This. You’ll only get reasoned debate and geeky science from me

This is a function of working in research.

I work in QA, so my day involves working out whether some idiot or idiot company has put patients at risk.

I get tired of the blame directed at Az, especially when at my company we have R&D, QC, manufacturing, QA and logistics staff working round the clock to deliver these vaccines and biologicals. Most of them aren’t lucky enough to be working hourly rates as consultants like me, so they’re not being paid more for the long hours.

I’ve seen project managers and site leads in tears because of the pressure to bang out as many batches as possible, people who are normally calm as anything. Industrial accidents are going up.

Meanwhile shits kicking off in India…

To be honest I’m worried about a lot of developing countries. They can’t afford to keep up the lockdowns whilst the west vaccinates itself, India is just the start I’m afraid.

Can you both just stop it please, if people have the choice of vaccines then that is great and more power to them, but get a grip and look at what is happening in India for when poor bastards have no chance

I’m not even sure where to start on India, the situation seems so FUBAR that I’m not sure what could be done now? Other than to send what equipment we can and Naval ships to ferry patients and free up beds – seems like pissing in the wind though.

You can’t seriously be comparing the Thalidomide scandal to the clotting adverse events that are being seen across multiple suppliers (suggesting that there is no malfeasance going on)?

These incidents are different on so many levels that I can barely be arsed to even type this response.

Did the victims of those drugs deserve compensation? I think so. I also think the families of those left handicapped or dead by vaccination deserve compensation.

Comparing the Thalidomide scandal, which was a regulatory failure as much as Grünenthal’s fault – to a few unexpected adverse reactions where everything that is legally required was done to protect the patient – is as hilarious as it is offensive.

he Mediator saga is one of a long list of pharma giants behaving unethically and regulators being slow to react. Here are a few:

Most of those are anti-trust and corruption findings due to the insane way medicines are promoted in the good ole USA. Which I’ve never quite wrapped my head around, they have a system that encourages this behavior.

Not so many of the companies that have a thing for releasing bad medicines or falsifying data are covered in that list.

there have been numerous cases of pharma companies around the world getting their arses handed to them by regulators.
Gsk, novartis (should have been more over the zolgensma thing), pfizer (off label drugs), perdue, the list goes on sadly.

Agreed.

I will add this though

https://www.fiercebiotech.com/biotech/updated-gilead-sanofi-singled-out-as-worst-offenders-failing-to-disclose-trial-data

Gilead, Sanofi singled out as worst offenders in failing to disclose trial data

I’m sorry but

Servier laboratories to 2.7 million euros fine for “aggravated deception” by having ” knowingly concealed the” appetite suppressant “properties and dangerous side effects ” of the drug. ” Despite the knowledge that they had the risks incurred for many years, (…) they never took the necessary measures and thus deceived ” the consumers of the Mediator, declared the president of the criminal court

Sounds very much like withholding pharmacovigilance data. But Batfink appears to know more about the history of that scandal. Not a good look for the ANSM is it!

It was awesome – we had 1664 on tap in the canteen.

This explains a lot.

*throws pen at the Sanofi guy*

In this case, the idea that AZ somehow knew about the clotting issue, but “covered it up”.

I wasn’t talking about AZ :P

^ I think thats a stretch. I mean deliberately hiding data from regulators that would jeopardise or disadvantage their label.

https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2021/02/16/bristol-myers-sanofi-hawaii-plavix/

The exception is if the Pharma company developing the drug concealed (or didn’t notice) data that would have made a difference to the regulators determination. That

And guess which pharma company is down with concealing data…

https://www.reuters.com/article/europe-drugs-transparency-idUSL5N0F022G20130624

240 cases of clots with AZ, 44 deaths in 24 million vaccinations. Just saying. Pfizer has been linked to heart irregularities also, so do we go Moderna only? Where does the madness stop.

I’m not sure of the numbers but I suspect they will all end up causing blood clots at relatively the same rates when the data becomes clearer.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/blood-clots-as-prevalent-with-pfizer-and-moderna-vaccine-as-with-astrazenecas-report-2021-04-15

In which case, the French, the EU and the EMA will look fairly ridiculous having shot their own already poor vaccine programme in the foot.

