Covid 19 #26: Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

[Luzifer's right hand]

6 minutes ago, Padraig said:

What EU country didn't take vaccines?  Some of the EU countries haven't used all their vaccines yet but that was related to the restriction on using it on those over 65.  Those restrictions are being steadily removed.

It is safe to say that all vaccines produced for the EU will be used by EU countries.

I would suggest you got the South African AZ vaccines but those weren't via COVAX.

A 100% this.  The worse you behave, the more you need all the vaccines!  What a system.  You'd really wonder when US fatality figures will recede. 

Sharing doses is all about how you frame the story.  2k dying every day is hard to ignore though.  I hope the figure declines enough for people to have a rethink.

I don't think that is completely true.  One of the biggest challenges around the EU is its sheer size.  Vaccinating 450m people was always going to take a reasonably long time.  While the US is huge too, that's still 120m less people to vaccinate.  The US also benefited from American companies developing the first 2 solutions and a  British focused company developing the third.  Now, you might argue that the EU needed to be more creative but Pfizer used German technology for its solution.  So even that argument is not correct.

The EU does need to learn things from this but I don't think its a simple "EU bad" v "Others good" narrative.

Is there an appreciable difference?  If you say you will buy everything that a factory produces?

I don't think it is a good or bad issue. The EU is just not very fast and efficent due its nature. 

I guess all EU members had the option of doing their own thing(Austria was offered to option to cooperate with Isreal for example). But that would have had even more negative effects on the EU than the refugee crisis I think.

[ljkeane]

33 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Is there an appreciable difference?  If you say you will buy everything that a factory produces?

Sure, in the UK's case at least it's implied that the UK gets what the factory produces up to the level of it's order, not everything the factory produces full stop. So if the UK's order is 2 million doses a week and the UK based suppliers start producing above that then there's room for exports. It may not be a distinction that matters at current levels of production but it might at some point.

I'm not entirely sure what the situation is with the US but there's some talk of some the extra doses the EU got from Astrazeneca coming from the US so I doubt it's as simple as a blanket ban on exports.

[Padraig]

1 minute ago, ljkeane said:

So if the UK's order is 2 million doses a week and the UK based suppliers start producing above that then there's room for exports.

But is it phrased like that?  Rather than, you give us your first 50m doses?

Or, if AZ say the max capacity is 2m a week, and that is the UK's order quantity, same thing.  They never reach max capacity but get close enough.

I know Fragile Bird said that AZ can't supply Canada from the US because of the ban there.  So i'm  not sure did vaccines come from the US.

38 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

The EU is just not very fast and efficent due its nature. 

That's true.

But I don't know would co-operating with another country have helped them.  Its not like Israel was producing its own vaccines.  I think they all come from Europe actually?

The UK and US weren't going to be sharing their supplies.  The only other options were Russia, China and eventually India.  At the same, they probably didn't seem like attractive options.

If I had to pick one thing, I would suggest that individual countries should have been focused on ramping up factories.  (It is very easy to blame the EU but individual countries have a lot more power).  The signs are good that we'll have reasonable supplies in April.  If that happened 2 or 3 months earlier, we'd be fine.  But, I'm not convinced by my 20/20 hindsight vision.   And yes, if one country had done that, hoarding all those vaccines for themselves would have been challenging.

[RhaenysBee]

Wow I missed a lot of hot topics. I won’t pretend I have any idea about US politics. Or eastern, for that matter. Vaccine distribution is the miniature version of all other resource distribution though. It’s filled with political and economic interest while waving flags of national, global, humanitarian agendas. It’s no surprise that it’s going as poorly as handling the rest of the pandemic has been. And it’s no surprise that it’s all about pointing the finger at others. From what I hear and see nobody’s better than the other.  Or if anybody, it’s the UAE and Israel because they have majority of their citizens vaccinated (from what I’ve heard).

 

[ljkeane]

5 minutes ago, Padraig said:

But is it phrased like that?  Rather than, you give us your first 50m doses?

