[HN Gopher] EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine con...
___________________________________________________________________
EU Commission to end AstraZeneca and J&J vaccine contracts at
expiry
Author : osivertsson
Score : 112 points
Date : 2021-04-14 12:42 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| alexandr1us wrote:
| Some people are reporting bad side effects
| https://t.me/covidvaccinevictims
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Even if true (and apparently some German officials are saying it
| isn't), the contracts go through the end of 2021 is my
| understanding, so that makes these announcements a bit less
| significant than the headlines suggests.
|
| To be honest, it seems like there is an argument to be made that
| the rich countries _should_ stop buying the J&J and AZ vaccines,
| except perhaps to donate to poorer countries, because the mRNA
| vaccines are much more challenging for poorer countries to use
| (multiple doses, refrigeration more challenging). I wonder if the
| focus on (very rare) side effects is part of an effort to lay the
| groundwork for doing that without a huge backlash from rich
| country citizens.
| JamisonM wrote:
| The rich countries shouldn't stop buying they should buy and
| give away for sure. Not some strings-attached bullshit but just
| straight-up dropping refrigerated containers of them at
| airports.
|
| Politics is unfortunately going to get in the way of that.
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| The EU Commission is disputing this report, according to German
| news.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I don't doubt it, but a link would be good?
| trampi wrote:
| https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/corona-impfstoffe-eu-
| kommi...
|
| > Berichte, wonach Vertrage mit AstraZeneca und Johnson &
| Johnson ausliefen, dementierte die Kommission aber.
|
| translated: However, the commission denied reports that
| contracts with AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson were
| expiring.
| est31 wrote:
| https://www.handelsblatt.com/dpa/konjunktur/wirtschaft-
| hande...
|
| > Entsprechende Berichte seien falsch, sagte ein EU-Beamter.
| Es sei viel zu fruh, daruber jetzt zu entscheiden.
| Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote:
| Seems rather short sighted in my opinion given that the current
| scientific consensus is that Covid will become a seasonal thing
| as it mutates which means that booster shots will probably be
| needed. Given that amount of R&D funds that the two companies
| have put in I would imagine they would be reluctant to join in
| efforts to produce a vaccination for future variations.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| Its a false report, so no worries (see other comment thread)
| lampe3 wrote:
| short sighted is the mantra in a lot of EU Politics...
|
| In Germany politicians don't think longer then the next
| TV/Internet shit storm cycle...
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| Uninformed cynicism, however, is the exclusive mantra of
| online commentating.
|
| The EU is disputing the report in question. And even if it
| were true, they'd probably have some reason than what you're
| coming up with in the absence of all information, which is
| basically "let's kill some people".
| polack wrote:
| The point of this decision is that they think mRNA technology
| is the future, so they're investing in that. While I don't
| dispute that lots of EU politics is short sighted, this seems
| to be the direct opposite.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| It's not reserved to German politicians but the EU democracy
| apparatus as a whole is broken to the core without any better
| alternative.
|
| Politicians aren't incentivized to optimize for doing what's
| right for their constituencies or the greater good but
| instead they say whatever gets them (re)elected then do
| whatever their lobby friends who contribute to the party's
| fund tell them to do, while putting a positive spin on this
| for the great unwashed.
|
| We have no system in place that holds politicians accountable
| for the damage they do throughout their careers.
|
| Even when they are forced to resign due to various scandals,
| they often end up as "consultants" at the businesses they
| helped get rich with tax-payer money.
| Daho0n wrote:
| It's like this everywhere except in those countries without
| democratic elections. It's a big part of democracy.
|
| Edit: Changed 'with' to 'without'. Woops.
| andrepd wrote:
| I don't disagree but how is that a feature of EU democracy
| and not democracy in general?
| moystard wrote:
| That statement can be applied to a lot of countries outside
| of the EU, it is not an EU specific problem. It represents
| a challenge for western democracies that appeared with the
| recent waves of populist movements (Trump, Brexit, 5 Stars,
| etc.)
| tertius wrote:
| Ending a contract would encourage them to do more R&D for more
| future contracts.
|
| Don't subsidize drugs/vaccines that don't work.
|
| There are 100+ vaccines being worked on. We're fine.
| thu2111 wrote:
| But AstraZeneca _does_ work. The idea it doesn 't is a
| fiction peddled by French and German political leaders, it's
| not based in science.
| rocqua wrote:
| And this can be clearly seen in the UK covid numbers!
| krzyk wrote:
| It works, but has inferior efficacy compared to mRNA
| vaccines. Same for J&J.
|
| If you have a choice, why get AZ? More over second shot is
| 3 months away, for mRNA it is at most 42 days away.
|
| J&J has one shot, that has efficacy lower event than AZ.
|
| US is vaccinated mostly using mRNA (because AZ took long to
| approve and J&J came at that time, but is now blocked).
|
| In my country we have the most amount of Pfizer vaccine, AZ
| screwed us and didn't deliver so why bother with almost
| non-existent vaccine that has lower efficacy?
|
| J&J delivered todays some vaccines, but I assume it won't
| do it anymore as it waits to see what happens with
| clothing.
| tblt wrote:
| It's my understanding that efficacy cannot be directly
| compared like this, as it's a function of what variants
| were around during the trial, amongst other things. I
| believe Vice produced a good video on this recently.
|
| Importantly, don't all vaccines currently authorised have
| 100% protection against death from COVID-19?
|
| Edit: it was Vox, not Vice, and the video is here:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A
| elliekelly wrote:
| > Don't subsidize drugs/vaccines that don't work.
|
| Why not? Funding vaccine research seems a worthy endeavor
| even if some of the research doesn't pan out. The end result
| doesn't need to be an immediately usable vaccine in order for
| the time & money spent to be worthwhile. Even a completely
| failed vaccine project could yield a piece of information
| that helps ensure the next project doesn't fail.
| Daho0n wrote:
| Yes but funding the research and buying vaccines that
| doesn't work or won't be used for whatever reason is not
| the same thing though. You can help fund research without
| buying the vaccine. It would be quite the waste to buy
| stuff just to throw it out.
| bluGill wrote:
| There are different levels of research. Right not
| Adrenovirus vaccines need to go back to the lab and figure
| out this clotting issue. Maybe they can, maybe they can't,
| either way this is a basic research question that needs
| only a tiny amount of research money. More importantly,
| that money needs to be spread over a few years.
|
| Most of the vast amounts of research funding given isn't
| really research, it is scaling up production - a much
| harder problem that needs much more money. Since we now
| know of some issues (that would be very hard to find before
| a large scale roll out - lets not put undeserved fault on
| anyone here) the labs can focus on them.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| > Don't subsidize drugs/vaccines that don't work.
|
| Both AZ and J&J have been proven effective. They clearly
| work. It might not be politically expedient for the EU
| Commission to emphasize that fact, but it is true
| nevertheless.
| krzyk wrote:
| They work, but at least AZ is working hard to NOT deliver
| vaccines to EU. (and sending those manufactured in EU to
| the UK).
