The sky is always falling somewhere

For the last two years they've done a pretty good job of scaring the shit out of everybody, at least in what is known as the "developed world."

Everybody I know sits around talking about covid and vaccines and whether they should go to the family Christmas party.

That's a First World problem.

Do you think the people in the slums of Lagos or Mumbai or Gaza City are sitting around worried about that?

Oh, they might have some concerns about Christmas dinner all right, but I'm pretty sure those are not covid concerns.

Probably more concerned about starvation or a rocket coming through the roof.

We are herded from one great fear to the next. 

This week it's Omicron, at least in places where they don't have bigger fish to fry.

Which is a revealing metaphor. If you follow this kind of stuff, you'll know declining fish stocks represent an existential threat to communities from the great inland lakes of Africa to the North Sea to the South Pacific and beyond.

Fortunately for us, the pharmaceutical industry gives us plenty of options to deal with the anxieties of life in this age of pandemic.

First World problems deserve First World solutions.

Whether it's a deadly pandemic or a deadly depression, Big Pharma's got your back!

More evidence-free cheer-leading for "free trade"

I see where Toronto Star business columnist David Olive has another screed on view about how great globalization/free trade is for us; World must accept realities of globalization.

Oh, must it really?

Is this an article about actual facts, or is it vacuous pro business propaganda? I've read it through a few times, and I can find no reason why the "world must accept realities of globalization."

The sub-head kind of gives the game away, doesn't it? If you're iffy about "free trade" you're obviously a xenophobe. Nobody in Canada wants to be a xenophobe. Heck, if you're a xenophobe in Canada you're probably a scab-picking opioid addict who hates immigrants and sympathises with the racist Trump campaign. Who wants to be tarred with that brush?

Here are David Olive's proofs that free trade is great.

Here are some inconvenient truths for free trade critics:

• To oppose free trade now is to close the barn door long after horse has gone. Due to the lingering malaise from the Great Recession, growth in trade this year will be a mere 1.7 per cent, compared with an annual 7 per cent in the 1980s and 1990s. Growth in world trade has been slowing to a crawl for years.

Hmm... was not the Great Recession the result of the Lehman collapse, which was a result of the deregulation that is part and parcel of globalization?

• The decline of globalization is bad for poor people. More vigorous trade among countries over the past generation is the leading factor in the reduction of extreme poverty worldwide, which has been cut in half over the past two decades. About three years ago, the UN was able report that for the first time in history, the number of poor people in the world had ceased to grow, and is now in decline.

This is a result of "free trade?" Really? The biggest improvements in poverty stats over the past generation have come from India and China. Show me the free trade agreements that made this improvement possible.

• The goods that account for so many of the offerings at Wal-Mart, Costco, Dollarama, Home Depot and the like — imported from China, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Vietnam and other lower-wage countries — have for the past three decades reduced the rate of inflation in North America by about 1 per cent a year. Considering that the current rate of inflation in each of Canada and the U.S. is 1.1 per cent, that’s no small number. Globalization raises incomes in emerging economies, while in the West it drives down the cost of living.

There you have it, working class America; your wages have been stagnant for forty years but you can buy a 52 inch flat-screen TV for under five hundred bucks at Wal-Mart, so stop whining already.

• Any business or country intent on growing its sales or economy is compelled to seek free-trade access to emerging economies. There just isn’t enough GDP growth in the mature economies to sustain growth rates of more than 1 per cent or 2 per cent. The fastest-growing markets for the West’s high-priced goods, including cars, energy-efficient appliances and mainframe computers — are located among the emerging economies, greater access to which the vilified trade deals would make possible.

Growth growth growth... if we're to have a sustainable economy and a sustainable planet, we seriously need to get away from this obsession with growth. Why can't we have sustainable stability instead?

• Especially in the U.S., trade deals are condemned as job killers. But it’s not the fault of any trade deal that North America has starved its social infrastructure, notably education. We haven’t confronted technology’s impact on low-income workers who often are “precariously employed,” lacking job security. The U.S. ranks a dismal 30th in student test scores, and Canada ranks an unimpressive 13th. North America’s real problems include income inequality; gender bias in hiring, pay and promotions; the affordable housing shortage; and the impact of private-sector underfunding of R&D.

And how will the TPP and the other trade agreements in the pipeline rectify any of those problems? 

• No question, the TPP is ambitious. Of course, its stated aims include spurring economic growth in Canada, the U.S. and the 10 other founding TPP members. But it also promotes faster access to cheaper generic drugs (much to the annoyance of Big Pharma); eradication of child labour and forced labour; the right to collective bargaining (that could be a problem for Southern U.S. states that effectively prohibit unionization, a major contributor to income inequality); improvement in workplace conditions, notably safety; and stricter environmental protections. That’s a short list of both social and economic improvements the TPP, CETA and the TTIP are committed to achieving.

