About The Bayer Foundation Fellowships In Drug Discovery, Agricultural And Medical Sciences:
We offer three fellowships for outstanding masters, PhD, and medical students to undertake international research projects, internships & more. These fellowships are designed to enhance existing study programs by providing additional funding for international placements, that are complimentary to current or future scientific studies.
OTTO BAYER FELLOWSHIPS IN DRUG DISCOVERY
For master or PhD students from all scientific disciplines including pharmacy and data science, with fundamental or applied studies with relevance to the pharmaceutical and consumer healthcare (over-the-counter) industries.
JEFF SCHELL FELLOWSHIPS FOR AGRICULTURAL SCIENCE
For master or PhD students from all scientific disciplines including data science, with fundamental or applied studies with relevance to the Crop Science industry.
CARL DUISBERG FELLOWSHIPS FOR MEDICAL SCIENCES
For all students of human & veterinary medicine, or master and PhD students in medical engineering, applied medical sciences, data science in medicine and public health.
Applicants are eligible for up to 10,000€ in funding and can undertake fellowships for between 2 weeks and six months. People studying in Germany must undertake placements in second country & those studying outside Germany must undertake their fellowships at a German research institution. For more detailed information please see our guidelines and frequently asked questions.
Type: Fellowship
Who Can Apply To Bayer Foundation Fellowships In Drug Discovery, Agricultural And Medical Sciences:
General eligibility See specific fellowships for additional criteria:
For Otto Bayer Fellowships for Drug Discovery Sciences: Applicants must currently be studying for an MSc or PhD (or equivalent) in natural science, pharmacy, or data science. Bachelor students and postdoctoral researchers are not eligible.
For Jeff Schell Fellowships for Agricultural Sciences: Applicants must currently be studying for an MSc or PhD (or equivalent) in natural science or data science. Bachelor students and postdoctoral researchers are not eligible.
For Carl Duisberg Fellowships for Medical Sciences: Applicants must be studying human or veterinary medicine or for an MSc or PhD (or equivalent) in medical engineering, applied medical sciences, public health, or data science in medicine. Bachelor students and postdoctoral researchers in medical engineering, applied medical science, public health and data science in medicine are not eligible.
Evaluation process and criteria:
An initial screen of applications will be made by the Bayer Foundation to ensure they are complete and the criteria for application are fulfilled.
Applications will then be evaluated and ranked by an independent jury of scientists. Primary criteria for evaluation include:
Fundamental quality and relevance of the application (based on our guidelines and questions)
Motivation and potential of the applicant
Value of the fellowship to the applicant Additional criteria:
Collaborative and/or interdisciplinary proposals are highly desirable.
To be Taken at (Country): Bayer Foundation Fellowships are designed to enhance existing study programs (MSc, PhD, and medicine) by providing additional funding for international placements or research activities, that are complimentary to current or future scientific studies.
Students who are enrolled outside of Germany must undertake placement within Germany.
Students who are enrolled at a German university must undertake placements outside of Germany.
Fellowships cannot be undertaken at commercial organizations (i.e. in industry).
Number of Awards: Not specified
Value Of Bayer Foundation Fellowships In Drug Discovery, Agricultural And Medical Sciences:
The Fellowship provides additional funding for international placements.
Duration: 2 weeks – up to 6 months
How to Apply:You can find our 2024 guidelines here.
Application phase: February 12 – April 8, 2024. Applications can only be made through our digital portal below (click the button). Here you can find a preview. Please contact us with any questions at: bayer.fellowship@bayer.com
Tell Me About Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award:
Game-changing female entrepreneurs of Sub-Saharan Africa – is your innovation driving positive change by bringing better health and nutrition to everyone? Harvest a healthier future by applying for the Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award 2024. Lace up your gloves, Get in the Ring and grab the spotlight for a chance to win €25,000!
The value of this award comes to 50,000 Euros. Winners of the award will receive a cash prize of 25,000 Euros. They will also be entered at no additional cost, into an intensive 24-week growth accelerator, the value of which is 25,000 Euros. The accelerator provides a rare opportunity for awardees to receive tailored support and training for scaling, including active investor feedback. They will also gain access to relevant mentorship and advice from Bayer experts, as well as membership of the Bayer Foundation global alumni and partner network, which offers the opportunity to raise capital and exchange knowledge about the experience gained.