|
| Remember when Italians found 15M vaccines at the factory? I
| don't know why AZ representatives aren't prosecuted for
| such behavior of the company.
|
| So I think it is a good call to wait for the contract to
| end.
|
| BTW. Work at ~72%, mRNAs are at ~91%. What would you choose
| if you had both at the table? And what would you choose if
| you have the 91% at the table and 72% one in the other
| room?
| IAmEveryone wrote:
| "The food is terrible, and the portions much too small".
| makomk wrote:
| The 15 million vaccines which the EU and Italy claimed
| were some secret shipment to the UK without any basis,
| and actually turned out to be part of their already
| publicly announced deliveries to the EU and South America
| (with the latter being vaccines of non-EU origin which
| they were just packaging)? Those 15 million vaccines?
| There's been some astoundingly dodgy political narrative-
| pushing against AZ.
| krzyk wrote:
| I didn't write it was a secret shipment to the UK. Just
| that they have hidden 15M doses, that could be used to
| protect lives. And considering that they were obligated
| to provide few M of vaccines to EU countries makes it a
| good case against AZ.
|
| Is reducing the total amount of vaccines to EU from 500M
| to 200M in the whole 2021 also a dodgy political
| narrative against AZ?
| arrrg wrote:
| Long-term availability of mRNA vaccines is looking great
| (short-term is bad to middling but delivery promises were kept
| and even over-fulfilled and there were no relevant hiccups -
| everything is scaling up as quickly or more quickly than
| promised) and they seem to be the gold standard. Plus, as a
| bonus, maybe they are easier to modify.
|
| Price and logistics aren't really a concern that's relevant for
| the EU and mRNA vaccines. It's cheap enough and easy enough to
| handle.
| skrause wrote:
| The EU Commission has just started negotiations with BioNTech-
| Pfizer for 1.8 billion additional vaccine doses in 2021-2023:
| https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1382306561008230400
|
| They're simply betting on mRNA only, so AstraZeneca and J&J
| won't be needed anymore.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| If Covid becomes a seasonal thing (very possible), we will need
| more efficient treatments, too. For everyone who cannot either
| get the vaccine at all or didn't manage to get the booster shot
| on time.
|
| Fortunately it seems lately that some treatments do provide
| relief to people who are already sick:
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00650-7
|
| https://www.dw.com/en/asthma-drug-brings-hope-for-covid-19-t...
| maxerickson wrote:
| We don't yet have a clear picture of how necessary booster
| shots will be.
|
| Each mutation that impacts antibody reactivity also has a
| chance to impact infectiousness, and the proteins targeted by
| the vaccines are large enough that it isn't trivial to predict
| the outcome.
|
| So we might need to do boosters, or we might be fine with the
| vaccines we have now.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Presumably the mRNA makers will have ramped production enough
| that it won't matter by the time anyone needs a booster.
| maxerickson wrote:
| That doesn't appear to be the case, even if you limit it to
| "enough for rich countries".
|
| Pfizer is predicting that they will be able to produce 250
| million doses month by the end of the year, so I guess they
| are getting there (depending on how long a period is
| acceptable).
| double-a wrote:
| Source?
|
| Moderna (another mRNA vaccine) alone is estimating it will
| produce between 600M and 1B vaccines in 2021 already: https
| ://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...
|
| Curevac is on track to apply for authorization for another
| mRNA vaccine in Q2: https://www.biopharma-
| reporter.com/Article/2021/03/22/CureVa...
|
| It's not out of the question that the EU will be able to
| supply itself entirely with mRNA (or inactivated virus)
| past 2021.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Just search for Pfizer 3 billion (that's the annual rate
| they expect to be at by the end of the year).
|
| The population you want to cover and how long it is
| allowed to take are both factors in whether production is
| a limit, so there isn't really one answer as to whether
| production rate is a factor.
| refraincomment wrote:
| Good. But at the same time it should be possible to buy through
| private channels. So we can circumvent and get rid of the
| terribly inefficient bureaucrats.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Once given full approval and not just emergency use, they can
| sell directly to the people.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, dugs like vaccines are not sold to private parties. At
| least in country I know.
|
| EDIT: To clarify, vaccines are not sold without a
| prescription. At least not that I am aware of and where I
| life. So for me, a sale to a private party was understood as
| "you walk in and order it". Obviously you can do that with a
| prescription. That being said, doctors practices are already
| administering the Covid shots in the EU. Not as
| unbeaurocratic as the US so.
| dustinmoris wrote:
| They are in Europe. You can go to your family doctor and
| ask for a flu shot even if you are young and don't get it
| recommended by default. Same as you can go to your doctor
| and ask for lots of other vaccines because you want to
| travel abroad for instance. I paid for many vaccines in
| private in Austria in order to travel to certain countries.
| Don't see why I shouldn't be able to pay for a COVID-19
| vaccine the same way.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Ah, sure. But the produceris selling to the doctor who is
| then administering the shot to you. Quite different from
| you buying the shot for yourself. Without an ordonance
| from a doctor you wont get a vaccine.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > Without an ordonance from a doctor you wont get a
| vaccine.
|
| Like many people are trying to explain to you, you're
| just talking nonsense. You can get many vaccinations
| commercially without any kind of prescription in most
| western countries.
|
| Many countries even have commercial chains of shops that
| do this - for example example here's a price list of a
| company in the UK.
|
| https://www.masta-travel-health.com/Booking/Wellness
|
| In the UK even normal supermarkets offer for example
| vaccination against influenza as a normal over-the-
| counter product routinely.
| 4140tm wrote:
| Every year I go to the pharmacy and buy a flu vaccine. I
| can then get the shot in a way convenient for me.
| kube-system wrote:
| It's fairly common for private businesses like
| pharmacies/clinics/hospitals to have vaccines in much of
| the world, no?
| hef19898 wrote:
| And you can walk in there and buy it like, say, a bottle
| of oke? Not without going through a doctor before hand,
| the same doctor who administers the shot after you picked
| it up at the pharmacy.
| seszett wrote:
| It doesn't have to be the same doctor, but anyway a
| doctor is not a bureaucrat and buying medicine with a
| prescription is something that only involves private
| parties (unless you want to be reimbursed by social
| security when it exists of course, then social security
| is obviously involved and it might be public).
|
| If you're advocating for the end of mandatory doctor's
| prescription for all medicine that's your right, but it's
| rather doubtful that it would be an improvement over the
| current system.
| kube-system wrote:
| Here in the US my doctor is a "private party". They don't
| work for the government, they work at a private business.
| Nor do I need their involvement to get a vaccine.
|
| The pharmacist at my local grocery store can legally
| prescribe me a vaccine on the spot at my request, and an
| assistant can administer it. The pharmacy in my local
| grocery store is also a private business. For all intents
| and purposes, yes, I walk into a pharmacy and buy a
| vaccine.
| bluGill wrote:
| Here I walk into a pharmacy and say I want a vaccine.
