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Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

reuters.com

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Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#71

Post by ajsnigrutin »

evandijk70 wrote: post #23
sonicggg wrote: post #11

I see a lot of complaints of people about the fact that Pfizer required legal immunity against side effects. This is a must for any vaccine manufacturer, otherwise the vaccine is just not commercially feasible. That's what killed Lymerix, and why we don't have Lyme disease vaccine anymore. If the government does not back it up, the manufacturer won't stand a chance. Even if the vaccine has a good safety profile, a 0.…

Please note that for a vaccine against a disease like corona, a 0.1% rate of side effects serious enough to lead to lawsuits is not a 'good safety profile', especially when given to people outside well-defined risk groups. The Johnson & Johnson and Astrazeneca vaccines, which probably have a 'borderline safety profile' have a rate of side-effects between 0.001% and 0.0001%.

In slovenia (~2mio pop, ~1mio had covid), the current statistics for girls under 25 show zero deaths due to covid and 1 death due to the vaccine (j&J). She got vaccinated because she had to, and all the measures are designed (accidentally or intentionally) to mostly affect the young, because old people (the ones who die a lot if not vaccinated) don't do most of the restricted stuff anyways (eg. closed nightclubs don't affect them)

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#72

Post by roenxi »

lmm wrote: post #58
roenxi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If he doesn't have sterelising immunity, how can he have recovered from COVID? He'd still have the coronavirus. For a body to fight off cornavirus the immune system has to have reached a state of sterelising immunity, otherwise the coronavirus would just keep jumping back and forward between family members. And that immunity will probably decay at about the same speed as any vaccine.

> If he doesn't have sterelising immunity, how can he have recovered from COVID? He'd still have the coronavirus. Like any other situation where someone has non-sterilising immunity, his body may have been able to eliminate the disease without fully preventing the virus from reproducing.

I'm certainly confused now. What is this mechanism that can successfully destroy ... hundreds? thousands? millions? of virus particles but is unable to stop them reproducing? Are you arguing that they reproduce after they've been destroyed? Or maybe that the COVID virus is a permanent infection?

For a body to rid itself of a viral disease it needs to achieve sterelising immunity. That is what it means to recover after a virus, unless the virus is permanent like ... I dunno, herpes? ... and the body is suppressing it. Even then that might technically be sterelising immunity.

The coronavirus doesn't reinfect people immediately after they recover from COVID. It is all but impossible that they don't have sterelising immunity at that point. Otherwise they would keep getting COVID over and over again. I can see how that isn't always true, but if coronavirus persisted after recovery I assume that would be big news.

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#73

Post by fer »

native_samples wrote: post #39
fer wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't waive more than what was defined in the PREP Act[0], they're exempt because it's an emergency and all evidence points at the treatment being better than the disease, and its production, distribution and administration is under government request. This was enacted in 2005, shortly after the original SARS, partially because pharma companies were reluctant to mass produce any novel vaccine/drug under governme…

PREP Act is an American thing. Pharma requires liability waivers globally and changing laws to eliminate legal liability is a requirement of the contracts they sign with governments. Sometimes even that isn't enough. In some cases they demand collateral. They also demand immunity from criminal prosecution, even in cases where it's proven that people were injured through "negligence, fraud or malice": https://www.phar…

Pfizer allocated doses for those countries (and more) at non-profit prices. Argentina pays $12 per dose[0]. The EU, who haggled a lot, and bought a lot more, is paying $15, and the US pays almost $20.

If Pfizer agreed to be held liable at any level, they'd be literally be agreeing to losing money.

These countries are free to pay the regular price other countries are, with the usual emergency levels of indemnity. I'm sure Pfizer won't mind.

What Argentina and Braz^H^H^H^H the other country want is to have the cake and eat it too: "you manufacture it, you bring it, you earn nothing, yet you're held accountable if things go wrong". Personally I wouldn't go in, not sure about you. This is actuarial 101.

[0] https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/argentina-has-paid...

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#74

Post by simonh »

reindeer76 wrote: post #65
simonh wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analysis on years of life lost, including reduced life expectancy in those with long covid, has actually been done. >Conclusion: More than 28 million excess years of life were lost in 2020 in 31 countries, with a higher rate in men than women. Yes the chances of young people dying is individually very low, and gets tiny for the very young, but for example in Brazil it’s estimated that about 500 babies died due to…

28 million years of life lost in 31 countries whose population appears to add up to over 1 billion people. So what are we talking about here, maybe like 2 weeks each? Which is optimistic -- because personally I believe most of the restrictions have a very small effect. Roughly that many people were going to die anyway, whether we did Sweden's approach or Austria's approach or anywhere in between. Well - good god, I'm…

Right, that’s the loss of life _with_ lockdowns, mass vaccinations, etc. we’ve successfully managed to limit the damage to much, much, much lower levels than it would have been otherwise. It’s been a huge success, compared to an unrestricted or minimally constrained propagation of the virus.

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#75

Post by pvaldes »

waihtis wrote: post #36
pas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously the situation is bad. The antivaxx bomb exploded and a significant chunk of the population has been hit by it. Now governments are trying to counteract that. (Twitter too.) Both usually have crude methods only.

This is not an antivaxx problem, this is a government/NGO ineptitude & trustworthiness problem. There's been a million fumbles and lies around the whole pandemic, making the quasistalinist approach to pandemic governance likely the number one catalyst of antivaxx stances.

The advice and main rules were really clear from the start. Do 1) this, 2) this and 3) this. And were repeated millions of times from thousands of people in the whole planet.

