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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

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Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#51

Post by maxerickson »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #50

Some had faith in the new mRNA technology, while others preferred to rely on more time-tested methods. Sometimes articles hide a great deal in one seemingly innocuous sentence. From what I've learned from Europeans, there's only one vaccine candidate of that nature the EU considered, a Sanofi Pasteur/GlaxoSmithKline combo, the former providing the infamous spike protein, the latter an adjuvant. Everyone expected this…

EU pre-ordered more Pfizer than the US.

Enough for 150 million people in EU, vs enough for 50 million in the US. The US has ordered more after it was approved.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#52

Post by mrtksn »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #50

Some had faith in the new mRNA technology, while others preferred to rely on more time-tested methods. Sometimes articles hide a great deal in one seemingly innocuous sentence. From what I've learned from Europeans, there's only one vaccine candidate of that nature the EU considered, a Sanofi Pasteur/GlaxoSmithKline combo, the former providing the infamous spike protein, the latter an adjuvant. Everyone expected this…

Chinese and the Russian vaccines were not even considered. Now those are used in mass vaccinations, soon EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all.

People don't even want to talk about that, as if those alternatives don't exists. Non-EU countries in Europe are getting them. Serbia(6.1) and Turkey(2.3) are already close to EU average(2.6) or better on the vaccination process.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#53

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

maxerickson wrote: post #45
dogma1138 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly for a vaccine that is sold at cost, the regional price that the IA got was $3 per dose, the commission stepped in trying to get it down to $2. Israel is paying $30 for its doses of the Pfizer vaccine and likely a similar amount for Moderna. If the EU would’ve paid as much as Israel is for 500M doses it would only cost them 15 billion $. That is peanuts in the grand scheme of things, the UK spent 16 b…

The US spent quite a lot, but still came in very conservative. The initial orders (combined) of Pfizer/Moderna were enough for 75 million people. Vs likely demand of at least 200 million. For $40 billion (which we are estimated to lose every 4 or 5 days), we could have ordered 300 million of each of them. There's likely some materials that are scarce enough not to waste (we need billions of vaccines globally), but pr…

Sources? Because everything I've read is that each got a 100 million dose initial order, so that's 100 million people total to begin with. Moderna was already part of Operation Warp Speed, the contract signed 11 August 2020 according to Wikipedia. Pfizer refused to be a part of it, but in July 2020 signed a 100 million dose order contingent on getting regulatory approval. Both have since signed additional 100 million dose contracts, and Moderna an option for an additional 150 million.

Operation Warp Speed worked with Moderna, spent a lot of money on both them and various parts of the supply chain to do the best to manufacture this new type vaccine as fast as possible, and I've not heard anything about their failing in their promises. Whereas Pfizer initially went it alone, and starting in December has been failing to keep their promises everywhere, now even shutting down their plant in Belgium to increase capacity.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#54

Post by maxerickson »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #53
maxerickson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US spent quite a lot, but still came in very conservative. The initial orders (combined) of Pfizer/Moderna were enough for 75 million people. Vs likely demand of at least 200 million. For $40 billion (which we are estimated to lose every 4 or 5 days), we could have ordered 300 million of each of them. There's likely some materials that are scarce enough not to waste (we need billions of vaccines globally), but pr…

Sources? Because everything I've read is that each got a 100 million dose initial order, so that's 100 million people total to begin with. Moderna was already part of Operation Warp Speed, the contract signed 11 August 2020 according to Wikipedia. Pfizer refused to be a part of it, but in July 2020 signed a 100 million dose order contingent on getting regulatory approval. Both have since signed additional 100 million…

Yeah, I appear to have misunderstood or misremembered something, the Moderna order was 100 million doses.

It's very hard to evaluate whether they have proceeded on the fastest possible timeline scaling up the production. Which whether their goals were ambitious enough is just as important as whether they are hitting them.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#55

Post by mikem170 »

fabbari wrote: post #43
jeofken wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Sweden the death rate during 2020 was equal to the average for the last 10 years. We had zero restrictions until a couple of months ago.

No - it wasn't, head over to EuroMomo and you'll find out that it was over[0]. Not only that, compare the excess mortality with your neighbors and the "Sweden did fine without lockdowns" sounds hollow. That would explain the restrictions. Consider that the excess mortality is just a small indicator that things didn't go well - if you plug in the equation a reduction of deaths due to other causes you figure out pretty…

The grandparent's original point still stands, this is not the disaster that the headlines portray. The U.S stands at 1 in 750 people dead from covid, mostly elderly with comorbidities, a rate similar to many other countries.

That is 0.13% of the population. That's not 1 in 10, or even 1 in 100. It's not the young and healthy, either. A pretty small number. And if you are old and frail something is going to get you soon, anyways.

Per-capita just as many, perhaps several times more, people died of the 1968 Hong Kong flu.

