CaFE Forum

[Tony]

... wonderful scam, wonderful scam.
"I'm having the baked beans, scam scam scam scam scam and scam"
"Baked beans are orf!"
"Oh right, I'll have scam instead then..."
You know the rest.

Here we have a nice little write up from theflucase.com:

£1.5bn swine flu vaccine boost for GSK and Astra
The swine flu pandemic will result in a £1.5bn boost for the UK’s two drug giants, according to analysts’ estimates.
By Jonathan Russell


Published: 8:18PM GMT 25 Oct 2009


Although the numbers will not be included in third-quarter results due to be released this week, GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca are expected to reap significant financial rewards for vaccines they have been rushing to release over the last few months.


Analysts expect sales of GSK’s Pandemrix to hit £1bn in the fourth quarter, while its anti-viral treatment Relenza could hit £180m.


AstraZeneca’s nasal spray vaccine could reach £275m of revenue over the last three months of the year.


Although there has been a relative lull in the number of cases of swine flu in the UK in recent months, last week saw a significant increase, with 53,000 reported cases. The number of deaths now exceeds 125.


The onset of colder weather and the usual seasonal increase in the number of flu cases is expected to result in a rapid rise in cases over the next few weeks.
Although the numbers for swine flu vaccines will not be included in third-quarter figures, both companies are expected to post significant increases in revenue and profit, largely down to the weak pound in relation to the dollar.


GSK, which announces its results on Wednesday, is expected to post increased revenue of 15pc to £6.7bn for the third quarter, and profit is expected to rise 29pc to £2.01bn. Although the results will not include sales of swine flu vaccine, they are expected to be boosted by an estimated £130m from sales of GSK’s swine flu antiviral treatment Relenza, a 10-fold increase on the same period last year.


GSK will announce on Wednesday when it expects to start shipping its vaccine Pandemrix.
AstraZeneca, which reports on Thursday, is also expected to update the market on the development of its nasal spray vaccine.
Although the sales of swine flu- related products are set to rise, GSK has not released any figures on its profit margin on its vaccine.
It has, however, said it will be charging individual countries on a sliding scale based on World Bank ratings. The company has invested $2.5bn in the development of the drug over five years.

.... REALLY? 5 years of development??? Who believes that pile of horseshit? Swine flu only came about in April didn't it? Has it been 5 years already?
If they started their preparations five years ago, then they must have been getting bloody desperate for the pandemic to come along! Or maybe it's just the usual bollocks when a drug company is found to be making megabucks at the expense of the very gullible public and the even more craven and venal government that RULES them?
Sorry, but this is so blatant my head is beginning to explode in rage!!!
Follow the money and what do you find? The biggest hoax and scam ever perpetrated on the world... even bigger than AIDS.
I am more than ever convinced that this is a virus that has been manufactured by one of the drugs companies. The hype that follows this thing around is completely devoid of rational thinking and completely overshadowed by the scaremongering by idiotic 'experts' who must be in the thrall of those who stand to benefit the most. Quite sickening and so blatant... but so necessary as the virus really has done very little damage, but it is talked up at every available opportunity... and of course, don't forget that testing stopped in June, so NONE of the figures that have followed on have any substance to them at all.


The impact of competition from generic drug manufacturers is likely to be slightly less when the two companies reveal their results this week.
Jeremy Batstone-Carr, analyst at Charles Stanley, said: “The adverse impact of off-patent issues is lessening, with just Valtrex [a herpes drug] to suffer in December, following which point we expect underlying improvements to emerge. ”


The pressure will be on AstraZeneca to show that its drug development pipeline, which has taken a number of recent setbacks, has the potential to boost revenue over the medium to long term.


Positive data about the diabetes drug Onglyza and heart attack treatment Brilinta have offset concerns about the health of AstraZeneca’s pipeline, but investors will be hoping for more good news.
_________________
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.

[Tony]

Interesting article at Monsters and critics especially the comments that follow:

Death toll still rising in Ukraine's flu outbreak

Health News
Nov 5, 2009, 12:38 GMT

Kiev - The death toll in Ukraine's flu outbreak continued to rise on Thursday.
A total of 95 persons have died from flu-related symptoms since the disease struck Ukraine's western provinces late last month, said Zinovy Mytnik, vice health minister, in comments reported by the Interfax news agency.
A total of 633,877 Ukrainians nationwide have registered with health authorities as suffering from the flu, though some have recovered since the disease's late October outbreak, Mytnik said.
Ukraine's Ministry of Health on Wednesday gave a total of currently infected at some 470,000.
The particularly virulent A/H1N1 flu strain, or swine flu, was likely responsible for a significant proportion of the infections, based on laboratory testing thus far, Mytnik said, speaking at a Kiev press conference.
Since the beginning of the flu outbreak, Ukraine's Health Ministry had sent 31 samples from persons infected with flu to a British laboratory to be checked for the presence of swine flu, of which 15 tested positive.
A former Soviet republic, Ukraine lacks a modern public health infrastructure and, since the beginning of the flu outbreak in late October, has seen severe shortages of even simple medical supplies such as protective masks and flu remedies.
No Ukrainian laboratory is capable of testing for the presence of swine flu, Mytnik said.
International medical assistance continued arriving in Ukraine on Thursday, with European Union nations taking the lead. Top contributors were Slovakia, Austria, Hungary and Poland - the last being the first country to respond to a Ukrainian October 31 appeal for foreign aid, according to an Intefax report.
EU-donated medical supplies en route or already in Ukraine included protective masks, respiration equipment and surgical gloves.
Emergency shipments of the swine flu treatment Tamiflu, produced in Switzerland, first began arriving by cargo plane to Ukraine on Sunday.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, on a visit to the western city of Chernovtsy, near the epicentre of the flu outbreak, said government efforts to control the flu's spread were working.
'There is no need to to invoke a national emergency,' she said, according to a Korrespondent website report.
Tymoshenko's government has attempted to control the flu outbreak with the imposition of a partial quarantine of eight western provinces most badly hit by the disease, a military-style mobilization of state-owned fabric and clothes factories to mass-produce protective masks, and limits to allowable public gatherings.
In the midst of a campaign for Ukraine's presidency, Tymoshenko has, since the beginning of the flu outbreak, repeatedly attacked the private health industry, accusing drug manufacturers of inflating prices artificially and pharmacists of hoarding medical supplies.
A government consumer protection agency in Lviv, one of the worst-hit cities in the flu outbreak, on Thursday filed a class-action suit against local health officials, accusing them of conspiring with private health suppliers to price-gouge consumers of medical supplies, the Unian news service reported.

Interesting link here as well... conspiracy theory? Or fact. Personally, I'd plump for the latter.

http://davidrothscum.blogspot.com/2009/10/has-baxter-international-released.html