Mudface
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Posts posted by Mudface
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Wow, the last shreds of the US's reputation for not being utter cunts has gone- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/us-buys-up-world-stock-of-key-covid-19-drug
US buys up world stock of key Covid-19 drug
No other country will be able to buy remdesivir, which can help recovery from Covid-19, for next three months at least
The US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the world.
Experts and campaigners are alarmed both by the US unilateral action on remdesivir and the wider implications, for instance in the event of a vaccine becoming available. The Trump administration has already shown that it is prepared to outbid and outmanoeuvre all other countries to secure the medical supplies it needs for the US.
“They’ve got access to most of the drug supply [of remdesivir], so there’s nothing for Europe,” said Dr Andrew Hill, senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University.
Remdesivir, the first drug approved by licensing authorities in the US to treat Covid-19, is made by Gilead and has been shown to help people recover faster from the disease. The first 140,000 doses, supplied to drug trials around the world, have been used up. The Trump administration has now bought more than 500,000 doses, which is all of Gilead’s production for July and 90% of August and September.
“President Trump has struck an amazing deal to ensure Americans have access to the first authorised therapeutic for Covid-19,” said the US health and human services secretary, Alex Azar. “To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it. The Trump administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for Covid-19 and secure access to these options for the American people.”
The drug, which was invented for Ebola but failed to work, is under patent to Gilead, which means no other company in wealthy countries can make it. The cost is around $3,200 per treatment of six doses, according to the US government statement.
The deal was announced as it became clear that the pandemic in the US is spiralling out of control. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading public health expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Senate the US was sliding backwards.
“We are going in the wrong direction,” said Fauci. Last week the US saw a new daily record of 40,000 new coronavirus cases in one day. “I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around,” he said. He could not provide an estimated death toll, but said: “It is going to be very disturbing, I guarantee you that.”
The US has recorded more than 2.5 million confirmed cases of Covid-19. Some states lifted restrictions only to have to clamp down again. On Monday, the governor of Arizona ordered bars, cinemas, gyms and water parks to shut down for a month, weeks after they reopened. Texas, Florida and California, all seeing rises in cases, have also reimposed restrictions.
Buying up the world’s supply of remdesivir is not just a reaction to the increasing spread and death toll. The US has taken an “America first” attitude throughout the global pandemic.
In May, French manufacturer Sanofi said the US would get first access to its Covid vaccine if it works. Its CEO, Paul Hudson, was quoted as saying: “The US government has the right to the largest pre-order because it’s invested in taking the risk,” and, he added, the US expected that “if we’ve helped you manufacture the doses at risk, we expect to get the doses first”. Later it backtracked under pressure from the French government.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau warned there could be unintended negative consequences if the US continued to outbid its allies. “We know it is in both of our interests to work collaboratively and cooperatively to keep our citizens safe,” he said. The Trump administration has also invoked the Defense Production Act to block some medical goods made in the US from being sent abroad.
Nothing looks likely to prevent the US cornering the market in remdesivir, however. “This is the first major approved drug, and where is the mechanism for access?” said Dr Hill. “Once again we’re at the back of the queue.”
The drug has been watched eagerly for the last five months, said Hill, yet there was no mechanism to ensure a supply outside the US. “Imagine this was a vaccine,” he said. “That would be a firestorm. But perhaps this is a taste of things to come.”
Remdesivir would get people out of hospital more quickly, reducing the burden on the NHS, and might improve survival, said Hill, although that has not yet been shown in trials, as it has with the other successful treatment, the steroid dexamethasone. There has been no attempt to buy up the world’s stocks of dexamethasone because there is no need – the drug is 60 years old, cheap and easily available everywhere.
Hill said there was a way for the UK to secure supplies of this and other drugs during the pandemic, through what is known as a compulsory licence, which overrides the intellectual property rights of the company. That would allow the UK government to buy from generic companies in Bangladesh or India, where Gilead’s patent is not recognised.
