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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

#391

Post by Redoubts »

jimbokun wrote: post #381
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 it's almost entirely a supply issue? Israel, UK and USA procured large amount of doses ahead of time, and now EU is having trouble getting enough doses for their population. That was my understanding.

It’s weird because the NYT ran an article about how little we procured ahead of time, compared to the EU. And now they’re the ones fumbling it

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

#392

Post by chaosite »

tguvot wrote: post #336
underdeserver wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel had a very good starting point - the 4 mandatory healthcare providers (Clalit, Maccabi, Leumit, Meukhedet), who due to a voucher system could only compete on service. They had every interest to digitize and improve efficiency over the past decade or so. That's why they did digitize - every resident has a digital medical file, and healthcare providers can easily track and report back to Pfizer and the ministry…

healthcare providers in Israel have centralized systems/databases for at least 20 if not 30 years the only "digitization" over past decade, it's shiny websites.

You're right, the digitization effort was around 2000 or so.

But you're presenting that as somehow being bad, while it's actually better than what a lot of other countries have.

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

#393

Post by matt_o »

kevinstubbs wrote: post #285
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What bothers me the most, is the delay in signing the vacine contracts with Pfizer and AstraZeneca. The US for all the criticism it can take, closed this negotiation in weeks. We spent a whopping 3 months arguing with pharma companies about price and liability before closing these contracts. There are people dying avoidable deaths while we allowed for this inertia. There are no serious media outlets pushing the Europ…

I imagine the US has a ton of leverage in such negotiations. Something along the lines of "give us a good price on this to make us look good or else maybe we'll actually do something about the ridiculous price gouging for medicine in this country." No pharma exec wants to be the one that killed the golden goose.

It seems to me that, if negotiation leverage is the crucial factor here, then wouldn't the US and EU be in a similar spot?

The EU's economy is roughly the same size as the US's[0], but the EU has roughly a little over 445 million citizens compare to the US's ~330 million.

I would imagine that EU countries paying for the healthcare of 445 million citizens would be considered as quite a large "customer" for pharmaceutical companies and could strike a good deal.

How does the US get an edge in negotiations over the EU? It feels that military power wouldn't factor here, but I'm having trouble coming up with other ideas. What else could it be?

[0]: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/10868691/2-1...

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

#394

Post by call_me_dana »

benja123 wrote: post #209
oblio wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making matters a bit worse is that the anti-vaccine propaganda has been quite successful in some areas, with some anti-vaxxers going as far as to book appointments only to intentionally not show up so that the vaccine is wasted. This should be a criminal offense. It's basically https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangerment in a more roundabout way.

It is, but I am not sure how you enforce it as it is extremely hard to prove. I think they should be going after the people who have been making posts encouraging this type of behavior. Unfortunately the anti-vaxxers in Israel are extremely aggressive and they use a lot of fear tactics and deceptive “marketing”. An approximate translation of the largest anti-vaccine group in Israel’s Facebook page title is “Vaccines,…

One giant problem, which you seem to be suffering from, is lumping in radical anti-vaxxers who would willingly waste doses with people that are questioning the safety of the vaccines. These people are looking to have an open discussion on the positives and negatives to getting the vaccine, but instead find themselves the victims of name calling and censorship.

Conflating the vaccine hesitant with the radicals you mention is done on purpose of course, but there’s a real cost. You are alienating and further radicalizing fence sitters. Censorship of open discussion can also be seen as confirming their possible view that vaccine manufacturers are ”hiding something“.

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

#395

Post by bronzeage »

Nothing like an election coming up in few months to force the leader to speed up things. I bet if Bibi didn't care about elections and staying in power whilst awaiting awaiting trial, we wouldn't have rushed this vaccination campaign as fast as we did.

The vaccine itself wouldn't have been available if Trump wasn't acting out of his own deadline of elections, and sadly, Pfizer decided to backstab him and publish results literally one week too late. However with the scale of fraud revealed I hardly think it mattered.

