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Post by pim on Mar 23, 2021 13:17:31 GMT 10
Wow! Pauline? Is that you?
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Post by ponto on Mar 23, 2021 13:18:09 GMT 10
Well did say awhile back with foreign aid, yet definitely Howards did cut aid to all and sundry including in Australia's Pacific Oceana region...while doling out with fistful of cash to retires with franking credits etc...which opened the door for China, gotta have those middle class early retirees voting conservative coz PNG and Pacific Island should be standing on their own 2 feet as Johnny said at the time.
Australia cannot say it has been fair dinkum with trade and neighbours, trade as in mining, PNG and Timor call it bullying piracy....unless ones says Australia is the lesser of two evils.
PNG will work towards what is best for PNG, as it should, and if Australia wants to exclude the Chinese government from geopolitical influence then Australia has to work at it a whole lot better than it has been.
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Post by Stellar on Mar 23, 2021 21:01:59 GMT 10
My complaint was about foreign aid especially in Africa being confiscated by warlords and corrupt govts. The poor people never got anything. So why should we provide aid in those circumstances?
And right now charity begins at home. Surely we have enough people suffering from the fires and floods.
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Post by matte on Mar 23, 2021 21:21:40 GMT 10
The word "we" is used in the context of AUSTRALIA, our collective response through our government.
Yes, when the government acts (especially internationally), they act in all of our name, so the word "we" makes total sense.
WE (i.e. the Commonwealth Government) should be sending millions of doses of the vaccine to PNG, because they have a major medical emergency where the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks. Their problem is our collective problem. If Covid-19 gets out of control in PNG, it will become very much our problem here.
It is quite embarrassing that we're sending 8,400 vaccine doses to PNG, when you consider they have a population of over 8 million people. That will provide 1 dose to around 0.105% of their population.
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Post by pim on Mar 23, 2021 21:56:53 GMT 10
So it's the puffed up little white chauvinist with the whitefella hegemonic fantasies talking through his arse while the brownfella majority of the Asia/Pacific gets on with it and treats your ilk as irrelevant.
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Post by ponto on Mar 23, 2021 23:19:00 GMT 10
Can someone tell Matte 'we' don't have millions of doses to give to 'them'.....nor 'us'
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Post by matte on Mar 24, 2021 17:55:09 GMT 10
Can someone tell Matte 'we' don't have millions of doses to give to 'them'.....nor 'us' We do have millions of doses. They are sitting in storage at CSL in Melbourne awaiting for the TGA to complete their batch testing.
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Post by ponto on Mar 24, 2021 19:19:55 GMT 10
Doses provided for roll out now, next few weeks production increases to around 3million and the near future is said to be a million doses a week.
For PNG because of its energy issues and the requirement the vaccine needs cold/ultra cold storage, millions of doses for the country is a complex roll out for all the people where only 13% of the New Guinean people have access to electricity. Not as simple as here have 8 million doses and she'll be apples.
But don't worry they are working towards vaccinating all PNG people, as with Samoans and others in the region.
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Post by matte on Mar 25, 2021 15:44:00 GMT 10
The AstraZeneca vaccine doesn't require the ultra-cool storage, it can be stored at 4 to 8 C.
We should be sending these to PNG where the real need is.
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Post by pim on Mar 25, 2021 16:47:13 GMT 10
"We" (gawd but you love to abuse that pronoun) don't have millions of doses yet of AstraZeneca vaccine sitting in Melbourne. This is not Europe where a good dose of socialism in relation to Big Pharma would go a long way. When I last posted I didn't realise that the Morrison government had ordered and paid for a million doses of AstraZeneca from the Europeans which were destined for PNG. I support this. Credit where credit is due. The fact that it's held up in Europe (I think it's manufactured in Antwerp) is no fault of the Morrison government. It's more about corporate bullshit. The socialism that I speak of is where governments legislate away patent rights on the manufacture and the recipe for all anti COVID-19 vaccines and they're made freely available to all comers - especially the basket case countries.
But it's not just about availability of AstraZeneca. That issue will be resolved as the Australian manufactured rollout gathers steam. It's the distribution in a country like PNG which is pre-industrial village-based with next to no infrastructure by way of roads, clean fresh piped water and power. Think Kokoda Track. It's still like that. Welcome to vulture capitalism Australian style where private affluence for a tiny few and public squalor for the many is an art form. If the Morrison government wants to show Australia embracing a leadership role (and remember this is Scotty from Marketing we're talking about - not big on leadership is Scummo) then his government is going to have to commit resources, big time, in terms of personnel and equipment to help with the distribution. This will cost big $$$ and I mean serious money. Billions. How serious is this government going to be on delivering on aid?
Coz if "we" don't do it then "they" (hint: "their" capital is Beijing) are bound to step up and step in. And serve "us" right!
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Post by ponto on Mar 25, 2021 16:56:56 GMT 10
Well said Pim....in short it ain't that easy peasy to roll out the vacine to PNG.
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Post by caskur on Mar 25, 2021 19:19:22 GMT 10
I wish we were giving these now TGA approved vaccines to PNG, where the true emergency exists. We do not need them in Australia, we can wait until PNG has enough of these vaccines to vaccinate its entire population. New Guinea has other serious illnesses, like TB and possibly AIDS.... Vaccines might be ineffectual I'm thinking.
