Transcripts For RT Documentary 20240713

Got a call from his wife that a doctor. Was flabbergasted its not safe for people who just have chronic pain to give them opioids because they dont have the years of tolerance built up that people with heroin addiction have to really understand the complexity of being that drug is a reflection on. Guys much training this was the published data i said theres something wrong here. And that left a. Hole in my heart i still remember him very very clearly he had opened up a shop a Small Business and was really getting conceit and he even gave me his a. 100 day to come with me accomplish that information was dribbling in that the opioid miracle pain relievers were killing people is produce pharma and the other Drug Companies would have acknowledged a potentially lethal effects of opioids when these problems for 1st discovered hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved instead they took steps to suppress negative information within a month received a 3 page letter from purdue pharma. Basically saying why are you bothering the doctors this is not a prescribing problem this is a patient misuse problem this is a drug abuse problem patients need to be able to get what they need and then we got a year later got sued in federal court we were all all the medical directors were served in our homes current efforts to stop this overprescribing have been met with much pushback from the pharmaceutical industry they rationalized that the billions of dollars they were making were helping more people than they were hoarding they insisted and still insists today that only those who are diverting and misusing the drugs to get high are responsible for the epidemic and not those who are prescribe the drug produced distributed a follow up video to i got my life back to double down on their claims that oxycontin was a safe nonaddictive long term chronic pain relief returning to these patients off to 2 years shows that when pain treatment is successful and stay successful over the last 3 years ive gotten much much stronger is just absolutely a god thing its just such a different ive been away away. And its wonderful however in time even produce own video poster children were succumbing to oxycontin lethal effect of the 6 featured patients spotlighted in the videos 3 maintain they were still helped by the product 2 were deceased from causes thought to be related to their opioid addiction and non last minute other things said if i was to go to the mailbox once a month and i would find a bottle nazi and constantly on time the day lauren is among the lucky survivors i would allow doctors to prescribe me right now its a synthetic heroin. In 2010 for do introduced a new tamper resistant oxycontin with a spotlight focused on stopping pill mills in the new tamper. Just medication easy sources for prescription pain killers began to dry up prescription opioids were expensive on the black market. Heroin became a cheaper alternative i can remember this 15 years ago when my patients coming in here for buprenorphine treatment were saying you know heroin is a lot cheaper than most pills and it works better in 2016 the new england journal of medicine published a study that found that 76 percent of those seeking help for her when addiction began by abusing pharmaceutical opioids primarily oxycontin this draws a direct line between produce marketing of oxycontin then the subsequent care one epidemic currently in the United States policymakers were hearing that all of the problems related to opioids or from socalled drug abusers and that these were wonderful medicines for for pain patients and we recognized this wasnt true one of the 1st people to stand up to the Drug Companies and lobby for reform was dr andrew. He helped form prop physicians for responsible opioid prescribing their organization is one of the earliest advocates for opioid prescription reform the one federal agency that seemed to understand that Overdose Deaths in addiction had arisen as a consequence of the medical community overprescribing was the c. D. C. You know the f. D. A. Gets criticized. The c. D. C. Really doesnt i mean the c. D. C. Is like you know they care about Public Health in america at its best and brightest and today had kind of this Blue Ribbon Committee that looking in people that had no ties to the pharmaceutical industry no conflicts of interest declare and they spent a long time reviewing all of their research and when they came back and said its incredibly damning theres no evidence to support long term use of opioids for chronic pain. What can any drug company say beyond that chronic pain is 80 said. In percent of the market what separates the current Opioid Epidemic from the heroin and crystal meth epidemics of the past is that it affects white middle class and Rural Communities far more than urban minority poor clicked the early eightys late sixtys. Puce and the negative consequences of the abuse of opiates was primarily limited primarily not exclusively limited to minority populations poor individuals inner city populations. From my perspective what ended up happening is this current circumstance got a jump start from prescription opioids and as a result of that it impacted the much broader socioeconomic strata in our community particularly individuals who have access to health care middle class for the most part white families in 2007 produce foreman 3 of its executives pled guilty in federal court to charges of misleading the public about oxycontin their risk of addiction and ease of abuse they were fined over 635000000. 