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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

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Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#61

Post by mikem170 »

piva00 wrote: post #23
MrRiddle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, I’m not convinced it’s such a disaster it’s being portayed. Serbia is/was heavily hit by Covid, yet only 12% more people died in 2020 than 5 year average before that. Again, meh.

Only 12%? More than 1/10 of your population dies, literally more than a decimation by its old meaning, saying that this is not such a disaster is incredibly unempathetic. Or you have a very warped view of what consists a disaster...

No, In Sweden 1144 out of every million people have died [0], which equates to 1 out of every 874 people.

Does 1 out of 874 people dead, mostly elderly and/or with comorbidities, sound bad?

Picture a room with 874 people. That's a lot of people. Ask 1 person to leave. Is that a disaster for society?

[0] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#62

Post by mellosouls »

mrtksn wrote: post #32

I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines. Very populous countries are getting them and any distrust towards the reporting of these vaccines could have been scrutinized(Turkey run its own "stage 3" on the Chinese one, got its own numbers and is inspecting the deliveries for 2 weeks before vaccinating the population). Now we have this situation where EU is lagging behind very se…

Presumably because (despite your point about customer countries doing their own testing) China and Russia are undemocratic and authoritarian regimes which are not trusted to produce a vaccine that has been properly tested in a fully accountable way.

That is not to doubt their scientific prowess, but the ability of their science to avoid gross political interference.

Neither is it to imply the West are angels, but comparatively China and Russia are not subject to the same democratic oversight.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#63

Post by peteretep »

robotmay wrote: post #10

From what I've gathered (unfortunately mostly on Reddit, before this article), Ursula von der Leyen wasn't exactly fondly thought of in Germany before this and somehow keeps managing to fail upwards. Is that accurate? The utterly bonkers u-turn today was a bit of a shocker. For those that haven't seen the news, the European Commission managed to say they were effectively going to establish border controls between the…

> Even if the UK was somehow being duplicitous here, and had somehow undermined the EU vaccine program

But let us be clear that it isn’t, and they are not.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#64

Post by xiphias2 »

mrtksn wrote: post #52
Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #50

Some had faith in the new mRNA technology, while others preferred to rely on more time-tested methods. Sometimes articles hide a great deal in one seemingly innocuous sentence. From what I've learned from Europeans, there's only one vaccine candidate of that nature the EU considered, a Sanofi Pasteur/GlaxoSmithKline combo, the former providing the infamous spike protein, the latter an adjuvant. Everyone expected this…

Chinese and the Russian vaccines were not even considered. Now those are used in mass vaccinations, soon EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all. People don't even want to talk about that, as if those alternatives don't exists. Non-EU countries in Europe are getting them. Serbia(6.1) and Turkey(2.3) are already close to EU average(2.6) or better on the vaccination process.

I still don't know whether my parents should get the Chinese / Russian vaccines or not.

I'm more concerned about lack of efficiency than safety. The problem is that after they get one of the vaccines, they won't have any chance to get more from the Pfeizer vaccine when it arrives.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#65

Post by bluGill »

Exmoor wrote: post #46

I've been wondering when these chickens would come home to roost. There are a few countries who have heavily touted how many vaccines they've agreed to buy, but aren't being nearly as vocal about when they're going to actually have them in hand. Having contracts to vaccinate everyone in your country 4 times over doesn't do much good if you don't get those people any dose for another 9 months. It now seems plausible t…

Only a few governments can be smug about how they handled Covid, and they are all in Asia (counting New Zealand and Australia as Asia, which is hand wavy). Even those who can make such a claim are still only one mistake from it all crashing down.

Europe likes to think they are doing better than the US, but the truth is they are not very different.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#66

Post by coldtea »

mrtksn wrote: post #32

I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines. Very populous countries are getting them and any distrust towards the reporting of these vaccines could have been scrutinized(Turkey run its own "stage 3" on the Chinese one, got its own numbers and is inspecting the deliveries for 2 weeks before vaccinating the population). Now we have this situation where EU is lagging behind very se…

>I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines.

Because they care for politics and diplomacy plays (and playing second fiddle to American rivarly with these countries), not for the citizens...