Dr. Monika Lessl, Executive Director of Bayer Foundation, says “Studies have shown that women play a central role in bringing change and working towards a more equal society. We also see this in our daily work. In the many years of Bayer Foundation’s activities, the positive impact of strong women has been a central theme. They are the change-makers we need. As a basic principle for our activities, we, therefore, have chosen to strengthen and highlight the role of women as leaders in science and as entrepreneurs,”
What Type Of Scholarship Is This?
Entrepreneurship
Who Can Apply For Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award?
Are you a woman game changer, driving sustainability and social impact through entrepreneurial innovation? To apply for the Open Application, you can sign up from any country within Sub-Saharan Africa. Through the Open Application, you may become one of the 16 finalists that will be selected from this group by the Bayer Foundation and Get In The Ring team.
Which Countries Are Eligible?
Sub-Saharan African countries
How Many Scholarships Will Be Given?
Not specified
What Is The Benefit Of Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award?
24-week growth accelerator program
€25.000 Cash prize
Workshops and trainings
Access to network
Access to the Women Empowerment Award Final Event
Additional funding opportunities
How To Apply For Bayer Foundation Women Empowerment Award:
Tell Me About Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab:
The Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab is an intensive five-month accelerator designed to help further develop and scale startups, culminating in a Demo Day and showcase presentation to the investor community.
Our in-house startup accelerator promotes financial inclusion and provides access to capital for early-stage technology and technology-enabled companies.
TYPE:
Entrepreneurship
Who Can Apply For Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab?
The ideal candidate will meet the following criteria:
Is an underrepresented founder, co-founder, CTO or other C-suite member.
Has founded a technology or technology-enabled startup that falls within the Seed to Series A funding round stage.
Has launched product with demonstrated revenues that validate the initial business model and market opportunity.
HOW MANY AWARDS?
Not specified
What Is The Benefit Of Morgan Stanley Inclusive Ventures Lab?
Investment of Capital: Morgan Stanley provides participating companies with $250,000 for each company in our New York-based program and £250,000 for each company in our London-based program in exchange for a 5% equity stake.
Powerful Networks: We introduce startups to our bankers, financial advisors, technology experts and others who can connect each company to their industry networks. We also give them access to potential clients and the investor ecosystem at large.
Mentoring and More: Morgan Stanley pairs each startup with hand-picked mentors, entrepreneurs in residence and advisors who provide counsel, sales and leadership coaching, to help each company grow and scale.
Tailored Curriculum: The Lab customizes a curriculum for each startup, including finance and sales strategy, marketing and branding, and private sessions with industry experts.
Pitch Day to Investors: Our program culminates in a Demo Day during which all participants can raise their profiles with presentations to investors, potential business partners and customers.
How To Apply:
Start the process to be considered for our 2024 Cohort. Applications close March 15th, 2024. Learn more in our FAQs.
Hospices across the north west of England have announced a major funding crisis, with 29 of the 30 hospices in the region warning of a budget shortfall in the coming year, leading to the possibility that vital services will have to go if they do not receive more funding from central government.
A report published in September last year by Hospice UK showed the crisis is a national one, finding that government funding for adult hospices has fallen by £47 million in the past two years. Information gathered from Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) across England showed that there was not a single area in Britain where government financing of local hospice services had not been cut in the last two years.
A hospice in Leeds, UK [Photo by Mark Stevenson / CC BY-SA 2.0]
Government money is distributed via ICBs, who have a statutory requirement to provide resources for palliative and end-of-life care. They are expected to increase funding for hospices, reflecting increased costs and demand (the need for palliative care is projected to increase by 25 percent by 2048), yet are ultimately limited by the funds provided them by central government.
In the last two years, no ICB provided any uplift in contract funding to hospices that matched increases in inflation, with 5 percent of ICBs providing no increases at all.
Hospices are waiting to hear how much funding they will receive for 2024/25.
The institutions provide care for up to 23,000 people in the north west of England, and 300,000 people a year nationally. They are an integral part of the healthcare system yet remain largely funded by charities, with adult hospices only receiving one third of their funding from the state.
Now the communities that provide funding are being hit by a cost-of-living crisis and struggling to pay essential bills. Many people have very little excess income to make contributions to charities.