00 the biggest pharmaceutical settlement and us history now that may sound like a lot it is a lot but if you look at the damage thats been done particularly since then in terms of the number of people that are taking. Not only oxy cotton but many types of opioids for conditions that really have theres no value for these drugs. Today the Opioid Epidemic commands National Attention there are now dozens of court cases against purdue and other pharmaceutical companies for their collusion to promote drugs they knew were dangerous for turning a blind eye to the sale of opioids to doctors and clinics that were killed mills and for the destruction of states and communities ravaged by the up at them. Im not sure im enough of a medical expert to say what steps need to be taken at this point. But you know what whats very clear is that unless you have. Public Health Experts regulators criminal investigators local officials and the medical Community Working together. In some kind of established program the problem will never get solved the one thing that we have to do is slowly and surely. The. Prescriptions we need to get them doctors are no strongly encouraged to cautiously prescribe for both chronic pain and acute pain this will lessen the chance of surplus pills being diverted in the buz surgeons or Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in lebanon New Hampshire recently published guidelines to reduce the number of excess opioid pills prescribed for acute pain what we found was that only about a quarter of the opioid pills that were being prescribed were taken by the patients so it was clear that we were over prescribing these opioids and so we came up with a guideline and said ok for a partial mastectomy 5 pills should be enough to satisfy 80 percent of the patients for lack of stopping gallbladder removal calls the stock to me 15 pills should be enough to worry did a whole bunch of patients come back for refills when we are really taking care of their pain ok and the answer that was we were taking care of the pain because less than one percent of the patients ended up needing an opioid we felt some doctors question the use of opioids at all and feel they were more effective nonaddictive options even for acute pain when we think about treating patients in pain we should understand what the ability of the body is to respond to those things themselves. We have endorphins and we stimulate those with activity and exercise. Oftentimes when somebody is in pain we tell them not to move thats the bad it thats bad it was. As we exercise use our systems normally we can create our own and orphans and pain control thats number one and. Number 2 is to go to over the counter medications for example there are lots of good studies that show that the combination of taking acetaminophen which is tylenol. Ibuprofen which comes in multiple forms like advil. And aleve but the combination of those medications together actually is much more effective than opioids for taking care of acute pain we can use. Activity we can talk about comedy reading theres things to divert people from pain if we sit home all day in pain we will guarantee you you will have pain if you try to be active you wont necessary get rid of it but youll learn to deal with it better on the other hand there are those patient there is no alternative but to use narcotics i can count those on one hand in any one. Its very rare. This is a story about what happens auster a stray bullet kills a young girl in the streets. What happens to her family and daughters in florida another mother daughter is buried in a cemetery in healing messes with your head what happens to the community the public was screaming for a scapegoat the Police Needed a scapegoat so why not choose a 19 year old black kid with a criminal record who better to pin this on him and what happens in course the. Shock shock as far. As i feel. We dont know still just for the. End of this trial unfortunately due to the will still love no children. The world is driven by shaped by our own person. Who dares thinks. We dare to ask. Doctors are getting the message that certain uses of opioids are not appropriate for example long term chronic use there are lots of Educational Programs out there there are. D. N. A. Enforcement activities out there. In fact some doctors are now complaining that its so hard to write a narcotic prescription that they dont even bother to talk to people who are chronic pain patients and i get emails from people on phone calls who believe that their prescription is working for them. They are very scared of the discussions going on theyre scared that their doctors not be able to prescribe it the federal governments going to take away their pellets and that are allowing them to have a quality of life that they dont believe is possible about the drugs there are a lot of patients that are. Going to have pain acute pain and chronic pain that arent attics that need to be treated properly with pain medication that does work for some people so i dont think we should throw the baby with the bathwater for about 10 to 12000000 americans who have been put on long term opioids. Many of whom may never be able to come on and who many of whom are convinced that opioids are helping them theyre desperate to maintain their supply and the idea of folks out there telling other doctors that these arent safe and effective that they dont work well long term they rightly believe that it could make it harder for them to continue to access opioids and so. From some of these pain patients who are opioids. Threats and its its often a threat. Wanting to cause bodily harm so that. Maybe i have a different feeling about opioids and i was injured that type of threat i do worry in some ways that now perhaps the pendulum. Swinging so far the other way that were going to see a lot of people and so its cut off from their long term supplies of opiates which are not appropriate for them to be. But i