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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

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Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#421

Post by majewsky »

pelasaco wrote: post #208
cosmodisk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also pro-EU,remainer,etc. The problem is that the EU is the political graveyard, because countries send the most absurd people there. Not all of them,of course,but a lot. EU works when things are going slow and because of the sheer economical scale and power, everybody takes it serious when it comes to negotiations. But the EC isn't a bunch of experts on rapid situations. It's exactly the same when a French civil…

thats true. At least in Germany, you are just sent to the EU Parlament if you re not performing well in the country level.

We even have an entire saying about it: "Hast du einen Opa, schick ihn nach Europa." ("If you have a grandpa [to get rid of], send him to Europe [i.e. Brussels/Strasbourg].")

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#422

Post by vidarh »

grey-area wrote: post #242
vidarh wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 12 weeks is not about maximizing protection for an individual recipient, but was a decision made solely to get the first dose to more people faster. In terms of effect on effectiveness per person it is purely speculative.

That's not correct for the AZ vaccine, the longer interval is supported by the trial data, and we simply lack that data for other vaccines, though for most other vaccines historically a longer interval than 3 weeks is better for a second dose. Exploratory analyses showed that increased immunogenicity was associated with a longer dose interval (see Immunogenicity Table 3). Efficacy is currently demonstrated with more…

If the AZ vaccine actually better with longer delays, that's great, but it does not change the fact that the political decision to increase the interval was made at a point where the UK was starting to give second jabs of the Pfizer vaccine, and second round vaccinations with the Pfizer vaccine were cancelled for a lot of people as a result, prompting Pfizer to warn they didn't have data on what that would do.

As such the decision was very clearly made on the basis of getting more people some protection, whether or not they could be confident of the effect of the long term protection across the various vaccines.0

It's a reasonable gamble to take given the amount of spread, and is not a criticism (though the way the change was communicated was absolutely awful), but if it had been a decision taken based on available data one would expect the schedules actually tested by the manufacturers to be adhered to, even if different between the vaccine.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#423

Post by [deleted] »

xenoph0n wrote: post #405
Ulrich2 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well... maybe not. What the EU suspects is that vaccine that was produced in the EU with EU money was shipped to the UK in December. I have read that even until last week shipments went from the EU to the UK. If so, AZ and/or the UK government are actively cheating the EU. Is it true? I guess time will tell. Good source for latest vaccine news: https://twitter.com/QuentinAries

The EU doesn't own everything in the EU, it's not the Soviet Union (much as people like you seem to want it to be). They aren't "EU vaccines". Astra Zeneca can ship them wherever they want based on contractual and legal practices. Those are privately owned AstraZeneca facilities. The idea that you can separate out "EU money" within a private company is also ridiculous. If the EU wants to start playing games then othe…

[deleted]

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#424

Post by Gravityloss »

foepys wrote: post #183
jostmey wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of millions of dollars? Not even a billion dollars was set aside for vaccines as trillions of dollars are being lost?

That's what many people are getting mad about. Germany wanted to order from Biontech in July 2020 but the EU convinced them to let the EU order for a better "collective bargaining position". But this isn't the time to bargain. Just pay them a few billion Euros. Germany alone is estimated to be currently subsidizing its shut-down economy with around 4 billion Euros a week. Each week is more expensive than what the EU…

Just paying more to get further in the queue is not a good solution. That's just a zero sum game.

What is better is removing all obstacles from the vaccine mass production scaling.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#425

Post by radu_floricica »

viraptor wrote: post #302
radu_floricica wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how being consensual or not has any bearing on its efficacy. Not to mention that any model I have of russian military (or any military) tells me that finding volunteers for a pandemic-ending vaccine would be a very easy task.

> being consensual or not has any bearing on its efficacy Not on efficacy, but in reported efficacy. Basically: if you're willing to be unethical about testing X, why would we trust you to be ethical when reporting about X.

That's the opposite of the halo effect. They're bad guys, so everything about them is bad.

You can say that results are unreliable because they're not open about the details, or didn't provide enough data, or the data they provided doesn't make sense. Vaccinations being consensual or not is unrelated to the topic.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#426

Post by Ambix »

pelasaco wrote: post #204
TheMechanist wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Russian scientists have first discussed Sputnik V with EMA (EU's medicine agency) 5 days ago: https://www.msn.com/en-xl/europe/top-stories/russia-files-sp... ; Hungary, which is part of the EU, has already given the vaccine emergency authorization. However, vaccination in Hungary is lagging behind its neighbors Austria and Romania due low levels of trust (in the Russian vaccine) and general antivaxx sentiment. Th…

It wouldn´t surprise me if Russia and China prioritize to sell the vaccines to other countries than attend their own population.

Here in Moscow russian citizens can get the vaccine absolutely free in about of 100 authorized medical partners. I've personally got first dose of Sputnik V yesterday without any problems or shortages.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#427

Post by maxerickson »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #102
maxerickson wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, no one has demonstrated that it would not have either, and if you look at my comments, I've acknowledged that we don't have the information to evaluate it. And who cares if we just pissed away $40 billion dollars failing to speed things up. But look at the distribution. Pfizer submitted their results around Thanksgiving. The FDA decided they'd look at them in a couple weeks. The Federal answer to states compl…

The Federal answer to states complaining that they didn't have funds to get programs running was "figure it out". Maybe you shouldn't live in a notoriously failed state when it comes to COVID-19 management (Michigan, which outlawed the sale of garden seeds! , Vermont is the only other state to go that far), we seem to have arrived at the gravamen of your issue with not enough money being spent. My home state is doing…

https://www.statnews.com/2021/01/31/trump-officials-lobbied-...

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#428

Post by ric2b »

HugoDaniel wrote: post #356
ucha wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inv…

Total deaths are an awful way of comparing countries, it's heavily correlated with population size.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#429

Post by trianglem »

pelasaco wrote: post #214
trianglem wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Trump administration spewed misinformation from day one that caused massive dissonance in dealing with the problem. Saying they did better when they had literally no plan and let 400,000 people die is incredible dissembling and most likely a political statement than a logical one. They literally dissuaded people from using masks.

True, but if Americans are being vaccinated more than EU now, is mainly because of him.

Not at all, it’s because the states are doing what they can inspire of no federal strategy.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#430

Post by vinay427 »

estaseuropano wrote: post #345
foepys wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what many people are getting mad about. Germany wanted to order from Biontech in July 2020 but the EU convinced them to let the EU order for a better "collective bargaining position". But this isn't the time to bargain. Just pay them a few billion Euros. Germany alone is estimated to be currently subsidizing its shut-down economy with around 4 billion Euros a week. Each week is more expensive than what the EU…

This was not the EU pushing, rather the smaller countries were scared that they'd be left out and thus put pressure on the German government to agree to do it jointly. That said, the main source for the story tha the negotiations were advanced is the German health minister who has skin in the game and reason to try and assign the blame elsewhere...

It was the EU pushing for the Commission to negotiate even though it was clear the Inclusive Vaccine Alliance (IVA) composed of the four countries were planning to supply all member states. There are multiple sources on this deal including the official AZ press release, although the harsher criticism of the Commission's role is from Spahn as you say.

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

https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2020...

https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/europe-s-vaccine...

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