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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

311–320 of 434 posts

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A significant part of the vaccines the UK has administered were produced in EU factories Yes, and those vaccines are, or were, only approved for use in the UK, the EU, only yesterday finally approved the AZ vaccine, 3 months after the UK. So who else are the pharma companies going to ship those vaccines to, when the shelf life is weeks or months? There is a global supply chain at work here, from the substances for…

Approval doesn't matter when AZ has to build stock to meet deadlines. Basically they weren't building stock to fulfill UK orders, from EU based production. It takes months to build stock, but they were flushing that stock to UK.

> Approval doesn't matter when AZ has to build stock to meet deadlines. Basically they weren't building stock to fulfill UK orders, from EU based production.

Vaccine delivery, like pretty much everything else, is just-in-time delivery. They haven't been building stocks. They've been manufacturing vaccines and shipping them straight out as they have signed contracts with many other countries other than the UK. Demand is outstripping supply.

The EU's argument, which is well documented in the press, is that they've promised about 300 million Euros to AZ to build up capacity, only a small amount of which they've paid AZ. It is also well documented that it takes time to get a vaccine manufacturing plant working at close to 100% yield, something even the UK plant hasn't achieved. It's simply the case that the EU should have agreed and paid sooner so that AZ could have invested that money in the EU plants sooner. All of this is covered in the 'best reasonable efforts' parts of the contract.

> It takes months to build stock, but they were flushing that stock to UK.

Evidence? As far as I can see in the press, the AZ doses in the UK are coming from the AZ manufacturing plants in the UK, and it is vdL / the EU that is demanding that AZ doses in the UK are diverted to the EU to make up the current shortfall in EU manufacturing.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah yes the good old covid story - sovereign states order some medicine/medical equipment from the companies, and on the airport upon sending it to the country comes US government officials with few extra (freshly printed) suitcases of money to change delivery of that order. Remember quite a few articles from spring about that. 3rd world countries having no chance of receiving what was agreed upon. I mean I understand…

Covid is not nearly as high on the priority list for many third world countries as it is for the US. Here covid shuts down everything. In many African countries it is an order of magnitude less impactful than malaria.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please stop spreading lies. The paper is only about "The effectiveness of the first dose of BNT162 ..." 50% efficacy after the first dose is exactly the number that BioNTech reported in its Phase3 trial. So nothing unusual here. That is why the 2nd booster shot is needed to get to 95%.

No it is not. Have you actually read either Pfizer’s report or this paper? Looked at their data? The graphs, both in Pfizer’s original report and in this paper, show that past about two weeks, there is almost no change. Please look at the Pfizer graphs and tell me where the great advance is from 50% to 90% Also, if yo actually read the Pfizer report, you’ll notice the 95% is for mild disease - a totally uninteresting…

Well, the solution to this dispute is easy => We just wait another 8 weeks:

(1) If am right, then Covid is gone in Israel by end of March.

(2) If you are right, Covid will be still a huge problem in in Israel.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#314
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The US does currently not allow COVID-19 vaccine exports. Pfizer's plants are only manufacturing for the US while the EU plants are producing for the EU, Isreal, Canada, UK, etc.

coul EU ban vaccine export?

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#315
post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up two different datasets. The former deals with first dose effectiveness (which we've always known to be lower - that's why the regiment is two doses), the latter with the full two dose regiment. Ynet is Yediot, which is either the biggest daily newspaper or the second-biggest depending on how you count, either way it has more influence than Yisrael-Hayom. They do neglect their English site, but this p…

Please look at the graphs and data, not the headlines. Nothing magical happens past day 12 from the first vaccine in the Pfizer paper, or day 18 in this paper. Seriously. Look at it. Yes, ynetnews is ynet/yediot. Their reporting of covid is exactly parroting the government with no criticism whatsoever so far. I’m not antivax, I’m provad. 50% is pretty damn good for a first attempt. But everything has become so politi…

Edit: looking at the graph [1] more closely, I understand what you meant - there is no visible change in the slope past day 12 after dose 1 (dose 2 was administered on day 21). So the patient data actually shows that the vaccine achieved its maximum efficacy ~12 days after the 1st dose, not necessarily related to the 2nd dose at all.

Original comment:

I don't know where you're getting this, but the Pfizer paper [0] clearly shows that disease prevalence is much lower after the second dose:

> Among participants with and those without evidence of prior SARS CoV-2 infection, 9 cases of Covid-19 at least 7 days after the second dose were observed among vaccine recipients and 169 among placebo recipients, corresponding to 94.6% vaccine efficacy (95% CI, 89.9 to 97.3).