| They do some paperwork and give it to me. No doctor visit
| required.
|
| My doctor can give me a vaccine, but it has been a long
| time since I got mine there. I generally the pharmacy
| because they give me a discount on some sort of item I'd
| buy anyway.
| krastanov wrote:
| Yes, especially for vaccines that are not on a schedule,
| but given in specific travel circumstances, in many
| places in Europe you can buy the dose, store it for a few
| days in your home fridge and then go to a nurse to have
| it administered (and logged if you need proof).
|
| For many of the vaccines you can just go and buy them and
| store them yourself without any special permission or
| prescription. Usually you do not want to do it, simply
| because it is easier for the immunization clinic to take
| care of it.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > And you can walk in there and buy it like, say, a
| bottle of oke?
|
| Yes I can literally walk into a shop near me and buy an
| influenza vaccination at the same time as a bottle of
| coke from the same supermarket.
|
| > Not without going through a doctor before hand
|
| No prescription needed, no doctor or nurse involved.
|
| Simple commercial transaction.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| Eu paid just a few euro per dose with other countries (and
| certainly individuals) paying 20x as much. Seems they are not
| so inefficient after all..
| stale2002 wrote:
| The end result of the EU saving this small amount of money is
| that they are now way behind countries like the UK and the
| US, on vaccinations.
|
| The economic damage to their mistake to do that is will be
| way larger than any small savings on doses.
| djbebs wrote:
| Pretty sure the EU paid around the same price as the US
| foepys wrote:
| The EU could've issued an export ban for Covid vaccines
| like the US and UK did but did not want to. There would
| have been 34 million more doses available until the end of
| March if they had done it.
|
| But even in these times, the EU rather supports their
| allies than revert to nationalism. It could pay dividends
| in the future.
| detritus wrote:
| The UK has a vaccine export ban in place?
|
| "Let me be clear: we have not blocked the export of a
| single covid-19 vaccine or vaccine components." - Boris
| Johnson
|
| https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-03-10/debates/
| 8A8...
|
| The UK has certainly sent a few hundred thousand to
| Australia - they even did it 'on the quiet' so as not to
| enrage the frothing tabloid classes.
| foepys wrote:
| The UK does not formally restrict exports but it didn't
| export a single dose to the EU despite AZ telling the EU
| that they would. This lead to the export controls the EU
| put in place where the EU can forbid exports into
| countries that don't export themselves. AZ exported 9
| million doses into the UK, the UK didn't export a single
| dose back.
|
| The UK most likely sent them to Australia because Italy
| blocked AZ exports to Australia.
| detritus wrote:
| The AZ doses that the EU did not receive were from plants
| based in the EU run by European companies fulfilling AZ
| production. The UK government even invested PS55m over a
| year ago in one such EU-based plant to bring its capacity
| up after the Dutch government didn't.
| refraincomment wrote:
| I think it's impossible to have a pro-choice viewpoint in
| discussion websites. People get too nervous and defensive.
| tertius wrote:
| Source?
| refraincomment wrote:
| As usual, advocating for personal freedom gets you downvoted.
| It's such a funny pattern.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| Maybe people don't like your idea because it reeks of the
| rich being able to buy their way to vaccines ahead of
| everyone else?
| refraincomment wrote:
| I didn't say anything about the rich. A vaccine costs
| pounds, everyone can afford it. Only thing preventing you
| from being covid protected is a random lazy bureaucrat in
| Brussels.
| moystard wrote:
| So the fact that the EU will not renew a contract at
| expiration in favour of other providers is impacting your
| freedom?
|
| The underlying truth is that a lot of Brits have
| identified with AZ, and any "attack" to the vaccine feels
| like a personal attack to their country and their
| identity to them... You seem to be in that category.
| agubelu wrote:
| Bureaucracy, and scarcity. Personal freedom to buy it
| would be great if there were more than plenty for
| everyone, but right now they should be given to those who
| have a much higher risk of severe complications and/or
| death. Not even the US allows private selling right now.
| SamReidHughes wrote:
| Charging money allows higher risk people to purchase it.
| agubelu wrote:
| How exactly is selling vaccines directly to private
| citizens going to fix the underlying issue, which is
| insufficient production?
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| You must be delusional. What's preventing you from being
| vaccinated is the scarcity of vaccines, and those being
| allocated to the people that need them most, instead of
| those that pay the most. If they were sold on the free
| market the price would rise rapidly above the current
| price, as demand outnumbers supply by at least an order
| of magnitude.
| the-dude wrote:
| Western 'Free markets' are not free at all, and the sale
| of these vaccines could be regulated to a fixed price.
|
| In the meantime, the state has taken a monopoly on the
| distribution of these vaccines and has even stopped
| administering them, so while they are available, they are
| locked away.
|
| I predict for later this year, we will see news reports
| of batches of vaccines being _safely disposed of_ (
| destroyed ).
| refraincomment wrote:
| What a bunch of retards you are :)
| parhamn wrote:
| Does anyone know how reusable the mRNA infrastructure is in the
| future for other mRNA based solutions or is this stuff more one-
| off for COVID?
| andylynch wrote:
| Very. Moderna's main focus is (or was) oncology; specifically
| personalized cancer vaccines.
| dmitryminkovsky wrote:
| In my understanding, the mRNA platform can be used for any
| application where you want to temporarily express a protein in
| the body. In the case of these COVID vaccines, it's being used
| to express the coronavirus spike protein, but Moderna is
| already using this technology for HIV, flu and others[0]. I
| believe the applications beyond vaccines are many, too.
|
| [0] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/moderna-offers-update-
| on-v...
| maxerickson wrote:
| It should be fully reusable for similar applications.
|
| The mRNA production is basically 1:1 capacity. If a different
| application needed a different lipid some of the stuff might
| not be suitable.
| theptip wrote:
| On both ends of the spectrum of mortality rates:
|
| Common cold: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23159882/.
|
| Malaria: https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2021/03/12/yale-lab-
| develops-...
| syntaxing wrote:
| It's pretty much the holy grail for vaccines. It delivers the
| spike protein via mRNA and the hardest part is the delivery
| which they're ironing out with nanolipids (also Moderna biggest
| IP) during this COVID run. Though I'm an engineer so take
| everything at face value.
| _Microft wrote:
| The vaccine only contains the (mRNA) blueprints for the spike
| protein that cells of the body will then produce themselves.
| The immune system then reacts to those.
| donretag wrote:
| mRNA is a decade in the making, which is why they were able to
| target/isolate a COVID-19 vaccine is a very short time. Two
| weeks I believe, someone please correct me.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| I think it was more like two days. Very quick.
| barrenko wrote:
| Another EU blunder, what more can be said at this point.
|
| The only person who could pivot EU to something effective at this
| point would be a fictional character such as Darth Vader.
| dathos wrote:
| How very US
| DominikD wrote:
| If or when this happens, I hope we don't end up with millions of
| people who got the frist AZ shot and are left without access to
| the second dose.