The UK has always upheld patents, backing the argument of pharma companies that they need their 20-year monopoly to recoup the money they put into research and development. But other countries have shown an interest in compulsory licensing. “It is a question of what countries are prepared to do if this becomes a problem,” said Hill. -
So- we don't know how many people are being tested, or even what actually constitutes a test as it could simply be mailing out a kit. Pillar 2 test results are publicly reported daily for Scotland, Wales, NI and the UK as a whole, but not for England, and English local authorities may not be aware of cases in their own area. The test and trace system is completely fucking useless and the contact app has had to be scrapped at great expense, even though a free open source one was available form Germany.
Great.
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Depends what you want- Bioshock is pretty much single player only with good to great storylines. Borderlands is much more multiplayer/ co-op focused- it's first person sci-fi Diablo essentially- you can play it single player, but it's a bit boring to do so. Neither are particularly great at the shooting side of things, they're not a patch on something like Doom 2016 for example, but make up for it in other areas.
Personally, I much preferred Bioshock as I'm not really a fan of co-op games and the first game has some amazing set pieces like Fort Frolic and the classic opening scene. As for accessibility, both are pretty simple to get into, you won't have a problem with either.
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33 minutes ago, skend04 said:
Selma 9/10
That Ava DuVernay is some filmmaker. From a cinematography point alone, it was beautiful to look at. Oyelewo was brilliant as MLK. That the Oscars snubbed it and him was embarrassing if not pretty racist.
Fascinating to read the other day that George Wallace, after he was paralysed in an assassination attempt, became almost the polar opposite of the man he was.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/22/trump-george-wallace-samuel-freedman
We should arrange to have Trump shot, see if he undergoes a similar conversion.
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10 minutes ago, Strontium Dog™ said:
I found a link somewhere after quite a bit of searching, someone else had been having exactly the same problem with their Virgin Media broadband. I've no idea what the technical reason is, but I've never trusted any of these power saving settings; I've had a problem with sleep mode on a PC in the past and routinely disable it now. I'd never have even known my ethernet had such a setting but it was super easy to turn it off in Device Manager.
OK cheers- I never use sleep mode either, it's pretty shit. I've disabled those settings so fingers crossed that's it fixed for good.
Anyone else looking for it- open up device manager (Windows key + R, type devmgmt.msc) and expand the network adapters section, then double click on the adapter name and the settings are under the Advanced tab-
Edit- under the Power Management tab, it might be worth unchecking the 'allow the computer turn off this device' option too.
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4 hours ago, Strontium Dog™ said:
I've always found McAfee to run like turd. Avast has served my PCs well. Although when I installed Avast on my tablet, it slowed everything down, so I'm looking for something that won't do that.
On a tangent, because I am smugly pleased with myself for fixing it, I was having major problems with my ethernet connection dropping out frequently or just not working at all. The wireless worked fine, however. I eventually worked out that it was a network adapter issue, specifically an issue with my Realtek PCIe GBE Family Controller, and a setting called "Energy Efficient Ethernet". Once I disabled that, and another one ("Green Ethernet") for good measure, I haven't had any problems at all.
Ooh, now that's interesting. I've been having problems with mine for a while now, wifi would regularly drop for 30 seconds or so probably once or twice an hour. Eventually I ended up getting home plugs and connecting it directly- that improved things, but I still get the odd cut out maybe 2-3 times a day. I'll try disabling those settings and see how I get on. Was the fix as a result of trial and error, or did you find a link somewhere? Presumably the settings cause the adaptor to go to 'sleep' at some point?
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Downhill from there, sadly.
Plus most of the rest of the film...
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2 hours ago, johnsusername said:
New symptoms added to the totally completely natural virus ...
A runny nose
Nasal congestion ,
nausea
diarrhoea .
Coughing,
fever,
fatigue,
muscle or body aches,
headache,
Loss of taste or smell
sore throat
I had that in '77. People need to man up.
etc
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The best bit of a bad series-
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Just now, Dougie Do'ins said:
Roughly translates to. 'If you dare publish anything that might show us to be the corrupt shower of cunts we are, then we might have to bring the licence fee back to the table'.
Aye- I think at this point though, with so many Tories being parachuted into the BBC, getting rid of the licence fee would be welcomed by them.