At the same time, hospices’ own costs are going up. Intensive users of gas and electricity, they have reported a 350 percent increase in energy bills. An increase in the minimum wage and rising supplier and maintenance costs have also had an impact.
The increase in energy costs is also impacting individuals receiving palliative care at home, as they cannot afford to run specialist electrical medical equipment, or even to keep the central heating on.
Hospice UK CEO, Toby Porter explained, “We’ve been warning for over a year about the impact that insufficient government funding will have on essential hospice services. It’s getting critical”.
As an example, the Hospice of the Good Shepherd near Chester warns it will have to raise £12,000 a week, or more than £4 million a year, to run its services. Speaking to the BBC, Caroline Siddall, director of funding, said the job is getting harder: “It’s so difficult to think ahead of how we are going to raise £4m.”
St Ann’s Hospice, the largest in Greater Manchester, has had to close nine beds across its two sites. Four hospices across Merseyside and Cheshire have also had to reduce services.
Last year, Alice House Hospice, based in Hartlepool, north east England, had to close its long-term care unit due to not being able to meet a budget shortfall in the coming year of £755,000. The eight-bed unit provided 24-hour nursing care to patients with high dependency needs. It was operating at an unsustainable loss of £275,000 a year.
With the government providing just 21 percent of its funding, Alice House Hospice had to raise £8,000 a day to keep functioning.
Speaking to the BBC, CEO for Bolton Hospice, Dr. Leigh Vallance said, “The deal with the NHS [National Health Service] has always been we as a charity bring £2 to the table and the NHS comes with a £1, but over the past 10 to 12 years that £1 has reduced to 90p, 80p, and now it’s below 70p. Add to that the cost of living and a big hole opens up.”
Toby Porter, CEO Hospice UK, commented, “Hospices are a vital part of our wider healthcare system. It is unfair and unrealistic for the Government to allow their funding to hospices to fall short and expect local communities that support hospices so generously to make up the shortfall.”
The impact of falling donations and increased running costs is being felt by many organisations in a charity sector that, due to a lack of state provision, is now delivering essential services to some of the most vulnerable in society. Research carried out across 700 organisations by the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in November 2022 found many were worried about their ability to survive in the coming period.
Nearly two in three (63 percent) said demand for their services had increased compared to November 2021, and this figure included a third (33 percent) who said that they had seen demand rise significantly. But only half felt they had the funds to meet current demand, compared to 58 percent in October 2022.
A quarter (24 percent) reported they had made cuts to services and were not able to cut any further. Over half (51 percent) said they were using reserves to cover their core costs. This figure is worse than at the height of the pandemic in November 2021, when CAF research showed that 40 percent of charities were using their reserves to help them through.
Two thirds of charities (67 percent) said falling income from fundraising was their main concern, with nearly 58 percent citing increasing costs such as energy.
Neil Heslop, CEO of CAF, said, “Charities are running out of options, forcing them to rely on their reserves and cut back on the services they provide. This research provides stark evidence about how the sector is responding to the triple threat of soaring demand, falling donations, and rising costs.”
At a time when hospices and charities are scrambling around for money, and the NHS has been deprived of hundreds of billions of pounds over the last decade, the Tory government—backed by the Labour Party—has poured billions into backing the ongoing war against Russia in Ukraine and Israel’s genocide against Gaza.
The Move Forward Party (MFP), the largest oppositional party in Thailand, is facing the prospect of dissolution after the Constitutional Court characterized a plank of its 2023 election program as an attempt to overthrow the monarchy.
The ruling continued: “[T]he accused have an intention to subvert the monarchy” in direct violation of Section 49 of the Constitution. Section 49 states that, “no person shall exercise the rights or liberties to overthrow the democratic regime of government with the King as Head of State.”
The court instructed the party and its former leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, to cease any and all communications relating to the law’s amendment or abolishment. The MFP has complied by scrapping references to the law on its website.
In a press release, Pita stated on behalf of the MFP that the gag order was a “lost opportunity” for parliament to discuss the law. “We refuse that the attempt was an alibi nor was it an attempt to cause any deterioration of the monarchy and did not have any intention of separating the monarchy with the national security,” Pita stated in English.
In January, political activist Mongkol Thirakot was sentenced to 50 years in prison for social media postings critical of the monarchy, the longest such sentence given in history.
