Covax, the global scheme to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries faces a “very high” risk of failure, potentially leaving billions of people with no access to vaccines until as late as 2024. The bleak warning is contained in a financial risk assessment commissioned by Gavi, an alliance of governments, drug companies, charities and international organisations that arranges global vaccination campaigns and is the WHO’s partner in the Covax scheme. The Covax programme is the main global scheme to vaccinate people in poor and middle income countries against the coronavirus. It aims to deliver at least 2bn vaccine doses by the end of 2021 to cover 20% of the most vulnerable people in 91 countries, mostly in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

It has been beset by a number of issues, including a shortage of doses of approved vaccines, and a decision by India’s Serum Institute, which was initially earmarked to supply Covax, saying it would prioritise supplying India first. The cheaper and easier to transport vaccines that the scheme has banked on, including the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine, have been slower in testing and getting regulatory approval.

Gavi says the programme is struggling from a lack of funds, supply risks and complex contractual arrangements, which could make it impossible to achieve its goals.

“The risk of a failure to establish a successful Covax facility is very high,” says an internal report to the board of Gavi. 

The risk of failure is higher because the scheme was set up so quickly, operating in “uncharted territory”, the report says. It also warns that issues with contracts that allow countries to back out of buying doses they have committed to could push up the cost of doses from the $5.20 benchmark and ultimately make the scheme no longer viable.

Scheme to get Covid vaccine to poorer countries at ‘high risk’ of failure | Coronavirus | The Guardian

  Super-cyclone Amphan, which battered the south of Bangladesh in late May. Bangladesh’s disaster management department has said 300,000 people have been affected by the flooding. About 50,000 people are still displaced. They have spent the months since Amphan living on government land, camped out by the riverside or near roads or in cyclone shelters.

“We are able to successfully evacuate millions of people and it can prevent loss of life but people are still losing their homes, land and livelihoods. There is a lack of support after the cyclone,” Saleemul Huq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development explained.

The long-term effects of flooding are pushing Bangladesh’s rural populations into already crowded cities, expanding their slums.

“Unfortunately, with climate change and rising sea levels, people in the lower coastal districts of Bangladesh will gradually lose their livelihoods as fishermen and farmers, They will be forcibly displaced. This needs to be actively addressed by both the national government and the international community,’ he pointed out.

‘It’s over for us’: how extreme weather is emptying Bangladesh’s villages | Global development | The Guardian

 Adrian Williamson QC, counsel for the bereaved and survivors of the Grenfell fire disaster, said the evidence revealed “an industry in which Arconic, Celotex and Kingspan were content to push hazardous products into the marketplace and sought to market them dishonestly”.

In 2013 Celotex executives had known that “in the event of a fire [its insulation] would burn”. In 2007 Kingspan’s tests had also caused “a raging inferno”. In 2009 an Arconic executive had shared images of a burning tower fitted with similar panels to those it sold to Grenfell “to show you how dangerous PE [polyethylene] can be when it comes to architecture”.

Kingspan altered the foam’s chemical mix. When tested in 2007 the new formula had become a 600C “raging inferno”. Despite the new formula, Kingspan had stuck to using the 2005 test pass to help sell the foam boards. Ivor Meredith,   a technical manager for Kingspan, had run more tests “to get the technology to pass, to justify our lie”, he said. Meredith’s job was to maintain the impression that the material could be used in line with building regulations. More full-scale tests failed in 2007 and 2008 but the results had not been communicated to clients, Meredith said.

The British Board of Agrément (BBA) rules on a material’s performance; Local Authority Building Control (LABC) decrees if a material meets regulations; and NHBC, a warranty and insurance provider for new homes, assesses risk. They are supposed to guarantee safety but product manufacturers at Grenfell treated them as “mere marketing tools”, the inquiry heard.

It was “great news” in 2009, when  technical manager Philip Heath  told colleagues that LABC had awarded K15 a certificate for use on high-rise buildings, saying that it was “limited combustibility” based on a certificate acquired the previous year, which had made no mention that it related only to testing of a specific use of the material against a masonry wall. Heath told a colleague they had thrown so much data at the LABC certificator “we probably blocked his server”. In 2014 the NHBC called the LABC certificate “all garbage”. Brian Martin, the government official responsible for building regulations about fire, had also heard about foam insulation being used on high-rise residential towers and had emailed NHBC with “a friendly warning” that such foam insulations were not of limited combustibility. But Kingspan had pushed back saying there had been two successful tests, even though the inquiry heard one of these had been a fail. It was “a deliberate lie”. When the NHBC had warned it might advise builders not to use K15, Kingspan had threatened legal action.

Nor had Kingspan told the BBA about the change in the foam’s chemistry making it burn like a “raging inferno”. when the BBA had been alerted to concerns about its certificate, Heath had told his colleagues to “let the file gather dust”. The reason for stalling, Meredith explained, had been that if changes were made “it could limit sales”.

In October 2014 Kingspan hired the engineering consultancy Arup to ratify its test data. Its expert was “deeply concerned”, she told NHBC. “The use of highly combustible materials in residential buildings is now simply an accident waiting to happen.” But sales on high-rises had continued.