| tempestn wrote:
| All evidence suggests people will be at least as well off
| getting an mRNA vaccine for the second dose after an AZ first
| dose.
| jleyank wrote:
| Probably every drug has risks, many higher than the 1:1,000,000
| reported for AZ/J&J. It's always a balance between the risk
| untreated vs. treated - many cancer drugs will kill you, but
| slower than they kill the cancer. Contraceptives have various
| issues, but their "social good" is deemed worthwhile.
|
| I've read that they are doing gene analysis to try and determine
| why these cases appear - is it gender, age, cross-reactions with
| other meds, ...? And recall that some of these conditions appear
| without obvious causes. If they're due to an overly aggressive
| immune response, recall that the cytokine storm caused by covid
| in such cases is what attacks the lungs (why immunosuppressants
| are used as treatments).
|
| And nobody understands Long Covid.
| josefx wrote:
| This might just be the straw that broke the camels back. As far
| as I remember the contracts the EU signed turned out to be
| incredibly one sided, with deliveries getting cut down when
| someone found out that more dosages could be extracted, no hard
| delivery requirements leading to constant shortages, etc. . Not
| getting out of that mess when alternatives exist seems like a
| bad idea.
| petre wrote:
| This is very likely a political decision. AZ has not honoured
| their "best effort" contract obligations, the company
| priortized UK deliveries to honour their other contract and
| Western Europeans are reluctant to take it because it's less
| well tolerated than mRNA vaccines and now the very rare blood
| clot issues. It's too bad, because vaccination rollouts are
| well behind schedule with less than 10% or so of the EU
| population vaccinated, while the UK has vaccinated almost
| everyone under 50 and at risk groups and are out of lockdown.
| Germany by contrast is imposing additional lockdown measures.
|
| I got my first AZ shot it and I'm thankful it exists and
| really hope it works against the new variants. Maybe this is
| a chance for poorer countries like Ukraine, Moldova, the
| former Yugoslav republics and Albania to get their citizens
| vaccinated. Western Europe should probably donate part of
| their stocks to these countries through the Covax mechanism
| instead of letting it go to waste.
| vanattab wrote:
| What do you mean "first AZ" shot? The AZ vaccine is "one
| and done" is it not?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| No, AZ is two-dose, J&J is one-and-done.
| ssdspoimdsjvv wrote:
| No, that's J&J.
| makomk wrote:
| There were no hard delivery requirements in any of
| AstraZeneca's contracts because they didn't have any way to
| guarantee how much they could deliver - the contract was
| literally to build the full-scale production lines, and they
| had no idea of the yield until those lines were actually
| built because messy biological processes are involved.
|
| The big problems with the EU's AZ purchase is that they
| bought less of it relative to their population than the UK
| (so had a commensurately reduced amount of production
| capacity allocated to them), signed the contract later
| (meaning less time to fix yield issues), and _completely
| failed to grasp that signing a "best effort" contract for X
| units of a never-mass-produced vaccine on timescale Y didn't
| guarantee they'd be delivered on time_. Like, the UK
| apparently only got something like a third the amount of AZ
| vaccine as expected by now in the initial contract and is
| more dependent on it than the EU, but you wouldn't even know
| there was a problem because the publicly-announced schedule
| was based on actual production numbers - and the UK contract
| had clauses with teeth to make sure AZ provided the
| information needed to make that possible. Not only that, the
| initial plans were ambitious enough that even after the main
| vaccine supplier underperformed hugely, the UK still ended up
| ahead of the EU despite most of their vaccines coming from
| suppliers who did perform as expected.
| josefx wrote:
| What kind of "best effort" is signing five more delivery
| contracts when you aren't even sure that you can get the
| first few done?
|
| > Like, the UK apparently only got something like a third
| the amount of AZ vaccine as expected
|
| So just how far behind the expected production is AZ? The
| UK only got a third, the EU is months behind schedule and
| half a dozen other countries are just around the corner
| waiting to have their contracts fulfilled.
|
| > and the UK contract had clauses with teeth
|
| Yeah, that would require halfway competent politicians, not
| something you find in the EU.
| surfsvammel wrote:
| I think the big issue is that people are afraid of the active
| risk of the vaccine (more so than the passive risk of not
| getting the shot). I think that even rational people have this
| fear to some degree. We need to help people deal with that
| fear. Something I see very little of.
|
| I know that kind of fear personally, I'm on meds with risks
| orders of magnitude worse than that vaccines and that have been
| (and still is) a struggle for me. I can do the math, and I
| understand the risks, but taking an active risk is just hard.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| Long Covid is mostly self reported vague symptoms, namely
| fatigue and brain fog. It's what happens when you stay at home
| too much and don't get enough exercise and have a poor diet.
| Isolation? The Covid 15* that many of us packed on? You will
| feel worse and especially more fatigued, no doubt.
|
| Not to mention being constantly immersed in an environment of
| fear. It's a misattribution to associate side effects of weight
| gain, isolation, depression with the Covid illness.
|
| * https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-covid-15-if-only-
| this-...
| zarkov99 wrote:
| How about all the other people who did not get covid but also
| stayed home? Shouldn't they all be complaining about fatigue
| and brain fog? Come on.
| seriousquestion wrote:
| They do, and would if asked!
|
| Question: Do you feel more fatigued over the past year?
|
| Common Answer: Yes.
|
| Question: Are you having a harder time concentrating or
| focusing?
|
| Common Answer: Yes.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _They do, and would if asked!_
|
| Today I learned I must have fatigue and brain fog...
|
| What delusionally contrived nonsense.
| lxgr wrote:
| Again, do you have any data to back this significant
| claim?
|
| To paraphrase, your thesis is "there is no significant
| difference in physical and mental health between covid
| patients and people that have only been suffering the
| social/economic effects of a quarantine but not
| contracted covid".
|
| This thesis seems highly verifiable/falsifiable in an
| empirical way.
| [deleted]
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| One of my best friends and his wife have long covid and it
| has completely wrecked their lives. They had covid 6 months
| ago and are still incapable of going back to work. My friend
| was an avid cyclist and his wife was also pretty physically
| fit.
|
| My friend described to me how hard it was for him to make a
| grilled chese sandwich and how it required him to take breaks
| in between taking the things out of the fridge and beginning
| the grilling. He also described to me how he couldn't even
| listen to music until recently because he couldn't focus on
| it.
|
| It is only recently that he can talk to me on the phone for
| 30 minutes without getting completely exhausted from the
| mental energy of it.
| rolha-capoeira wrote:
| That's an awfully simple interpretation to post without
| linking to at least one study or professional analysis.
| drzaiusapelord wrote:
| I have lc. It is borderline crippling. I can barely climb the
| stairs and terms like "brain fog" are comically inaccurate.
| Its like being drugged or having something like dementia.
