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Hopes on the cocktail of vaccines, flop sequencing of variants, French torpedo on Mps, dredged on Conte and Trump

3 years ago babelfish

Hopes on the cocktail of vaccines, flop sequencing of variants, French torpedo on Mps, dredged on Conte and Trump

Not only Astrazeneca, Draghi, Erdogan, Brunetta, Mps. Facts, names, numbers, curiosities and controversies. Bits of press review in the tweets of Michele Arnese, director of Start

THE HOPES OF HOPE

THE DOSES COCKTAIL SPONSORED BY AIFA

VACCINAL CHAOS IN THE REGIONS

FLOP SEQUENCING IN ITALY

BRUNETTA FLOP?

THE ANTICONTISM OF DRAGONS

DRAGONS 'ANTITRUMPISM

DRAGONS ANALYZED BY FABBRI (LIMES)

TURKISH THINGS

ALWAYS MAXIMUM FRANCO

TORPEDO ARRIVING FROM THE MOUNTAIN FOR THE TREASURE

ABUSIVE FINANCE

STATE CAPITALISMS

QUISQUILIE & PINZILLACCHERE

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EXCERPT FROM AN ARTICLE FROM CORRIERE DELLA SERA ON COMPETITIONS IN THE SOUTH PA:

Someone dismissed it as the fast track method to speed up the selection of candidates to be allocated to the 2,800 posts within the public administrations of the South. The decision of the Department of Public Administration to proceed with a preselection based on qualifications, with the 'intent to streamline the recruitment operation did not work as hoped. The proof is not so much in the proliferation of complaints and protests on social networks (many are under the hashtag #ugualiallapartenza), but in the choice to adjust the shot in the face of the risk of not being able to fill those 2,800 boxes, currently available, in the offices of the administrations of the Southern regions. The selection to identify experts in the administrative-legal field, management, reporting and control, planning and territorial animation, in recent days has taken the wrong turn. Against the initial 70,000 applicants for a fixed-term job in the administrations of the South, who must strengthen themselves to prepare for the start of the NRP, the selection by qualifications, provided for by the call, has admitted 8,852 candidates to the written test. A non-coincidental figure: the announcement establishes that a number of candidates equal to three times that of the places available have access to the writings.

A proportion that turned out to be insufficient, because at the test last Friday one candidate out of three of the 8,852 admitted did not show up. Participants averaged 65%, but in some regions it fared even worse, with one in two candidates missing out. At the Department of Public Administration, over which Minister Renato Brunetta oversees, they do not have an exact explanation, but the fact that it is a fixed-term job, combined with the request for profiles with medium-high skills who could, however, find a job , makes the choice not to show up, trusting in some better opportunity, plausible. Evidence that forced the department to retrace its steps to avoid the embarrassment of Minister Brunetta not to guarantee the 2,800 technicians promised to the administrations of the South. Not surprisingly, the department reiterated the «need to guarantee the public interest to see all 2,800 positions sought filled ”. An indication followed by the announcement of a new round of selections with written tests starting from 22 June open to all 70,000 candidates who had initially presented themselves.

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EXCERPT FROM AN ARTICLE BY FUBINI FROM CORRIERE DELLA SERA:

Biden arrived on the English coast just days after receiving a more than 250-page report commissioned from his national security assistant Jake Sullivan and first economic adviser, Brian Deese. It is a picture of the situation in the United States in four strategic supply chains: semiconductors, batteries for electric motors, minerals and critical materials (including rare earths), as well as pharmaceuticals and active pharmaceutical ingredients. The bottom line is that a government strategy – including subsidies worth over $ 100 billion – is needed to break the West's dependence on China and revitalize manufacturing at the technological frontier. In the report, the objection against Beijing is direct: "China emerges for the aggressive use of measures – many of them well outside the accepted commercial practices in the world – to capture global market share in the value chains of critical importance" . Moreover, in the executive order that requested the report a hundred days ago, Biden had quoted an ancient proverb: "" For lack of a nail, a horseshoe was lost. For lack of the iron, the whole horse was lost ”. And so on, until the whole kingdom was lost. Small deficiencies at even one point in the value chains can affect America's security, jobs, families and communities. "

