Tag: Pfizer

Adieu Mother Empire

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Empire In Decline

Media reports have become the canary in the coal mine. “US State Department report details damning failings around chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.” [CNN, June 2023]; “Hawaii Officials Were Warned Years Ago That Maui’s Lahaina Faced High Wildfire Risk.” [Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2023]; “WHAT US TAXPAYERS ARE GETTING FOR THEIR MONEY IN UKRAINE —American taxpayers are financing more than just weapons. We discovered the U.S. government’s buying seeds and fertilizer for Ukrainian farmers… and covering the salaries of Ukraine’s first responders – all 57,000 of them.” [CBS NEWS, 9/24/2023] The drumbeat gets louder, its message harder and harder to ignore. The empire is in a hell of a mess. At home its people are suffering. They are angry, resentful, and discouraged. What happened to the land of the free, the greatest democracy in the world? What has replaced it?  The national security state, a paramilitary outfit that calls itself the law enforcement arm of the government. Although all it enforces is a new regime of censorship, a narrow window of acceptable speech, and an emphasis on identity politics. When was the last time you heard the media bring up mounting student debt ($1.8 trillion and rising], the astronomical rise in housing costs (more than half a million Americans experienced homelessness in 2022), childhood poverty (11 million children live in poverty, 14% of them children of color) and other indicators of American decline. Instead war has become the topic du jour. Forget about Vietnam, Korea, Iraq and Afghanistan. This time it will be different. Except it won’t be, will it? It’s a grim read but an important one. In “Adieu Mother Empire” we spell out the perils of living in a declining empire.

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Big Pharma’s Latest Get Rich Quicker Scheme

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Vaccine Capitalism

Who among us can forget the last two years as we cowered in our homes shunning contact with friends, neighbors, even relatives. When we dared open our doors, we were sheathed in masks, many of us went the final mile and donned gloves. “Social distancing” kept us isolated. What happened to our kids was equally damaging to their psyche. Their schools were shut down and education became a haphazard system of “remote” learning, which is to say very remote and very little learning. The usually docile servant of the establishment finally spoke out — “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading” [NYT, 9/1/2022] even though of the over one million Americans who died of Covid, an infinitesimal percentage were children (1,332) and less than 2% of them needed to be hospitalized. Yet despite being the least likely to suffer serious illness or die, children were subject to the same restrictions as the elderly who were the most likely to die. Fast forward one year and the chickens are coming home to roost. The pandemic lockdown, including mask mandates, social distancing and lack of exposure to germs, a guaranteed immune booster, have left millions of children unusually vulnerable to early-onset RSV. “Where these infections might have been spread out over time, they’re happening all at once now,” [Céline Gounder, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation and infectious-disease specialist]. If you’re finding it hard to believe such stupidity (and cupidity), read “Big Pharma’s Latest Get Rich Quicker Scheme” and see up close and personal how greed rules the healthcare system of the exceptional nation.

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Profiting off the COVID Vaccine: Big Pharma Hauls in Big Dollars from the World’s Pandemic Misery

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Stop Greed

You gotta hand it to them. A united front in pharma-land to keep the profits rolling in. When the outcry over the rising cost of prescription drugs erupted — 30% of patients cannot afford to take their prescribed doses — drug company flacks tut-tutted and came up with a refrain they repeat over and over: “[Increased prices are] necessary to support investments that allow us to continue to discover new medicines and deliver those breakthroughs to the patients who need them.” Balderdash! Even a committee of the bought and paid for House of Representatives was forced to admit: “…prices have skyrocketed over the last few decades… these same companies’ have dedicated more and more of their funds to enrich shareholders or to purchase other companies to eliminate competition.” Now pharma has come up with a new wrinkle. The CEO of the world eighth largest drug company, Pfizer, one of three vaccine makers, — revenues of over $42 billion in 2020 — took it upon himself to announce that every American would need at least one booster shot and a COVID vaccination ever year. That announcement more than quadrupled projections for Pfizer’s future revenues from the vaccine. Is the CEO of any drug company particularly one with such an obvious conflict of interest competent to make healthcare decisions affecting every American? Before you decide, check out “Profiting off the COVID Vaccine: Big Pharma Hauls in Big Dollars from the World’s Pandemic Misery”

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Profits Over People: Not Big Pharma’s Finest Hour

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Profits Over People

Melinda Gates, wife of the third richest person in the world, whose foundation has given $156 million to vaccine makers was interviewed by the New York Times on December 7. She was asked to comment “on the rise in vaccine hesitancy.” Her answer ““We’re at a point of a lot of distrust in the country… Disinformation is just too easy to spread and, that’s going to cost people their lives.” Not true. “Vaccine hesitancy” has a far more serious and disturbing cause. Throughout the course of the pandemic’s rampage in the U.S., the public has been bombarded with half-truths, unreliable guidance, and the obscene spectacle of vaccine makers circling the pot of gold that awaits the winner of the vaccine sweepstakes claiming success via press releases instead of peer-reviewed journals. It appears that the priority in the U.S. profit-at-any-cost healthcare system is on profits not saving lives. Sorry, Melinda, what we have here is not a bunch of anti-vaxx ‘crazies’ but a healthcare system where anything (profitable) goes. “Reporting the covid-19 vaccine trial results in press releases before publication in journals is neither good scientific practice nor does it help to build public trust in vaccines.” [editorial in the British Medical Journal] Are the oligarchs trying to confuse us by claiming that realistic demands for more public information, more documentation, more reliance on the scientific method are really “disinformation?” Check out “Profits Over People: Not Big Pharma’s Finest Hour” and decide for yourself.

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