Most important feature of elections is holding these leaders accountable. It doesn't happen when they have millions of easily fabricated mail votes backing them up, and just for saying that I bet the US mob will downvote me to oblivion but that's the truth. Leaders that are scrutinized and criticized properly by the media will always act more in the people's favor then those handled gently and favorably by the media.

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

#396

Post by isbvhodnvemrwvn »

hef19898 wrote: post #160
lnsru wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Build 10 damn factories if needed. For biotech it is cheap - hundreds of millions, not billion range as for semiconductor. As a reminder - saving Lufthansa alone consumed €9B: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52801131

Sure, and it is the mney that is building these factories? You need people, you need certification. And that is once the building and equipment is their. No dea why people always ignore the time aspect of supply chains. Having more capacity in 4 months isn't any good now . Nor is it n 4 months when existing capacites are suffcient in 4 months anyway. And they are using new site, Biontech in Marburg (a reporposed exis…

There's a lot of software engineers here who are used to having a prototype banged out in a few weeks and think it applies to everything else.

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

#397

Post by 2-tpg »

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…

Israel has one of the best biowarfare offense and defense in the world. For them, Iran releasing a bioengineered pathogen is a legit threat. The El-Al flight that crashed in Amsterdam in 1992 was carrying materials to produce large quantities of Sarin for the purpose of testing gas masks.

Israel is specifically suited to treat COVID as a test-run for a biowarfare attack. A real War Effort, because it is one.

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

#398

Post by DanHulton »

bronzeage wrote: post #395

Nothing like an election coming up in few months to force the leader to speed up things. I bet if Bibi didn't care about elections and staying in power whilst awaiting awaiting trial, we wouldn't have rushed this vaccination campaign as fast as we did. The vaccine itself wouldn't have been available if Trump wasn't acting out of his own deadline of elections, and sadly, Pfizer decided to backstab him and publish resu…

Despite many attempts, exactly zero accusations of voter fraud have been proven, or even considered vaguely probable.

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

#399

Post by mchusma »

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 US also has almost no sense or urgency (maybe more than the EU, but pretty bad).

Examples:

- modernas main bottleneck is filling. They applied weeks ago to fill the same bottles with 15 doses instead of 10. The FDA has still not approved it.

- the us prioritizes second doses over first doses. This creates a ton of cascading issues, including the fact that many places are storing half the doses for 28 days. Many people have reported getting the same lot number for the second shot.

- the FDA takes 3 weeks to schedule approval meetings (after having reviewed the data enough to believe an EUA is warranted).

-the FDA hasn't approved Astrazeneca, one of the last countries to do so.

-our prioritization system is a mess. It's really hard to figure out who is eligible. "Healthcare workers" (which was supposed to be the first group) is vague, so of course what happened is what you would expect. I know about 100 people personally who have gotten the vaccine as healthcare workers. Only 1 works with COVID patients. Most of the others have less contact with people than grocery store workers. They should have just done covid ward workers first (<1M people) then go by age only. Super easy to know who is eligible. Our local hospital sat on doses from late Dec to late Jan because they didn't know who to give them to. After sitting on them for almost 30 days, they realized if all the doses went bad it would be a scandal so they just gave it to everyone on the property first come first serve.

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

#400

Post by azinman2 »

mchusma wrote: post #399
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 US also has almost no sense or urgency (maybe more than the EU, but pretty bad). Examples: - modernas main bottleneck is filling. They applied weeks ago to fill the same bottles with 15 doses instead of 10. The FDA has still not approved it. - the us prioritizes second doses over first doses. This creates a ton of cascading issues, including the fact that many places are storing half the doses for 28 days. Many p…

I think you’re making a lot of assumptions that FDA approval/disapprovals are slow due to a sense of urgency. I’d like to see evidence for that, I’d personally assume it’s quite the opposite— they’re trying to get it as right as they can before doing something at scale that can’t be easily undone.

If 15 doses lead to issues compared to 10, then you jeopardize all those vaccines which are slow and difficult to make. You also give people false sense of hope and possibly either get lower effectiveness or build public distrust. These are tough balancing acts.

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