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Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

reuters.com

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Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#121

Post by dna_polymerase »

DalasNoin wrote: post #63
ancymon wrote: post #17

As I understand, for example in Europe Pfizer is producing vaccines in single factory and not in sufficient number. Why production doesn't happen in more places? Couldn't they sell license to other European pharmaceutical companies to produce it? Is production process so unique it can't be replicated in other places?

Pfizer does most of the production of the vaccine, but in Europe a large part of the vaccines is also manufactured by their German partner BioNtech. BioNtech is setting up a new factory in Marburg Germany right now. https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det... From their press release: "Facility will become one of the largest mRNA manufacturing sites in Europe and the third site in the BioNTech man…

They already started production.

https://investors.biontech.de/news-releases/news-release-det...

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#122

Post by peteretep »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #92
peteretep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the deep state at work! [0] 0: by which of course I mean strong institutions like the NHS, apolitical and well-organised army, regional councils, and the civil service

If EU countries had the same supply as the UK, they would also have vaccinated roughly the same percentage of people.

Some countries probably, but institutional strength in the EU varies dramatically country by country

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#123

Post by retromario »

readittwice wrote: post #78
ulfw wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but that's for first dosage given until end of June. That's still 4.5 months away. A long time considering thousands of infections and hundreds of deaths. Maybe paying a bit more would have been more intelligent (see Israel) than negotiating for months on end.

Unfortunately the EU still communicates there is no problem with the procurement but only with evil pharmaceutical companies not delivering as promised. There will not be any remorse. It really must hurt them that even the heavily criticized politicians Johnson, Netanyahu and Trump did a much better job with procurement than the EU.

The EU messed up but they are at least publicly owning up to some of the blame (finally): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/10/ursula-von-der...

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#124

Post by hef19898 »

readittwice wrote: post #64
mytailorisrich wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The situation is bad but not so bad that competitors could be forced to work together it seems. And yet this should have been the plan from the very beginning. Considering the vast numbers needed in Europe and the whole world, forcing all available production facilities to produce vaccines should have been part of the plan.

Absolutely, however the EU's politicians are playing dumb and claim that they couldn't foresee that mass production could be a problem. The EU ordered too late and simply not enough. Now they are trying to blame everyone else for their failure.

They ordered one slightly later than the UK and the US (let's ignore Israel which is basically a large scale trial). The main difference: the EU used normal certification processes, just sped them up considerably. The UK and US used emergncy certification.

The volumes the EU ordered initially were absolutely sufficient with 4+ doses per EU inhabitant. Manufacturing capacities were sufficient for that as well. It all started to go south as soon as memeber states looked for scape goats why vaccination happened so slowly. First the manufacturers, then the EU, then the federal government (where applicable). It is a last-mile distribution issue if you will now, not a manufacturing one.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#125

Post by bryanwb »

jsharf wrote: post #99
jansan wrote: post #10

The Google COVID-19 statistics for Israel show that cases and deaths are declining, but not at a faster rate than elsewhere in the world. Reported deaths lag behind sometimes for weeks and new deaths were caused by infections weeks ago, so vaccination may not have much effect on deaths, yet. But the number of positive tests should have gone down considerably with 50% of the population vaccinated. Are all these aympto…

Israel has many different population groups. The Haredi population is acting like covid doesn’t exist and has insanely high numbers of cases. I suspect that despite the vaccine working well on your everyday science-trusting Israeli, the Haredi population is throwing off the average significantly. Source: I have family there. Recently the police tried to enforce the lockdown Bnei Brak (a city with a lot of Haredis). T…

kudos to the Haredim of Bnei Brak for choosing to be human.

I used to live near there.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#126

Post by raphaelj »

mschuster91 wrote: post #69

> He added that the data indicates the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second shot. That's wrong. BioNTech was the developer, Pfizer only was pulled in for manufacturing and clinical tests.

One could argue that clinical trials are part of the development process.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#127

Post by Robin_Message »

FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #92
peteretep wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the deep state at work! [0] 0: by which of course I mean strong institutions like the NHS, apolitical and well-organised army, regional councils, and the civil service

If EU countries had the same supply as the UK, they would also have vaccinated roughly the same percentage of people.

EU approved the vaccines over a month later IIRC, and Germany and France won't use the easy to distribute vaccine (astraveneca) in over 65s, the major target group.

So I'm not sure it's only a supply issue.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#128

Post by saiya-jin »

lnsru wrote: post #98
est31 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the EU had made different deals, doubling the price won't make production capacity appear out of nowhere. The UK and Israel can get vaccines in such large quantities because they are comparatively small countries. The EU might outbid those countries, but the gain of displacing them, while costing a lot, will distribute among the huge european population and thus will only shorten the wait period for individua…

There was time. I work in manufacturing, we plan factories years in advance of manufacturing start. Abandoned biotech factory cost is a drop in the ocean compared to weekly lockdown cost. Why countries failed here? If I would do such crap professionally, shelves of electronics stores would be empty.

You are an expert with hand-on experience. Here decisions were done by career politicians, who are utterly clueless in any hard science, and basically often have only one skill mastered - the skill of selling themselves to population to get voted in. Hence the results.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#129

Post by hef19898 »

top_sigrid wrote: post #28
lnsru wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will not happen in Europe soon. The vaccine will be sold by manufacturers to highest bidder, that’s no surprise. And with the European ordering disaster as an adult I’ll get vaccinated best case in 2022.

I am not to sure you have that right. Europe's mistake was to spread vaccine orders with manufacturers without ordering enough from each. For Germany the numbers publicly reported have gotten more conrete the last few weeks. While there are only few doses for the first quater (about 18mio for 9 mio people ~ 11% of the population), in the second quarter there will be lots of doses delivered. Confirmed numbers are, tha…

Spreading orders across manufacturers was actually quite prudent. Sanofi's mRNA vaccine is delayed. We have no reaon to believe that is was impossible that the same could have happened to Biontech / Pfizer and / or Moderna.

Overall the EU ordered 4+ doses per inhabitant, incl. minors. That seems to be enough. Single sourcing is never good. In case of vaccines it would mean that a) vaccines are delayed b) manufacturing issues happen. Also ordering enough from each manufacturer would have blown their manufacturing capacites. The necessary capacity increases woud just have further delayed deliveries, as the Pfizer plant in Belgium shows quite clearly.

And yes, as far as I understood the AZ contract, alocations are the same for each EU memeber state. Proportionally of course, Germany will get more doses in absolute numbers than, say, Luxembourg.

Re: Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic Covid-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine

#130

Post by EvgeniyZh »

lucd wrote: post #104

Here is some chart showing vaccination effect on hospitalization for severe forms. Very telling. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/israel-severe-hospitaliza...

I'd expect that case fatality rate would significantly reduce after 60+ population (which is 90%+ of deaths) is vaccinated. However, even though more than 80% of 60+ got second dose already, case fatality rate is approximately the same. I don't have any good explanation for that.
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