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

reuters.com

71–80 of 460 posts

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

#71

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…

On the local level things seem to work, they're just not getting nearly enough vaccine. The machinery is there, it's just sitting idle in the parking lot. This is a huge, enormous screw-up which can be almost entirely pinned on promoting people that have achieved nothing but failures into EU offices, the latest and most egregious case of which is Ursula von der Leyen. Guess what, when you're promoting an incompetent…

Up to now, no one dared to task the EU with something as important, because it was always clear from the start that the EU isn't capable of handling tasks that are complex, time-critical and important. But since the production chains of most vaccines are spread all over the EU, smaller members were afraid to be left out, larger members wanted a slice of the cake for their pharmaceutical industries (i.e. France) and the current EU leader von der Leyen was promoted there by Germany's chancellor Merkel, everyone was in a position where they just had to involve the EU.

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

#72
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The American factories are only producing for Americans. The European ones are producing for the whole world.

doesn't explain why European ones are happening in one factory

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

#73
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...

Europe has definitely dropped the ball in terms of supply, but looking at the numbers, I can't help but feel like at least Belgium couldn't actually distribute more if it had more to distribute. Just recently the country was boasting about being ahead of its own schedule and all I can think is "if you're ahead of schedule despite all of europe being dry on supplies, your schedule sucks, doesn't it?". It's very likely…

Belgium is as disorganized as you can get. Most of the time over the last 20 years they didn't manage to form a government, just an endless chain of interim solutions that quickly broke apart. It shows...

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

#74
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

The problem was, as usual, EU countries' nationalism and wealth disparity. Macron insisted that the EU not order more doses from Germany's Biontech than from French Sanofi. So far so usual, but the worst problem were the Eastern European countries - they insisted on also keeping AstraZeneca with their 1.78€ a dose on board because well they are poor and can't afford more.

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

#75
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…

I can't find a single bit of evidence to support your post, so I'll go out on a limb and say stop spreading fake news.

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

#76
post #29
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.

I think currently the main reason why not more factories produce the BionTech/Pfizer Vaccine is that it is quite difficult to manufacture and so it takes time to set up additional capacity. As far as I know several competitors are in discussion to build additional capacity. Of course there is the question why this has not been done earlier.

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

#77
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…

Aggressive comes of as a weasel word here; what does it even mean in a context where a pandemic has killed hundreds of thousands? It's redicilious that even with the hindsight if israel's fantastically successful vaccination program, people are still anti-vac.

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

#78
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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

#79
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are they? Didn't the EU put up a vaccine export ban? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55860540

No, they are currently just requiring export licenses "to get an overview". Up to now, all export requests have been granted and there are large parts of the world where no license is required: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/weltwirtschaft/eu-impfs... Overall I would call it useless EU blustering, there won't be an export ban, no matter what happens. It is just the minimum required measure to save face.

Also lets not forget that this was specifically targeting the UK, not the rest of the world.

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

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel is in a continuous state of war. It is both prepared and aware that a pandemic can disrupt your defences enough to make you an easy target. I think this played a big role in their response.

Israel has competition between several private healthcare providers. That fact makes them agile and efficient than most places in the world (e.g. Britain's NHS ). The army has nothing to do with the vaccine rollout.

That's quite irrelevant to the point. And in fact the UK are also doing very well with vaccine rollout (and the army is involved).

In Israel, where everyone has received a military training and is ready to organise, the IDF is of course very involved in the vaccine rollout though the Home Front Command. The supply of the vaccine is also controlled by the government, not private healthcare providers.

But my point was not even this. It was about how to consider the pandemic and its potential consequences as part of the internal government's discussions on how to respond and then the capacity to act quickly. I have no doubt that Israel has deemed Covid a very serious threat to national security and has thus mobilised accordingly using their experience of the de facto continuous state of war or at least high alert to organise and act quickly and effectively.

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