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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

151–160 of 434 posts

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#151

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…

You completely rewrote your comment and inserted the "EDIT:" comment after I wrote my second reply (this is my third reply). Here's the text you inserted after reply 2: EDIT: removed a remark about Fauci and herd immunity, I thought I read this but couldn't find a reference. My apologies. It's fine to edit comments. It's ridiculous to substantially edit them in an attempt to rehabilitate them or re-contextualize repl…

Ok, then I'm ridiculous, I should have flagged that I removed that statement when I couldn't find a reference, didn't catch that there was followup already. Let's get past that and continue the discussion.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#152
post #43
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…

> if you plug in the equation a reduction of deaths due to other causes you figure out pretty quickly that things were pretty bad.

This is pure speculation.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#153
Only adjacent to this: am i wrong to think that in many places this lack of available vaccines in a predictable manner is leading to a staggered immunization and (unneeded?) delay of effective mass immunization?

I mean: if you waited to stockpile large enough quantities first, you'd then be able to apply the vaccines quicker (given right logistics and man power) speeding up heard imunity. Am I wrong?

Wouldn't this accumulation strategy make more sense even if it's harder to apply?

I ask because it's clear that vaccination has become so political everywhere that govs are rushing to "start immunization" while not being able to garantee a sustainable rate of vaccinations.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You completely rewrote your comment and inserted the "EDIT:" comment after I wrote my second reply (this is my third reply). Here's the text you inserted after reply 2: EDIT: removed a remark about Fauci and herd immunity, I thought I read this but couldn't find a reference. My apologies. It's fine to edit comments. It's ridiculous to substantially edit them in an attempt to rehabilitate them or re-contextualize repl…

Ok, then I'm ridiculous, I should have flagged that I removed that statement when I couldn't find a reference, didn't catch that there was followup already. Let's get past that and continue the discussion.

You edited your comment like 6 times there master blaster, I don't believe your characterization of that activity is in good faith and am checking out of this thread.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#155
post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

About a quarter of the long list of vaccines was developed by public universities. Almost all were developed with billions in public subsidies.

Public investment in the EU doesn't work like in the US. Expect to see a shit ton of money trickle down to Eurocrats and bureaucrats in their respective countries, before one ounce reach one country.

Another issue is the fragmentation of the EU. If there is a pool of funds for a particular research target, the EU has to divvy it between its major countries. So even if a university in country X doesn't have much of a history researching something, they still get funded from the EU pool, as long as their country raises a tantrum over it.

Meanwhile the US' (and most other countries') policy often looks at funding individual projects to one or a few unis at most. More targeted funding = better outputs.

Not that EU doesn't have its successes. Galileo could be called a success, but the road to it was very very bumpy.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#156
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only 12%? More than 1/10 of your population dies, literally more than a decimation by its old meaning, saying that this is not such a disaster is incredibly unempathetic. Or you have a very warped view of what consists a disaster...

No, In Sweden 1144 out of every million people have died [0], which equates to 1 out of every 874 people. Does 1 out of 874 people dead, mostly elderly and/or with comorbidities, sound bad? Picture a room with 874 people. That's a lot of people. Ask 1 person to leave. Is that a disaster for society? [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

And the person is already on the way out.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The US has been consistently providing 50% or more of the world's food aid for a century at this point. It has saved tens of millions of people from starvation over that time. No western countries eh.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, init…

> initially they planned to cut Canada's deliveries by ~50% for 4 weeks but EU's by a 8% for 2 weeks.

This is simply because of different contractual obligations to the different parties. If I owe you $100 by the end of year, but owe someone else $20 by end of month, I'm going to give full priority to repaying the other person.

> I am deeply concerned that EU would simply block exports to Canada to make up for the shortfalls in its share of the vaccines.

Unwarranted: they've explicitly said they won't. Lots of articles on your news source of choice. one random example: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/01/28/news/eu-health-o...

As a fellow Canadian, it simply doesn't seem to be a big deal yet. May become one, but whatever.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, In Sweden 1144 out of every million people have died [0], which equates to 1 out of every 874 people. Does 1 out of 874 people dead, mostly elderly and/or with comorbidities, sound bad? Picture a room with 874 people. That's a lot of people. Ask 1 person to leave. Is that a disaster for society? [0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

I think the answer to that is: “Are you the one person?”

That's a personal disaster, but not a disaster for society.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada has no large scale vaccine production capacity so even if they could license the production they couldn't produce any decent amount any time soon.

I hope this is something that changes post pandemic.

I just hope there is a post-pandemic era. Too many unknowns still about the mutations and whether they’ll out-maneuver the vaccines.
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