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EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

reuters.com

121–130 of 209 posts

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fairly common for private businesses like pharmacies/clinics/hospitals to have vaccines in much of the world, no?

And you can walk in there and buy it like, say, a bottle of oke? Not without going through a doctor before hand, the same doctor who administers the shot after you picked it up at the pharmacy.

> And you can walk in there and buy it like, say, a bottle of oke?

Yes I can literally walk into a shop near me and buy an influenza vaccination at the same time as a bottle of coke from the same supermarket.

> Not without going through a doctor before hand

No prescription needed, no doctor or nurse involved.

Simple commercial transaction.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#123
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

although we do not have data yet to show if there are any side effects 1+ years after vaccination, it would be very unlikely that there would be. Serious side effects from vaccines are almost always immediate and seen within a few weeks after administration, not months or years later. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....

Almost one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA ended up years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-threatening side effects. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-drugs-found-c... Your supposition about likelihood bears no resemblance to reality. It's almost as if you're misleading people on purpose. I certainly hope that's not the case. Fully 1/3 of all medications approved by the FDA tur…

Every vaccine uses body cells to a certain extent. Sure, mRNA vaccines are new, but the underlying mechanism is not.

Vaccines are behaving differently from drugs. Once they took effect, and your immune system reacted, it is over. And with millions of people vaccinated by now, for months, any adverse effects would have shown. That's why we discuss blood clots, under normal circumstances these rare cases would have gone unnoticed for quite a while.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#124
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversation is about the respective merits of one vaccine over another. The fact that one is a new approach with no long term data on humans whether the other is a traditional approach is relevant.

J&J and AZ adenovirus-vector covid vaccines are highly novel vaccines that are very similar to mRNA vaccines, just with a different delivery mechanism.

Adeno virus based vector vaccines are a pretty old idea.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#125
post #113
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might just be the straw that broke the camels back. As far as I remember the contracts the EU signed turned out to be incredibly one sided, with deliveries getting cut down when someone found out that more dosages could be extracted, no hard delivery requirements leading to constant shortages, etc. . Not getting out of that mess when alternatives exist seems like a bad idea.

There were no hard delivery requirements in any of AstraZeneca's contracts because they didn't have any way to guarantee how much they could deliver - the contract was literally to build the full-scale production lines, and they had no idea of the yield until those lines were actually built because messy biological processes are involved. The big problems with the EU's AZ purchase is that they bought less of it relat…

What kind of "best effort" is signing five more delivery contracts when you aren't even sure that you can get the first few done?

> Like, the UK apparently only got something like a third the amount of AZ vaccine as expected

So just how far behind the expected production is AZ? The UK only got a third, the EU is months behind schedule and half a dozen other countries are just around the corner waiting to have their contracts fulfilled.

> and the UK contract had clauses with teeth

Yeah, that would require halfway competent politicians, not something you find in the EU.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#126

Seems like mRNA vaccines is winning the the race against other emerging technology like viral vector. If we manage to figure out the nanolipids to live in better temperature conditions, mRNA will change our generation.

Viral vector vaccines are hardly an emerging technology.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#127
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

although we do not have data yet to show if there are any side effects 1+ years after vaccination, it would be very unlikely that there would be. Serious side effects from vaccines are almost always immediate and seen within a few weeks after administration, not months or years later. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....

Almost one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA ended up years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-threatening side effects. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-drugs-found-c... Your supposition about likelihood bears no resemblance to reality. It's almost as if you're misleading people on purpose. I certainly hope that's not the case. Fully 1/3 of all medications approved by the FDA tur…

Well, except that these serious adverse effects are often so rare to not have any way of reaching statistical significance. Especially when you consider that you're looking for associations between medication and any indication. Just by random chance you'd get a many associations between serious diseases and any medication.

The very rare and very serious side effects are tracked closely, and it's likely that for a vast number of medications, even though the very rare side effects are written on the packaging, there actually is no causal connection with the medication whatsoever.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#128
post #55

Seems short sighted to me given we don't know efficacy against the variants. If I were in the contractual chair I'd keep all my options on the table, we aren't out of this yet. assuming this is true, as opposed to some kind of way to leverage better terms out of a deal

The EU was slow off the mark when it came to ordering vaccines and as a result it did not get priority for deliveries. The EU can't change that now, but it can send the manufacturers a message warning of the dangers of not showing fealty. Perhaps I'm cynical, but I do wonder if this decision is more politics than science.

I think people are possibly reading a bit more into this than necessary. Stripped of context "supplier A delivers ~33% of contracted quantity of thing, other suppliers deliver 100% or more of contracted quantity of thing, supplier A's contract not renewed" is not even a vaguely surprising narrative, even if 'thing' is entirely generic.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#129
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

although we do not have data yet to show if there are any side effects 1+ years after vaccination, it would be very unlikely that there would be. Serious side effects from vaccines are almost always immediate and seen within a few weeks after administration, not months or years later. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-history....

Almost one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA ended up years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-threatening side effects. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-drugs-found-c... Your supposition about likelihood bears no resemblance to reality. It's almost as if you're misleading people on purpose. I certainly hope that's not the case. Fully 1/3 of all medications approved by the FDA tur…

You can't compare vaccines to the overall universe of drugs like that. The main difference is that drugs that are intended to be taken over the long term can develop long term side effects. Vaccines are taken once or a few times, and then they're done. The parent is correct that complications arising from vaccines years after they're taken just isn't something that should be expected to happen.

Re: EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at expiry

#130
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Source?

"The Danish Health Authority said studies had shown a higher than expected frequency of blood clots following doses, affecting about one in 40,000 people." https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56744474

It's a weird one isn't it - 1/40,000 but they only gave 150,000 doses out. This seems like the error bars on this would be huge - we've seen in the UK very few of these events with millions vaccinated which is pretty strange. Is there something different about Denmark and Britain at this time of year?

I've had the AZ vaccine 1st dose 3 weeks ago now and I keep getting very concerned by the ever changing picture; is it 1 in a million or 1 in 40000, or did these people have conditions that made this situation more likely... will we see an increase in the rate as we get more data too over the coming weeks a lot like we did with COVID.

All very unclear right now. I wish the case reports of all the people with blood clots were made available so everyone could review if they match the groups who have had the problems.

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