imagine well be seeing those people coming to our Addiction Treatment programs as that begins to happen as states but more restrictions in place for physicians people want to blame big pharma and they would say theyre greedy theyre terrible now but the problem is that big pharma is the engine for medical innovation in this country they develop drugs they are willing to invest millions of invested 40000000 dollars in oxy hot before they made a dime from it. So if we if we say lets you know whats make all of our Drug Companies nonprofits like were not going to have a lot of innovative drugs that are going to a carrot cancer are things like that so its a problem and the rest of the world is counting on american Drug Companies to come up with cures chronic pain is truly a life altering problem for millions of people d. Search for safe nonaddictive solutions for pain really we can probably produce better drugs in terms of alleviating pain without the addictive component and some of the faculty here the symbolised if you were working very hard on the pain we need to treat pain is very important to treat ive been studying the. Courage of studies in england we close up that we found the gene which we call code that. We can block the information in the brain and we dont quite know what that will do i think whats needed is a drugs which dont. Necessarily all d drugs which work at over substance but dont reach the reward system there is some process in the Playing Field in developing new drugs the focus of our study is really to investigate the role that the immune system actually plays and so thats. A new. Research in regard to the. Cells to actually valid. Response is worth on animals so we decided to shoot from animals as well as. An expression and produce an expression and i think the really promising aspect of our study then is that these. Are a target for treating pain better so we could inhibit the activity. And actually improve the clinical. Get rid of some of these problematic effects like tolerance addiction exaggerated and i came to stanford to understand how proteins these very fascinating molecules work at the most basic level im an instructor in the department of molecular and cellular physiology where we study very basic aspects of biology and the work that weve been doing lately is to understand how. They bind to their receptors and function these models provide is really remarkable ways of developing new drugs because what ill do next is put up a. Drug like morphine here in orange and inside its receptor you can see if its really nicely and i was told into that. I can i can kind of cut away and you can see how well those little balls are fitting inside that receptor because what we can do now is to say well this is the receptor binding poket what other drugs in this bind pocket and then can we use this kind of knowledge to develop better drugs that these receptors are not addictive opioid would be a medication that targets the new opioid perceptor. Turns it on provides pain relief but doesnt trigger the rewarding pathways in the brain that cause tolerance for cause addiction you know with these other drugs that target different systems likely also are coming down the pike actually see either a complete turn over the drugs that are actually used to treat pain or we can actually apply these drugs to improve the clinical profile of our people its. True it could still be administered but if we shut down the signaling that occurs at the same. Time and then we can eliminate these problems of tolerance addiction as i said earlier the system better because as well despite all the attention focused on the opioids to make the crisis continues to grow. According to the c. D. C. 2016 there were over 62000 deaths due to overdue this is the worst manmade epidemic in modern medical history. We still havent reversed it and weve known about it for more than 10 years show where are where are these teachers that taught us to do these things why are they all fair helping to reverse this during the making of this documentary we saw to interview representatives from purdue in the form of suitable industry and those doctors who advocated for the sure hope your knowing would appear on. This is a common problem experienced by most journalists covering people preorder. I would love to talk to anyone from the Sackler Family of say you know theyre smart people this is a complicated problem and i want to hear what they say about it its a Family Company and there is a sense that i get from talking to people that are associated with it that they feel that theyve been mistreated by the media by the government by politicians. And that they feel attacked you know i was interviewing someone who has a very high opinion of the company and very high opinion of the family i mean he didnt want his name used because hes like if look i stand by them 100 percent but if i give you my name then like ill be just pillory you know people look askance at me all the internet people trolling me. And so i feel like they have this you know they would say its a well grounded cynicism about the media and about just you know coverage of their drug i believe that. In terms of the blame for what addiction epidemic produce. Karmas purse shoot financial profit and the fact that they didnt care about an epidemic of addiction and Overdose Deaths that they were fuelling. The fact that the food and Drug Administration failed to properly regulate the claims that produce was making the failure of the medical establishment. And the fact that it took money from purdue and other opioid makers and promoted aggressive in this state medical boards that failed to regulate the way in which doctors prescribing and even encouraged aggressive prescribing theres a lot of blame to