| I've only somehow managed to barely keep my job by hiding
| this from my employer. I'm also usually unable to stay away
| the entire daya and have hard crashes in the afternoon where
| I must lie down and crash into a weird deep sleep or I might
| faint standing up. Before this I was active, fit, and
| generally a high energy person. This also isn't "stress." I
| won't tell you my life story but I have more mileage on me
| than most and I've handled serious stress without my entire
| body falling apart on me.
|
| Secondly, the only thing that has helped was my first dose of
| pfizer, which made me very sick for a week but since then
| helped with my symptoms significantly. Its very, very clearly
| linked to the actual virus and how our immune system reacts
| to it and I'm guessing things like the vaccine may help our
| immune system recalibrate itself or help our bodies fight off
| resident infections we just can't beat.
|
| Thirdly, post-viral effects are well studied. We see them in
| all sorts of infections like Lyme, SARS, or EBV. This isn't
| necessarily new, its just different per virus family. Doctors
| usually can't help because there's no real treatment, and
| write people up like me as CFS/ME and hope it goes away
| (which so far thankfully there are a lot of reports of lc
| going away after a 2nd dose of the vaccine). Lesser so,
| people without lc still have chronic issues with their lungs,
| heart, sense of smell, tinitus, etc. Its really all a matter
| of degree. This isn't the common cold where you just beat it
| and go back to normal. For many people normal doesnt come
| back for a long time and how bad it is in the meantime is the
| big question.
|
| Lastly, I think calling people hysterical from your comfy
| armchair where you're enjoying good health is tasteless,
| rude, and ignorant. I hope you never get lc or have to help a
| loved one with it. I hope you also stay out of the medical
| field if you have such an ungenerous and anti-compassionate
| attitude towards sick people.
| google234123 wrote:
| The fact that you feel like the vaccine helped you makes me
| suspect your symptoms are not due to covid. Getting covoid
| will provide the same type of lasting immunity as a
| vaccine. Moreover, the existence of chronic lyme disease is
| very dubious.
|
| https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/chronic-lyme-disease-
| anothe... https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/fake-diagnoses-
| not-fake-dis...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo#Psychology
| [deleted]
| jean_tta wrote:
| It is my understanding that many doctors have found "long
| covid" to 1. be a thing and 2. have specific, unexpected
| symptoms. Now it is possible that they are all wrong, but
| could you perhaps give a few arguments why you are right and
| all those doctors are wrong?
|
| [0] unfortunately I only have a French source on this https:/
| /www.lemonde.fr/sciences/article/2021/03/22/epuisemen...
| abduhl wrote:
| These are the same doctors that we now doubt their
| competence in when it comes to pausing vaccination with J&J
| and AZ, or are these doctors somehow more credible?
| lxgr wrote:
| That's some pretty impressive remote diagnostic capability
| you have there, have you thought about a career in
| telemedicine? (Update: This snarky comment is in response to
| a much more hostile parent comment that has since been
| changed.)
|
| > It's what happens when you stay at home too much and don't
| get enough exercise and have a poor diet
|
| While both are risk factors for a wide range of illnesses,
| last time I checked, neither of those cause lung damage
| visible on a chest x-ray.
| ericb wrote:
| Source?
|
| Yesterday I met a woman whose husband has lost his sense of
| smell for 4+ months and still has not regained it. My lungs
| still hurt sometimes on deep breaths 6 months later.
| incrudible wrote:
| We'd have to distinguish between physical symptoms that are
| well-known long-term effects of viral infections and
| psychosomatic disorders that may be triggered without any
| infection whatsoever.
|
| Losing your sense of smell, even permanently, is a known
| side-effect of Influenza infection:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23948436/
|
| The same is true for many inflammatory conditions, such as
| myocarditis.
|
| As for diffuse symptoms that are most likely psychosomatic:
| Look into ME/CFS. These are patients which may have a very
| real _perception_ of debilitating symptoms that have no
| tangible underlying physical cause. There 's a lot of
| misguided activism surrounding the topic, because people
| don't want to be perceived as having a _mental_ disorder,
| due to the associated stigma.
| tpm wrote:
| Denmark reports AZ's serious blood clotting issue as up to
| 1:40'000.
|
| I will still get vaccinated with it if it's available in our
| country for me as I think the risk is worth it in my case. But
| if I was a woman under 60 and especially under 40 I would be
| hesitant to get vaccinated with AZ and probably wait for other
| vaccine.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| Source?
| tpm wrote:
| "The Danish Health Authority said studies had shown a
| higher than expected frequency of blood clots following
| doses, affecting about one in 40,000 people."
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56744474
| megous wrote:
| 3 cases don't make a frequency, yet
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I think I read 10 somewhere but as I've said in the
| sibling comment it's hard to know if these were all weird
| cases like the one who died or if they fit a pattern at
| all.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| It's a weird one isn't it - 1/40,000 but they only gave
| 150,000 doses out. This seems like the error bars on this
| would be huge - we've seen in the UK very few of these
| events with millions vaccinated which is pretty strange.
| Is there something different about Denmark and Britain at
| this time of year?
|
| I've had the AZ vaccine 1st dose 3 weeks ago now and I
| keep getting very concerned by the ever changing picture;
| is it 1 in a million or 1 in 40000, or did these people
| have conditions that made this situation more likely...
| will we see an increase in the rate as we get more data
| too over the coming weeks a lot like we did with COVID.
|
| All very unclear right now. I wish the case reports of
| all the people with blood clots were made available so
| everyone could review if they match the groups who have
| had the problems.
| tpm wrote:
| I think they have also used Norway's numbers.
|
| As to the difference, maybe they first vaccinated health
| professionals with AZ and UK mostly vaccinated older
| people with it, so different issues became apparent? It
| affects mostly younger women, so it would manifest pretty
| clearly with female nurses.
| [deleted]
| physicsguy wrote:
| On top of that, we wouldn't even yet know if there were any
| long term side effects from Pfizer, etc.
| josiea wrote:
| The publication to follow is the CDC Advisory Committee on
| Immunization Practices (ACIP) monthly reports. There's a
| report from January and one latest is from March 1.
|
| So far no statistically significant adverse events have
| occured for either pfizer or moderna vaccines. I follow them
| closely.
| shlant wrote:
| although we do not have data yet to show if there are any
| side effects 1+ years after vaccination, it would be very
| unlikely that there would be. Serious side effects from
| vaccines are almost always immediate and seen within a few
| weeks after administration, not months or years later.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/concerns-
| history....
| bmj wrote:
| Except this particular vaccination mechanism (mRNA) has
| never been licensed for use in humans. Yes, there has been
| research, but never any sort of trial on the scale of what
| is happening right now. So, we really _don 't_ know what
| the long term effects of this particular type of vaccine
| are.
|
| I'm not trying to cast doubt on the efficacy of the
| vaccines that have been approved. Rather, I'm simply
| pointing out we don't have much data on the long term
| effects on humans.
| shishy wrote:
| edited because its not worth
| srswtf123 wrote:
| By saying "I'm not trying to cast doubt" they in fact
| acknowledge their statement casts doubt. Surely you can
| see how...?