Well we don't know obviously but when they were asked about it during the spat with the EU UK government figures were pretty consistent about saying they were 'confident that the UK's order would be met' but wouldn't commit to saying no vaccine would be exported. If the UK just gets the first 100 million doses it doesn't seem worth trying to thread that needle. On top of that the fact that Astrazeneca mentioned UK sites as potential suppliers for the EU suggests they thought there might be at least a bit of capacity for exports.

9 minutes ago, Padraig said:

Or, if AZ say the max capacity is 2m a week, and that is the UK's order quantity, same thing.  They never reach max capacity but get close enough.

I doubt maximum capacity is significantly above the level to meet the UK's order considering the sites seem mostly intended to meet that order but considering the EU's kicking off international incidents with Australia over few hundred thousand doses every little obviously helps.

It might become more relevant when the Novavax vaccine is approved since that's also being produced in the UK and might be more likely to have a bit of surplus capacity later in the UK's vaccine rollout.

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Padraig said:

What EU country didn't take vaccines?  Some of the EU countries haven't used all their vaccines yet but that was related to the restriction on using it on those over 65.  Those restrictions are being steadily removed.

It is safe to say that all vaccines produced for the EU will be used by EU countries.

I would suggest you got the South African AZ vaccines but those weren't via COVAX.

The Guardian story proclaimed that Canada was the only G7 nation to take their allotment from COVAX. That story brought us abuse not only from around the world but from Canadian MSM and the opposition parties as well. How dare we! As I said then, Japan hadn’t approved a single vaccine yet and is getting 90 M doses from the AZ plant in Japan, the US wasn’t a member then (they said they would join, have they yet?) and hadn’t approved AZ, the UK is getting 100 M doses from the UK plant, and that leaves Italy, Germany and France that didn’t take allocations from COVAX. My cynical self says that was because the doses were too old.

I thought the SA doses were from COVAX.

[JoannaL]

16 minutes ago, ljkeane said:

It might become more relevant when the Novavax vaccine is approved since that's also being produced in the UK and might be more likely to have a bit of surplus capacity later in the UK's vaccine rollout.

There is no later. From all we hear and know it looks like vaccine amount will stop to be such problem in the next quarter, at least for everyone who can afford it. In the 3. and 4. quarter already a decent amount  will  also go to developing countries. So that is very good news.

We will then all look back to see where we made mistakes. And I think almost everyone made some. In the ordering or producing or distributing or handling of the politics around it. I think the last part was especially badly done in all western countries.

For the EU I think the most bad thing is that we neglegted our neigbours in the east and on the balkan. they hadto look to China and Russia. We managed to stay more or less together as EU , and that is a precious success but we shouldnt have forgotten them.

[JoannaL]

20 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The Guardian story proclaimed that Canada was the only G7 nation to take their allotment from COVAX. That story brought us abuse not only from around the world but from Canadian MSM and the opposition parties as well. How dare we! As I said then, Japan hadn’t approved a single vaccine yet and is getting 90 M doses from the AZ plant in Japan, the US wasn’t a member then (they said they would join, have they yet?) and hadn’t approved AZ, the UK is getting 100 M doses from the UK plant, and that leaves Italy, Germany and France that didn’t take allocations from COVAX. My cynical self says that was because the doses were too old.

I thought the SA doses were from COVAX.

hTe EU is not getting any AZ via COVAX. The AZ we are getting -or not getting - is a direct order and contract from the EU to AZ

[Zorral]

Well, as to doing the best -- Cuba?  It has created its own vaccine and manufactured it.  Nobody is giving or selling Cuba anything.  The USA won't allow it.  But when Cuba has surplus after vaccinating its own people, will the USA insist that Venezuela, Brasil, the Palestinians, etc. can't buy any from Cuba, or accept any as a gift?  One wonders.