go around the question is is who is guilty or who should feel guilty i dont know that anybody feels too guilty i kind of wish a few more people did feel a little more guilty despite public outcry pharmaceutical Companies Find new and creative ways to market their heroin builds. Whats in the parts lauren and we do have pounder with employers. And it looks to be very opioids centric including painkillers marketed to children the food and Drug Administration announced about a month ago that they were determining that oxycontin is safe and effective for children 11 and up which is very disturbing most of the companies that now operate in these bases in this space have gone dark. Its not the big names that you and i would recognize like pfizer or johnson and johnson pfizer does have a little bit but not a lot. Is actually these small very focused companies the focus on pain and then not names and the household names they dont have to worry as much about the sort of reputational damage as forces in our nation strengthen against the over prescribing of opioids from a Suitable Company see their us market of ventura narrowing. As one door closes another opens produce private Company Owners international from munda pharma has already begun the same kind of Marketing Campaign in latin american asia the middle east and africa. Nations where chronic pain is high and people havent the money or access to medical treatment communities ill equipped to handle an Opioid Epidemic Los Angeles Times reporter harriet ryan was the 1st to break the story interviewed someone who is going around the world training physicians in Foreign Countries for purdue for teaching them how to use oxycontin he admitted he doesnt use it as a practice citizen think its a. As big pharma broadens its horizons our nation continues to struggle in the aftermath of their deceit. And it wasnt until february of 2017 after much had been exposed about the overprescribing of opioids that a new doctor at the clinic noticed 70 year old linda g. N. R. He had a serious opioid addiction he discontinued her high dose prescriptions causing linda to experience a painful withdrawal process get nauseous you might throw up if diarrhea theres a whole array of stuff you feel pretty miserable for people like myself need some relief or look on it pain. And it doesnt take 150 milligrams of the whole to do that today life is better but that doesnt make up for the decades of endangerment and loss of quality of life linda innocently experienced by trusting her doctors would do her no harm. I dont czerny when i dont like go through it again. Happy with how things are now. I think its fair to say that this epidemic of opioid addiction and Overdose Deaths was in many ways caused. I buy green oh i think inform public is critical to resolving this problem. People need to understand that these drugs are very potent very dangerous and very addictive the Opioid Epidemic can only be contained if it is attacked from multiple fronts start with an information regulatory agencies that placed Public Welfare above special interests health care and pharmaceutical industries governed by providing each an oath to help the sick and to do no harm. The battle continues. Pleasure to have this opportunity to speak with you all about the opioid addiction epidemic im going to just jump right in ill start off by saying i have no financial relationship with pharmaceutical companies and i think youll understand if you hear my talk why no pharmaceutical companies that want to relationship with me. Im going to start off by saying something very obvious or something that should be obvious but unfortunately is not obvious when we talk about drugs like oxy code. Which isnt oxycontin or hydrocodone which is invited and were talking about drugs that come from opium to to make oxycodone and hydrocodone you start with opium and the effects that hydrocodone and oxy code dont produce in the brain are indistinguishable from the effects produced by heroin if you give an experienced heroin user oxy called on heroin to self administer. Like a blind taste test in fact they did a study like this at columbia. The heroin user cant tell which is which and if you ask them which they like a little bit better they actually rate the oxycodone higher than the heroin so when we talk about opioid painkillers we are essentially talking about heroin pills. Is your media a reflection of reality. In the world transformed. What will make you feel safe from. High salacious community. Are you going the right way or are you being led. By. What is truly lost his faith. In the world corrupted you need to descend. To join us in the depths. Maybe in the shallows. Style bananas planted on the. Spot that same day and. On that i desire to know. How much older the. Local just to. Show. You some will push it under. A new prince not just on thoughts the most unusual not among the full not so nice to stop it. This is our 2 u. K. Welcome to our viewers from around the world who are live from Central London we are currently waiting for the governments daily coronavirus a press briefing given today by the chancellor regimes soon act its on the day his own firdos scheme to help firms keep workers on the payroll by paying 80 percent of their wages opens online with tens of thousands already applying it was expected discuss a new scheme to help those Tech Startups hit by the outbreak lets hear what he has to say today. Good evening from downing street where im joined by professor Angela Mclean deputy chief scientific advisor and yvonne doyle medical director Public Health england before provide an update on the Economic Situation let me start by addressing the issue uppermost on peoples minds personal protective equipment or p. P. This is an International