| [deleted]
| shlant wrote:
| yes you are correct that we don't _really_ know until we
| know, but there is good reason to believe that mRNA
| vaccines are actually _safer_ than traditional methods
|
| https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/multimedia-
| article/were-be...
|
| This seems to be at least partially supported by the
| current risks in regards to currently available non-mRNA
| vaccines (such as AZ).
|
| Also I'm not really sure what saying "we don't know the
| long term effect are" accomplishes. It's not really
| adding much to the conversation.
| cm2187 wrote:
| The conversation is about the respective merits of one
| vaccine over another. The fact that one is a new approach
| with no long term data on humans whether the other is a
| traditional approach is relevant.
| selectodude wrote:
| J&J and AZ adenovirus-vector covid vaccines are highly
| novel vaccines that are very similar to mRNA vaccines,
| just with a different delivery mechanism.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Adeno virus based vector vaccines are a pretty old idea.
| Imnimo wrote:
| I was under the impression that adenovirus vaccines have
| only been been approved in the past year or two - a few
| for Ebola and the new ones for Covid. Are there others
| that have been around before that?
|
| It doesn't seem like it really matters if adenovirus
| vector vaccines is an "old idea" - after all, the idea of
| using MRNA has also been around for a long time. But if
| we've only started actually using them recently, how
| different is our knowledge of long-term effects?
| JamisonM wrote:
| Your impression is correct.
|
| The fact that it is an "old idea" is indeed unimportant,
| but what is very, very important is that large scale
| study over long periods has already been performed on
| that vaccination platform so we really do know a lot
| about it.
|
| That means that the similarity to mRNA is a good thing in
| terms of any worries about unexpected consequences. Of
| course it also means that we know that the risk of any
| unexpected consequences for adenovirus vaccines is also
| very low.
| hef19898 wrote:
| They are tested and researched since at least 2004. Not
| for Covid-19 of course.
| bmj wrote:
| _Also I 'm not really sure what saying "we don't know the
| long term effect are" accomplishes. It's not really
| adding much to the conversation._
|
| You are making the claim that there may not be any long
| term effects to the vaccine, but the information you cite
| has nothing to do with mRNA-based vaccines. I'm simply
| suggesting we don't have the data yet to make such
| claims.
| randomsearch wrote:
| They're saying "we don't have any data on long term
| studies of such vaccines", which is an important point.
| There is a risk there, and there's no obvious way to
| manage it.
| imchillyb wrote:
| Almost one-third of new drugs approved by the FDA ended up
| years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-
| threatening side effects.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/new-drugs-
| found-c...
|
| Your supposition about likelihood bears no resemblance to
| reality. It's almost as if you're misleading people on
| purpose. I certainly hope that's not the case.
|
| Fully 1/3 of all medications approved by the FDA turn out
| to have serious, and some life-threatening, side effects
| YEARS after the medication was approved.
|
| ______
|
| You realize that this new 'vaccine' bears no resemblance
| whatsoever to any prior vaccinations?
|
| This new Covid Vaccine is not a true vaccine. This is a
| drug that modifies the inner workings of cells.
|
| That is not a vaccine but a 'new drug'.
|
| I repeat: 1/3 of all new drugs have serious, and sometimes
| life threatening, reactions attributed to them between 1-5
| years after the drug's approval and release to the public.
|
| 1/3...
|
| That is not an insignificant number, and it is HIGHLY
| LIKELY that this new drug will have similar issues.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Every vaccine uses body cells to a certain extent. Sure,
| mRNA vaccines are new, but the underlying mechanism is
| not.
|
| Vaccines are behaving differently from drugs. Once they
| took effect, and your immune system reacted, it is over.
| And with millions of people vaccinated by now, for
| months, any adverse effects would have shown. That's why
| we discuss blood clots, under normal circumstances these
| rare cases would have gone unnoticed for quite a while.
| peytn wrote:
| > any adverse effects would have shown
|
| As I understand, the required teratogenicity study in
| rats with Pfizer is ongoing as of two weeks ago [1]. It's
| rather optimistic to claim we've seen everything when
| even animal studies haven't completed. Vaccine science
| itself is rapidly developing. Now I don't think there
| will be issues with this drug, but surprises may lurk
| still.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/regulatory-
| approv...
| tialaramex wrote:
| The effect seen with these two adenovirus platform
| vaccines seems to be exactly what this would suggest we
| should expect too.
|
| Roughly the immune system says "OK, let's attack things
| this shape" - which is why it's so useful for defending
| us against a wide variety of viruses - but alas, the
| shape it's picking in some patients happens to also match
| Platelet Factor 4, so now they are mounting an immune
| defence against their own blood clotting mechanism which
| is bad.
|
| I don't know (perhaps if I read more papers about this
| I'd find out) whether it is suspected that the immune
| system makes this bad matching choice based on the spike
| protein (which we want it to match because of this
| coronavirus killing millions of people) or the adenovirus
| (which even if it could replicate in humans, which it
| can't, basically gives you the common cold so who cares)
| which is delivering it. If it's the latter, that's
| showing an advantage to the mRNA vaccines, since they
| don't need a viral delivery mechanism at all.
| jhayward wrote:
| > You realize that this new 'vaccine' bears no
| resemblance whatsoever to any prior vaccinations?
|
| > This new Covid Vaccine is not a true vaccine. This is a
| drug that modifies the inner workings of cells.
|
| Flagged as misinformation. Complete nonsense.
| zosima wrote:
| Well, except that these serious adverse effects are often
| so rare to not have any way of reaching statistical
| significance. Especially when you consider that you're
| looking for associations between medication and any
| indication. Just by random chance you'd get a many
| associations between serious diseases and any medication.
|
| The very rare and very serious side effects are tracked
| closely, and it's likely that for a vast number of
| medications, even though the very rare side effects are
| written on the packaging, there actually is no causal
| connection with the medication whatsoever.
| tempestn wrote:
| You can't compare vaccines to the overall universe of
| drugs like that. The main difference is that drugs that
| are intended to be taken over the long term can develop
| long term side effects. Vaccines are taken once or a few
| times, and then they're done. The parent is correct that
| complications arising from vaccines years after they're
| taken just isn't something that should be expected to
| happen.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Would your feeling change if we discover that yearly
| boosters of the COVID vaccine will be required
| indefinitely?
