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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

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Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#121

Post by neximo64 »

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.

The teams in the UK and EU were led by two seasoned professionals, an EU trade negotiator, & in the UK a VC (as controversial as that is). The outcomes summarise the personalities of the two involved.

Success for a negotiator is the cheapest cost. Success for a VC is return on investment. Both won spectacularly on their own fronts.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#122

Post by maxerickson »

mikem170 wrote: post #119
maxerickson wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people die the less you control the spread of the virus, the overall death rate at this point in time is not a good gauge of the potential impact of the pandemic.

But we live in democracies, and there are a lot of people who feel differently than you might. Not just Trump. They look at the same numbers and dangers and don't agree. Besides, the authority and responsibility to respond to a pandemic (issue health orders, closings, quarantines, and lock downs) rests with the states and not the president or congress. EDIT: removed a remark about Fauci and herd immunity, I thought I…

He didn't say that.

He has made comments that we can likely get there sometime this year if we have widespread administration of vaccines.

Which widespread vaccination is a lot cheaper than other measures, but it's not doing nothing either.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#123

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

outside1234 wrote: post #109
maxerickson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The EU did not pay as much as the US — and signed the contracts much later. Pfizer is doing the rational actor thing and, given a shortage, prioritizing their highest paying clients. There might also be verbiage in the US contract to this effect. Also, Pfizer is an American company.

There might also be verbiage in the US contract to this effect. Also, Pfizer is an American company.

But also a multinational, manufacturing their vaccine in the US and Belgium. Initially without any help from Operation Warp Speed, which appears to be a mistake if their December claims about supply chain problems was true, along with eventually signing up to the program and moving up their promise for our second 100 million doses from the 3rd to 2nd quarter.

But that Belgium plant? Something is so wrong with it they're shutting it down for a while to improve capacity ir so they claim. My only good guess is that they have a sterility problem and are finding they have to dump way too many lots they produce after testing for that.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#124

Post by emteycz »

tehjoker wrote: post #112
outside1234 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There were multiple efforts - but no reason to collaborate. And the French effort utterly failed to the point that they gave up. And Germany’s BioNTech signed an exclusive deal with Pfizer.

If the vaccines were developed publicly, there would be no reason not to collaborate.

If the vaccines were developed publicly there might not be any vaccines. This is not your ordinary flu shot.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#125

Post by oska »

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.

> Non-EU countries in Europe are getting them.

At least one EU country will soon be getting them. Hungary has approved [1] and also ordered [2] the Russian vaccine. Hungary has also approved [3] but not yet ordered the Chinese vaccine.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/covid-hungary-fast-tracks-russian-vacc...

[2] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/22/hungary-buys-russia...

[3] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccin...

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#126

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

neximo64 wrote: post #120
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…

You're saying this despite the weekly pcr and different efficacy testing methods?

Can you be more specific? I'm happy to drill down to the individual Phase III trial protocols, but want to know which ones you're referring to. Plus I'm pretty sure I left myself a lot of wiggle room with efficacy claims like "very good" and "OK."

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#127

Post by wbillingsley »

jackTheMan wrote: post #92
peteretep wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the UK was somehow being duplicitous here, and had somehow undermined the EU vaccine program But let us be clear that it isn’t, and they are not.

Do you know how many doses UK is getting over the same period? Does UK also missing 60% of their contract or they are prioritized?

AZ set up a separate supply chain in each major jurisdiction. As I understand it, the EU interfered in its member countries' contracts, delayed them 3 months, delaying the EU supply chain from starting.

Ridiculously, from what I can see, in the contract the EU specifically stated they could only supply a few early doses from the UK in 2020 (because after Jan 1 the UK is outside the EU and they are not permitted to use non-EU production) and have then been trying to make spurious claims they're supposed to divert UK doses nearly a month afterwards.

Sorry to say it looks like EU Commission incompetence layered on some more EU Commission incompetence.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#128

Post by neximo64 »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #126
neximo64 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're saying this despite the weekly pcr and different efficacy testing methods?

Can you be more specific? I'm happy to drill down to the individual Phase III trial protocols, but want to know which ones you're referring to. Plus I'm pretty sure I left myself a lot of wiggle room with efficacy claims like "very good" and "OK."

Some of the efficacy methods involved you saying you're sick and then getting tested (Pf/Mod). Others were you were swabbed weekly (thereby catching asymptomatic infections (AZ)). So the efficacy rates between the bunch aren't apples to apples comparisons. AZ has an understated efficacy rate, so it's better than 'OK'.

It explains Jansens efficacy being broken down up to the number of hospitalisations (where it reduces nearly all of them)

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#129

Post by Throwawayaerlei »

maxerickson wrote: post #122
mikem170 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we live in democracies, and there are a lot of people who feel differently than you might. Not just Trump. They look at the same numbers and dangers and don't agree. Besides, the authority and responsibility to respond to a pandemic (issue health orders, closings, quarantines, and lock downs) rests with the states and not the president or congress. EDIT: removed a remark about Fauci and herd immunity, I thought I…

He didn't say that. He has made comments that we can likely get there sometime this year if we have widespread administration of vaccines. Which widespread vaccination is a lot cheaper than other measures, but it's not doing nothing either.

Fauci said we were getting close to herd immunity.

He didn't say that.

Not sure it matters when he recently admitted he was lying in stages about the percentages to encourage people to get vaccinated.

After that and his self-admitted lying in the masking debacle, I'm not sure why anyone still listens to him. Credibility is one of the most precious resources in public health, and our public health authorities including him have burned through a great deal of it.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#130

Post by smnrchrds »

volkl48 wrote: post #113
smnrchrds wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

Uh, why do you think that? You don't appear to be behind the EU in any substantial way. (2.61 doses/100 administered for EU, 2.49/100 for Canada) https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... ---- You've purchased more vaccine relative to population than basically anyone else in the world and you appear to be higher than the EU in terms of the line for deliveries. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/…

> Uh, why do you think that?

It has been an unfolding story for the past couple of weeks. I wish I know of an article which summarized everything with a timeline, but I do not. The gist of it is that, Canada has purchased many vaccines, but they will not be coming soon enough. It also lacks the leverage that US, UK, and EU have in terms of the production being domestic. So when Pfizer ran into production issues, initially they planned to cut Canada's deliveries by ~50% for 4 weeks but EU's by a 8% for 2 weeks. Of course the issue has developed since then, but the central issue remains the same: Canada is not a priority for getting vaccines, and does not have the leverage to make itself the priority. I am deeply concerned that EU would simply block exports to Canada to make up for the shortfalls in its share of the vaccines. Even before the new laws, that was close to what was happening in practice, with deliveries to Canada being affected most and to EU the least.

Also, Canada's not being far behind is because we started earlier. We have seen our vaccine doses administered per capita ranking go from 6th to 21st. Most of the countries that got ahead of us are the EU countries. And every day, we fall behind more and more EU countries, as our deliveries have been deprioritized compared to EU's. Or at least so it seems. We won't know the full truth until the dust settles. Probably a year from now.

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