Olive is writing pure fiction now. TPP will reduce prices for prescription drugs? That's not what I've been reading. And Big Pharma is annoyed with the TPP? Olive knows this how? Big Pharma has been inside the TPP tent while the agreement was crafted. The media and politicians were not. There's been zero transparency about the TPP, and what little we know comes from unauthorized leaks. But Olive knows Big Pharma is annoyed?

I don't think so.

But my biggest problem with Olive's vapid spot of cheer-leading was this non-sequitur in the middle of his story;

 We’ve seen the 1965 Auto Pact transform southern Ontario into an industrial powerhouse. 

What's David been smoking? Not that I disagree with the statement that the Auto Pact transformed southern Ontario into an industrial powerhouse, but because the Auto Pact was the very opposite of a free trade agreement!

The Auto Pact was about strictly regulated trade, not "free trade."

And what's happened to that southern Ontario industrial powerhouse since NAFTA?

Read this.

Or this.

Southern Ontario's powerhouse manufacturing sector was utterly decimated by NAFTA. I know, because I used to work there. 

More proof that Canada is governed by morons

So Health Minister Rona Ambrose is outraged that the Supreme Court has decreed that consumers of medical marijuana will no longer be forced to set it afire and inhale it into their lungs in order to consume it.

Outraged, no less!

Yup, you can legally get a prescription for marijuana in Canada, but it you deviate from the technicalities of the law and bake up a batch of special brownies, you're a criminal. The only way to legally take the stuff is by smoking it.

That's just stupid!

Until today, when the court ruled in favour of common sense. Now, that five year old prescribed marijuana to control his epilepsy will no longer have to fire up a fattie to take his medicine.

Ms. Ambrose claims she is outraged because marijuana has never gone through the formal testing and approval process to scientifically prove it is effective and safe. That's another way of saying Big Pharma hasn't given weed the thumbs up, but that's because they fear it'll cut into their obscene profits. Here's a list of Big Pharma products deemed safe but later withdrawn because they were found to have unintended side effects, like killing people.

So Ms. Ambrose is outraged, but somewhere high in the sky, Wally Tucker is smiling!

Finally, some good news for a change

I'm not one to burden Canada's "free" health care system with unnecessary visits to the doctor. Far from it. In fact, when I went in for a visit the other day the dude noted that I had successfully deferred my annual check-up for four years!

I would have been happy to defer it even longer, but alas, my strategy of wheedling prescription renewals over the phone had hit the wall.

Now, as the regular reader well knows, I'm not much for Big Pharma and prescriptions and all that shit, but I do have a blood pressure issue that is mitigated by the regular consumption of a particular combination of Big Pharma products that seems to work, as evidenced by the fact that I'm not dead yet.

So I was delighted beyond belief to find this spot of good news. Seems that folks with low blood pressure hit higher speeds on the Alzheimer Highway! That means having high blood pressure slows ya down!

WHEE-HAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

Pour me another rye 'n coke baby, we gonna party tonight!

U of T exposed!

Some solid investigative journalism at Canada's newspaper of record has revealed an ugly truth; Canada's leading institution of higher learning claims to respect "academic freedom!"

It's right there on page A19 of today's Globe and Mail. Unlike their truth-loving brethren a couple of hours up the 401, the heretics at the University of Toronto continue to employ an academic who preaches scepticism about the efficacy of vaccines.

In fact, the article quotes a University PR hack claiming the school is "committed to the principles of academic freedom and freedom of speech," if one can even imagine such a thing!

What's next?.. an all-out critique of Big Pharma?

Queen's University caves to Big Pharma, waves bye-bye to Academic Freedom

These days it is deemed headline worthy that six cases of measles have been discovered in Southern Ontario (pop. 9,000,000+).

When I was a kid in grade school, it was nothing if six kids in my class (pop. 28) got measles in the course of the school year.

In fact, pretty much everybody got measles or chicken pox or mumps somewhere in the course of their childhood. I had all three at one time or another, and I don't think that's anything unusual. Lots of kids had all three at one time or another.

Life went on.

Fast forward fifty years, and Queen's University has just deep-sixed adjunct professor Melody Torcolacci for spreading the heresy that vaccines may not be all that Big Pharma has cracked them up to be.

According to the story, one of Canada's most prestigious universities has taken this measure in response to the concerns of students upset by Professor Torcolacci's alleged dissemination of anti-vaccine propaganda.

Ya right!

Kind of reminds you of a certain Galileo chappie pilloried for spreading anti-Papist propaganda a few centuries ago.

I've had enough experience with post secondary education to know that university administrations don't give a shit for the sensitivities of their students, nor should they. That's a claim that rings false regardless in this case; university students in undergrad courses are preoccupied with planning their next kegger, not with expunging vaccine sceptics from the faculty.

Queen's University is banishing Professor Torcolacci because of pressure from vaccine manufacturers, not pressure from undergrads.