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EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

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Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#81

Post by ben_w »

fighterpilot wrote: post #63
ben_w wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s something like a thousand times less dangerous than the virus — 4 or 5 per million for the vaccine, 1 to 10 per thousand for the disease. (And COVID deaths staying that low assumes we continue to prevent the instantaneous case load exceeding the capacity of the health care system, which is hard enough when we can tell people a vaccine is coming and they just need to wait for it).

You really do have to segment by age groups when doing this analysis.

Would it change the conclusion? I can’t find good age-specific fatality rates for either thanks to all the search results being polluted with news about controversy rather than actual science, but the baseline pre-COVID stats I’ve seen for the incidence rate of venous thromboembolism in the USA is 30/100k/y in 25-35 year olds and 300-500/100k/y in 70-79 year olds.

Again, that’s the rate it was happening already (well, in 2003), no vaccine and no pandemic. This doesn’t seem enough to counteract the roughly one thousand-fold decrease in risk of being vaccinated relative to not being vaccinated.

In any case, this isn’t “people getting blood clots and dropping like flies in parking lots”.

I’m old enough to remember when deep vein thrombosis was all over the news, convincing people to buy special socks for long-haul flights.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#82

Post by Dumbdo »

jarmitage wrote: post #66
Dumbdo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my personal experience (at least the German) media focuses on that as well. I read a lot of articles on how the companies are working to scale the output up. One good and recent example is this article (paywalled) https://www.zeit.de/2021/15/biontech-werk-marburg-corona-imp...

That's good to hear. Maybe I don't read enough UK media widely enough (for health reasons!) to really have a say here, but I don't remember reading similar articles recently. It must be out there though, perhaps in more specialised media.

> for health reasons

I can relate to that, which is also a reason why I now _try_ to consume weekly newspapers (like the linked "Die Zeit") instead of the daily/hourly short-lived news. In my experience the latter tend to report more about "drama" and focus more on negative things, exactly like you said.

I also saw your remark in the other chain:

> I was referring more to the discourse, which seems to be about heightening nationalistic sentiments by pitting governments against each other fighting over a small stockpile

And that also makes sense. I'd say that's something especially prominent nowadays due to Brexit. The amount of news highlighting the failures of the EU certainly got an uptick in the UK and so did the news portraying UK's vaccine import as "egoistic" in the German media. There are certainly more shades to that, but it's pretty obvious from the newspapers as well that the EU and UK are just frustrated with each other currently.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#83

Post by sschueller »

_Microft wrote: post #18
throw-8462682 wrote: post #13

At this point, AZ must really regret having gone down the road of working with Oxford to supply a Covid vaccine. They are not even making money off it at the moment. Pfizer on the other hand hit gold with their BioNTech collaboration. They are making 10+ B this year and probably even more in brand value. AZ on the other hand lost billions of brand value. Is there a morale of this story?

I bet a lot of people will hate to hear that but I think the morale of the story is "Don't overpromise and underdeliver".

So far that hasn't hurt Elon Musk a bit...

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#84

Post by fighterpilot »

ben_w wrote: post #81
fighterpilot wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really do have to segment by age groups when doing this analysis.

Would it change the conclusion? I can’t find good age-specific fatality rates for either thanks to all the search results being polluted with news about controversy rather than actual science, but the baseline pre-COVID stats I’ve seen for the incidence rate of venous thromboembolism in the USA is 30/100k/y in 25-35 year olds and 300-500/100k/y in 70-79 year olds. Again, that’s the rate it was happening already (well…

I meant when comparing it to how deadly the virus is. The virus might be 1000x more deadly for the average person, but that's grouping 20 year-olds with 85 year-olds.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#85

Post by samaman »

throw-8462682 wrote: post #62
rjzzleep wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a seriously fucked up response to personally attack someone that made a statement based on existing research that YOU don't know about, just because YOU decided to divide the world into two people. Those that YOU think agree (which you conveniently labeled vaxers) and those that YOU disagree with. Not only that, but you don't even have the balls to actually use your account to write that incendiary comment. It's…

Respectfully, are you a doctor? I am not. That link is from 2007 and talks about a modified Adenovirus. There’s so much medical jargon in there that I can’t make any sense of it, let alone connect it to increased risk of strokes for an Adenovirus based COVID vaccine. I understand why vaccines can be scary but ask yourself this: is your unease based on a deep medical understanding of the subject matter, or an underbel…

What the comment basically said is that adenovirus on it's own produced coagulation aka clotting, but that PEG wrapping decreases coagulation a lot. Therefore, a vaccine embedded in PEG, like those made by BioNTech and Moderna, should lead to less coagulation.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#86

Post by rsynnott »

zpeti wrote: post #45
throwaway10110 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

---

Why not mention the very negative mentions of AZ by macron and merkel? Macron even wanted to stop all foreign vaccines and rely on some French one. I have no love for Putin or Johnson but this most certainly wasn’t down to just their politics. EU leaders are massively at fault here with their rhetoric too.

