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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

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Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#351

Post by mikem170 »

petre wrote: post #257
mikem170 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The grandparent's original point still stands, this is not the disaster that the headlines portray. The U.S stands at 1 in 750 people dead from covid, mostly elderly with comorbidities, a rate similar to many other countries. That is 0.13% of the population. That's not 1 in 10, or even 1 in 100. It's not the young and healthy, either. A pretty small number. And if you are old and frail something is going to get you s…

Just take a look at Reuters' stats page. It's easy now as we have just passed 100m infections with 2m deaths. That amounts to 2 dead out of every 100, globally. https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-m... Death rate is 0.16% in the US though.

I was relating the number who died in the U.S. versus the total population, calculated from published deaths per million per country [0]

The link you provided says that 2.2 million people globally reportedly have died of covid. Out of world's population of 7.8 billion that amounts to 1 out of 3545 people who have died, or 0.028%.

I wonder if a lot of people have misconceptions about their odds of dying from covid, given the alarmist news coverege. Especially the young and healthy, who are more at risk of dying of other things like suicide for example.

Some would say that the reaction and mitigations to covid have been more impactful than the disease itself.

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#352

Post by hef19898 »

jack_arleth wrote: post #286
Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As a Belgian, this is what we've heard and read: - Pfizer stated on 15 Jan 2021 that they would produce 40% less (60.000 instead of 100.000 doses) - This delay in production would we compensated in the weeks that follow. In February the production should be compensated. - This was a temporary measure to scale up production after an extra order was made by the EU The working group concerning the vaccine and it's distr…

Your last point, the additional order, is crucial. And media, Spiegel being one of the most outspoken, created enough pressure tp force that order. Not that overall quantity was an issue, so. But all people saw was shortages. There were no delivery schedules published, so that played a role. But I would have expected some more investigation and research.

Then thr EU ordered more, being under fire, and that let to a temporary shutdown of the plant and even more severe shortages.

Nobody is thinking about that. Instead, the Spiegel is using this to push an agenda against von der Leyen. I'll not defend her, she should never have gotten the presidency (EDIT: become head of the Commission) but what is going on now is just cheap propaganda. And definitely not helping in any way.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#353

Post by HugoDaniel »

MichaelRazum wrote: post #346
HugoDaniel wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Huge corruption and bureaucracy disaster" Please provide facts before making unsubstantiated claims. This is how fake news proliferate. Don't contribute to it.

Sure. Corruption Ursula von der Leyen. Just the wrong person. I would say it sounds very much like corruption to me. https://www.politico.eu/article/the-scandal-hanging-over-urs... Seems that France tried to help it's own company Sanofi. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/macron-accused-of-holding... Bureaucracy Eu approved weeks later then others. If every day counts that is in my point of view a bureaucracy disaste…

Those corruption cases must be verified and dealt with by the law.

The EU latency is a well known cost of the coordinating effort of multiple countries with different politics and perspectives. EU is not a country.

Make no mistake, without the EU the peripheral countries like mine would still be waiting for a vaccine.

Make no mistake, without the EU countries like France and Germany would be having similar, if not better, vaccination numbers than the UK/USA are having now.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#354

Post by monopoledance »

freeflight wrote: post #101
robotmay wrote: post #10

From what I've gathered (unfortunately mostly on Reddit, before this article), Ursula von der Leyen wasn't exactly fondly thought of in Germany before this and somehow keeps managing to fail upwards. Is that accurate? The utterly bonkers u-turn today was a bit of a shocker. For those that haven't seen the news, the European Commission managed to say they were effectively going to establish border controls between the…

Leyen failing upwards is a pretty accurate description of her political career in Germany. She was never popular, one of her first "big ideas", as the head of the ministry for families, was to introduce DNS Internet-censorship against child pornography, which ultimately failed due to the public backlash. Like many other German career politicians, her doctors dissertation was found to be partly plagiarized. Her change…

> For many Germans she's the definition of what's wrong with German politics because she didn't get where she is out of her own abilities, but rather as a consequence of her family having had that kind of influence in Germany for generations

Lucky her, now we think of Scheuer instead. Her fuckups are pretty tame compared to that guy... and he's still not canceled.

https://media.ccc.de/v/36c3-10652-bahnmining_-_punktlichkeit...

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Scheuer

Quite sadly, the english wiki article is... well pretty misleading about this guy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Scheuer

PKW-Maut isn't even mentioned..

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#355

Post by ChrisIsTaken »

gridder wrote: post #336
estaseuropano wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's less testing, less reporting and much less transparency and awareness. Doesn't mean there's less infection or less dying.

There probably is (less infection) due to the more broad vaccines they receive compared to developed countries, which as a second effect create a little more broad immunity.

Due to the much younger population, most of Africa, India, and Pakistan has had MMR, and it's been found that the mumps vaccine provides significant immunity. In the west most over 35 had measles only, or MR combination without mumps.