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| The flu vaccine is still called a vaccine and it's
| delivered yearly and while not required is highly
| recommended indefinitely.
|
| Why would this be any different?
| tempestn wrote:
| No, because again, you take the vaccine, it causes an
| immune response, and then it leaves your system. Even if
| you then take it again a year later. It's not like a drug
| that you're regularly taking, which remains in your
| system. What would change my mind is if I saw
| vaccinologists explaining a mechanism by which a vaccine
| could cause long-term side effects, rather than the
| opposite.
| 8note wrote:
| Does the calculus change based in how many people you'll be
| giving this to?
|
| A 1:1M chance is much different to me if you give it to 3
| people or 2 Billion
| sokoloff wrote:
| I don't think it's different based directly on that, but
| rather based on something which is strongly related to that.
|
| If you're giving a chemotherapy drug to patients with
| advanced cancer, 1 in 106 is perfectly acceptable. But it's
| acceptable because the do-nothing course is probably worse.
| Even serious, chronic pain relief I'd consider 1 in 106 to be
| a good tradeoff.
|
| With vaccines, you're taking healthy people with no acute
| condition and exposing them so the do-nothing course is much
| better than the cancer case.
|
| Those differences of course drive the "do we give it to 3
| people or 2 Billion people?" decision, but it's not directly
| the breadth but the underlying reason for the breadth that
| make me think differently about the acceptable risk level. If
| 2 Billion people had cancer or serious, chronic pain, I'd be
| in favor of giving them a drug which would cure 999,999 of
| them for every 1 that it killed.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Along that line i'd be interested to hear insight here from a
| stat person or someone who does these studies.
|
| At those low %s what are the chances the actual clot rate say
| doubles, quadruples as we keep getting larger audiences.
|
| With such low numbers random chance would not likely show up
| in small studies.
|
| So what are for instance the statistical chances of seeing a
| 10x increase in clotting going to 250mm population?
| quantgenius wrote:
| Lumping AZ and JNJ together seems inappropriate.
|
| The fundamental problem with AZ is that they don't seem to
| understand how to conduct clinical trials and do data science
| and so you can't trust any of their numbers. Population level
| studies on the effectiveness of the AZ vaccine everywhere but
| the UK would seem to show it is barely effective or
| ineffective. The population level studies in the UK were
| largely conducted by the Oxford team that developed the vaccine
| themselves or their "friends". The head of the team is
| politically connected. The UK population level studies are
| almost certainly complete bullshit because during the period
| when the vaccine supposedly reduced Covid deaths, a draconian
| lockdown was instituted which certainly had an effect as well,
| and despite this excess deaths went up by a bit more than half
| the supposed reduction in Covid deaths. It's not clear the
| reduction in Covid deaths was any more than would be expected
| with just the lockdown. The well publicized UK studies are in
| my opinion, more likely than not, massaging of the numbers to
| make the Boris Johnson government look good, especially
| relative to the EU post-Brexit.
|
| The Oxford Team and AZ essentially openly admitted to doing
| p-hacking at a press conference and insist that the vaccine
| should be used if the results are significant only in any sub-
| sample. The Oxford team in particular has had a history of
| claiming fake good vaccine results for other diseases that
| aren't prevalent in the West. Their history of doing this may
| not be well known in the West but there have been a lot of
| problems here. Each problem seems to have had the same cause,
| p-hacking so they could claim they had good results and get
| research grants. It's unfortunate in my opinion that a lot of
| UK and EU policy was based on things these guys said, for
| example delaying the gap between shots etc.
|
| For a vaccine with the actual rather than claimed level of
| effectiveness of the AZ vaccine, the appropriate level of
| acceptable side-effects is very low. You only approve a drug if
| the cost/benefit makes sense.
|
| The JNJ vaccine by contrast seems excellent. The top line
| numbers are not as good as PFE/MRNA but you have to look deeper
| than that. PFE/MRNA cause side effects including fever etc in
| 30-40% of people after the second dose. Many people, especially
| those who've had Covid, get side effects after the first dose
| as well. JNJ does not prevent mild Covid in 35% of people but
| the symptoms of this mild Covid are comparable to the side
| effects from the second dose in the 35% of people who get side
| effects from PFE/MRNA. In a world where getting exposed to
| Covid is inevitable, like in the US or Europe right now, it
| probably doesn't matter which you get, you have to deal with a
| 30-40% chance of a week of flu like symptoms. However, in a
| world where Covid is rare, hopefully soon, with JNJ you end up
| with less symptoms overall and something just as effective in
| preventing serious Covid and death as PFE/MRNA. Essentially, if
| there is only a 4% chance of being exposed to Covid when you
| are out an about, your risk of a week of fever is 4%*35% with
| JNJ rather than 35% with PFE/MRNA and it's otherwise very
| comparable.
|
| The FDA action on the JNJ vaccine may be overly cautious. About
| 1 in a million vaccinated got blood clots over almost 2 months
| of use of the vaccine. In a typical year 6 in a million get
| blood clots anyway and the frequency seems to be a bit higher
| in colder months. Given the population groups most vulnerable
| to blood clots, based on the data currently publicly available,
| the frequency of blood clots does not seem to go up with the
| JNJ vaccine either in the population as a whole or in any
| subgroup. I suspect the FDA action would not have been taken if
| it hadn't been for the mixup at the Baltimore plant. They
| likely want to triple check production facilities and the
| vaccine in the logistics chain because it seems some
| contaminated vaccines did make it to vaccination sites and may
| have even been injected. If you got a vaccine with the
| ingredient switcheroo, it's not unreasonable to believe you
| would have a higher risk of blood clots. There is no actual
| study of this, and you would have do a real experiment to make
| a solid claim but given everything we know increased risk from
| a vaccine with the ingredient switcheroo is more than just
| possible.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| > Population level studies on the effectiveness of the AZ
| vaccine everywhere but the UK would seem to show it is barely
| effective or ineffective.
|
| This is blatantly untrue. Here is a US study:
| https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04516746 . The US NIH
| is reporting 78.9% efficacy against symptomatic disease and
| _100% efficacy_ in preventing severe or critical disease and
| hospitalization: https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-
| releases/investigationa...
| [deleted]
| bhobs wrote:
| I didn't expect to find this level of, frankly, absolute
| nonsense on HN. Please don't write fabricated statistics
| which have no basis in reality. It's dangerous to present
| such misinformation.
| krona wrote:
| I suggest you do more reading and less writing.
| solarkraft wrote:
| I hope this isn't true unless an mRNA vaccine production miracle
| is inbound.
|
| This will measure whether the commission has
|
| a) Managed to solve the self-inflicted supply issues far beyond
| demand
|
| or
|
| b) Lost the last bit of sanity.
| boringg wrote:
| Seems short sighted to me given we don't know efficacy against
| the variants. If I were in the contractual chair I'd keep all my
| options on the table, we aren't out of this yet.
|
| _assuming this is true, as opposed to some kind of way to
| leverage better terms out of a deal_
| gnfargbl wrote:
| The EU was slow off the mark when it came to ordering vaccines
| and as a result it did not get priority for deliveries. The EU
| can't change that now, but it can send the manufacturers a
| message warning of the dangers of not showing fealty.
|
| Perhaps I'm cynical, but I do wonder if this decision is more
| politics than science.
| tubularhells wrote:
| They have to show force. Money speaks.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I think people are possibly reading a bit more into this than
| necessary. Stripped of context "supplier A delivers ~33% of
| contracted quantity of thing, other suppliers deliver 100% or
| more of contracted quantity of thing, supplier A's contract
| not renewed" is not even a vaguely surprising narrative, even
| if 'thing' is entirely generic.
| polack wrote:
| The EU have options to buy 100 million doses of AZ vaccine for
| 2022, but they need to make up their minds now if they want
| them or not. With AZ's history of not delivering on time I
| think this is a no-brainer, especially since we don't know if
| the AZ vaccine will work on the new Covid variants. Why pour
| more money down the AZ drain when we have better alternatives?