This is your brain on the Daily Mail, I think... There is no approved French vaccine.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#87

Post by shubb »

NumberCruncher wrote: post #75
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't remember exact values but my guess is this friction comes from the price point. AZ was negotiated at something like less than 2 euros per shot for EU markets, and the Pfizer contracts varied wildly for different countries but it was negotiated at about 15 euros per shot for EU. With my cynical hat on if you are having to vaccinate millions that order of magnitude difference probably matters. What I haven't se…

I remember the exact values, at least the ones published on public media (German ZDF): The negotiation wasn't about the purchasing prise of a shot, but about the price to "reserve a shot". Germany spent ca. 4€ per capita on "reserving an AZ shot", which adds up to a total spending of ca. 350M€. Just to have a comparison: - Last time I bought a beer in a pub in Munich a paid more than 4€ - Just last week Germany spent…

>> selling the vaccine to whoever pays the highest price

It does not appear the AZ are shipping vaccine to customers based on price. We know that Pfizer are, which is why Israel has been able to pay them a premium to get vaccines first.

Rather, AZ appear to have set up manufacturing dedicated to particular contracts - for instance separate manufacturing in the EU, manufacturing in the UK, manufacturing in the US, and manufacturing in Latin America. They seem to have written contracts that say 'you get what your dedicated manufacturing produces'.

The dispute between the EU and AZ is about whether the UK counts as being in the EU - in my opinion AZ appear to have taken money from the UK to build factories there, included those factories in the EU's contracted dedicated manufacturing when they should not have, and then refused to give the EU the vaccines from these factories.

This became relevant because AZ manufacturing yields are lower than expected - less vaccine than expected is being produced for a given amount of manufacturing capacity - so the bugs in their contractual arrangements have become visible.

So, I agree that AZ screwed up, but I disagree with your model of why.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#88

Post by sharikone »

oaiey wrote: post #37
rjzzleep wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still waiting too see long term effects of all adenovirus based vaccines. I'm kinda estimating there to be an increased risk of strokes overall. But I'm constantly baffled at Germany's vaccine response. Remember that Pfizer's vaccine is developed by the German company and that the president of the European commission used to be Germany's Minister of Family/Labour and Defense. But in a way that's a result of their…

Arrogance. No. It is very simple: Germany does not have the concept of "National Security" and does not act like that. Germany has many big pharmaceuticals in the country. But guess what: We Germans searched a solution in a European context. We tried to not only vaccinate all of us but also everyone around us. We are exporting the shots all over the world (Canada as an example is supplied by Germany and not by the US…

Of course Germany has a concept of national security... and a large sphere of influence to protect that

And it's nothing to be ashamed about. E.g. see https://m.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-new...

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#89

Post by jimmydorry »

Slartie wrote: post #57
jarmitage wrote: post #4

Does anyone know why all of the geopolitical discourse in the UK and Europe has been around arguing over a small supply, rather than about increasing manufacturing capacity?

Increasing manufacturing capacity is happening. BioNTech as the most important producer in Europe has brought multiple additional partners into production as well as an entire new plant, which by itself is churning out 1 billion doses per year when fully operational (they're still scaling up production there AFAIK, but have been shipping doses from there since April). Also, the CureVac vaccine is expected to be autho…

I would need to refresh myself on the specifics, but either Italy or the EU itself blocked shipments of AstraZeneca from Italy to Australia. I recall France saying they would do the same as this came to a head.

To say that the EU as a whole wouldn’t block exporting is a bit premature when we already have precedent.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#90

Post by zpeti »

rsynnott wrote: post #86
zpeti wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not mention the very negative mentions of AZ by macron and merkel? Macron even wanted to stop all foreign vaccines and rely on some French one. I have no love for Putin or Johnson but this most certainly wasn’t down to just their politics. EU leaders are massively at fault here with their rhetoric too.

This is your brain on the Daily Mail, I think... There is no approved French vaccine.

Macron wanted to use this vaccine as a matter of national pride. He talked down Astrazeneca because of it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/french-self-es...

Things have changed a lot since then, it's been forgotten.

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