Challenge that many other countries are experiencing alongside the efforts of british businesses and our embassies around the world we are working hard to get the p. P. Our front line n. H. S. And social care staff need we have appointed Paul Deighton formally chief executive of the london 2012 olympics to lead on our domestic efforts to make and increase the supply of p. P. And we are receiving shipments of p. P. Regularly from suppliers in the u. K. And abroad. Were working to resolve the turkish shipment of p p as soon as possible following some unexpected delays at the weekend. Today we have unloaded a shipment of 140000 pounds from me and more and we are of course continuing to pursue every possible option for p. P. Procurement. Let me now turn to the Economic Situation exactly a month ago today i stood at this lectern and said we would step in and help to pay peoples wages. We promised the support would be available by the end of april today we deliver our promise him our c open the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme at 8 oclock this morning as of 4 oclock this afternoon over 140000 firms have applied and the grants theyll receive will help pay the wages of more than a 1000000 people. A 1000000 people who if they hadnt been furloughed would have been at risk of losing their job firms applying today should receive their cash in 6 working days h m r c will continue to provide updates on the number of people furloughed and let me put on record my thanks to the thousands of staff at h. Or massey and h. M. T. Who have made this happen people have come out of retirement put aside their normal duties and worked around the clock from their kitchen tables and spare rooms to get this new system up and running this remarkable story of Public Service reminds us how many different people are playing a role in this crisis and im very grateful to all of them for everything they have done. Its important to be clear why we have introduced the c j r s and the other schemes weve put in place to support the selfemployed and businesses weve never seen an economic crisis like this one. Times like this demand that we put aside ideology and orthodoxy times like this demand that the state turns to its most immediate purpose the protection and support of its people. The goal of the new schemes weve developed is to maintain as many people as possible in their existing jobs to support viable businesses to stay afloat and to protect the incomes of the self employed to allow them to trade again to maintain in other words our economys productive capacity so that we can bridge through this crisis. That is what we have done and the office of budget responsibility said last week that the situation would have been much worse if it hadnt been for our actions but in everything we have done even in our defense against the immediate crisis we have also been sowing the seeds of our ultimate recovery as we look ahead and start to plan for our recovery it is critical we dont just maintain companies in jobs that already exist but that we also encourage the businesses jobs and technologies of the future innovation and entrepreneurship have powered growth in our country for centuries and it is what will drive our growth as we recover from this crisis to that end today i launched 2 initiatives to support the most innovative in the country worth 1250000000 pounds 1st. We are launching a new future fund worth 500000000 pounds to make sure the High Growth Companies across the u. K. Well we just heard from the chancellor soon as theyre giving the governments daily Coronavirus Press briefing he said his firdos scheme to help firms keep workers on the payroll turn a crisis was already helping 1000000 people thats out Industry Leaders claim that any delays to payments would be catastrophic in the transfer also address those failings on protective equipment saying that the governor is doing everything it could to secure the stock for Health Service workers because hes and he joins me now and so. The photos came as finally live but that needs to commence business is that it will deliver in practice yeah absolutely so that the chancellor of course a month ago he announced that this furlough scheme was going to be launched and that employers could reach out to the government to support them in this time of the desperate economic downturn to pay wages for their workers and he announced that at 8 am this morning that jobs scheme got furlough scheme was launched and already around 140000 firms have applied for those wages or for that job detention scheme to apply to now and he says that that will help over a 1000000 peoples wages to be guaranteed now to go it really again this follows scheme would see 80 percent of peoples wages paid for by the government up to a limit of 2 and a half 1000 pounds a month and the chancellor has said that there will be support for companies in other ways and he took to twitter earlier to now its that this was coming into play today when he thanked the many what he said was a Civil Servants and other workers in the government who have been working day and night for the past. Months to try to put this system in place and its thought that thousands or up to half a 1000000 in fact applications can be processed each hour bus for only 140000. 00 perhaps those companies and those employees are really trying to a pace themselves so as not to crash the system a head of applying for those funds and he asked a major intervention by Health Service leaders. Yes as we get the death toll the daily death tolls coming in every day and todays death toll for england at least by 429. 