DOI: 10.1128/mBio.02628-20

For some reason this hasn't been well covered in the media. I got an MMR booster in June based on preliminary findings, my GP thought I was insane.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#356

Post by HugoDaniel »

ucha wrote: post #307
HugoDaniel wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this comment. Could you please expand it in a more constructive way? Vaccination is not the only way available to stop the spreading of the virus: - Keep social distancing - Avoid friends and familiar reunions - Wash your hands frequently - Wear a mask - Be careful The top 5 places with most coronavirus deaths are: 1. USA 2. Brazil 3. Mexico 4. India 5. UK None of these are in the EU.

That's not even true when looking at deaths per capita (because how is total deaths relevant?) If you remove micro-states, the top 5 in deaths per capita is: 1. Belgium 2. Slovenia 3. UK 4. Czech Republic 5. Italy 4 out of 5 are in the EU. Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Sort by total deaths. It is true. The parent comment did not specify the metric, every death counts and total deaths is a metric that should not to be disregarded.

You are disregarding total deaths, like a robot that only looks at percentages and ratios. These are real people.

If you remove micro-states, if you filter by this, if you only consider that, if you spin this enough, if you consider that this metric is invalid, if you this, if you that...

then what do we have for such a vague claim such as "-> more people dying"?

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#357

Post by hef19898 »

robotmay wrote: post #10

From what I've gathered (unfortunately mostly on Reddit, before this article), Ursula von der Leyen wasn't exactly fondly thought of in Germany before this and somehow keeps managing to fail upwards. Is that accurate? The utterly bonkers u-turn today was a bit of a shocker. For those that haven't seen the news, the European Commission managed to say they were effectively going to establish border controls between the…

Your view of von der Leyen is pretty much correct. The problem is, so, the Spiegel has an axe to grind with her. Various reasons, she being from the CDU, being former Defense Minister, working with defense companies and the Big 5 consultancies. The defence company and defense ministry thing goes back the 60. Then defense minister Strauss, also head of the Bavarian CDU sister party CSU, illegally raided the Spiegel offices. And was the driving force behind EADS / Airbus as well. Ever since, the Spiegel is driving an agenda in that direction. Sometimes they loose themselves doing so. Their whole reporting of the Covid vaccine story is just another example where they totally miss the main issue.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#358

Post by HugoDaniel »

ucha wrote: post #306
HugoDaniel wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please provide data. How did you make the comparison? Does it consider that these countries moved up the priority stack through shady tactics and started vaccination earlier than the EU? Are you analysing the numbers per capita? total? average in 7 days? Please be constructive.

I'm using the only statistic that matters, the percentage of the population being vaccinated. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations If the goal of vaccination is to stop the propagation of the virus, all the other possible metrics you cited are irrelevant. Which shady tactics? Not being 3 months late to place an order?

"the only statistic that matters"

this is the kind of certainty that hides misconceptions and forces biased perspectives.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#359

Post by monopoledance »

estaseuropano wrote: post #333
freeflight wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leyen failing upwards is a pretty accurate description of her political career in Germany. She was never popular, one of her first "big ideas", as the head of the ministry for families, was to introduce DNS Internet-censorship against child pornography, which ultimately failed due to the public backlash. Like many other German career politicians, her doctors dissertation was found to be partly plagiarized. Her change…

She is a product of the CDU - which promotes based on internal networks, not quality results. I would say she's not one of the worst politicians - everyone with that length in public life has a few scandals. I haven't forgiven her for her censorship laws, but the other 'scandals' seem rather be a matter of hubris (often confused with 'vision'). In other countries that's a normal expectation - new policies such as on…

I think Alice Schwarzer's words seeded some doubt in me, that v.d. Leyen got a fair chance overall. Seems like she lost her ways in fighting conservative opposition all her career. Anyway, Schwarzer is a nasty person, with some rather ignorant positions, so whatever. I just don't want to jump to conclusions on v.d. Leyen, without really reading up on shit, no more.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#360

Post by oli5679 »

HugoDaniel wrote: post #324
oli5679 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU has administered 2 doses per hundred citizens. The UK and US have administered 12 and 8 respectively. The EU treated this like a procurement exercise, fussing over price and process and not buying sufficiently diverse portfolio. UK and US treated this like an emergency. Every day of lockdown costs close to total vaccines expenditure, so they moved fast. Now the EU is scapegoating a company that is producing th…

Its a coordinated effort, a fair comparison needs to at least take that into consideration. Even so: Why are you comparing "today" EU numbers with those of countries that started a one or two months earlier? If so, what makes you think that is a fair comparison (even disregarding the cost of the coordinated effort)? Can we compare "today" EU numbers with those of countries that have just started vaccinations? Would t…

No, the governments learned of Covid at the same time. There was no law of nature constraining the EU to start later, or compelling US and UK to start earlier.

Normally, it makes sense to do this. Negotiate price, avoid hassle of repeated procurement energy, wait until you have more certainty about trial results and manufacturing process.

This situation was a national disaster, not a normal procurement exercise. The EU should have committed earlier to a broader range of vaccines because the cost benefit was trillions of euros of human live and economic damage costs compared to billions of euro of potentially redundant vaccines.

That they didn't do this, and now are scapegoating the manufacturers, is a 'catastophe' from my perspective. Coordination and delays are explanations but not mitigations.

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