Thursday, March 25, 2021
Australian company signs deal to sell COVID nose spray in Britain
Australian biotech Starpharma is taking its COVID-fighting antiviral nasal spray to the world, signing a deal with UK chemist chain LloydsPharmacy to sell the product in Britain as the country emerges from lockdown.
The Melbourne-based company announced a deal on Thursday morning that will see its Viraleze virus-fighting product sold online in the UK starting next week. It will also be stocked in Lloyds’ 1400-strong pharmacy network.
Chief executive Jackie Fairley declined to comment on the value of the deal, but said the successful launch of the product overseas would pave the way for its long-term use beyond the pandemic. She said the company was also planning to register Viraleze in Australia, but would focus on COVID-ravaged Europe in the first instance.
“It’s been a pretty frenetic 12 months, and we’re delighted to have gotten to this point,” she said. “Clearly this market [Britain] is a very large market - this is a broad spectrum antiviral and it’s a product that has applications more broadly. The UK is currently locked down and will be emerging in a couple of weeks. This [deal] achieves a very high level of distribution through that market rapidly.”
The move makes Starpharma the first ASX-listed biotech to bring a COVID-19 preventative product to a global retail market. It comes after a year in which almost every drug developer around the world has tried to pivot its treatments towards the virus.
Starpharma’s shares opened up 3.5 per cent to $2.10 on the news, before dropping 1 per cent by 11am AEDT.
Starpharma started work on Viraleze around a year ago, convinced that SPL7013, the active antiviral compound that it already uses in registered antiviral condoms and sexual health products, could prove useful in stopping SARS-CoV-2 in its tracks.
Unlike vaccines for coronavirus, Viraleze has not gone through large-scale human trials and instead has been tested in the laboratory for its effectiveness. The company has been able to launch the product quickly because the active ingredients have already been reviewed and registered for use in Europe.
The company says the product is a “broad spectrum antiviral” spray that has been shown to inactivate 99.99 per cent of the virus that causes COVID-19 in lab studies.
The product is intended to be used alongside vaccines and other preventative measures as an extra level of protection against the virus and other viruses including influenza for candidates such as healthcare workers.
Dr Fairley said Viraleze was designed to be used in the overall battle against COVID alongside masks and vaccines.
“We’re not making a claim that [it] is the same as vaccines,” she said.
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The Desperate Attempts to Separate Trump from Conservatism
The harder the left goes after someone on the right, the more squishy people on the right desert that person. Instead of circling the wagons and supporting our own, RINOs and moderates leave some of our top shining stars high and dry. We’ve seen this pattern happen for years, it’s nothing new. The more successful a conservative leader is, the more likely they are to become a target, so this is a real ongoing problem. Unfortunately, there are a lot of self-righteous people in our party who care more about donations for reelection from powerful special interests than promoting real conservative values, so when they see someone like former President Trump getting beat up in the MSM, they use the ruse that he’s not conservative to desert him.
Now that Trump is no longer in office, the revisionists are coming out in full force. There is currently a split on the right between those who think Trump defines Republicans now, versus those who think he is toxic and must be deserted. The latter derogatorily refers to anything he does and those who approve of him as “Trumpism,” as if it’s a cancer that must be purged from the party.
One of the most popular accusations is that Trump is a populist, not a conservative. What is the definition of a populist? Someone who cares about the little people, who is concerned about their interests and rights being exploited by a privileged elite. This sounds merely like a tenet of conservatism, not a completely different philosophy. The left and MSM always pretend that Republicans are the party of the wealthy, but that’s not true. Republicans are about treating everyone the same and giving everyone the same opportunities, no matter how poor. Regardless, while Trump seemed to care a bit more about the average Joe than the previous two Republican presidents, there wasn’t a huge divergence in policy implications.
Another popular criticism is that Trump approved of large spending increases. If this was the criteria for being a conservative, then what about Ronald Reagan? Under Reagan, spending increased by 2.7 percent, higher than under George H.W. Bush and even Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.