You think a meical student can afford life insurance. You think young nurses can afford life insurance

Yup. If they are that bothered about suddenly leaving family members financially screwed – as there are a lot more likely ways to die.

Or maybe the French state should provide that insurance at the taxpayers expense. Either way it’s not up to pharma.

So you want the cost of bicycles to cover insurance against getting run over?

Under your system, OakleyMuppet pharma companies would be free to poison people with impunity

They are not immune normally, negligence when manufacturing or failing to carry out pharmacovigilance will get them in trouble. Adverse effects not being spotted by regulatory approved trials, is not negligence it’s bad luck and the responsibility lies with the French medicines agency for approving it.

There is no lack of uptake in France only queues of people at vaccination centres

Really?

https://www.euronews.com/2021/03/26/vaccine-hesitancy-rises-in-france-after-astrazeneca-suspension-survey-reveals

In my opinion it increases vaccine uptake because it reduces one of the risks associated with being vaccinated. You might be killed or left handicapped by the vaccine but at least your family won’t face financial ruin in addition

That’s what life insurance is for.

You can be sued for negligence in any country, but that’s not what we’re talking about here is it. We’re talking about suing for a unknown unknown, there was no negligence.

If everyone had your attitude, we’d have a lot less investment in drug research.

The French already lose their shit at the cost of many drugs, you’re saying you want more expensive drugs?

Genius.

I doubt this litigation will affect the roll-out, or undermine uptake more than the public statements of various European leaders already have.

I think it will decrease uptake.

We don’t what advice they’ve been given, or what is motivating the legal action.

But we can make educated guesses. If there were manufacturing problems that make AZ culpable, I would have heard about it by now on the grape vine.

can have plenty of empathy for anyone who is in a bad place after losing a young relative to possible vaccine complications.

Again, putting others lives at risk is where my empathy ends and my indignation starts.

Not sure its particularly a French thing, half expecting some US case too.

It’s a French thing.

The yanks have protected the vaccine manufacturers using the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act and rightly so.

I have zero empathy when others lives are at risk.

So far I have yet to hear of private prosecutions being attempted in other countries.

My empathy doesn’t extend that far, **** them. There’s a time and place for it and that’s after the pandemic has passed.

People die due to the side effects of drugs all the time, doesn’t mean to say there’s a case to answer for on AZ’s part – and unless there has been a manufacturing issue that could have caused these deaths (my spies tell me there hasn’t) – then any attempt at prosecuting AZ will only lead to more deaths.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20210428-paris-prosecutors-seek-involuntary-manslaughter-charges-over-astrazeneca-deaths

It seems the French are displaying their usual halfwit intransigence.

Delaying death

As a medical scientist I resent that, nothing short of complete immortality is a total waste of time!

We’ll be downloading yerr consciousness into SSDs and blasting you at alpha centuri in 50 years, altered carbon style.

My fingers are crossed that this is true.

Johnsons slack jawed face at the end there was brilliant!

Paul @ Mojo set mine up for me initially, felt really good for grip and feedback, but I just couldn’t get any pop out of them. The bike was stuck to the ground basically! I’ve since wound a bit of rebound off, altered pressures in the + and ++ slightly to make it slightly softer off the top with a little more progression… We are talking very small changes, but getting there. It’s certainly not as easy to dial in as the Storia shock.

It’s a race fork designed for people hitting stuff faster, it’s not meant to pop. Neither does my Storia in comparison to an air shock or even a DHX2.

Not sure why one would expect the Era to be stiffer apart from perhaps the single piece crown design? Didn’t Ohlins move away from that idea as they were cracking instead of creaking, seem to remember Steve from Vorsprung talking about stress risers caused by that design.

I’m just going to go ahead and put this here

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29724412/

We need this in MTB

Had the same idea as soon as I saw this. Will definitely get a couple at that price and try it out on the bike.

No but the Axle to Crown length of those 29er Nero forks looks perfect to mullet my Supreme SX whilst keeping 180mm of travel and preserving the geometry (almost).

