I think the Chinese are desperately trying to create a new virus. They are still wearing masks and social distancing so itâll rip through China but people will have some protection but because weâve so many idiots in the west itâll kill 3 out of 4 of everyone while fellas are roaring they donât want to wear a mask.
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Be grand
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Thanks for pre-framing your post with this. It saved a minute of my time.
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Where your mask like a good lad and stop spewing all over people you sicko.
Wear to where it though?
How will we square wearing one off PPE equipment like masks with saving the world of catastrophic consequences of climate change and single use plastics?
Weâll be grand once there arenât fellas heading here there and everywhere, for example the historical China covid hotspots like Italy. Cunts like these will need a proper sorting out.
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The phraseology here is.
It just is.
Jesus, a new record of people on trolleys, scoff all you like but there appears to be an unprecedented level of sickness around at the moment,
Little one has an ear infection. Went to 2 pharmacies with a prescription and they literally had no stock of the prescribed antibiotic left.
https://www.ft.com/content/fe24d669-7a6b-4df2-adc6-654265b66e7
A surge in bacterial infections after countries lifted pandemic restrictions has led to shortages of antibiotic drugs such as penicillin and amoxicillin, highlighting the precarious state of global supply chains.
Of the 35 countries whose data is collected by the WHO, 80 per cent have some form of shortage of amoxicillin-related antibiotics, said Lisa Hedman, WHO group lead for supply and access to medicines. The UK introduced âserious shortage protocolsâ last week allowing pharmacists to prescribe alternative formulations of antibiotics after a rise of infections such as Group A streptococcus.
During the pandemic, lower demand for antibiotics, combined with severe strain on supply chains, led drugmakers to draw down production. But as many countries experience their first winter with no restrictions in two years, supply pressures and regulatory requirements are making it hard for companies to scale up and ease the shortages, said health experts.
The shortages have also occurred because âcountries didnât anticipate that respiratory infections were going to hit us [so hard] in the first year without masksâ, Hedman said.
Where have shortages been reported?
Shortages of amoxicillin have been reported in the US and Canada, while in the EU 25 out of 27 member states have reported scarce supplies of some antibiotics to the European Medicines Agency.
The impact in poorer or smaller countries is less well known but they can be disproportionately affected, especially if their currencies have depreciated and they need to procure drugs on the open market, said Hedman.
Although the volumes may be small compared with use in developed countries, they are far from inconsequential. Duťan Jasovský, pharmacist at aid group MÊdecins Sans Frontières, said an estimated 5.7mn people die annually through a lack of access to antimicrobials, which include antibiotic, antifungal and antiviral medicines.
A phial of intravenous antibiotics: shortages have been reported in the US, Canada and Europe Š Gado/Getty Images
The fear of pushing prices higher acts as a âdisincentiveâ to report shortages publicly and to the WHO, added Hedman.
Some US and European pharmacists have also reported shortages of common pain relief medicines such as paracetamol, as a winter wave of flu, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and Covid-19 cases fuels demand. Ilaria Passarani, secretary-general of the Pharmaceutical Group of the European Union, said drugs to treat infections such as tuberculosis and skin infections have also been affected.
Whatâs causing the shortfall?
Shortages of drugs, ranging from cancer medicines to anaesthetics, were common at the height of Covid-19, highlighting the pressure on supply chains. The Ukraine war has further disrupted the supply of antibiotic ingredients, while rising energy costs have reduced margins for antibiotics manufacturers.
Adrian van den Hoven, director-general of the generic drugmakers association Medicines for Europe, said that after two years of lockdowns it would have been hard for antibiotics makers to accurately predict the spike in demand this winter for treatments such as liquid antibiotic solutions for children.
âYou can predict a higher infectious season but you cannot predict the very high rate in children,â he said.
MSFâs JasovskĂ˝ said depleted stocks of antibiotics were âminor symptomsâ of a wider âsystemic challengeâ affecting the whole chain from wholesalers, final dose formulators and original manufacturers.
Most of the worldâs active pharmaceutical ingredients now come from India and China rather than Europe, he said. And there is âlittle transparencyâ regarding these materials because production processes worldwide are regarded as proprietary information only visible to regulators. That âmakes it difficult to perform a true risk assessment to determine areas of greatest vulnerabilityâ, he said.
The antibiotic supply chain can take between four and six months from production to distribution. But Rajiv Shah, executive director of UK-based wholesaler Sigma Pharmaceuticals, said additional regulatory checks meant that it took longer for drugmakers to reboot lines that were mothballed when production was scaled back during the pandemic.
Can the shortages be fixed?
Sandoz, one of the largest generic antibiotics makers, said it had increased production of drugs by a double-digit percentage in 2022, hiring 140 new people since September. Next year, it planned to do the same, opening a factory in Austria.
But the Novartis-owned company is being squeezed by rising costs, which are harder to pass on in European markets that cap drugs prices, adding that its Asian competitors have access to cheaper fuel sources for the energy-intensive process. Costs have also soared for other essential ingredients such as sugar for fermentation â an important part of the manufacturing process.
âYou canât just throw a few extra cakes into the oven,â said the WHOâs Hedman. âWhen you make an antibiotic you have to shut down and revalidate your equipment before you make another one . . . [shortages] can take months to correct.â
The PGEUâs Passarani said solutions include forcing drugmakers seeking European authorisation to market their drugs in all member states and creating a redistribution mechanism during a crisis.
JasovskĂ˝, the MSF pharmacist, said pooling mechanisms between countries, companies and multilateral organisations should be introduced and more should be done to diversify manufacturing capacities and improve transparency, data sharing and forecasting.
Do shortages risk increasing antimicrobial resistance?
Doctors often prescribe ânarrow-actingâ antibiotics to avert the emergence of superbugs that resist treatment â a growing phenomenon known as antimicrobial resistance. By targeting specific bacteria, the practice lowers the likelihood of infections becoming resistant to antibiotics.
But the unavailability of some antibiotics means that doctors and pharmacists are being allowed to dispense other classes of antibiotics with a broader range of action, which are usually reserved for infections that are not cured by first-line antibiotics.
Lorenzo Moja, a scientist working on the WHOâs essential medicines list, said it was typical for doctors to overprescribe antibiotics for mild infections in colder months, so the shortages are âleading to additional problems in terms of resistanceâ.
This risks what Moja calls prescription âinertiaâ, where some doctors find it difficult to return to prescribing specific antibiotics once the shortages ease, which threatens the proliferation of more intractable bugs.
Antibiotics donât treat viral infections, am I right about that?
This seems very suspect from Saint Tony
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That is what weâve been lead to believe in recent times. Obviously Iâm not qualified to answer that one. Iâd be slow to take them myself only if really badly needed.
I went to the gp with a chest infection. He prescribed antibiotics and it cleared up in a week.
It would have cleared up in a week regardless.
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Weâre seeing a significant rise in excess deaths- evenly spread across all age groups, a large proportion of them occurring at home. Itâs no surprise that whatever is causing the deaths is also putting a strain on hospitalsâŚits even less of a surprise that the media, politicians, medical establishment etc arenât mentioning this inconvenient fact
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Iâve seen this mentioned by anti-vax, anti-refugee, irish flag twitter posters.
Is there any figures to show thereâs been any increase in this?
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The public need to âconsider all optionsâ but the politicians refuse to consider the only option that makes sense. Leo needs to show some leadership.