 

[Fragile Bird]

12 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

hTe EU is not getting any AZ via COVAX. The AZ we are getting -or not getting - is a direct order and contract from the EU to AZ

All the countries that contributed funding to COVAX are entitled to get AZ from COVAX. In fact, the agreement, iirc, requires that vaccine be offered to the contributors. I am surprised that Italy blocked a shipment to Australia yet didn’t take up the vaccine they could get from COVAX. That’s where my cynicism popped up.

[Consigliere]

47 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I thought the SA doses were from COVAX.

The Oxford/AZ doses that SA received were bought from the Serum Institute of India and not via COVAX.

Also, @Padraig, Canada most certainly did not receive Oxford/AZ doses from SA. The 1.5 million doses we bought from the SII is being sold to the African Union. 

[Zorral]

It has everything to do with money and stopping ships, plane flights, etc.  The US running dawgs who did Bay of Pigs 2 but in Venezuela that time, what a coupla years ago where they were to be met with flowers and overflowing desires for their babies >ah-hem< were a different thing.  In actual engagement on their own, this US 'influence' is always a flop, but putting the hurt on the international mercantile shipping, is something else.  Though, hmmm, for how much longer one does wonder.

~~~~~~~~

In the meantime I thought for sure I was getting a vaccination appointment today with Walgreen's.  They said there were appointments. Everything was ticked to qualify, including I have a Walgreen's account, and I am in their system, and the pharmacy is only doing people within the zip code area, etc.  But then -- no appointments.  Period.  This is what I did all afternoon with one place after another, including hospitals.  One has to make a separate account for each one.  Well, I've said it before: this is insane.

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

It has everything to do with money and stopping ships, plane flights, etc.  The US running dawgs who did Bay of Pigs 2 but in Venezuela that time, what a coupla years ago where they were to be met with flowers and overflowing desires for their babies >ah-hem< were a different thing.  In actual engagement on their own, this US 'influence' is always a flop, but putting the hurt on the international mercantile shipping, is something else.  Though, hmmm, for how much longer one does wonder.

~~~~~~~~

In the meantime I thought for sure I was getting a vaccination appointment today with Walgreen's.  They said there were appointments. Everything was ticked to qualify, including I have a Walgreen's account, and I am in their system, and the pharmacy is only doing people within the zip code area, etc.  But then -- no appointments.  Period.  This is what I did all afternoon with one place after another, including hospitals.  One has to make a separate account for each one.  Well, I've said it before: this is insane.

 

Try through the city’s site. People have had a lot of luck with it

[Filippa Eilhart]

covax vaccines are produced in India so all moral questions aside the EU can’t use them because it hasn’t (yet) approved the Indian factories.

[Clueless Northman]

5 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

it's not even a housing boom, it's more like a renovation boom 

Funny. People stuck at home for weeks begin to notice the flaws and want to fix them

9 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Both those countries are using this crisis as a way of pushing their own soft power and influencing nations around the world.

Ideally yes there would be a push to export more vaccines from the EU, but you can see that they have really struggled to get them to their own population, and I can only imagine the political damage internally if Europeans were dying because they had committed to sending vaccines abroad. 

The ones not allowing exports of vaccines, not even to Canada, are the USA. Heck, that Bloomberg article actually stated that part of the late 2020 batch of 20 mio Pfizer doses came from Europe - Europe which had barely received any Pfizer at the time, and who had to make with far less Pfizer vaccines than promised, just like AZ, though AZ is a far bigger culprit which reduced by close to 60 mio doses it's Jan-June 2021 delivery. It's probable UK has a similar policy since British vaccine production are far less impressive.

But since US and probably UK are very good at projection and deflecting blame, it's Italy which is the bad guy because of 250.000 doses they told AZ would be more needed in Italy than in Australia.

And US doesn't realize how badly these moves can backfire, because this hurts the rest of the world as a whole, Africa and Europe are in the same boat there. Risking alienating European peoples when the US will be vaccinating 18-y old at the same time Europe will barely vaccinate its 70-y old won't go very well. Sure, Von der Leyen should be blamed and booted out of office for fucking up the whole thing, but she's not the only culprit. At some point, more and more people across Europe will begin to look East instead of West for help. Then we'll see how great a policy America First was.

