I was asked to share this, and am happy to do so. It is a recording of an Independent Sage meeting, a week ago, when one of the shocking disclosures was that very recently 75% of all Covid vaccines had happened in ten countries and 130 countries had received no vaccines at all. Debate was on what might be done to address this.
We are a very long way from treating this global pandemic.
Patent issues are clearly involved. The first half an hour is definitely worth looking at. I admit I did not get to all the Q&A.
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I have been the WHO Press conferences.
This is not news to me.
They can be found here down the page.
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019
Next one is tomorrow Friday.
Our press does not report on this in any meaningful way.
“75% of all Covid vaccines had happened in ten countries”
Which sounds awful unless you know that those ten countries are China, the US, India, The UK, Brazil, Germany, Turkey France, Indonesia and Russia and they account for 52% of the world’s population. And while the figures from China just aren’t known, The US, Brazil and India alone have suffered around a third of the reported deaths in the world. When everyone in the world has been vaccinated it will be the case that 52% of all Covid vaccines have happened in ten countries.
I’d have thought we should be expecting to have most vaccinations by number within the those countries with the biggest populations and certainly in countries suffering the worst infections.
But you find it ‘shocking’ that the most populated countries are having the most number of people vaccinated? Still, I’m sure you can spin it into something else.
And you think yat ignoring developing countries is going to work?
Please feel free to be callous if you wish, but not here.
How about good news? Britain’s top epidemiologists has confirmed Britain is no longer in a pandemic. Sarah Walker, Professor of Medical Statistics and Epidemiology at Oxford and Chief Investigator at the ONS, now says Britain has “moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation”
Then she does not understand pandemics
By definition they are worldwide and there still is a pandemic to which we are at risk, worldwide
So the comment was ignorant, if she made it
She needs to turn on her television
It strikes me that you’re talking at cross purposes here. No-one looking at the appalling scenes in India can doubt that the world is still in the grip of a Pandemic.
So this would include countries such as New Zealand and Taiwan, as part of the global community, but wouldn’t include them if we were simply looking at local cases numbers there. There are very few cases in either.
Prof Walker, if I understand her correctly, is describing the local situation. I’m sure she would apply all the usual caveats about not dropping our guard, and the dangers of new variants etc.
I would agree we must drop our guard
Precisely because we are in a pandemic
They are global, by definition, and we live on the globe
“130 countries had received no vaccines at all”
Where does that information come from? Can you give a source? Because all the information I can find (e.g. FT vaccination tracker of 214 countries) flatly contradicts that claim with Yemen as the ONLY country noted with “no vaccines at all”.
Presumably you checked the claim before repeating it? What source did you check?
I quoted my source
Thankyou for sharing this.
Note that Bill Gates is appearing on the Sophie Ridge show on SKY NEWS on Sunday morning.
Appropriate Questions that might be asked are:
1. Is it right that the Bill Gates Foundation has become the second highest financial contributor to the WHO?
2. Is there not a conflict of interest with Bill Gates as a staunch defender of the IP /Patent system which blocks access to vaccine production and the WHO whose duty is to manage world health most effectively?
3. Is it not right that all obstacles to producing as many effective vaccines as possible as quickly as possible in a pandemic are removed?
4. Are some things more important during a pandemic than the interests of patent holders?
Good questions
I bet they will not be asked
Richard,
I think it’s only fair to quote what Prof Walker said, the last paragraph being particularly relevant. This is from the Mirror:
“Without vaccines, I don’t think getting close to zero is really feasible in the situation now in the UK where we’re effectively endemic, we’ve moved from a pandemic to an endemic situation.
“Long-term lockdown isn’t a viable solution so vaccines are clearly going to be the only way that we are going to have a chance to control this,” she said.
But she did warn that the virus has been good at ‘throwing us curveballs’ and said it could go wrong very quickly.
So, we’re still in a pandemic then
The comment was straightforwardly wrong
I had checked it our before saying so
I simply cannot understand how there can be any serious debate about whether we have a pandemic and whether the ONLY way to defeat it is by a global vaccination drive, largely funded by those countries that can afford it. Even if one is inhumane enough to believe overseas aid is bad and undesirable, simple, self-interested logic still dictates this as the sole available option.