00 thats the lowest increase in a month for england and it takes the u. K. Total thats around 16 and a half 1000 people who have sadly lost their lives after testing positive for coded 90 drug this process weve seen frontline and its just stuff criticizing the government for a lack of p. P. Hospital protective equipment this latest intervention comes from senior bosses at a number of and they just trust them is really quite unprecedented throughout this crisis anyway and according to one major newspaper over the weekend a senior at the street vice is drained this fadia on p. P. All the leadership of Boris Johnson directly saying that the Prime Minister failed to attend 5 meetings the government say however its normal for other ministers to share these meetings Boris Johnson also attended his 1st coded 19 cobra meeting on march the 2nd its a whole 5 weeks after the 1st reported case in the u. K. Again the government saying that the Prime Ministers been at the helm all the way throughout this crisis there have also been of course as you mentioned questions around p. P. And also the revelation that up to 280000 items were shipped to china and critics saying that those items could have been sent to frontline staff in this country but the government say that already to date the countrys received 12000000 items of p. P. And that theyre still working day and night to source them and also criticism for the speed with which the government brought in those locked down measures many critics saying the government should have done it is areas other European Countries when it became clear that the scale of the pandemic in those countries but the government say theyve been working day and night to try to fight this crisis no one voice one conservative voice has been critical all the way through this is the former Health Secretary jeremy hunt and hes taking to twitter to express and the importance of the government introducing Contact Tracing. Contact tracing needs to be our next national mission. The countries that have the biggest success in keeping coronavirus tesla are places like korea and germany that have just done a lot of testing but they use the data from testing to track down people who have the virus people theyve been in contact with to isolate and quarantine them as well and if we are going to use the extra capacity that we now have in testing which is so welcome this is the way to do it you know of course all the talk of Contact Tracing were tracking tracing by and as you lead just some serious concerns by Civil Liberties Civil Liberties and privacy campaigners who say that its intrusive and unnecessary for the government to be tracking peoples every step. It thank you very much indeed for all of that will lower to discuss the chances for those schema more data and im not joined by Business Expert erica wolfe mari erica thanks so much for joining us my pleasure soon i can tweet to his furloughs scheme to allow more workers in is it now fit for purpose doing. Well i think the interesting thing about the fellow scheme is its actually quite flexible in some ways and not in others you as an employer can choose to take on you can you choose to him follow your staff extremely expose likely longer the law you can follow some not others but it is an employer decision is hes not an employee decision now you as an employee can go to your employer and say id like the furloughed you know maybe your care or maybe youve got someone vulnerable at home but your employer does not have to agree to that and so yes there are flexibility flexibility is in it but it is not flexibility is that the employee gets so is there any is there a survey or degree perhaps of unfairness when you are actually leaving that decision to employers yes i mean you who there is meant to be a relationship of trust between employer and employee. Some in some companies you know that trust is stretched very thin. And you know we have to believe that the money that comes through the furlough money that hes paid back through the system to the employer is going to be paid to the employee course some will and will always miss out there who will admit no scheme can possibly cover everyone in circumstances like this i absolutely agree there are going to be lots of companies that miss out you know they have covered the selfemployed over you know through a different system but the selfemployed dont get that money until the end of june and you know thats a long period to wait but equally with the for. Scheme you know. Several people several companies have already made lots of individuals redundant you know the extreme was rigidly set up to prevent redundancies but you know companies are going to make people redundant anyway why would you keep a failing business open longer than new knees and its meant to be there for jobs to come for people to come back to you but it could be that the company had skinny that the company was failing anyway you know there wont be those jobs to come back or what what will happen is the furloughs in could just be extending you know the death of the company and talking of deaths of companies but principle is one thing how it works in practice is key there cant be any delays though can they because the business going is the same the outcome would be catastrophic so we are talking about the deaths of companies that if that money isnt forthcoming as its not promised yes we are talking about the deaths of companies but what youve got to understand is it is not just the co the virus that has made this happen you know weve had austerity where were really successful programs were have been slashed we then had uncertainty weve got cohesion on top of this and we still have to face you know us emerging from lee you at the end of the year so companies are going through it really really traumatic time you know the last days 5 years you know if youve managed to keep your business going in