5 hours ago, ljkeane said:

Age is also one of the biggest risk factors anyway. So while you might want to break it down more by other factors if that's not logistically feasible doing it just by age groups is a pretty solid way of going about it. Apparently in the UK it's something like one life saved for every 160 people in their 80s vaccinated compared to something like one life saved for every 50,000 vaccinations outside the priority groups (people under 50 without underlying conditions).

A 55-y old with diabetes has lesser odds of dying from covid than a healthy 80-y old, so indeed there's sense in targetting age first, conditions second.

3 hours ago, Padraig said:

Now, you might argue that the EU needed to be more creative but Pfizer used German technology for its solution.  So even that argument is not correct.

J/J vaccine was developed in a Swiss lab. Not EU, but still in Europe and not in the US.

There were plenty of know-how and abilities, and plenty of manufacturing abilities in continental Europe, but it's clear most if not all major countries screwed up. The other big guys being massively uncooperative doesn't help at all, though, and only make things worse.

10 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

covax vaccines are produced in India so all moral questions aside the EU can’t use them because it hasn’t (yet) approved the Indian factories.

Probable. But on principle, I'd like to see Europe only bother with doses it has ordered, complain to AZ (and UK) and messing with countries who aren't heavily affected by infections. As for Canada, it has no bargaining or blackmailing chip with the US, so I can see why trying to get vaccines from other sources makes sense.

[Fragile Bird]

11 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

covax vaccines are produced in India so all moral questions aside the EU can’t use them because it hasn’t (yet) approved the Indian factories.

Whaaaaat? That’s insane. The EU, I’m sure, gets other vaccines from India, the whole world gets other vaccines from India

[Filippa Eilhart]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

Whaaaaat? That’s insane. The EU, I’m sure, gets other vaccines from India, the whole world gets other vaccines from India

yes, but there are approval processes before that happens. The Indian plants are supposed to be audited soon so that AZ can actually try and deliver an amount close to what it’s promised.

[Fragile Bird]

9 minutes ago, Filippa Eilhart said:

yes, but there are approval processes before that happens. The Indian plants are supposed to be audited soon so that AZ can actually try and deliver an amount close to what it’s promised.

The 300,000 with the April 2 expiry date actually came from Korea.

So why the hell did Korea hang on to vaccine first so long?

[A Horse Named Stranger]

3 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Whaaaaat? That’s insane. The EU, I’m sure, gets other vaccines from India, the whole world gets other vaccines from India

Badly phrased.

There are currently three EMA authorized vaccines: BionTech(Pfizer), AstraZeneca and Moderna.

The Johnson&Johnson vaccine is on the verge of authorization, so that will happen within the next few weeks I think. That will be 4th.

 

Some member states have also certified the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. But that's afaik just Hungary and Slovakia. EMA has started a review process for that one now.

On that note Hungary has started to use the Chinese Sinopharm, I think. But to the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, the Chinese manufacturers have not filed for authorization, yet.

Production site is not really an issue, as you pointed, most medicines are produced in India or China anyway.

 

[Fragile Bird]

1 minute ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

Badly phrased.

There are currently three EMA authorized vaccines: BionTech(Pfizer), AstraZeneca and Moderna.

The Johnson&Johnson vaccine is on the verge of authorization, so that will happen within the next few weeks I think. That will be 4th.

 

Some member states have also certified the Russian Sputnik V vaccine. But that's afaik just Hungary and Slovakia. EMA has started a review process for that one now.

On that note Hungary has started to use the Chinese Sinopharm, I think. But to the best of my (admittedly limited) knowledge, the Chinese manufacturers have not filed for authorization, yet.

Production site is not really an issue, as you pointed, most medicines are produced in India or China anyway.

 

Yes, but my point was about getting AZ vaccine from India. Filippa says no vaccine has been received from India because the plants have to be inspected first. It's March, for crying out loud, how could the plants not have been inspected yet?