But some people didn't liked science and choose instead to go to bath masses, religious massive holidays and parties just to make a political point. Some people even put deliberately the live of other in risk, teared off their masks and spit in their faces.

As expected, they paid a big bill for their own 100% genuine stupidity. Those that don't died look now desperately for a decorous way out to save face and will blame other for it: "You explained it only 5 million times, so I though that it was a joke. Is your fault to not repeat it 5.000.001 times..."

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#76

Post by fer »

roenxi wrote: post #72
lmm wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If he doesn't have sterelising immunity, how can he have recovered from COVID? He'd still have the coronavirus. Like any other situation where someone has non-sterilising immunity, his body may have been able to eliminate the disease without fully preventing the virus from reproducing.

I'm certainly confused now. What is this mechanism that can successfully destroy ... hundreds? thousands? millions? of virus particles but is unable to stop them reproducing? Are you arguing that they reproduce after they've been destroyed? Or maybe that the COVID virus is a permanent infection? For a body to rid itself of a viral disease it needs to achieve sterelising immunity. That is what it means to recover afte…

There's no sterilising immunity. That's a gross oversimplification of the incredibly complex thing that the immune system is.

Immune response isn't linear. Likewise, viral reproduction isn't linear. They're not even constant within the same tissue.

So whatever happens will depend on the virus, on the viral load, where it appears, and previous type and kind of immunity, and the speed of that immune response.

Fun fact: the overwhelming majority of HIV exposures don't result in infection, but one would be stupid to claim that most people have "sterilising immunity" to HIV. It simply can't target most cells and dies off in the mucous membranes.

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#77

Post by waihtis »

pvaldes wrote: post #75
waihtis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an antivaxx problem, this is a government/NGO ineptitude & trustworthiness problem. There's been a million fumbles and lies around the whole pandemic, making the quasistalinist approach to pandemic governance likely the number one catalyst of antivaxx stances.

The advice and main rules were really clear from the start. Do 1) this, 2) this and 3) this. And were repeated millions of times from thousands of people in the whole planet. But some people didn't liked science and choose instead to go to bath masses, religious massive holidays and parties just to make a political point. Some people even put deliberately the live of other in risk, teared off their masks and spit in…

This theory of "pandemic of the unvaccinated" can safely be dumped into the trashcan following that e.g. here in Finland we have a double vaccination rate of over 80% and yet the daily numbers are easily the highest of all time.

It also follows that the advice and main rules given to avoid the pandemic aren't actually effective, and somewhat ironically, it would bode well to use scientific principles to re-evaluate the evidence and adjust their posture.

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#78

Post by reindeer76 »

simonh wrote: post #74
reindeer76 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

28 million years of life lost in 31 countries whose population appears to add up to over 1 billion people. So what are we talking about here, maybe like 2 weeks each? Which is optimistic -- because personally I believe most of the restrictions have a very small effect. Roughly that many people were going to die anyway, whether we did Sweden's approach or Austria's approach or anywhere in between. Well - good god, I'm…

Right, that’s the loss of life _with_ lockdowns, mass vaccinations, etc. we’ve successfully managed to limit the damage to much, much, much lower levels than it would have been otherwise. It’s been a huge success, compared to an unrestricted or minimally constrained propagation of the virus.

Sweden.

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#79

Post by adevx »

simonh wrote: post #74
reindeer76 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

28 million years of life lost in 31 countries whose population appears to add up to over 1 billion people. So what are we talking about here, maybe like 2 weeks each? Which is optimistic -- because personally I believe most of the restrictions have a very small effect. Roughly that many people were going to die anyway, whether we did Sweden's approach or Austria's approach or anywhere in between. Well - good god, I'm…

Right, that’s the loss of life _with_ lockdowns, mass vaccinations, etc. we’ve successfully managed to limit the damage to much, much, much lower levels than it would have been otherwise. It’s been a huge success, compared to an unrestricted or minimally constrained propagation of the virus.

That's a huge assumption. Given how well Sweden has done with limited lockdowns [0] one could also jump to conclusions that lockdowns have prolonged and exacerbated a situation that would otherwise have fizzled out with herd immunity.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Re: Refugees lack Covid shots because drugmakers fear lawsuits, documents show

#80

Post by pas »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #67
waihtis wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not an antivaxx problem, this is a government/NGO ineptitude & trustworthiness problem. There's been a million fumbles and lies around the whole pandemic, making the quasistalinist approach to pandemic governance likely the number one catalyst of antivaxx stances.

Yep, so many many lies, so many "science changing is a good thing" stuff (eg "masks are useless, wash your hands", and mask wearers being conspiracy theorists, to "mandatory masks" and antimaskers being the conspirac nutjobs), "just 14 more days", etc.... but they still want you to "trust them" now, with "this new thing".

The science was always uncertain, the policy flip-flop was understandable, the absolutely fubar'ed PR is the nightmare fuel.

Masks work. That was not the question. How much they help is the question of science. The cost-benefit decision is the question of policy. How to communicate the changing policy should have been the PR question.

The US and international agencies that set policies are not as science-driven as they should be. ( https://www.slowboring.com/p/our-public-health-agencies-shou... )

Framing this as "lies" is counter-productive. Policy converging with science is mostly a good thing, but first that needs high quality science (= high quality data, asking the right questions, etc). The current US communication zeitgeist using "science" as a shorthand for "policy based on cost-benefit evaluation of such and such scientific reports by this and this community of experts and stakeholders" is a big problem, but it's a symptom of other bigger US social phenomena.

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