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Because it's a very small amount of money relative to the
| impact of the pandemic. Even if these vaccines only added 1%
| to the fight against the pandemic they'd be worth it. This is
| another expression of the "penny wise, pound foolish"
| decision-making process that led to the EU being last in
| lines for the vaccines in the first place.
| boringg wrote:
| It's the cost centric/money spent only mentality that
| pervades the minds of many. Agree completely with you.
| JamisonM wrote:
| It is a no-brainer to spend this money.
|
| Someone in the world is going to have a use for these
| vaccines, buy them and then give them away if you don't need
| them in the end but in the meantime just book more supply. 18
| months from now if the world is flushing COVID-19 vaccines
| down toilets due to surpluses every dollar will have been
| worth spending, the downsides are too great.
| polack wrote:
| The problem is that this option is to buy AZ's current
| vaccine that have a high probability of being ineffective
| in 18 months. EU is not saying that it won't buy from AZ,
| but as of now it's not well spent money to buy their
| current one to be delivered in 18 months. By then all
| companies will have new better vaccines and the EU would
| have to fork up a shitload of money on the new AZ vaccine
| and just write the old of as another loss while the AZ
| execs get another fat bonus paid by the EU citizens.
| Hallucinaut wrote:
| Isn't AZ selling the vaccine at cost? Won't AZ also have
| the opportunity to improve their vaccine (or delivery
| protocol)? Won't more data be available in one year with
| which to make these decisions?
| JamisonM wrote:
| Regardless of the margins involved, I think it is
| improbable that AZ would want to produce an obsolete
| vaccine when those facilities could be producing a better
| one if they have something ready to go. Its not like
| everyone involved here is a sociopath, they can put the
| money down now and renegotiate for a mutually beneficial
| change to the contract.
| JamisonM wrote:
| > The problem is that this option is to buy AZ's current
| vaccine that have a high probability of being ineffective
| in 18 months.
|
| I doubt that is a "high probability" occurrence.
|
| If it does occur and AZ makes a lot of money, I don't
| care. The EU has many shitloads of money to spend, spread
| out your bets, go to town, reward every vaccine producer
| with huge profits, that's what we want, we want all of
| the companies that bet big on developing products -
| successful or unsuccessful - to make money off this
| thing. That way if it happens again they won't be shy
| about giving it another go!
| bluGill wrote:
| If I were the chair I'd be looking at how can I subsidize more
| mRNA production (the whole supply chain, lipids might be a
| better focus than mRNA itself) so that if variants are a
| problem we can get more vaccine fast. This will also scale to
| the net pandemic. This seems to be something close to what they
| are doing.
|
| Right now adenovirus based vaccines as a rule seem like they
| need to go back to the lab for a few years.
|
| I would keep options open to other vaccine technologies. There
| are others out there with some promise. I wouldn't expand on
| them yet - they haven't delivered, but I'd keep options open
| and would be ready to change if the real world conditions
| change.
| robert_foss wrote:
| From reading local news, the reason seems to be unrelated to
| clotting complications. Instead it seems to be based on the
| expected long-term efficacy of non mRNA vaccines.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Seems like mRNA vaccines is winning the the race against other
| emerging technology like viral vector. If we manage to figure out
| the nanolipids to live in better temperature conditions, mRNA
| will change our generation.
| s_dev wrote:
| Seems incredible now the University of Pennsylvania told the
| inventor mRNA that their contributions weren't worthwhile and
| let them go.
|
| https://billypenn.com/2020/12/29/university-pennsylvania-cov...
|
| And now on social media they've done a full 180 and are acting
| as if it were their contribution to the world when the reality
| is quite different.
| marcinzm wrote:
| As I see it, the issue isn't with the University of
| Pennsylvania but with academia. Publish or perish. Get
| consistent grants or find a new job. The system isn't geared
| to promoting long term risky endeavors.
| visarga wrote:
| > The system isn't geared to promoting long term risky
| endeavors.
|
| They made a mistake by trying to follow the obvious path
| towards progress, and the result proves how wrong they
| were. The path was deceptive and the straight direction was
| leading to detours.
|
| This problem appears also in AI. Optimization only works
| when you can point to the solution. Evolution on the other
| hand can find these hidden stepping stones that initially
| don't appear useful, but it takes time.
|
| In my opinion lots of the scientific research is just
| following the trends instead of finding these hidden
| stepping stones. Only very few are committed to searching
| so far from the beaten road.
| gambler wrote:
| _> Seems incredible now the University of Pennsylvania told
| the inventor mRNA that their contributions weren't worthwhile
| and let them go._
|
| Incredible from common sense perspective, but totally
| expected if you know how American academia operates these
| days.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I don't think it was common sense 30 years ago that this
| technology would eventually pay off.
|
| I imagine things looked pretty grim for the first 24 years
| the university employed her to work on it with little
| commercial traction, and the technology was only finally
| demonstrated due to a freak global pandemic 7 years after
| that.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Im not sure what exactly the criticism of UPenn is here.
|
| Is the criticism that the university mistreated Kariko or set
| unrealistic expectations?
|
| IS the criticism that the university lacked the foresight to
| know how valuable her contributions would be 30 years later
| and didn't adequately support or compensate her?
|
| I don't know where this idea that untenured university
| faculty should should not be expected to meet the objectives
| and and milestones of the university comes from. They took
| the risk and employed her for 16 years (1989-2005) before she
| published a groundbreaking study, then another 8 years,
| before leaving to be a VP at BioNTech. 7 years later, the
| technology was demonstrated to be incredibly valuable.
|
| Does U Penn deserve no credit for the 24 years of work done
| by university faculty and researchers in university labs?
| hyko wrote:
| Viral vectors have been around since the 1970s.
|
| The mRNA tech feels like a glimpse of the future, let's hope
| they can iron out some of the teething problems (e.g.
| anaphylactic shock, absurd storage requirements).
| bsder wrote:
| > Seems like mRNA vaccines is winning the the race against
| other emerging technology like viral vector.
|
| But it could very well have failed.
|
| The fact that we have a surfeit of vaccines is something _NO
| ONE_ predicted. Everybody was just hoping that _one_ of them
| would work.
|
| In addition, the A/Z and J&J vaccines don't need the same level
| of cold chain refrigeration that the Moderna and Pfizer ones
| do.
|
| While in the US and the EU we have the infrastructure to choose
| between any of the major vaccines, in many places of the world
| this is not true. It's the A/Z and J&J vaccines or _nothing_.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Viral vector vaccines are hardly an emerging technology.
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