The base settings were spot on for me for the conditions I tested my Storia under (working away from home at the moment), either direction felt worse on everything on my test track.

First time that’s ever happened as well.

My EXT Storia blows my DHX2 away, the 38 is a good improvement over the outgoing 36s in terms of sensitivity and support – but the rear shock is definitely in a class of it’s own.

The Era hasn’t been without it’s issues looking at the MTBR forum, but by the sounds of it Mojo are good at tuning the fork for you and ironing out the setup issues that others have found.

Some of the magic is Mojo Risings tuning I suspect, they’ve certainly got their heads screwed on these days when it comes to damper setup. They used to feel a bit whack in the past sometimes, but the Storias been the best custom tune I’ve ever had done on a shock. They’ve managed to nail that fine balance between giving the shock enough LSC bleed to react sensitively without that hand numbing vibrational harshness and firm on faster harder hits. My DHX2 fell “gatey” – either too harsh or the HSC would open up too quickly and blow off.

Compare and contrast to Kanye’s (of all people) more humble response to the Gay Fish, South Park sketch.

Although that might be more to do with the sheer size of Kanyes ego more than being more humble than Morrisey.

My Bedlington is fond of other terriers and whippets/lurchers.

Oh dear, I can see why you are having problems now.

Honestly, I do mostly check it though.

But BoughtbyMany has an SMS service as well, which has seemingly stopped updating. “your vet we’ll update you on how the claim is progressing via text message and email.” so they aren’t providing the service they claim to.

Ahem – others agree:

https://www.inc.com/john-brandon/its-2018-email-is-already-dead-heres-who-zapped-it-into-extinction.html

Its the main form of communication, replacing letters…

Boomer.

Nahhh dude. Emails dead. It’s all about apps and instant messaging services now. Haven’t had a single email from my bank in three/four years.

Or my utilities either, all the bills are on the app in PDF form.

Do you honestly expect important updates/communication from large corporates to be done just via email? None of my banks bother with it anymore, it’s either they call/SMS you or you get a letter.

Emails just get buried in junk folders and under massive amounts of spam.

oakleymuppet I agree lack of communication always causes problems – but didn’t your insurance company tell you about the rejected claim?

This is partly the cause, I had one email buried in my junk folder from them – no letter through the post and no text message update like I usually get.

Arghh.

Do people/companies not get that email is dead and the cause various communication failures?

We are under a lot of pressure and stress at the moment, and bear in mind your request for payment was after in your words the insurance took months before deciding, so the account with them has been outstanding for all of that time. There are not many other businesses that will happily tolerate unpaid bills for several months.

Would have been happy to pay up front had they actually called or contacted me in any shape or form, even called in a number of times to give them status updates and see how things were. Will keep everything in writing next time instead.

The aggression of pressing the big red button and getting collections involved within a couple of weeks of the insurance company rejecting the claim, without contacting me – pissed me off hard.

It’s not just vets under pressure during Covid, all of us who are in medical or healthcare aligned fields are.

BoughtbyMany

I might add, it took the insurers months to reject it the first time. Then within a few days of rejection, the vets shoved it to a collection agency without notice given. The last message I had from them was the initial invoice.

So I’m mildly annoyed about that as well and might be looking for an excuse to get mean.

Should I get mean with the vets on the informed consent side as well? Or hold onto my cards?

Ok, so if the appeal doesn’t work I have to try an internal complaints procedure first Fuzzy? Cheers for that!

Yeah, it’s also about the poor clinical notes as well – and lack of detail given/consent that these were elective procedures, if that’s what the vets think when I squeeze some clarity out of them (I’d argue that it wasn’t anyway).

They go a little bit beyond the “lets kill every man and his dog with weaponized smallpox” research of the 1950s.

It’s the fact that they are openly discussing ethnically targeted bioweapons that is the most worrying. That’s only a few rungs down from publishing papers on how to gas Jews more efficiently.

India has official policy for war with Pakistan which is barely different to this, not opinion, actual policy.