grow your business my goodness i have admiration because its tough sort of just briefly cant stop a future potential interesting that soon x. Announcement is there to help Tech Startups to. Yes i mean brilliant that that came out this morning but you know there are a lot of people that dont dont fit within that bracket and there is going to be a huge amount uncertainty in the marketplace and pain to come up and praise erica really good to hear from you today thank you for joining us erika thank you more Labor Councillor Morris Mcleod told me that the government delayed the lockdown to help the economy. Lets not underestimate how difficult a task bases but you know a National Level and local level good very are paying for governments to be managed in a box truck i did feel that the original d when when when this was warned it was coming around run columbia original d priority response i think the government was the economy and i think thats why we saw stepped in the way that we did and closed down a bit later than maybe we should have a lot to say so i didnt suck i feel i was still a bit out of place making these sorts of points now because right now just get on with get on which fixing things going to right i could get on with fixing things so what you want to see the government do right now then also as 1st off i mean 1st start make sure Everyone Needs a good p. P. Make sure everyone is protected make sure that people that are going out there risk in you know going out there to make us to keep us well are as safe as possible. The in our our ask about lets i mean not that as well as that we should be looking at the things that seem to be shown to be work in other countries less than and then all that sort of and weve seen weve seen miles behind on all this sort of thing where you know we do it daily death rate but its kind of guesswork at the moment in about you know can homes and people in their own homes take it to just briefly funny your Labor Council we got kissed on another new labor leader has brought even support of all the government has any do you think we should be seeing more criticism from the Opposition Leader its not bizarre its not like a saying now now isnt it not now is the time driscolls that be pulling together when there is when i think what hes right. To bring up you know times is using the government still out there is i think hes very right its all about about the very our rights talk about i dont really heard. Talking say much about what they did or didnt they. Thats taken across the u. K. For the latest figures. Well over 120000 people across the home nations have melted to positive with the virus 449 more people have lost their lives in the past 24 hours and thats bringing the death toll to just over 16 and a half 1000 as you can see there joined todays press briefing 1st minister nicholas sturgeon said social distancing restrictions are likely to remain in place for some time to come and a welsh counterpart mark drake food criticises countries failure to meet is testing targets branding them not good enough. And as for the figures for more over the world according to Johns Hopkins University Almost 2 and a half 1000000 have contracted the disease over 160000 have now passed away and more than 630000 have made a recovery. Still to come this hour. A 99 year old war veteran breaks fund raising records off the race of a 27000000 pounds the n. H. S. Will be hearing from caps and talk more himself. Oh the 19 pandemic not only sees much of the world in lockdown but it is also devastation economies the pandemic has been painful recovering from it maybe even more painful is it all a shes all. The world is driven by a dream shaped by one person with those great. Dares thinks. We dare to ask. Join me every day on the i like simon chill and ill be speaking to us of the world of politics or business im show business ill see of. 19 on your old war veteran has broken the record on the nation website just giving raising of a 27000000 pounds for n. H. S. Charities captain tom was due to turn 110 days time so they break his upcoming birthday by doing 100 laps around these got setting up a just giving page to handle donations he quickly broke through his 1000 pound target and hes also released a hit Charity Single but concerns have been raised over whether the donation site itself has profited from is exploits. Or just giving automatically add a one pound contribution fee to donations under 10. 00 pounds of a 10 pounds the fee is 10 percent the website because users to opt out of adding the contribution fee to their donation just giving also charges a processing fee that covers the cost of credit and debit Card Transactions and all this together there are claims that the site could have earned up to 2000000. 00 pounds from the captains campaign however its made a 100000 pounds mission itself and says 97 percent of all donations will go directly to n. H. S. Charities i spoke to captain tom himself and his daughter hannah about his fundraising exploits and started by asking if he expected to be so successful. No harm do you do anything. I think youre absolutely marvellous the public come forward. A little cause. Mark. And what do you put it down to why do you think you yourself have caused such a stir and achieve this incredible achievement so many other people would try to do the same but you captain have done it. How. We model who are bad judges mug lovers and treatment command national Health Service i heard a broken in. Karen and lisa gotta call the doctors and the nerve the nurses and all of you know pretty poor and our service men absolutely magnificent and there were certainly were reasons why its all a great show and then through all this money. And maybe actually just jump in there and say that