New viruses happen, part of nature, people die, that's how it goes, This isn't nearly as bad as a lot of similar situations in the past.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#56

Post by trianglem »

sn41 wrote: post #16
trianglem wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all intrinsically knew what to expect from and how to react to a pandemic. I honestly believe intentional misinformation from the Trump administration caused the massive bifurcation in dealing with this problem with a united front. Asian countries did not have this problem, and look at how much better they are faring.

That was due to the lessons from SARS-Cov1 in 2003. Asian countries that did not suffer from SARS-Cov1 did very badly with covid-19. e.g. India. In India the misinformation was uniquely Indian - first they said that vegetarians will not get Covid, it came from bushmeat (ignoring the fact that human-to-human transmission was through cough droplets), then they said that Yoga fights Covid, then they blamed it on a minor…

India did badly for the same reason the US and Brazil did so badly. Authoritarian, right wing, populist governments that relied on misinformation and half truths, had no plan and basically shifted blame and tried to save face. India actually probably did the best out of all three considering Modi at least isn’t a science denialist.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#57

Post by Clewza313 »

cosmodisk wrote: post #38
mrtksn wrote: post #32

I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines. Very populous countries are getting them and any distrust towards the reporting of these vaccines could have been scrutinized(Turkey run its own "stage 3" on the Chinese one, got its own numbers and is inspecting the deliveries for 2 weeks before vaccinating the population). Now we have this situation where EU is lagging behind very se…

This is a political suicide in many countries+ the likelihood of people wanting to take it may be on the lower side.

This. Singapore, an ethnically Chinese country, has announced they're buying Moderna, BioNTech and (Chinese) Sinovac, and approximately nobody trusts or wants to take the Chinese one.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#58

Post by peteretep »

Hunisgung wrote: post #36
dogma1138 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly for a vaccine that is sold at cost, the regional price that the IA got was $3 per dose, the commission stepped in trying to get it down to $2. Israel is paying $30 for its doses of the Pfizer vaccine and likely a similar amount for Moderna. If the EU would’ve paid as much as Israel is for 500M doses it would only cost them 15 billion $. That is peanuts in the grand scheme of things, the UK spent 16 b…

> the regional price that the IA got was $3 per dose, the commission stepped in trying to get it down to $2. Meanwhile in France, I can do a RT-PCR test paid by the state (around 50$ AFAIK) every other day with no question asked.

My understanding is that the rich countries like France were willing to do a deal on day 1, but the commission stepped in to negotiate for everyone

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#59

Post by smnrchrds »

mrtksn wrote: post #52
Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #50

Some had faith in the new mRNA technology, while others preferred to rely on more time-tested methods. Sometimes articles hide a great deal in one seemingly innocuous sentence. From what I've learned from Europeans, there's only one vaccine candidate of that nature the EU considered, a Sanofi Pasteur/GlaxoSmithKline combo, the former providing the infamous spike protein, the latter an adjuvant. Everyone expected this…

Chinese and the Russian vaccines were not even considered. Now those are used in mass vaccinations, soon EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all. People don't even want to talk about that, as if those alternatives don't exists. Non-EU countries in Europe are getting them. Serbia(6.1) and Turkey(2.3) are already close to EU average(2.6) or better on the vaccination process.

> EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all.

Ouch. Reading this from Canada hurts.

(We are way behind EU and I would be very surprised if we get ahead of them at any point).

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#60

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

maxerickson wrote: post #49
plandis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Countries (notably the US) didn't work through the past year to build out socialized manufacturing capacity for additional dose production I was under the assumption that Project Warp Speed explicitly directed funding from the US government to help ramp up production while vaccines were still being tested. Did that not happen?

It did, it just wasn't ambitious enough. There were separate grants, but the preorders were only enough to cover the entire population if multiple vaccines were approved. I guess it is possible that production was scaled up as fast as possible, but it seems that there was a lack of imagination in the planning process (setting low goals, not anticipating far enough ahead, etc).

From the now taken down Operation Warp Speed page, see here https://web.archive.org/web/20210119000857/https://www.hhs.g... 300 million doses from AZ, 100 million from Novavax, as mentioned in my other comment 100 million from Pfizer, 100 million from Sanofi/GSK which as mentioned failed, and a 100 million from Johnson and Johnson.

Also mentions we signed the second 100 million dose contract with Moderna December 11th, that would be based their results which led to their submitting their application for an FDA Emergency Use Authorization on November 30th. See also lots of details on supply chain spending, well over a billion dollars.

So while you're technically correct, with how much effort it takes to ramp up production, see how Johnson and Johnson isn't going to meet their early 12 million dose promise, I don't see our general approach as being wrong. Signing multiple 700 million dose contracts would not in any way speed production, that only happens when you get an initial contract and start making it. Which is exactly what Moderna and Pfizer did, quite some time before getting EUAs, lots of doses were shipped within days. Where I live, for Pfizer the Monday after the FDA's Friday issuance of an EUA. To a hospital which had rented an ultra-cold freezer to store it, a lot of work and money has gone into this hole process.

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