In early May 2020, RT News reports
- Poorest in England MORE THAN TWICE as likely to die from Covid-19 as richest
- ‘Trying every trick in the book’: UK government changes rules to hit 100k coronavirus tests target
- US should have spent half its military budget on healthcare system instead of missiles
Poor most vulnerable
New UK figures show that the deadly coronavirus does indeed discriminate in unequal societies, and badly, revealing that Covid-19 deaths in the most deprived areas of England are over double the amount in the least deprived areas.
Data published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on Friday reveal the shocking consequences of being poor in England. For deaths involving Covid-19 between March 1 and April 17, the mortality rate in the most deprived areas was 55.1 deaths per 100,000 population, compared to 25.3 deaths in the least deprived areas.
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Editor’s Note: It would be interesting to see the prison statistics included in this report to see he disparity in risk between Judge Baraitser and the prosecution versus Julian Assange
Editor’s Note: Reading at the twitter thread above it is possible the death rate may be affected by relative risk of catching covid-19 ( say information or density ) and the death rate upon being infected may be more informative
Coronavirus Testing Rule Change
In its scramble to hit the target of 100,000 Covid-19 tests a day by the end of April, the UK government has revised the way it counts them, the Health Service Journal (HSJ) reports. UK health officials deny the claim.
A test would previously only have been counted in its tally once the sample had been processed in a laboratory, but that’s changed in the past few days, a senior source told the HSJ.
It’s alleged that the Department of Health and Social Care is now also including in its official numbers those tests that have simply been mailed out, regardless of whether the sample has been returned by the recipient.
We’re now counting a home test as tests which have been sent to people’s homes.
HSJ reports that up to 50,000 of the tests that will be registered as having taken place by the landmark date of April 30 will actually only have been mailed. That figure will also include those home tests that recipients have merely agreed to receive in the randomized trial being undertaken across England.
In the past week, 23–30 April, the number of ‘actual tests’ reported by the government has increased dramatically, from 23,560 to 81,611.
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Health Care versus Missiles Cost Benefit
The Covid-19 pandemic should be a rallying call to change an economic system that spends billions each year on the tools of war but can’t produce a decent healthcare system, bestselling author John Perkins told RT.
Perkins is best known for his book ‘Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,’ in which he describes how American corporate elites plunder other nations to enrich themselves.
The economic system that puts immediate gains above all else, which Perkins calls an “economy of death” may be as lethal to common Americans as to people in Latin America or Eastern Asia, he said in an interview with RT Spanish. One only needs to look at the death toll of the Covid-19 epidemic in the US to see the proof.
“Our annual military budget is something between $600 billion and $700 billion. But we’ve just spent about $3 trillion to fight coronavirus. If we had spent half of that military budget over the last 10 years creating a better healthcare system in this country, we would all be better off now. The world would be better off,” he said.
The big flaw of the current arrangement is that corporations don’t suffer financially for inflicting long-term damage.
“In a way, it boils down to the driving force behind the ‘death economy,’ which is to maximize the short-term profits regardless of social or environmental costs,” Perkins said.
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