The court decision underscores just how central the monarchy is to the capitalist state in Thailand. In times of crisis, the king has stepped in to defuse infighting within the ruling elites and to prevent the development of mass movements that threaten capitalist rule.
The ruling also opens up the party to the possibility of dissolution. Section 92 of the Political Parties Act states that any party deemed to be acting in a way that “may be adverse” to the government “must” be dissolved. This can entail lifetime bans on its top officials from applying to run in future elections.
The law was strengthened following the 2014 military coup. Previously it only applied to parties that had engaged in acts to directly “overthrow” the government. Moreover, dissolution was only an option that “may” be considered.
Last month’s ruling lays bare the anti-democratic character of the Thai state apparatus, which is not prepared to countenance a public discussion about any reform of the monarchy. The fact that the MFP immediately fell into line underscores its class character as a capitalist party that has channeled the opposition of workers and youth into the dead-end of parliamentary politics.
Nonetheless, the ruling class deemed the MFP too unreliable a party to form government and used the courts to sideline it. Pita, who was positioning himself as prime minister, had his parliamentary status suspended pending an “investigation” into his holding of shares in a media company, in contravention of electoral laws.
The media company, iTV, had been defunct since 2007, and receives no revenue from media services. It only remains a business entity due to an ongoing legal dispute with the government over unpaid concession fees. Furthermore, the shares had been disclosed by Pita in 2019 when his registration as an MP was approved by the Election Commission.
The trajectory of the MFP is now following a similar path to that of its predecessor, the Future Forward Party (FFP), which won an unexpectedly significant share of seats in the 2019 election on the basis of calling for democratic reforms. It was dissolved by the Constitutional Court the following year for supposedly receiving illegal donations. No other party was subject to the same level of scrutiny.
On Monday, Pita and several other former FFP parliamentarians received suspended 4-month jail sentences for participating in an impromptu protest in Dec 2019. The rally blocked a train station and involved the illegal use of loudspeakers.
The MFP has waged no campaign to defend itself against any of the anti-democratic court decisions. The investigation into Pita’s media shares, and the suspension of Pita’s MP status was allowed to proceed. After the investigation was dropped on January 24, Pita called the proceedings a mere “detour” of his program.
MFP lawmaker Bhuntin Noumjerm made clear that no call would be made to mobilise popular opposition if the Constitutional Court dissolved the party. Rather it would simply change the name and reorganize the party. “You can kill a man, you can’t kill an idea. People have already lost faith in our legal system over and over, so if they want to dig their own grave… by all means,” he demagogically told the media.
Federal Reserve Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington [AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, file]
The US Federal Reserve has revealed that a significant financial milestone was passed last week. The amount of money lent by US banks to so-called shadow banks, otherwise known as non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs), has passed the $1 trillion mark.
As significant as the amount is, equally important is the speed with which it has occurred.
As the Financial Times (FT) reported, the lending is “up 12 percent in the past year, making it one of banking’s fastest-growing businesses when overall loans growth has been sluggish, up just 2 percent.”
The rapid rise in lending by banks to shadow banks is causing concern among financial regulators. Numerous reports, including from the International Monetary Fund, as well as statements from the regulators themselves, have made clear very little is known of the connections between them.
The FT reported that Michael Hsu, a top regulator at the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, had noted in a recent interview that the lightly regulated lenders, the shadow banks, were pushing the banks into lower-quality and higher-risk loans.
“We need to solve the race to the bottom,” he said. “And I think part of the way to solve it is to put due attention on those non-banks.”
The acceleration is indicated by the fact that when banks were first required to reveal their lending to non-banks in 2010 the total was just $50 billion for the entire banking sector. It is now 20 times that level and comprises 6 percent of all loans. This is more than auto loans, at 5 percent and just under credit card loans at 7 percent.
Across the Atlantic, European Union regulators are also seeking to probe the connections between the banks and NBFIs about which they confess to know very little. The worry is that if operations by a shadow bank go sour it can pass into the broader banking and financial system.
The potential damage was seen most notably in the crisis of the US Treasury market in March 2020 when a “dash for cash” was sparked, at least in part, by the activities of hedge funds. The freeze in the market, which went on for days, meant there were virtually no buyers for US government debt. It was only ended, and a major financial crisis averted, through a massive intervention by the Fed to the tune of $4 trillion.