Yeah I mean that’s mad as well, but the point here is that the attitude makes China less predictable and more likely to go to war with the United States. The point being whilst an India/Pakistan nuclear holocaust would be terrible for us all, any shit China pulls is more likely to drag us into conflict.

Just to remind you guys how batfuck insane the CCP and PLA are…..

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/chinas-military-pursuing-biotech/159167/

https://www.armyupress.army.mil/special-topics/future-warfare-writing-program/non-fiction/biotechnology/

“Specificity of wounding. Precision injury is an embodiment of specificity. HGP and proteomics have greatly enriched bioinformation. If we acquire a target’s genome and proteome information, including those of ethnic groups or individuals, we could design a vulnerating agent that attacks only key enemies without doing any harm to ordinary people. We could also confine the attack to a more precise level. Injuries might be limited to a specific gene sequence or a specific protein structure. Through gene manipulation, we can attack or injure one or more key human physiological functions (the ability to learn, memorize, keep one’s balance, or perform fine motor activities and even act aggresively) without a threat to life.”

And check out this gem entitled…

“The Command of Biotechnology and Merciful Conquest in Military Opposition”

https://watermark.silverchair.com/milmed.171.11.1150.pdf?token=AQECAHi208BE49Ooan9kkhW_Ercy7Dm3ZL_9Cf3qfKAc485ysgAAArgwggK0BgkqhkiG9w0BBwagggKlMIICoQIBADCCApoGCSqGSIb3DQEHATAeBglghkgBZQMEAS4wEQQM76EaKPHfL2MwoxCEAgEQgIICa9EJgM0yukVSOORLNEDf0aeDYRqUKmpy_cPelQ8oUIR1qe4Cj82VvvcN_QtEzVZ1nHm-cIlOofpOM6cynfeO5zdoqWK65kQ600piOinR-Ll16Z1xLQAvbV1fWrSlfPCRvSrrOTfVbcAz2DLl1Ljwy0ouybkh0_DCDTXpkakfaaddeX7MBXEC6B3-l2MPya1SB7614W68VLPfqDC-7ZyWOqdbD_Fz5fRNg9jSFN2BHLs82iFeVdFuMo6hHhvBfIozzLgEX9bCYD-2em-BCjQh0wAXDG2Kz1AxDujeUAe6ZdmD2zwBmN7WolMDF7UOO6hwnp7rcx6G-mzcEA0KHzdHGcdD7AROULreK2PoyCEyWOevRDALLCpyHARnQ8pNbqNBZr2R6eqf7th65dfKY4dZLZkfLGwO2ynZX50-zs7-aC3mWaPg55SeX_ccgRx8q70aHEJ1dmaBQOIFW90G4SAmqFfTaLunHyqSJfhs4ng3YUC375naXwpSyq_WVZdKErlu05h4DwALRuaQ6IwR_oFj_rN1wVjdniFFBaAYluI81oa6gL3DqHbjo-Z_byWSkpj8RVF7Dv28oD9CJvQBtStv6fu9tKxfMs9_d5WTsfpQXssi1GwX4bU43NaiB6eicE2gUqbdVF0Ihps5eoEFHX2xteG8CNljFzd2R54SLpdbjXuWHjXa-tPyAPWjgnIRvGfEEYyQ7akP0Dpx2qIIjcEdpZnDTIoUrBf5gGsh1rbMoJ_olJXJaEEoJXJZ0a2AJAHVR6skdNZe9bFXS08ojU1FaZpDoepQHxtnJyiGNohOsxJXFtgg1dveLZRtfdM

Russian and American military journals tend to talk about deterrence and how to prevent war. Where as China likes to talk about nuts self aggrandizing stuff like “merciful conquest”, which wouldn’t be out of place coming out of the mouth of Kim Jong-Un.

To top all of that insanity off….

In the past, I have met Chinese officials who were known to brag that, with a population of 1.4 billion, China has a much better ability to survive a nuclear war than America. There is a role here for Russia’s nuclear experts to educate China in the realities of nuclear annihilation.

https://defense.info/re-thinking-strategy/2020/10/is-a-war-with-china-inevitable/