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Post by caskur on Mar 25, 2021 19:30:28 GMT 10
"We" again. "We warn the Tsar". It's a metaphor. Geddit? I know that China doesn't have a Tsar. Matt and Stellar default to whitefella hegemonic language when talking about the Asia/Pacific and it's in the DNA of Australian conservatives to talk that way. There's a difference between being one player in the Asia/Pacific among a lot of other players, and being the regional hegemon. The US has been the regional hegemon since WW2 until 4 years of Trump probably terminally trashed that role. Biden is trying to press the reset button on US hegemony but is coming up against a rising China who I am certain welcomes the opportunity to exercise soft power diplomacy in the region. Hell, if you were the PNG PM and you contemplated a developing health disaster in your country and Australia was constrained in giving the promised million Astrazeneca doses because of corporate bullshit in Europe, and along comes China with its vaccine and says "How can we help?" what would you do? Biden has 60,000 on skidrow...and now an influx of unwanted refugees... he needs to put his attention towads fixing his own home grown tragic affairs, don't you think?
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Post by pim on Mar 25, 2021 22:40:30 GMT 10
This is about PNG and Matt’s fantasies of the Australian mouse roaring so loud and so fiercely it makes the Chinese panda poop in its furry bum.
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Post by caskur on Mar 26, 2021 19:17:09 GMT 10
This is about PNG and Matt’s fantasies of the Australian mouse roaring so loud and so fiercely it makes the Chinese panda poop in its furry bum. If the Chinese want to help, they should... I personally have donar fatigue. PNG medical workers need us to help tho... I'm for that.
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Post by pim on Mar 26, 2021 23:04:39 GMT 10
Donar was a Germanic god. His other name was Thor. The name exists in either form in all the Germanic languages. In English you see it in Thursday. The Dutch word for Thursday is Donderdag or “thunder day”. “Donar” as a word gives us “thunder” in modern English. Thor was the god of thunder. Our remote ancestors used to wear a small amulet in the shape of Thor’s hammer around their neck for luck. Thor’s hammer even had a name: Mjollnir. Don’t ask me how to pronounce it!
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Post by Occam's Spork on Mar 27, 2021 1:31:23 GMT 10
Does it concern anyone that this vaccine has gone through less rigorous testing than all of the prior vaccinations?
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Post by ponto on Mar 27, 2021 3:36:56 GMT 10
The only concern is supply...
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Post by pim on Mar 27, 2021 8:30:42 GMT 10
The pharmaceutical researchers can't win. If they'd taken their time and dotted every "i" and crossed every "t" so we still didn't have a vaccine you'd have had pressure coming from all sorts of quarters for a vaccine. Complete with conspiracy theories about how a diabolical cabal of Big Pharma and Big Government were sitting on a vaccine and were lying to the public because of some nefarious and sinister agenda. Imagine the Trump White House: "Hey douchebags why don't we have a vaccine yet. You're fired!" So they produce not one but several vaccines in record time and you get blowback that says "dodgy vaccine produced in haste. Quackery!"
We have public health authorities in our country both at the state and federal level who aren't political appointees but permanent public officials independent of government. Unanimously they have endorsed AstraZeneca as safe and effective. That's good enough for me. I'm sorry Occam but if I had to choose between listening to them and listening to the conspiracy theorists the choice is a no brainer.
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Post by Stellar on Mar 27, 2021 8:58:42 GMT 10
The idea of using messenger RNA to produce proteins to fight disease has been around for decades. But until now, no vaccines using this technology have made it this far in clinical trials.
I'd ask why? The problem is that DNA is more stable than RNA so those vaccines such as Moderna and Pfizer are still really experimental. RNA can cause serious inflammation and other problems.
Dotting every "i" and crossing every "t" has always been the preferred method of developing any new vaccine.
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Post by ponto on Mar 27, 2021 9:03:32 GMT 10
Then there's Sputnic V.....which has 91.5% efficacy rate.
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Post by Stellar on Mar 27, 2021 9:22:33 GMT 10
That's a DNA vaccine.
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Post by ponto on Mar 27, 2021 11:35:01 GMT 10
It does have a higher efficacy rate and it was only western snobbery and mistrust of Russia that Sputnik V hasn't been appropriated for wider use.
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Post by caskur on Mar 27, 2021 19:51:58 GMT 10
Donar was a Germanic god. His other name was Thor. The name exists in either form in all the Germanic languages. In English you see it in Thursday. The Dutch word for Thursday is Donderdag or “thunder day”. “Donar” as a word gives us “thunder” in modern English. Thor was the god of thunder. Our remote ancestors used to wear a small amulet in the shape of Thor’s hammer around their neck for luck. Thor’s hammer even had a name: Mjollnir. Don’t ask me how to pronounce it! Lol, I misspelled donor and got myself mytholgy lesson. good one... Thor has let me down this year.
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Post by matte on Mar 27, 2021 23:06:31 GMT 10
Does it concern anyone that this vaccine has gone through less rigorous testing than all of the prior vaccinations? Yes it is extremely concerning, but it seems people have been lied to so much that they do not care. The governments all around the world have taken their populations for mugs. When has it ever been considered normal that a drug be considered for use in human beings from INCEPTION to INJECTION in less than 12 months? They wouldn't have even completed animal trials to the point that they would consider human trials. The only time this has happened in the past is in the concentration camps run by the Nazis. It is also weird that whenever there is just 1 or 2 cases of community transmission of Covid-19 reported inside a state, that you have people on Facebook crying out and demanding that state governments lock the borders. Why have people gone so crazy to willingly and irrationally give up all of their liberties? What a weird world we live in.
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