Europe's Vaccine Disaster • Hacker News Board

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#81

Post by InTheArena » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

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!

More than anything else that appears to be lack of timing. European and USA rates have generally evened out.

The virus don’t care what country you’re in.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#82

Post by FartyMcFarter » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:03 AM UTC

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…

China literally runs concentration camps for some of their citizens. If that's how they treat citizens, why should foreigners expect good treatment?

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#83

Post by InTheArena » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:06 AM UTC

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).

I know this is the party line right now but it’s nothing more then Joe Biden is doing his best to set low expectations and to revamp history.

I’m a committed never Trumper. But there’s no question that warp speed has been a insane success. Biden set at the bar as low as warp speed was already achieving.

There are 1 million valid reasons to hate Trump. This might be the only reason to think his government did a reasonable job at one task.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#84

Post by jackTheMan » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:06 AM UTC

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.

I wonder if the Chinese vaccine with 50% efficiency could be used for herd immunity at all. Im not a virologyst, but the false safety of most people vaccinated with it in a country might could trigger even more death? The Chinese vaccine is not even tested above 59 years old. If the young is vaccinated and start to party etc the new more infectious variants could still spread and can reach even more elderly.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#85

Post by bluGill » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:09 AM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #67

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 11t…

Yeah, like $12 billion dollars. We are spending trillions on relief, so it's worth asking if more money spent on production could have accelerated things. A few tens of billions more would have been cheap! The vaccine shipments here (Michigan) have accelerated considerably since December, implying a pretty small head start on manufacturing. The distribution trends tab on https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-…

A large part of the head start wasn't manufacturing the vaccine, it was setting up the factories to manufacture the vaccine.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#86

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

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…

One other issue with the mRNA vaccines is that they're brand new technology, never before produced in bulk, so except for the vials, most everything is new and we're still climbing the learning curve. The production of DNA using E. Coli isn't new, but everything else is, including how physically fragile the end result is. If you shake a thawed out vial of Pfizer/BioNTech's, you're directed to throw it out, of Moderna's, call them.

And I'd say with the exception of Sanofi/GSK's complete failure with the elderly, and AZ/Oxford's mess, we're getting about the results we should have expected. J&J's ambitious only one dose is not super good, but not bad, on the other hand it's also relatively new technology, which I'm not sure they've ever made in bulk in a hurry. Novavax's 89% is quite fine from a protein plus adjuvant vaccine (Sanofi/GSK's was the same), and uses old technology like Protein Sciences', they should be able to make it quickly, and only requires refrigeration. J&J should be about ready to make a FDA Emergency Use Authorization application, the Phase III US trials for Novavax and J&J's two dose 8 weeks apart are still in progress.

But, yes, in speed to market mRNA is new technology that's very very fast. Moderna literally developed their vaccine candidate over a weekend, although that was based on a lot of their prior work, and others in SARS like coronavirus vaccines. Whereas they had their first batch made in weeks, then had to wait a couple of weeks for the results of sterility tests.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#87

Post by maxerickson » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

InTheArena wrote: post #83

maxerickson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I know this is the party line right now but it’s nothing more then Joe Biden is doing his best to set low expectations and to revamp history. I’m a committed never Trumper. But there’s no question that warp speed has been a insane success. Biden set at the bar as low as warp speed was already achieving. There are 1 million valid reasons to hate Trump. This might be the only reason to think his government did a reason…

They knew they had clinical vaccine candidates in February! The whole development timeline starts with one of the good vaccines already existing.

We honestly don't have the information to evaluate whether they set reasonable targets or not.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#88

Post by Gravityloss » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:10 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #65

Exmoor wrote: post #46

I've been wondering when these chickens would come home to roost. There are a few countries who have heavily touted how many vaccines they've agreed to buy, but aren't being nearly as vocal about when they're going to actually have them in hand. Having contracts to vaccinate everyone in your country 4 times over doesn't do much good if you don't get those people any dose for another 9 months. It now seems plausible t…

Only a few governments can be smug about how they handled Covid, and they are all in Asia (counting New Zealand and Australia as Asia, which is hand wavy). Even those who can make such a claim are still only one mistake from it all crashing down. Europe likes to think they are doing better than the US, but the truth is they are not very different.

There are very different countries within Europe.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#89

Post by marcinzm » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:11 AM UTC

InTheArena wrote: post #81

marcinzm wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

More than anything else that appears to be lack of timing. European and USA rates have generally evened out. The virus don’t care what country you’re in.

>The virus don’t care what country you’re in.

Except New Zealand. Virus really hates that place.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#90

Post by Throwawayaerlei » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

maxerickson wrote: post #79

bluGill wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

You keep saying this, but you haven't demonstrated any way in which pouring more money into the process would have significantly speeded up production. Do Intel's massive financial resources allow them to profitably manufacture chips on their 10 nm and 7 nm nodes?