Starting with the sector most in tension today: the semiconductors now integrated in every telephone, car, weapon system and in artificial intelligence networks. The study by Biden's advisers finds that in thirty years the American share of the chip market has dropped from 37% to 12%. America has also fallen behind on the frontier of the most efficient chips, those of seven, five or three nanometers (millionths of a millimeter) needed for the most strategic uses. Tsmc produces 92% of world supplies of these semiconductors from Taiwan, a state not recognized by Beijing as independent and potentially exposed to invasion at any time. Building a single state-of-the-art factory to produce these chips may cost $ 20 billion, but China has been investing without savings since 2014. The report commissioned by Biden estimates public subsidies from the (formally) Communist regime of over $ 200 billion. The beneficiary companies are not asked for an economic balance. Skilled engineers are attracted to South Korea or Taiwan with fivefold salary offers if they agree to move to China. The reaction recommended by Biden's advisors is stark: at least $ 50 billion in federal subsidies to the American chip industry and close industrial collaboration with Europeans.

Also worried is Sullivan and Deese's analysis of the materials and minerals needed in all the decisive technologies of these years. China is the only country in the world that fully controls all stages of the neodymium chain, a metal belonging to the rare earth group that is present in hard drives, car engines, wind turbines, guided missiles or magnetic resonance machines. The report recommends a federal investigation into the working conditions and pollution levels by which Beijing has this material produced. However, China also controls 55% of the world capacity for the extraction of rare earths in general and 85% of their (polluting) refining. The domination of China is equally vast, even in the mines of Congo or Zambia, over the cobalt needed for gas turbines and aircraft engines or in the lithium batteries for electric cars. Here the reaction of the White House foresees duties against producers who do not respect environmental standards. High-capacity batteries, now largely Chinese-made, are the other big Achilles' heel. On this the White House proposes to invest 50 billion of public money.

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EXTRACT FROM AN ARTICLE FROM THE SUN 24 HOURS ON THE SEQUENCING OF COVID VARIANTS:

Too bad, however, that our country is among those that look less for variants with the risk of having an untruthful photograph of Covid and its variants in hand: in fact, to find them it is necessary to periodically carry out sample tests in the laboratory on positive swabs. Italy does it, but according to the latest report from the Italian Institute of Health on the activity of "genotyping by sequencing", only 1.1% of positive swabs occur weekly, given that in the period between 28 December 2020 and May 18, 2021, tests were carried out on 23,170 cases of infection on a total of 2,083,674 positive swabs. Therefore variants are sought only on one swab out of a hundred.

Too little given that the WHO, together with the disease prevention and control centers of the US and the EU, has established that to make the surveillance program effective it is necessary to sequence at least 5% of the cases detected with swabs. Other countries do much more: from Denmark which tests about 15% of swabs to England at 10%. That we are behind is evident by looking at the "Gisaid" database, the world archive of all virus sequences: from the beginning of 2020 to last June 14, almost 1,897 million sequences were deposited, England after the USA which is investing hundreds of million in sequencing is the country that contributes the most with 450 thousand sequences deposited (9.8% of cases sequenced), Germany immediately after with 129 thousand (3.5%) while Italy is far behind Spain with 30 thousand sequences deposited (0.7%).

Here, the laboratories of the regions take care of variant hunting, under the coordination of the ISS. Months ago there was talk of creating a national consortium for monitoring, but in the end the project remained in the drawer. Among other things, in these variant research activities there is the usual wide difference between the Regions: if Abruzzo tests 6% of swabs, Piedmont does it much less, only on 0.09%.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/speranze-sul-cocktail-di-vaccini-sequenziamento-flop-delle-varianti-siluro-francese-su-mps-dragate-su-conte-e-trump/ on Tue, 15 Jun 2021 06:20:48 +0000.