> Between the first dose and the second dose, 39 cases in the BNT162b2 group and 82 cases in the placebo group were observed, resulting in a vaccine efficacy of 52% (95% CI, 29.5 to 68.4) during this interval and indicating early protection by the vaccine, starting as soon as 12 days after the first dose.

You are right about the severe cases though - they had 1 in the vaccine group and 4 in the placebo group, which is far too little data to draw any meaningful conclusions from (it's also worth noting that the single severe case in the vaccinated group occurred >7 days after the second dose, so there is absolutely no data to draw conclusions on severe disease impact with a single dose).

[0] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2034577 [1] https://www.nejm.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/mms/jour...

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#316
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at WorldOMeters covid data shows India ranks 105th in deaths per million(lower ranking is worse). India has one wave peaking in September and now relatively low cases.

Let's not get into the testing data debate here. To say that a country with 0.53 hospital beds per 1000 persons can successfully handle any medical emergency is unrealistic[1]. India is also highly populated, so the sheer number of people without access to healthcare is enormous. Access to testing is non-uniform. Very strangely, only places with relatively better access to healthcare seem to have more cases - Delhi,…

> Let's not get into the testing data debate here.

Let's not spread misinformation either. India did enough testing. India's positivity rate was almost always below 10%. Now it's even less than 1%. India has made testing fast, cheap, and easy to access.

Also, it doesn't matter if india has fewer hospital beds, if those beds are empty. Hospitals beds are empty, and our morgues aren't overflowing (like how milan or nyc in March did). It is a free country with open media. Nobody is suppressing covid cases.

There are many reasons it could happen like this. Cross immunity. Younger demographics. Smaller groups (most indians live in rural villages). Diet. Weather. Etc.

It's not strange that delhi and bangalore have more cases. They are also denser cities with more people. It's just like how nyc and Los Angeles have more cases than say indianapolis or santa Cruz.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your response is consistent with the claim you called a lie. Adding "considering that ..." allows you to hold the EU to an arbitrarily lower standard than the other countries.

I am a EU citizen, my standards are much higher. EU didn't had to sell their citizens healthcare data to move up the stack (like Israel did). The EU negotiations with these Big Pharma corps made it wait for these 3 countries (Israel, UK and USA). Vaccinations started 1 or 2 months later in EU (depending on country). A fair comparison would be the data of today in EU with the data from 1 or 2 months ago in those count…

The pharma companies you mention are all working hard to supply a vaccine to purchasers, at cost.

The idea that they have some sort of profit motive and are deliberately delaying the EU is not true. Accounts of journalists, and the companies, suggest EU delayed contracts being signed because of internal disagreements, and haggling over contractual terms.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#318
post #165
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 way better than a lot of other countries, Lot of people expected it to do way worse. >>>> 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) This was at the point when WHO was saying there was no Human to Human transfmission. >>> then they blamed it on a minority gathering Well obviously since even during…

India just doesn't have the giant 70+ yo vulnerable male population that western countries have. If they did, the numbers would be horrifying. But since they have a young population, herd immunity was reached. (Serology tests show over 50% of india had covid, and the case stats show a classic epidemical curve)

Same goes for Russia btw, theres no 50+ males for covid to kill as they die to alcohol abuse. So they peaked at "only" 600 deaths / day.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of health care, it’s apt because the federal government cannot force states to take actions. They can only issue guidelines.

That’s due to being a federation. The US is not the only federation; Australia, for example, is one too, and just like the US, in Australia public health is primarily a state responsibility, the federal government provides most of the funding but the states own the public hospitals and control most of the operational decisions. Yet I never heard any Australian compare foreign countries to Australian states. Other fed…

Going from Idaho to New York is about the same shock as going from Idaho to Australia. The people who make this comparison are the ones who have actually been to many different American states instead of just reading about them on Reddit.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is easily available by searching Google. The EU has been slow to order doses from viable partners and always seems to be the last to approve new vaccines. Some EU countries are only now giving their first vaccines. What shady tactics did other countries use? To be fair it’s not reasonable to demand someone show data and then allude to “shady tactics” without providing evidence, though I don’t doubt that shad…

Does not answer the question or expand on what time interval the data is collected. However, since you played the Google card, please take it back: "What shady tactics did other countries use?" Also easily available by searching Google.

Id doesn't matter at all. Facts are: Other countries placed their bets faster and started vaccination faster. First come first serve, don't see anything wrong with it.

Maybe the EU should also use shady tactics but it sounds more like a huge corruption and bureaucracy disaster.

By the way Biotech offered more vaccines and it was refused (even the CEO of Biotech gave an interview and said it was very confusing how the EU negotiated).

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