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20 minutes ago, Doctor Troy said:
True yeah, problem is I've seen loads of Coventry fans on Twitter saying how well behaved they were and there was no trouble.
Also, Coventry seems to have a problem with gangs and a lot of stabbings but you'll always be told that Liverpool is an absolute shithole where everyone robs everything that isn't nailed down.
Yeah, 40-odd years of anti-Liverpool propaganda supported and even instigated by governments is hard to counter. I've lived or worked in a number of large cities and really, unless you go specifically looking for trouble, they're not these Wild West Helmand province type wastelands that the likes of the Mail tries to make them out to be.
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18 minutes ago, Doctor Troy said:
Good old Coventry fans
I just asked my sister about that- she lives in Coventry. Supposedly, the two black guys had been threatening people with knives and were chased and cornered, with a bit of a mob forming. They were arrested to get them out the way as the police didn't have enough backup available. Knives may or may not have been found in the bins following the arrest.
That's the trouble with Twitter, there's usually no context to anything, it's really dangerous.
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1 minute ago, Captain Milk said:
Know exactly what you mean there pal.
I said I wouldn't cry again...
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2 minutes ago, Captain Milk said:
Are you my brother posting under a pseudonym? The tracks/artists I stuck up last Sunday were all on the rotation at ours too, I was being transported back in time listening to them.
The multi-sensory nature of memory and how you can suddenly dislodge all kinds of things locked away for decades; conversations, smells, what people were wearing, all that stuff, makes music even more powerful, eh.
Yeah, I find it very difficult to listen to You're so Vain, some Elton John songs- especially Tonight off the Blue Moves album- and bizarrely the Dougal and the Blue Cat soundtrack as they evoke such strong memories and emotions of my Mum playing them when I was a kid.
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2 minutes ago, Captain Milk said:
Always reminds me of my mum and dad immediately, does Carly Simon.
Spooky, I was just thinking the same. My early years soundtrack was mainly Carly, Carole King, James Taylor, Elton John and Gilbert O'Sullivan.
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I need my rep limit increasing due to this thread and Thursday night...
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Craig Charles just opened his Radio 6 Funk and Soul Show with YNWA. He followed it with Get Down With It by Little Richard, never had such a pleasant 10 minutes cleaning up the kitchen after tea.
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34 minutes ago, Elite said:
Kevin Lisbie scoring an hat-trick against us was a pure anomaly.
He was the first that came to mind before I opened the thread.
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Grr, I've been waiting for this compilation and now I'm annoyed because of the shit effects they've put on it. Just show the goals ffs and keep the office temp away from After Effects Pro-
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3 minutes ago, Jairzinho said:
Pretty sure I copied and pasted, mainly because I'm really lazy.
Maybe the email gets flagged due to Cath's massive money-laundering operation.
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Christ, I hope this isn't us next month- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/26/arizona-joins-texas-halting-reopening-amid-surge-covid-coronavirus-cases
US coronavirus cases hit new one-day high as states backtrack on reopening
Experts say there’s evidence Covid-19 is making a comeback, including rising deaths and hospitalizations in parts of the US
Joanna Walters in New York, Joan E Greve in Washington and agencies
The number of confirmed new coronavirus cases per day in the US hit an all-time high of 40,000 according to figures released by Johns Hopkins on Friday, eclipsing the mark first set during one of the deadliest stretches in late April. It’s a resurgence that has led some governors to backtrack or at least pause the reopening of their states.
The news came as the governor of Texas ordered the closing of all bars again and scaled back restaurant dining, in the biggest retreat yet by any state after business reopening.
The move was quickly followed by Florida also announcing bars immediately have to stop serving alcohol.
Halsey Beshears, the head of Florida’s department of business and professional regulatinon, said the policy would be in effect “immediately.”
The announcement came less than an hour after the Florida department of health reported that the state confirmed 8,942 new cases of coronavirus yesterday, breaking a record set earlier this week.
