate lawyers is indeed a kind of liberation.

      In other words, the proposed waiver would leave the world a long way from the optimistic scenario originally evoked by health experts and scientists in early 2020 that Alexander Zaitchik described in his exposé of Bill Gates’ influence on the WTO: “Battle-scarred veterans of the medicines-access and open-science movements hoped the immensity of the pandemic would override a global drug system based on proprietary science and market monopolies.” The idea at the time was to mobilize everyone and maximize resources. This implied patent pooling.

      The health professionals facing the outbreak of COVID-19 understood both the scope of its threat and the dangers of an insufficiently coordinated organization to counter it. They also knew what the consequences of patent protection might turn out to be. The adoption of the agreement Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) in 1995 and TRIPS-plus in 1999 marked a landmark moment in the trend economists and politicians have celebrated with the term “globalization.” The specific rules applying to pharmaceuticals have been in place since 2005. In 2015, the website Infojustice highlighted the fact that the TRIPS agreement had established a regime in which “patents grant the patent holder a monopoly on the market that allows the blocking of price-lowering generic competition and the raising of prices which restricts affordable access to medicines.”

      The history of the past two decades has demonstrated to the global south the risk existing patent laws represent for their health and welfare. In 2015, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights drew “attention to the potential detrimental impact these treaties and agreements … may have on the enjoyment of human rights as enshrined in legally binding instruments, whether civil, cultural, economic, political or social. Our concerns relate to the rights to life, food, water and sanitation, health, housing, education, science and culture, improved labour standards, an independent judiciary, a clean environment and the right not to be subjected to forced resettlement.” 

      Embed from Getty Images

      COVID-19 changed everyone’s perception. So long as the world was not faced by a politically toxic pandemic, the developed world was free to use its superior wealth and force to impose its rules on the rest of humanity. Any serious campaign to understand the fundamental asymmetry that was continually and silently aggravating the gap between the rich and poor nations was easily stifled. Thomas Piketty could write erudite books about the gap and what was driving it. But most people in the West had bought into the belief system promoted by New York Times columnist and best-selling author Thomas Friedman, conveying the message that thanks to globalization and American technology, the world was now flat.

      In an ideal scenario, the Biden administration will now begin to put pressure on Europe and Switzerland to emulate America’s courage in backing the proposed waiver. It will also pressure US vaccine providers to share their technology and know-how with the rest of humanity by convincing them to show not just their leadership but also their commitment to human health above profit. With or without patent protection, there is no danger of their becoming unprofitable, not with the power they have and an ever-expanding marketplace for health. But what we are witnessing, as they resist even temporary waivers, is the rentier’s obsession with automatically induced maximum profit making the question of health benefits a secondary consideration.

      In the months to come, the world will be attentively observing the political and economic games now being played out. At some point, COVID-19 will begin to fade away. The world will then face the fear of the next contagion and perhaps begin seriously to struggle with a strategy to counter the effects of climate change. Awareness of the stakes is already much higher than in the past. It is time for the political class to begin assessing the risk that represents for their own future.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More