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#67

Post by maxerickson »

Throwawayaerlei wrote: post #60
maxerickson wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It did, it just wasn't ambitious enough. There were separate grants, but the preorders were only enough to cover the entire population if multiple vaccines were approved. I guess it is possible that production was scaled up as fast as possible, but it seems that there was a lack of imagination in the planning process (setting low goals, not anticipating far enough ahead, etc).

From the now taken down Operation Warp Speed page, see here https://web.archive.org/web/20210119000857/https://www.hhs.g... 300 million doses from AZ, 100 million from Novavax, as mentioned in my other comment 100 million from Pfizer, 100 million from Sanofi/GSK which as mentioned failed, and a 100 million from Johnson and Johnson. Also mentions we signed the second 100 million dose contract with Moderna December 11t…

Yeah, like $12 billion dollars. We are spending trillions on relief, so it's worth asking if more money spent on production could have accelerated things. A few tens of billions more would have been cheap!

The vaccine shipments here (Michigan) have accelerated considerably since December, implying a pretty small head start on manufacturing.

The distribution trends tab on https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98178_1032... shows the shipments.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#68

Post by mikem170 »

trianglem wrote: post #14
cdavid wrote: post #7

I wonder if this will become a watershed moment for the EU. I've always been an ardent believer in the European program, both for historical reasons (I have French and German grand parents), but also because for all its warts, I believed the EU had a competent bureaucracy, able to go above the pettyness of national politics. French politicians of all side love scapegoating EU for their own failures. To say that the c…

The Trump administration spewed misinformation from day one that caused massive dissonance in dealing with the problem. Saying they did better when they had literally no plan and let 400,000 people die is incredible dissembling and most likely a political statement than a logical one. They literally dissuaded people from using masks.

A lot of people in our democracy might not agree with your assessment of this pandemic. A lot of people feel that 1 in 750 people dying, mostly older with comorbidities, is not the disaster for society that some seem to think it is. A lot of people think that giving up a year or two of their social and economic lives is not worth trying to avoid a 1 in 750, or 0.13%, chance of dying. Especially those, like the young, who have less than 1 in 100,000 chance of dying.

Trying to tell them this is a catastrophe based on the numbers isn't going to work.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#69

Post by coldtea »

mellosouls wrote: post #62
mrtksn wrote: post #32

I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines. Very populous countries are getting them and any distrust towards the reporting of these vaccines could have been scrutinized(Turkey run its own "stage 3" on the Chinese one, got its own numbers and is inspecting the deliveries for 2 weeks before vaccinating the population). Now we have this situation where EU is lagging behind very se…

Presumably because (despite your point about customer countries doing their own testing) China and Russia are undemocratic and authoritarian regimes which are not trusted to produce a vaccine that has been properly tested in a fully accountable way. That is not to doubt their scientific prowess, but the ability of their science to avoid gross political interference. Neither is it to imply the West are angels, but com…

>Presumably because (despite your point about customer countries doing their own testing) China and Russia are undemocratic and authoritarian regimes which are not trusted to produce a vaccine that has been properly tested in a fully accountable way.

That's the last thing they care about (if it's even in the list). For one, we could easily verify the vaccines of those countries with independent testing here or there, we don't have to "trust" their development method and testing.

Not to mention we seemed to have no problem trusting their drugs and vaccines (Chinese ones) for decades. Suddenly we don't?

It's the trade war with China and the pressure on Russia (to just give in and open up to western companies/demands like in the Yeltsin era).

The rest are excuses for gullible citizens.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#70

Post by coldtea »

cosmodisk wrote: post #38
mrtksn wrote: post #32

I still don’t understand why EU did not consider the Chinese and Russian vaccines. Very populous countries are getting them and any distrust towards the reporting of these vaccines could have been scrutinized(Turkey run its own "stage 3" on the Chinese one, got its own numbers and is inspecting the deliveries for 2 weeks before vaccinating the population). Now we have this situation where EU is lagging behind very se…

This is a political suicide in many countries+ the likelihood of people wanting to take it may be on the lower side.

It's definitely not a "political suicide" in Europe, in the sense that people have political objections to that.

It is a political suicide in the sense that the political establishment will punish those that opt for it, however.

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