A third criticism is that Trump doesn’t have a deeply held ideology. Then why did he come down on the conservative side of issues consistently for four years? These critics would have you ignore his actions and instead tell you what they say he is thinking. The truth is, Trump pursued a very conservative agenda. All of the main tenets of modern day conservatism were there in his record as president: Second Amendment, pro-life, religious freedom, individual rights, lower taxes, decreasing regulations, strong military, opposition to authoritarian government, rejection of globalism, etc.
Some quibble that his rejection of globalism was not conservative — but the antithesis of that would subvert U.S. patriotism for values like the Paris Agreement on climate change, or condone rights abusing countries on the U.N.’s Human Rights Council who denounce the U.S. Trump has been critical of so-called free trade agreements like NAFTA because they aren’t purely free trade, they subvert U.S. sovereignty to foreign interests in ways that must be addressed. He rightly saw that we don’t want our environmental, labor and consumer protection laws dictated by authoritarian countries. Ultimately, Trump kept almost all of NAFTA in place, renaming it as the USMCA.
Trump’s patriotism merely harkens back to the Founding Fathers. But the RINOs attack even that, claiming that Trump’s patriotism is a form of nationalism, a word they have cleverly pounced upon because it can mean not just patriotism but also fascism or National Socialism. It’s nothing more than clever word plays.
Many of those on the right accusing Trump of not being a conservative aren’t very conservative themselves. They generally fit into one of two categories: 1) RINOs who caved in to obtain special interest money a long time ago and so want to pretend those positions are the status quo for Republicans, or 2) RINOs who enjoy the fawning attention from the left and MSM for attacking real conservatives. Many of the latter refer to themselves as intellectual conservatives, and fool people because they write for elitist news sources, some ostensibly on the right.
But the real intellectual conservatives, like the late William F. Buckley Jr., acquired this title because they thoroughly understood conservative principles, wrote about them intelligently and could trounce the left in debates. The snooty wannabe intellectual conservatives point to one derogatory remark Buckley made in 2000. Buckley called Trump a narcissist. But they fail to point out that Trump was not a Republican at the time, he was registered with the Independence Party and had no conservative record, so of course Buckley was going to criticize him.
Critics of Trump in this area even try to have it both ways. On the one hand, they say he is too liberal to be a conservative, cherry picking things he’s said in the past before he aligned with the right to run for president. On the other hand, they say he’s gone too far to the right, such as by demanding that Mexico pay for a border wall. So which is it? You can’t have it both ways. It shows the shallowness and desperateness of their criticism.
The reality is, Trump brought a coalition of those on the right together, uniting the party like we haven’t seen since the Reagan coalition of the 1980s. He brought in minorities including conservative gays, demographics which had been ignored for years as unattainable. His fans are both blue collar workers and the wealthy, also not easy to do. The Republican establishment couldn’t stand it because Trump can’t be bought; he wasn’t dependent on contributions from special interest groups like they are, which exposed them. Let’s hope they aren’t able to throw away all the accomplishments he’s made by replacing him with what they really want, an updated version of John McCain.
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Democrats Now Party of Leftist Elites, GOP of Working Class
The shift in voter support between the two parties is becoming more significant.
Pundits and talkingheads gleefully predicted the collapse of the Republican Party, claiming “demography is destiny” and noting the white percentage of the electorate was shrinking while the non-white percentage, which overwhelmingly tended to vote Democrat, was increasing.
Yet in 2010, Republicans won a historic number of races and retook the House, and in 2014 they retook the Senate.
Over the last decade, Democrats have made a conscious decision to abandon the white, working class vote, choosing instead to assemble a coalition of black, Hispanic, LGBT, and liberal white, college-educated voters.
In the process, the Democrat Party has plowed right through the political center line, not only without hitting the brakes, but with their gas pedal slammed through the floor and the steering wheel pointing to economic socialism and cultural Marxism.