“We should be doing more and we are going to be doing more,” he said. “We need to have an understanding of the whole underlying chain in NBFIs.”
The fact that regulators do not have such an understanding was an astonishing admission given that NBFIs hold almost half of the world’s financial assets of $218 trillion.
Campa told the FT the EBA would work with the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) and the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an international body, to develop an understanding of how a shock in the shadow banking system could be transmitted more broadly.
“We are at very early stages but [understanding that] is the core of what the ESRB and the FSB would like to do,” he said.
One of the ways a shock could develop is if NBFIs were forced to sell US Treasury bonds or financial products based on real estate.
Emphasising the lack of knowledge about the connections and links, Campa said: “The first step in this situation is always getting information; it’s an obscure sector where the quality of the data is not homogeneous.”
The financial authorities would like to believe that if they had a better understanding of the workings of the system over which they supposedly preside, then they would be able to introduce regulations to prevent future crises that could assume a systemic character.
However, historical experience speaks loudly against such a perspective. The problems arise from the very nature of the capitalist economy and its financial system which has come to play such a dominant role.
While production and finance are social—every sector in the real economy and in finance is connected to and linked with every other on a global scale—the productive forces and finance are privately owned.
This means that, in the final analysis, attempts at control and regulation flounder on the anarchy of the market where the driving force is the accumulation of private profit, whatever the consequences for overall stability.
Banking regulation is a case in point. In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, the Obama administration put in place the Dodds-Frank Act which it claimed would prevent a repetition of this catastrophe by the restrictions, limited as they were, placed on the banks.
But, as has now been widely acknowledged, even this relatively light-touch legislation only resulted in finance capital devising ways to get around it. This led to the rise of NBFIs which now have the potential to set off a crisis, accounting for 50 percent of financial asset services today.
As the FT noted in an article published at the start of the year, the NBFI sector “grew after [a] wave of post-crisis regulation drove some activities beyond the traditional banking sector while other areas outside the reach of regulators expanded, such as cryptocurrency.”
Well-known financial analyst Satyajit Das noted in an FT piece last month that the potential problems were not just a question of the quantum of debt but also of the increasingly complicated nature of modern-day leverage.
Investors often make investments in assets that are already leveraged, and the underlying source of cash flow must be sufficient to “meet multiple claims, reducing the margin of safety.”
Another factor was that lenders, often not only banks but institutional investors, public and private funds, and wealthy individuals, lent to another lender who in turn financed another party. Risk then became “diffused through an often lengthy chain with complicated financial and legal rights and claim priorities.”
Describing leverage as an arms race, in which the authorities are handicapped, Das cited the observation of the late financial economist Hyman Minsky that “in a world of businessmen and intermediaries who aggressively seek profit, innovators will always outpace regulators.”
Broadening the outlook to take in the present situation, Das concluded: “The real constraint is that over time the economy has become reliant on speculation to generate activity and paper wealth, backstopped when needed by governments and central banks using public resources to maintain stability. Ultimately, it is difficult to limit leverage in a world where everyone is incentivized to get rich quickly using other people’s money.”
The results of last Thursday’s election in Pakistan, the world’s fifth most populous state, constitute a stunning rebuke of the country’s military, long most powerful political actor.
With the support of the judiciary and state bureaucracy, it went to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the electoral process so as to ensure that jailed opposition leader and former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI, Pakistan Movement for Justice) would be eliminated as significant factors in Pakistani establishment politics.
Instead, “independent” candidates backed by the PTI—the party was not allowed to run under its own banner—topped the National Assembly polls.
According to the official results, which the PTI and several other parties are contesting on the grounds of ballot stuffing, pro-PTI independents captured 93 of the 266 National Assembly seats up for election Thursday.
In the run-up to the polls, the military and courts cleared the way for the return to power of three-time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz). However, the PML (N) won just 75 seats. The PML (N)’s long-time bitter rival, the Pakistan People’s Party, sits in third place with 53 seats, while the remaining 45 are divided among independents and almost a dozen smaller parties.
Supporters of imprisoned Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party chant slogans during a protest against the Pakistan Election Commission’s delaying of the results of the election in Karachi, Pakistan on Sunday, February 11, 2024. [AP Photo/Fareed Khan]
Pakistan’s military wields vast political and economic power and is the linchpin of the seven-decade-old, patron-client relationship between US imperialism and Pakistan’s ruling class.
