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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

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Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#71

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

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.

The Russian Gam-COVID-Vac/Sputnik V vaccine looks very good, but for the US or to much of the West, there's a price to be paid for being in an effective state of war with another country. Although Gamaleya is now working with AZ/Oxford to see if substituting one of their doses for one of Oxford's will produce much better results, which I never would have expected.

This is based on the theory that the immune system response to Oxford's virus vector is mostly negating the benefit of the second dose taken 21 days after the first. Gam-COVID-Vac gets around this by using different viruses for each dose, and has 90% efficacy results from their Phase III trial. Unfortunately, no one can yet manufacture it in anything like bulk quantities, but they have set up manufacturing partnerships with a whole bunch of countries from India to South Korea.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#72

Post by bluGill »

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…

The US bet on many different vaccines, most of which haven't arrived yet, but are still on track. On hindsight we can say we should have bet on Pfizer and Moderna, and screwed the rest - such a bet would have allowed them to increase their supply even faster. However that is hindsight, at the time we didn't have any reason to believe their vaccine would even work at all - while the ones we are waiting on we had good reason to believe would work. That some of the ones we are waiting on seem to be much worse is a shock to everyone. Even this much worse is a qualified - they are doing within the expected range, it is just that mRNA is doing so well that makes them bad.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#73

Post by esja »

marcinzm wrote: post #22
cdavid wrote: post #7

I wonder if this will become a watershed moment for the EU. I've always been an ardent believer in the European program, both for historical reasons (I have French and German grand parents), but also because for all its warts, I believed the EU had a competent bureaucracy, able to go above the pettyness of national politics. French politicians of all side love scapegoating EU for their own failures. To say that the c…

The US has twice the per capita covid deaths as Germany. Great success right there, hurrah!

Germany is not at all representative of the rest of Europe. Have a look at Belgium, Italy, etc.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#74

Post by mikem170 »

trianglem wrote: post #11
jacquesm wrote: post #5

It's not just a vaccine disaster, it is a COVID disaster. The response to COVID in most of the developed world was a completely fuck up. We are still learning lessons that should have been learned a year ago, and there are still people everywhere - here too - that believe the best way to tackle a crisis of this magnitude is to stick your head in the sand and to pretend it isn't happening. I've definitely lost the ill…

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.

Everybody thought it would fizzle out, like sars-cov1 years before. Nobody in North America or Europe wanted to shut down the economy on a possible threat they were not sure would happen.

The only countries that were ready for covid19 were the ones who got hit significantly by sars-cov1.

1 in 750 people have died, mostly elderly and./or with comorbidities. 0.13%. Hardly a social catastrophe. A lot of people think the world has grossly overreacted. These are in democracies so their opinions count, too.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#75

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

xiphias2 wrote: post #64
mrtksn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I still don't know whether my parents should get the Chinese / Russian vaccines or not. I'm more concerned about lack of efficiency than safety. The problem is that after they get one of the vaccines, they won't have any chance to get more from the Pfeizer vaccine when it arrives.

The Sinovac CoronaVac efficacy is not useless, but not very good from what I've read. Gam-COVID-Vac on the other hand is around 91% https://sputnikvaccine.com/newsroom/pressreleases/the-sputni..., which is quite good while not reaching Pfizer/BioNTech's 95% (the German firm BioNTech developed the vaccine, they partnered with Pfizer to test, manufacture, and distribute it).

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#76

Post by jokethrowaway »

MrRiddle wrote: post #12
jacquesm wrote: post #5

It's not just a vaccine disaster, it is a COVID disaster. The response to COVID in most of the developed world was a completely fuck up. We are still learning lessons that should have been learned a year ago, and there are still people everywhere - here too - that believe the best way to tackle a crisis of this magnitude is to stick your head in the sand and to pretend it isn't happening. I've definitely lost the ill…

Meh, I’m not convinced it’s such a disaster it’s being portayed. Serbia is/was heavily hit by Covid, yet only 12% more people died in 2020 than 5 year average before that. Again, meh.

The real disaster is yet to come, and it will be economical and caused by the prolonged lockdowns.

Not to mention the third world starving, but it's not like western countries ever cared about that.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#77

Post by esja »

trianglem wrote: post #14
cdavid wrote: post #7

I wonder if this will become a watershed moment for the EU. I've always been an ardent believer in the European program, both for historical reasons (I have French and German grand parents), but also because for all its warts, I believed the EU had a competent bureaucracy, able to go above the pettyness of national politics. French politicians of all side love scapegoating EU for their own failures. To say that the c…

The Trump administration spewed misinformation from day one that caused massive dissonance in dealing with the problem. Saying they did better when they had literally no plan and let 400,000 people die is incredible dissembling and most likely a political statement than a logical one. They literally dissuaded people from using masks.

“Literally no plan”? How did you arrive at that conclusion? Even the most cursory effort would tell you it’s not true.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#78

Post by bluGill »

roenxi wrote: post #35
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #13

> The EU negotiating team, according to people familiar with the talks, was intent on pushing down the price. In the middle of a pandemic that is literally costing trillions, this seems like the EU negotiators lost sight of the big picture.

I assume literally the entire job of the negotiating team is to negotiate the price down. If their job isn't to negotiate the price down, what are the negotiators hired for? If they are just going to take the market price, there doesn't need to be a negotiation team. Just let companies sell the vaccine to whoever at whatever price. They didn't lose sight of the big picture, they did what they were there to do.

The job of negotiation is to get a good deal for all. Price is only one part of that - if you only focus on price bad things happen. too low a price and the supplier goes out of business before you get all the product. Too low a price and your supplier doesn't have enough profit to remain in business for the next time you need something. Too low a price and the supplier won't negotiate with you at all next time you need something.

Of course too high a price has issues as well. It is important to pay attention to price. Sometimes you need to break away from a deal because it will never work out.

Long term the best deals are win-win.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#79

Post by maxerickson »

bluGill wrote: post #72
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…

The US bet on many different vaccines, most of which haven't arrived yet, but are still on track. On hindsight we can say we should have bet on Pfizer and Moderna, and screwed the rest - such a bet would have allowed them to increase their supply even faster. However that is hindsight, at the time we didn't have any reason to believe their vaccine would even work at all - while the ones we are waiting on we had good…

We could have bet 10 times the resources. Cheap compared to the pandemic!

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#80

Post by Gravityloss »

There's lots of medical companies in most countries of EU. Why didn't they just license some working vaccine and start cranking it out?

Why does the company X developed medicine only have to be made by company X? That's against the whole idea of patents, which is making information available and usable via licensing. Money shouldn't be the issue, the cost of the shots is negligible so there is not much profit to be made there. Instead licenses should be more profitable since time is worth a lot of money.

There are also a lot of vaccines under development. There should always be multiple well resourced efforts under way. Unfortunately it seems some promising alternatives for development, testing or mass production have been starved for funding.

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