Celotex had watched Kingspan’s success with envy, the inquiry was told. Its method had suggested a path to seizing part of a £10m-a-year insulation market. It had called it “the Kingspan route”.

Kingspan “do not have a piece of paper that states they can specifically be used behind any cladding panel”, Jonathan Roper, who was then an assistant product manager at Celotex had told his colleagues. Roper had cautioned they might “take the view that our product realistically shouldn’t be used behind most cladding panels” because it might burn. But they had pressed ahead anyway, copying Kingspan. Celotex provided most of the foam insulation on Grenfell. 

Roper, a 23-year-old business studies graduate in his first job, had spotted a crucial fact: “Contractors do not know enough about the fire test to challenge it.” The firm’s first test in February 2014 had failed in 26 minutes. So Celotex had tried again, this time concealing a thin sheet of fire retardant magnesium oxide board behind the main cladding panel to reduce the chance of flames reaching the top of the test rig and triggering a fail. Celotex executives knew it had been “unreflective” of how cladding was actually used, Roper told the inquiry. “The rig was being over-engineered to achieve a pass,” he said. After the system passed, his boss, Paul Evans, had told him the product would be sold and “the decision had been made to omit the magnesium oxide from any reference going forward”.  Celotex’s action had been an “intentional, deliberate and dishonest” attempt to mislead customers, Roper agreed.

A new product manager, Deborah Berger, asked to see the BRE test report after the product launch in October 2014 and was so alarmed at the picture of the test rig showing the fire-resistant magnesium oxide panels she scrawled “WTF?” in the margin.

“I thought Celotex was a good company that prided itself on doing the right thing, on being honest,” she said. “I was really shocked.”

 The inquiry heard that for years before that Claude Wehrle and his colleagues at Arconic had known of the danger they posed. Just 18 months before the Grenfell fire, the technical manager at the French division of the US materials giant had emailed the sales team about a fire at a building beside a tower which used the same material as Grenfell. In 2013, there had been a fire in a high-rise in Dubai using aluminium composite material (ACM) panels. Arconic’s representative in the UK, Richard Geater, had emailed fabricators to say that the cladding “is like a chimney which transports the fire from bottom to top … within shortest time”. He added: “We have taken random samples and done a live test in Bangkok in front of architects, they almost fainted. Indeed, this panel is a whole cheat and burns fiercely.”

Arconic had pressed on selling. In May 2013, Deborah French, a UK sales executive, had emailed customers saying: “We supply both PE and FR [fire retardant] core and can control and understand what core is being used in all projects.” But FR was not proposed at Grenfell. By the Summer of 2015 Wehrle had emailed colleagues with what he admitted as an “anti-commercial” opinion: “PE is dangerous on facades, and everything should be transferred to fire-resistant as a matter of urgency.” Arconic gave the instruction to no longer use PE on projects in France in May 2016, said Barwise. But no warning had been given to Grenfell.

Kingspan apologised for “process shortcomings and unacceptable conduct”.

Celotex said it was not a manufacturer’s responsibility to meet building regulations, but admitted “unacceptable conduct on the part of a number of former employees”.

Arconic said it was entitled to expect the UK regulatory regime to maintain safety, that its product had been “misused” and “the principal cause of the Grenfell tragedy was the failure by those responsible for the refurbishment of the tower”.

‘A raging inferno’: testimony reveals how deadly cladding ended up on Grenfell Tower | Grenfell Tower inquiry | The Guardian

None of which is much consolation for those who died, their families  or the survivors that money and profit justified gambling with people’s lives.

 The blog as an advocate of world socialism makes no apologies for drawing attention to the various national inequalities of the pandemic.

Billions of the world’s population may not have access to a Covid-19 vaccine until 2022, according to a study by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, with wealthier nations reserving more than half of next year’s potential doses. Eager to increase their chances of having access to at least one of the dozens of vaccines in development, many nations have snapped up allocations of several different drugs. Wealthy nations — accounting for just 14 percent of the global population — have pre-ordered just over half of the vaccine doses expected to be produced by the 13 leading developers next year.

Even if the drug makers all produce effective, safe vaccines and meet their maximum global manufacturing targets, the study said “at least a fifth of the world’s population would not have access to vaccines until 2022”.

The research, published in the BMJ medical journal, looked at publicly available data and found that as of mid-November, reservations totalled 7.48 billion doses — equivalent to 3.76 billion immunisation courses, because most vaccines require two jabs. That is out of a total maximum projected manufacturing capacity of 5.96 billion courses by the end of 2021.  Only 40 percent of the vaccine courses from the leading manufacturers might be available for low- and middle-income countries, but said this would depend on how rich countries share what they have bought.

The implications could go well beyond health.

“To varying degrees, trade with and travel to countries might face continued disruption until access to effective preventive or treatment measures, such as Covid-19 vaccines, becomes more widely available,” the report said.

In the BMJ editorial, Jason Schwartz, of the Yale School of Public Health, said the requirement for two doses and the very low temperatures needed to store some of the vaccines added to the challenges for many countries.