Today, the Democrat Party is full-blown radical, openly embracing socialism (or is it fascism?), nationalized healthcare, higher taxes, globalism, the economically destructive Green New Deal, and the small business-crushing $15/hour minimum wage. Democrats are canceling Dr. Seuss while pushing Drag Queen Story Hour, canceling Aunt Jemima while glorifying the pornographic Cardi B, and unapologetically attacking traditional American values, principles, and religion — “Most Religious President” Joe Biden notwithstanding.
For decades the Democrats have successfully sold themselves as the party of the “little guy.”
Yet Barack Obama raked in more Wall Street cash than any candidate in U.S. history and then filled his Cabinet with executives and lobbyists (more than 70) from the likes of Goldman Sachs.
Since then, the federal government has grown at an exponential rate, and federal employees have grown quite fat at the taxpayer trough.
It’s no coincidence five of the top six richest counties in America, and 11 of the top 20, are located in the Virginia and Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, inhabited by members of the ever-growing, handsomely paid federal bureaucracy. Nor is it coincidence these wealthy counties vote overwhelmingly Democrat. In Loudon County, Virginia, the median household income of $117,876 is nearly double the national average of $68,703.
In fact, according to recent data from the Census Bureau, a staggering 26 of the 27 richest congressional districts in America are represented by Democrats, and these districts are overwhelmingly white.
In 1980 and 1984, Republican Ronald Reagan won landslide victories with the help of the “Reagan Democrats,” the largely white, working class voters of the industrial Midwest who saw Democrats shipping their jobs overseas.
Fast-forward four decades or so and we are seeing a similar phenomenon, except the shift is not just with working class white voters but with black and Hispanic voters as well.
While “woke” white liberals — college educated and affluent — dominate the leadership of the Democrat Party, they seem oblivious to the fact that their relentless attacks on religion, their uncompromising support for abortion on demand (even until birth), their cheering for the thugs and criminals who are burning down American cities (including black and Hispanic businesses) in the name of “social justice,” their refusal to enforce immigration law even as waves of illegal aliens, sex traffickers, drug cartels, and common criminals swarm over the border and bring crime to American communities, and their hatred of fundamental American values are turning away members of the very coalition on whose backs they rode to power.
This is especially true when it comes to the religion that is under constant assault by Democrats. According to a recent Pew survey, the number of blacks (75%) and Hispanics (59%) who said that religion is “very important” in their lives was significantly higher than for whites (49%).
One can’t help but wonder how black and Hispanic voters, who say religion is very important in their lives, react to Democrat leaders who now call them intolerant, homophobic, judgmental bigots. One can’t help but wonder what they think as they watch the Democrat Party they overwhelmingly supported for decades openly declare war on the traditional family and religion.
Actually, we know.
Despite President Donald Trump being ceaselessly portrayed by Democrats as racist, bigoted, and anti-LGBT, he actually expanded his percentage of black, Hispanic, and even LGBT voters.
That may be because they watched as President Trump spent four years defending religious liberty, cutting taxes, slashing regulations, and renegotiating trade deals, which led to record low black and Hispanic unemployment and a dramatic rise in their family incomes.
Now, Joe Biden and the Democrats are increasing regulations, scheming to hike taxes, and sacrificing American jobs and income to the altar of globalism while attacking religion.
Meanwhile, Republicans are working to reopen the state economies and the public schools from the Democrat lockdowns, provide relief for working class families, raise wages, protect energy sector jobs, and stop Democrats from shipping jobs to China while catering to corporate behemoths like Amazon.
In other words, the Democrats are now owned lock, stock, and barrel by the “woke,” predominantly white, rich elitists, and the Republican Party is opening its arms to religious, hard-working Americans of every color or creed. It is becoming a more God-fearing, America-loving, working class party.
As it should be.
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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:
http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)
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