The Florida health department also reported a frightening rise in the rate of positive test results. On Thursday, 13.1% of test results come back positive, compared to 8.9% on Wednesday, confounding Donald Trump’s recent assertions, repeated on Thursday, that “if you did not do testing, you would not have cases”.
On Thursday, Texas had paused its reopening process and was swiftly followed by Arizona, as both states saw a surge of new infections. Florida and California are also seeing record increases.
While the national increase is believed to reflect, in part, greatly expanded testing, experts say there is ample evidence the virus is making a comeback, including rising deaths and hospitalizations in parts of the country, especially in the south and west.
The number of confirmed infections soared past the previous high set on 24 Aprilof 36,400, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University.
Deaths from the coronavirus in the US are down to around 600 per day, compared with about 2,200 in mid-April.
Some experts have expressed doubt that deaths will return to that level, in part because of advances in treatment and prevention but also because a large share of the new infections are in younger adults, who are more likely than older ones to survive, although officials have warned that younger people are at risk of then passing the virus on to older friends and relatives who will be less resilient.
The virus is blamed for 124,000 deaths in the US and 2.4m confirmed infections nationwide, by Johns Hopkins’ count.
But US health officials said on Thursday that the true number of Americans infected is about 20 million, or almost 10 times higher. Worldwide, the virus has claimed close to a half-million lives, according to Johns Hopkins.
On Friday, Texas governor Greg Abbott ordered a sharp reversal on reopening. He had pursued one of the most aggressive reopening schedules of any state and had not only resisted calls to order the wearing of masks but had refused until last week to let local governments take such measures.
“It is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars,” he said. “The actions in this executive order are essential to our mission to swiftly contain this virus and protect public health.”
And on Friday, just before the first White House coronavirus taskforce briefing in two months, the White House confirmed reports that Trump canceled his weekend trip his private golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
He was severely criticized last month, when he went golfing over Memorial Day weekend as the US coronavirus death toll neared 100,000.
And there had been questions raised about whether Trump would have to self-quarantine in New Jersey because the state is currently requiring those who travel from states with high levels of community spread of coronavirus to do so for 14 days.
Earlier this week, Trump traveled to Arizona, which was included on New Jersey’s list of affected states.
Health experts warned earlier on Friday that the US was not doing enough testing for Covid-19 and that simply pausing reopening plans in some states – as others continue to press ahead – would not be enough to stem the spread of the disease.
“Pausing reopening is not enough. We have got to try to put the horse back in the barn, as it were. We need to start to reverse the opening-up,” Ashish Jha, director of Harvard University’s Global Health Institute, told ABC on Friday morning.
He warned that hospitals face being overwhelmed unless leaders take stronger measures to slow the spread.
Jha urged more testing, saying the US was not doing enough, even though it is performing an estimated 500,000 tests per day, after the CDC on Thursday said that there were likely an estimated 10 times as many Americans who have or have had coronavirus than current statistics show.
“They are missing cases because there is not enough testing. They are way below where they need to be,” said Jha.
An ABC/Ipsos poll on Friday showed that 56% of Americans believe the country is opening back up too quickly, with no vaccine and no cure available for Covid-19.
Jha urged Americans to wear face masks in public. “It’s a pretty small step to take to make sure our hospitals don’t get overwhelmed,” he said. Jha said masks do help prevent the spread, despite a high-profile anti-mask backlash in some parts of the country.
Arizona governor Doug Ducey, a Republican, on Thursday declared his state “on pause” as hospitals accelerate toward capacity.
Many governors are retreating to measures they once resisted and striking a more urgent tone.
“I think they’re going to have to,” said Dr Mark McClellan, former head of the Food and Drug Administration. “It doesn’t take most people in a community getting sick to overwhelm healthcare systems.” -
Good God, why have I never seen this film-
The Hot Spot with Don Johnson and Virginia Madsen is another cracker.
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22 minutes ago, Numero said:
Yeah, PayPal under ‘send money’. I think I’m doing it right, I don’t use PayPal a lot.
I had that too, it seems to occur if you paste directly into the text box. It worked OK when I typed the email address out though.
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Boris Johnson
in GF - General Forum
Posted
Brilliant lines-