Egged on by Washington, the military orchestrated Khan’s removal as prime minister in an April 2022 non-confidence vote, after he proclaimed Pakistan’s PTI-led government would adopt a policy of “neutrality” on the US-NATO-instigated war with Russia over Ukraine.
Although he is a right-wing Islamic populist, Khan and his PTI have been subject to a legal vendetta since last May, when paramilitary forces seized him during a court appearance, and his supporters responded with nationwide protests that included the storming of a handful of military installations and the residence of at least one senior officer. Khan and several other senior PTI leaders have been jailed, along with thousands of party activists, some on bogus “terrorism” charges.
With the approach of last Thursday’s vote, this repression intensified. Khan was sentenced to lengthy prison terms in three separate cases and ruled ineligible to stand for election. The PTI was barred from contesting the polls, and those who stood as PTI-backed independents were prevented from using its cricket bat symbol on the ballot, a major impediment in a country where 40 percent of the population is illiterate.
Due to threats and violent attacks, the PTI-backed independents campaigned almost entirely online. On polling day, cellphone and mobile internet services were suddenly suspended nationwide to frustrate get-out-the-vote initiatives.
The PTI is claiming that were it not for ballot stuffing and other irregularities, it would have won as many as 175 seats.
What can be said with certainty is that tens of millions of Pakistanis seized on the vote as a means to express their anger and opposition to the military’s vast power and reach and to the traditional ruling establishment as a whole.
It had been expected that voter turnout would fall sharply, due to disgust with the military’s manipulation of the polls. However, preliminary reports indicate the turnout at 48 percent was down only marginally from the 2018 election’s 51 percent. Far from being cowed, tens of millions turned out at the polls to voice their defiance. This went far beyond Khan’s traditional support base among the urban middle class and included millions of working class people and a section of the rural toilers.
The establishment’s attempt to ostracize and punish Khan clearly backfired, producing a wave of public sympathy and enabling him to exploit his carefully crafted image as a “political outsider.”
Much of this is acknowledged in Western media reports about Pakistan’s “shock election.” What is left unsaid is that the results were also shaped and gave distorted expression to popular opposition to US imperialism and its wars, which have ravaged neighbouring Afghanistan and subjected millions in Pakistan’s tribal regions to years of drone surveillance and strikes.
Among Pakistanis, there is also widespread outrage over the US-enabled Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Khan is no opponent of US imperialism or for that matter the Pakistani military, which facilitated his coming to power in 2018. But unlike his rivals within the country’s political establishment, he has at times railed against Washington, accusing it of bullying and running roughshod over Pakistani sovereignty. Long a political also-ran, Khan significantly expanded his support in the first half of the last decade by denouncing the Obama-Biden administration’s drone war in Pakistan, which terrorized the population of what was then the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and slaughtered large numbers of civilians.
To the dismay of the military and political establishment, Khan repeatedly publicly charged that Washington helped engineer his ouster, only later to pull back from his allegations. Although he vigorously denies the charge, Khan and his former foreign minister and the PTI’s deputy chairman, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, were sentenced to 10-year jail terms at the end of last month for leaking “state secrets”—that is, leaking a cable or cipher from Pakistan’s US ambassador relaying Washington’s threats to freeze out Islamabad if Khan remained at the country’s helm.
The election results have further intensified the infighting within Pakistan’s elite, amid apprehensions about the ability of a weak government, largely viewed as illegitimate, to press forward with the austerity and economic “restructuring” measures demanded by domestic and global capital.
On Saturday, after the extent of the electoral rebuke became clear, Pakistan’s Chief of Armed Services General Syed Asim Munir cynically declared that the nation needs “stable hands and a healing touch to move on from the politics of anarchy and polarisation.”
This was a not so subtle appeal for the PML (N) and the PPP to stop their wrangling and form a national coalition government with other parties, but not the PTI. Such talks are now underway, although the PPP is concerned about further compromising itself by aligning with Nawaz Sharif and a PML (N) popularly seen to be the military’s chief lapdog.
On Sunday, PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari flew to Islamabad to meet US Ambassador Donald Blome. This underscores that Washington is working behind the scenes to cobble together a government that will best serve its interests, including in its multiple wars, even while issuing pro forma statements of concern about election irregularities.