“The operational challenges of the global Covid-19 vaccination programme will be at least as difficult as the scientific challenges associated with rapidly developing safe and effective vaccines.”

 Sweden has so far recorded about 341,000 infections and more than 7,600 deaths from the pandemic with one of the highest per capita death rates in the world.

 Nearly 90% of fatalities were of elderly at least 70 years old and half of them were in long-term residential care.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven admitted the country’s officials did not adequately care for the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mats Melin, the chair of an  independent commission made up of political scientists, crisis management experts and public health experts, explained, “The government should have taken measures to ensure the elderly care was better equipped to deal with the pandemic.”

The commission concluded that the “ultimate responsibility for these shortcomings rests with the government in power – and with the previous governments.”

The commission said there were “structural shortcomings that have been well-known for a long time” which “led to residential care being unprepared and ill-equipped to handle a pandemic.” Such shortcomings included a lack of protective equipment and delays in testing. The report warned of they described as “fragmentation” in the Swedish healthcare systems. Elderly care is divided between 21 regions and 290 municipalities. 

Coronavirus: Sweden admits lapses in elderly care | Coronavirus and Covid-19 – latest news about COVID-19 | DW | 16.12.2020

 It has been revealed almost half of Singapore’s migrant workers have been infected with Covid-19 in the past nine months.

A quarter of a million New Zealanders held in state care suffered some form of abuse with the true number believed to be higher.

A royal commission into abuse in state care is investigating historic abuse of children, young adults and vulnerable adults by state-run institutions between 1950 and 1999, as well as in affiliated religious institutions, such as church-run orphanages. It is the largest and most complex royal commission ever undertaken in New Zealand.

Those most frequently abused by the state were society’s “most disadvantaged or marginalised segments of the community … particularly from Māori whanau [family], Pacific families, children from impoverished backgrounds, disabled people and women and girls”.

The report found that many children were removed from their homes due to issues related to poverty, but were returned from state care to their families severely traumatised. Māori were over-represented in the number of children entering state care and the number of those who suffered abuse, and the “discriminatory attitudes” of officials contributed to this, the report found. Māori children continue to be over-represented in the state care system, making up 69% of children in state care, and 81% of children abused in care, despite representing only 16% of New Zealand’s population of five million.

Physical and sexual abuse was the most common type of abuse reported to the commission, but abuse also included the use of medication and medical acts [electro-convulsive therapy] as punishment, unjustified solitary confinement and isolation, improper strip searches and vaginal examinations, verbal abuse, racial slurs and “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment”, as well as widespread neglect.

Those who complained were routinely silenced or abused again as punishment, and the commission also found attempts at active cover-ups.

Glenis Philip-Barbara, assistant Māori commissioner for children, said, “It’d be a mistake to think that what happened in the past is not still happening today.”

At least 250,000 suffered abuse in New Zealand’s state care system, inquiry finds | New Zealand | The Guardian

 More than half a million households have fallen behind on their energy bills since February, taking the total number of billpayers in arrears to more than 2 million.

Citizens Advice said an extra 600,000 households owed payments to their energy suppliers, with the coronavirus outbreak leading to record high redundancies this year.

On average, billpayers who have fallen behind on their payments owe their energy suppliers about £760 for electricity and £605 for gas, according to Citizens Advice.

The findings show that about 16% of homes that use energy prepay meters – or almost 700,000 households – have not been able to afford a top-up since March.

Citizens Advice warned that financial woes were likely to deepen through the colder months and that an estimated 7 million households were expected to struggle to pay their winter energy bills this year.

Alistair Cromwell, the acting chief executive of Citizens Advice, said: “We’re heading into the coldest months of the year and the full financial impacts of the pandemic are still to be felt.”

More than 2m UK households in arrears on energy bills | Money | The Guardian

 FAQ Bread and Circuses pt.1 – introduced by Mike Foster, 11th November 2020

FAQ Bread and Circuses pt.2

Attachment Theory pt.1 – Tim Kilgallon, 13th November 2020

Attachment Theory pt.2

New Atheism pt.1 – Nigel McCullough, 20th November 2020

New Atheism pt.2

A report by the High Pay Centre thinktank  revealed that the chief executive of Ocado, the online supermarket, had the biggest pay gap between those at the top and those on the shop floor.

Tim Steiner, was paid £58.7m last year – which works out at 2,605 times the £22,500 paid to the online grocery delivery company’s staff on average.

Steiner was paid as much as the average Ocado worker’s annual salary for just one day’s work.

In second place was JD Sports, which paid its chief executive, Peter Cowgill, £5.6m, but paid staff an average of only £18,300. That means Cowgill’s pay was 310 times the median average. 

Tesco took third place for paying its outgoing chief executive 305 times the median pay. 

Across the UK’s 100 biggest stock market listed companies, chief executives collect 73 times the amount paid to workers on average. The biggest pay gaps are in the retail sector, where on average bosses are paid 140 times that collected by employees.

Luke Hildyard, director of the High Pay Centre, said, “These findings show that quite low levels of pay are commonplace for large numbers of workers at many of our major companies. ”

Pay gap in Britain between executives and workers ‘obscene’, says union | Business | The Guardian