i think that there are several reasons why this happened and what it and yes phenomena i think that any time when so many people up being isolated that there is no. Real sadness across not only our country but everywhere around the world dealing with this terrible pandemic i think that we are just a regular happy family and we create something that we thought would be small that we fail intended its a 1000 pounds if we need done really well to go to the n. H. S. And we share that story we knew we had like a magnificent person doing a magnificent thing coming up to 100 so we shared it and. Surely a lot of the credit you must take yourself because you had to handle this because obviously your dad captain thomas is in huge demand at the moment what about your role in all of this. Well i think that you know im a business person and i want them back to work for 2 weeks we knew that we were sharing we were not ignorant of the fact that we were sharing a lovely story and we did that deliberately because we thought we could make some people happy and raise a bit of money so were not naive we knew that we had something that people might like but we never ever thought in a 1000000 years it would go beyond some some great and traffic local press so we accept and take on our responsibility with Kravitz Hassen and with gravity we we know that we have. Tom has created a beacon of hope in a world that is sad and we know that this out pouring of public support is something that we feel a responsibility for that we owe the public back in service so we want to continue to try and give the nation a little bit of joy. And we wont stop until they want to stop are so totally not stopping tom are you carrying on working despite all the money youve raised so far. Years and you are who long of those people on contra moved in to those farm comes in to continue. Or markers in poor old want to sort of to on those who agree will have more novel or who are deciding not to be you know limb or monza those farms and you are a veteran of world war 2 do you think we need a bit of a blitz spirit to get through this dreadful crisis at the moment. Do you think we need a. Spirit that well what you suspect to get through this terrible crisis you need to get to do you think we need a bit of that spirit you know the world war 2 spirit i think so i think we all need to get together because were all the and were all in this together no one is a moon from list invisible. Army is. The moment. We were no need you brussel down the distillery have to do and really wartimes the nurses something we all need to do and do it cheerfully because the land and waiting room we all turned out alright im talking about bringing positive spirit during wartime do you feel about knocking Dame Vera Lynn off the top of the i tunes chart how do you feel about knocking jane perry or not the top of the charts well. Never ever thought i would do anything with this because of absolute high regard them dearly and because. Were in the war time when our zone in burma truck young lady came down bridges to luna were in the firing line and turned out to the real and so are although were not her off the top of soren but has happened and just finally what you make of calls for you to be knighted for your efforts. Think this is rather little a. Musician a group was dancing. A lot of things were a minute now it will. Be searched. To say thomas more but dont hold your breath before the mountains. Thats it for the reverend al be back with more news for in just over half an hour from now. Im. This is a story about what happens auster a stray bullet kills a young girl in the streets. What happens to her family and daughters in florida the mother daughter is buried in a cemetery it really messes with your head what happens to the community the public was screaming for a scapegoat the Police Needed a scapegoat so why not choose a 19 year old black kid with a criminal record who better to pin this on than him and what happens in court to be. Shocked shocked as far as society we feel. We dont know just from. The end of this trial unfortunately you too will still not know childress. Shows seem wrong why dont we all just dont call. Me. Yet to shape out just to become educated and gain from it equals betrayal. When so many find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. Im action returns in youre watching going underground the whole team here hope youre all safe were away until wednesday the 22nd of april but in the meantime were screening some of your favorite episodes of the sofa coming up in this show are you comfortably numb close to 10 years since collateral murder revealed nato nations indiscriminate targeting of journalists and civilians form of pink floyd front man was just slamming the British Government for persecuting wiki leaks founder Julian Assange plus greed in an industry exposed by wiki leaks as London Fashion week shuts down its glamorous facade we talked to steve coogan and Michael Winterbottom about their satire on capitalism featuring the last ever on screen performance of u. K. Celebrity Caroline Flack all this of all coming up in todays going underground but 1st ahead of next weeks hearings on the trial of Julian Assange weve still heard nothing from u. K. Labor leadership contenders in defense of the wiki leaks publisher but one candidate for Deputy Richard bergen has been speaking out going underground fine ahmed caught up with him. And its important that we speak out against the extradition of Julian Assange you could end up in prison in the United States america 375 years people have got to look to walks is given reason was given rise to this situation youve got to look at the. Crimes that we. Exposed the truth. Spoken for example look at the cultural murder