Although, Islamabad continues to publicly deny it, it is all but certain that a key element in the renewal of what had become badly frayed Pakistani-US relations was Islamabad’s supply of weapons to Ukraine via a back channel.
The PTI is continuing to challenge the election results and has stated in response to General Munir that the only true “healing touch” would be the release of Imran Khan and all the PTI prisoners and for the establishment to accept that the PTI has a popular mandate to lead the government. But party spokesman Gohar Ali Khan has said that if the PTI’s efforts to form a national government fail, it will go into opposition, suggesting it is trying to leverage the election results to effect an eventual reconciliation with the military-led establishment.
A likely further object of political conflict is the awarding of some 70 National Assembly seats “reserved” for women and “religious minorities.” These seats are supposed to be awarded to the parties proportionately according to the seats they have won, but since the PTI members were elected as “independents,” it could potentially be denied all such seats.
Pakistan is beset by intersecting economic, political and geopolitical crises. Recent months have witnessed a wave of significant social struggles. These include mass protests against punishing electricity tariff hikes, opposition to a wave of privatizations including of the national airline Pakistan International Airlines, and a “long march” against “disappearances” and summary executions perpetrated by Pakistan’s military in Balochistan, site of a longstanding ethno-nationalist insurgency.
Within ruling class circles it is taken as a given that Islamabad will have to go to the IMF for further loans almost as soon as the next government takes office. Currently, the country has only $8 billion in reserves, equivalent to less than two months’ worth of imports.
However, and this has been reflected in a sharp slide in the country’s stock market since Friday, there are apprehensions over the ability of the next government to impose the austerity and privatization measures needed to satisfy the vampires of the IMF and global investors.
“A weak coalition government,” lamented former Pakistani diplomat Maleeha Lodhi in a Dawn op-ed Monday, “will dampen the prospects of wide-ranging economic reforms that Pakistan desperately needs to put it on the trajectory of sustainable growth and investment. If the next government is a minority one, dependent for survival on appeasing a motley group of parties, will it be able to take tough and politically painful decisions to extricate the country from the economic crisis?”
The release of a study in pre-print form, pending peer review and publication in The Lancet, by investigators from the US and UK, found that COVID-19 infections among the elderly, those 60-years-of-age and older, caused a 60 percent increased risk of developing new-onset dementia (NOD) within a year of infection compared to controls without any other respiratory infections.
The systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted by scientists at Columbia’s Biobehavioral Sciences Department, the University of Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry, and Lancaster University’s Centre for Ageing Research, looking at the temporal association between COVID-19 and subsequent development of NOD.
A doctor looks at PET brain scans in Phoenix. [AP Photo/Matt York]
Their review incorporated 11 studies from North America, Europe and Asia, involving close to 940,000 positive COVID-19 cases and more than 6.7 million controls for comparison. Overall, when compared to an elderly population that never contracted COVID-19 or other respiratory infections, those with prior COVID-19 infections had a nearly two-fold increased risk of NOD at one year after infection.
The authors also compared COVID-19 patients to those without a prior COVID-19 infection but who had documented exposure to other respiratory pathogens like influenza or RSV. Significantly, in this comparison there was no difference between the groups regarding developing NOD, underscoring the danger posed by most pathogens considered “endemic” and a permanent feature of society. The implication of this finding is that among the elderly, infection with these respiratory pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, substantially increases one’s risk of developing NOD.
Most disconcerting was the finding that those with severe COVID-19 were much more prone to developing neurocognitive disturbances, with a 17-fold rise in the risk of acquiring NOD compared to non-severe infections. Severe COVID-19 was defined as anyone with COVID-19 who had a respiratory rate greater than 30 breaths per minute, severe respiratory distress, or oxygen saturation that dropped below 90 percent while on room air.
As the authors note in their discussion, “We believe it is among the first studies to explore the impact of COVID-19 infection on NOD risk in older adults aged 60 and above. It also proposes the protective benefits of being free from COVID-19 and other types of respiratory infections in reducing the risk of NOD.”
The study underscores the totally criminal character of the policies pursued by the capitalist ruling elites and the political establishment, who have largely dismantled public health infrastructure, insisting that COVID-19 be accepted as part of the “normal” array of pathogens that infect, sicken, and kill people each year.
