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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

#21

Post by dm319 »

kuu wrote: post #9
scrollaway wrote: post #5

Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. Here in Europe, articles are coming out complaining that the slow vaccination could be harming the economy which, well, fucking duh. ( https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154626/c... ) Fast rollout. Involve pharmacies. Involve the army. Distribute widely and efficiently. Prepare for months before the vaccine…

I think we all in Europe are in a similar situation (based in comments of friends of different countries), so it seems to me that is not because the internal organization of delivering / injecting the vaccine but the production of it. The production is going very slow, and therefore the rollout it's super slow...

There are a lot of analyses already about what has gone wrong with the European vaccine effort. It seems to be partly a mixture of being a bit stingy with procurement, being skeptical of new RNA vaccines, putting too much stock in sanofi and j&j, and requiring everything ratified by every country to proceed. In fact it was going so slowly that four countries decided to organise their own precurement, and that became the EU effort. So it seems mostly a problem of procurement/supply. A smaller country like Israel has a simpler logistical issue.

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

#22

Post by scrollaway »

jcfariadias wrote: post #14
scrollaway wrote: post #5

Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. Here in Europe, articles are coming out complaining that the slow vaccination could be harming the economy which, well, fucking duh. ( https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154626/c... ) Fast rollout. Involve pharmacies. Involve the army. Distribute widely and efficiently. Prepare for months before the vaccine…

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.

And yet, we're ahead of schedule here: https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154717/a...

Like I said in another reply: if you're ahead of schedule when your supplier is dry, your schedule is awful. Isn't it? It makes no sense otherwise.

If we had 1 million vaccines to distribute right now, we couldn't. We have 150 "vaccination centers", all of which are converted testing centers but which makes only 10 percent or so of them full time; most of them are open a couple days a week. If you crunch down the numbers you end up very optimistically at the ability to distribute 250-350k vaccines per month... In a country roughly the same population as israel.

Edit: i don't even sort of understand why I'm getting downvoted for sharing plain numbers.

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

#23

Post by throwaway4good »

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…

Exactly. I don't understand why it is so unpopular to ask this obvious question?

The numbers are falling all over the western world; probably because the policy response is largely same and maybe also because the virus' natural cycle is at the same stage.

Given how much further Israel is, one would have expected it to stick much more out in the statistics.

But it does not?

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

#24

Post by scrollaway »

kjakm wrote: post #16
scrollaway wrote: post #5

Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. Here in Europe, articles are coming out complaining that the slow vaccination could be harming the economy which, well, fucking duh. ( https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154626/c... ) Fast rollout. Involve pharmacies. Involve the army. Distribute widely and efficiently. Prepare for months before the vaccine…

The UK has (first-dose) vaccinated close to a quarter of the population now. Given the vast population difference between it and Israel it seems to be doing pretty well too.

Yes I agree, the UK is also doing very well considering. It just baffles me that no other country is even in the same category as israel in terms of readiness, despite nine months to prepare.

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

#25

Post by throwaway4good »

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.

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

#27

Post by [deleted] »

dm319 wrote: post #21
kuu wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we all in Europe are in a similar situation (based in comments of friends of different countries), so it seems to me that is not because the internal organization of delivering / injecting the vaccine but the production of it. The production is going very slow, and therefore the rollout it's super slow...

There are a lot of analyses already about what has gone wrong with the European vaccine effort. It seems to be partly a mixture of being a bit stingy with procurement, being skeptical of new RNA vaccines, putting too much stock in sanofi and j&j, and requiring everything ratified by every country to proceed. In fact it was going so slowly that four countries decided to organise their own precurement, and that became…

[deleted]

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

#28

Post by top_sigrid »

lnsru wrote: post #7
lukeitup wrote: post #4

That is some well needed news! Just hope that Europe will speed up its vaccine distribution now.

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, that doses for over 40 million people will be delivered in the second quarter (including some one time vaccines from Johnson&Johnson, as also with them there were contracts). Together with the 9 mio from the first, that is 49mio people (~61%) in the first half of 2021. So while it started slow (as was to expect), numbers will start rising soon.

These numbers were only for Germany, I don't know exactly how this reflects for Europe, but as all orders were made Europe-wide, I guess this is similar for the whole EU, at least that was the whole point for having a Europe-wide strategy.

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

#29

Post by ilkkao »

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?

I've been wondering this myself too. Lockdowns are so expensive that I'd assume every unconventional method to expand the production is taken into use. The situation is bad but not so bad that competitors could be forced to work together it seems.

I expect that the amount of angry people in EU will peak in spring or early summer when UK, US, and Israel are mostly back to normal and we are not.

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

#30

Post by amrx431 »

scrollaway wrote: post #5

Israel feels like the only nation taking the importance and urgency of vaccination seriously. Here in Europe, articles are coming out complaining that the slow vaccination could be harming the economy which, well, fucking duh. ( https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/154626/c... ) Fast rollout. Involve pharmacies. Involve the army. Distribute widely and efficiently. Prepare for months before the vaccine…

India. It is an enigma that why is India's response to Covid-19 gets ignored. India to date has vaccinated more people than Israel and has one of the least CFR per capita.
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