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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

#171

Post by dogma1138 »

jacquesm wrote: post #140
dogma1138 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some American factories are export restricted, Pfizer has set up production in the US which is cleared for export as they didn’t took any government funding for those production lines. Israel is getting most of their doses from US factories not EU ones.

And pays more than 10x as much per dose.

Israel is paying about $30 a dose about twice the Pfizer listed price in the US and EU not 10 times more.

It’s paying 10 times more when comparing to the AZ vaccine but that’s not apples to apples.

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

#172

Post by corty »

bipson wrote: post #158
Reason077 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is/was a contract dispute between the EU and AstraZeneca regarding supply of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU wanted AstraZeneca to supply additional vaccine from it's UK-based factories, which are already contracted to supply the UK. The export registration requirements (not an export ban ) are, at least in part, in response to this dispute. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/30/lawyers-dis...

Well, the contract with the EU included the UK factory(ies) as a (potential?) supplier to the EU. UK signed the contracts slightly earlier and jump-started the programme by issuing an emergency approval a few weeks earlier than the regular approval by the EMA. And above all, it seems despite all efforts of coordination and treaties (COVAX), almost all players (except Norway) are playing the auction game and hoarding.…

The rest of the world will get it's vaccines after the first-world states are all vaccinated. And while it sucks to live in a third-world country where vaccinations will come 2022 or 2023 maybe, I can't see any other way, except if the third world would do their own production. Letting more people in the first world die to save some in the third world would be politically impossible.

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

#173

Post by dogma1138 »

jacquesm wrote: post #165
dageshi wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that really doesn't matter compared to the cost of locking down a country and the lives saved by quicker vaccination.

Agreed. But given the lack of production this was an easier deal to make for Israel than for say all of the EU, no matter what the price, those vaccines are not available in that quantity.

Chicken and the egg if the EU would’ve handed out 50 billion € a year ago to setup production and stockpiles it would’ve made a difference...

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

#174

Post by ImaCake »

throwaway4good wrote: post #25
eganist wrote: post #6

Someone's comment raising fear about unmitigated transmission risk got flagged to death, so here's the comment I originally wrote in response to it: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.06.21251283v... The most recent un-reviewed publication looking into viral load, which is likely associated with the risk of transmission. Lay reading: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/09/pfizerbionte...

I am just a layperson. But given the scale of these vaccination programs; I think the question of how vaccination can affect the natural evolution of the virus is one that at least should be allowed to ask.

I am a biologist, and not a virologist. I would suspect we are never getting rid of COVID. But vaccination could turn it into something not much worse than a cold or at least the flu. The virus will mutate and change in ways that make it more infectious, but probably not more virulent.

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

#175

Post by timrichard »

1996 wrote: post #50
jcfariadias wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could be very well organised in terms of rollout and distribution. But every European country is having the same problem - shortage of production and provider's incapacity to distribute it without fail. Israel case is unique, because they payed more per vaccine, thus guaranteeing the supply needed to be able to mass vaccinate the population.

> they payed more per vaccine, thus guaranteeing the supply needed to be able to mass vaccinate Who could have guessed that paying the right price would guarantee the supply of a rare commodity everyone would want? :)

Quite right. And on the flip side, who would have guessed that haggling down the price of a super cheap at-cost AZ dose and playing hardball on liability when everyone else was bending over backwards would result in delays and supply problems for the EU...

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

#176

Post by hef19898 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #164
hef19898 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think that's a very charitable interpretation of events. Realistically the EU negotiated on behalf of the 27 member countries to try to get the best deal on price, and perhaps more importantly, to avoid the inevitable tensions which would follow from one member country securing more than another member country. This process slowed down the negotiation process. Whether there is any truth in the EUs certification bei…

I don't think it is charitable. The EU had to juggle 27 individual countries, one central certification and Brexit. They had to avoid a situation in which rich countries, e.g. Germany, outbids poorer countries, e.g. Hungary or Greee. They managed to do that. They over purchased, they split orders betwen suppliers thus further minimizing the risk.

And they did all that using normal certification. They even pointed out, quite clearly, that the actual managemen of vaccination campaigns, the vaccine ordering and the national distribution is up to the member states.

The last part shows very different results, e.g. in germany Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is far ahead in per capita vaccines. Bavaria for example is behind them. All we won with focusing on the supply of vaccines so far in a shutdown of Pfizer's pant in Belgium to produce more doses, which are not needed, at a later point of time. And a nasty contract dipute with AZ after the media and, at least IMHO, politians singled out AZ as a scape goat.

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

#177

Post by jryle70 »

giantDinosaur wrote: post #143
raphaelj wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They could, but it's clearly the part which can be replaced by anyone else. Without Pfizer we'd still have BionTech's vaccine, without BionTech we would not.

We literally have Moderna for the same kind of vaccine. Pfizer partnered with BioNTech because they'd had ongoing partnership. Pfizer's manufacturing and clinical test are the reasons why the trial was approved and millions of people got vaccinated in 2020.

> clearly the part which can be replaced by anyone else

Not clearly. Looks at trouble with AstraZeneca's trial and manufacturing issues.

This is really a worthless pissing contest but got brought up in every Pfizer/BioNTech thread.

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

#178

Post by ImaCake »

kesor wrote: post #66

It is worth adding that the Israeli government is very aggressively pushing vaccination. So aggressively that there is a notable movement of people who oppose to get vaccinated because of the blatant violations to basic human rights in a democratic country. At the very beginning of vaccination in Israel the demand was very high, since all those waiting for the vaccine rushed and went to get it asap. Now that most of…

>At the same time, there is a little known "cure" that was developed in a Tel Aviv hospital that has been tried on 30 people

I want to make it really clear that I am downvoting you for this last sentence. N=30 and no link to a publication is insufficient information for anyone to be talking about it except those organising the next (much larger) trial. Right now, what you say cannot be verified and appears to me to be a comfortable lie to support an anti-vaxxer view.

I don't know where I stand on coercive tactics to get vaccinated, they are for a noble goal, but such tactics can be very dangerous or backfire.

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

#179

Post by benja123 »

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…

It’s not that simple. I am a non-heredi Israeli, but I live next to a Heredi neighborhood. Yes a lot of Heredim are breaking the rules, but so are a lot of non-heredi. I have yet to see any proof that the heredim are breaking them at a much larger scale than the other non-heredi groups.

What is significant is that they live in much more densely populated areas with much larger families. Every infection is amplified by the number of people who come in contact with that infected person and this is likely what we are seeing with the heredi population. In the heredi community it is not unusual for 10+ people to live under the same roof.

It has absolutely ravaged their older populations with one study estimating that 1 in 73 of the heredim over the age of 65 have died from COVID. Unfortunately among some of their communities the anti-vaccine propaganda has been very effective, but this is something the government is actively working to counter.

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

#180

Post by dazc »

dm319 wrote: post #161
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…

The data for age group specific data is available freely in the UK. I did a quick analysis in R, and even though all over 75 and most over 70 have been vaccinated, I didn't see any increase in the rate of descent compared to other age groups. So not quite having a public health impact in overall numbers just yet (it's the lockdown that is doing that), but I have no doubt it will eventually. I wonder if part of it is…

My Dad, in the second-tier group of vulnerability [UK], only got his first jab last week and has to wait 11 weeks for his second.

We still have a fair way to go before all vulnerable groups have had two jabs.

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