The link between COVID-19 infections and Long COVID, also known as post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, has been well established and accepted by all health authorities and sectors of society. Beyond the substantial morbidity and mortality burden, the economic impacts of what they define as “endemic COVID” i.e., perpetual mass reinfection with COVID-19, are forecast to remain colossal for the foreseeable future.
A recent report by McKinsey’s COVID-19 Epidemiological Scenario Planning Tool, advising economist and financial shareholders, anticipates that the annual costs of “endemic COVID” could range between $137 to $379 billion with estimates of 110 to 220 million COVID infections and 20 million Long COVID cases annually. The long-term health impacts caused by repeated COVID-19 infections, of which the neurocognitive damage is but one, will simply become accepted as the normal state of sickness which are preventable.
From the beginning of the pandemic, it has been understood that COVID-19 infections can cause more than pulmonary complications. The virus’ impact on the immune system and pro-inflammatory drive, in particular small vessel disease and the formation of small blood clots, can wreak havoc on every organ system in the body.
The triggering of autoimmune responses can lead to inflammation in the central nervous system which causes debilitation with symptoms of brain fog, loss of memory, and even psychosis with delusional thoughts and agitation. Other theories speculate that vascular inflammation due to the formation of microscopic blood clots that deprive blood and needed oxygen to parts of the brain can contribute to these symptoms. Previous evidence has demonstrated an association between COVID-19 and the precipitation of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
The finding that other respiratory pathogens can cause NOD similar to COVID is in congruence with findings from other researchers who found older adults admitted for flu, whether they had pneumonia or not, had a two- to seven-fold greater risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease, all-cause dementia, and vascular dementia. Whether these respiratory infections use similar biological mechanism remains unknown, but studies have shown that vaccinations against these pathogens appeared to reduce the risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.
Another pressing question that remains to be answered is the impact of repeat COVID-19 infections on younger people in the long-term over the period of their lifetime. Many scientists who have studied the impact of these infections have found that COVID-19 appears to age the organ systems. Will this lead to an epidemic of neurocognitive disease and every other chronic ailment in even younger people? These same principled scientists have warned against following this dangerous track and to attempt to prevent as many COVID infections as possible.
The ongoing global wave of COVID-19 infections caused by the highly infectious JN.1 subvariant of Omicron may well infect over a third of the world’s population, virtually all of which are reinfections. Yet not one public entity in any major country has raised a breath to sound the alarm.
Instead of protecting the remaining years of older people, whose lives and experiences should be highly valued by society, the capitalist elites are allowing a virus that can cause them severe cognitive impairment to circulate unimpeded. This is in fact a eugenicist policy that condemns those who are “unproductive” to die off sooner than later, or in the words of Anthony Fauci, to “fall by the wayside.”
In the last five weeks in the US, more than 10,000 Americans perished from COVID-19, of which the significant majority were among those 75 years of age and older. With close to 1.2 million official COVID deaths since the start of the pandemic, three-quarter of these have been among older Americans.
A recent CNN report on the state of the pandemic response accurately stated, “The decisive actions that advocates had hoped for haven’t materialized. Today, most people—and government officials—appear to accept COVID as part of ordinary life. Many seniors at high risk aren’t getting antiviral therapies for COVID, and most older adults in nursing homes aren’t getting updated vaccines.”
They added, “Efforts to strengthen care quality in nursing homes and assisted living centers have stalled amid debate over costs and availability staff. And only a small percentage of people are masking or taking other precautions in public despite a new wave of COVID, flu, and respiratory syncytial virus infections hospitalizing and killing seniors.”
In 2017, neurodegenerative diseases impacted upwards of six million people and were responsible for more than 272,000 deaths and three million disability-adjusted life years. These disabling conditions do not only affect the patients but also families and their caregivers.
As Ken Thorpe, Chairman of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, said back in 2021, at the height of the pandemic, “The vulnerability of people living with these conditions, the increasing demands of their illness and the prevalence projections we are seeing all point to a dire need for reforms to support those diagnosed and their caregivers and to encourage and prioritize research and innovation that leads to new treatments and cures.”
However, the call for reforms, especially regarding the pandemic, has simply fallen on deaf ears. The White House summit on improving indoor air in October 2022, and more recently the congressional hearing led by Senator Bernie Sanders in January 2024 on Long COVID, are political theater signifying nothing.
