Covid-19 #28: Astra Projecting is an Out of Body Experience

[Fragile Bird]

I’m just hallucinating, right? All this stuff about AZ is a weird dream?

[Heartofice]

Quote

Here our daily AZ news:

(warning only German sources, citing italian newspaper )

AZ hid 29 mio doses of vaccine made in EU (in Halix) in Italian plant to export to UK. This while telling us, there arent any doses and they have to cut supply surprisingly again. These doses could already have  been distributed and used for vaccination (and saved lives)

Right from what I’m seeing this isn’t true. The doses ‘discovered’ were destined for Canada Mexico and Covax countries and has nothing to do with the UK at all.

[Fragile Bird]

9 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Right from what I’m seeing this isn’t true. The doses ‘discovered’ were destined for Canada Mexico and Covax countries and has nothing to do with the UK at all.

Not Canada. Our COVAX doses came from India and we have 20 M that are supposed to be supplied from the US plant. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

I think Germany made a gigantic mistake by allowing Biontech to cooperate with a Pfizer. It is too late now but I hope the EU will learn from its mistakes. You can't cooperate with a US company if lives are at stake.  I'm not blaming the US but the EU failed its people completely on the realpolitik side of things.

[JoannaL]

23 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Right from what I’m seeing this isn’t true. The doses ‘discovered’ were destined for Canada Mexico and Covax countries and has nothing to do with the UK at all.

Well, why havent they exported it then? Or at least applied for export? They didnt apply for export and Covax was exempt from the EU transperency mechanism, so there wouldnt be any problems there ...

I think this is the supply Johnson called Merkel and Macron about last wekend.

[williamjm]

25 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Right from what I’m seeing this isn’t true. The doses ‘discovered’ were destined for Canada Mexico and Covax countries and has nothing to do with the UK at all.

According to the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/world/europe/astrazeneca-vaccine-stockpile-italy.html

E.U. officials said there was no evidence that the stockpile in Italy, first reported by the Italian

daily La Stampa, was bound for Britain. They said the company, when confronted about the doses, said that 16 million doses were bound for the E.U. market and 13 million to countries under the Covax initiative that aims to get doses to poorer nations. Those latter exports would be exempt from E.U. controls, as they are deemed to be of humanitarian nature.

[Fragile Bird]

25 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Right from what I’m seeing this isn’t true. The doses ‘discovered’ were destined for Canada Mexico and Covax countries and has nothing to do with the UK at all.

Sorry for the double quote.

However, remember that Guardian hit article against Canada, when we took up Covax supply? France, Italy and Germany didn’t take any up because it was offered from SII and the Indian plant isn’t EU approved. Everyone told me the EU was being supplied from European plants.

Under the COVAX agreement vaccine doses must be offered to donors first, so if those 29 M doses are for COVAX, half of them had to be offered to EU donors first, no?

[JoannaL]

16 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I think Germany made a gigantic mistake by allowing Biontech to cooperate with a Pfizer. It is too late now but I hope the EU will learn from its mistakes. You can't cooperate with a US company if lives are at stake.  I'm not blaming the US but the EU failed its people completely on the realpolitik side of things.

this happened too fast. Biontech had a cooperation wth Pfizer already (cancer related) and last February -before most politicians realised that there even is a pandemic- they call their partners, telling that they have something promising...

Apart from that you are right, more realpolitik is needed.

[Fragile Bird]

Pfizer had a relationship with BionTech, they are developing a new kind of flu vaccine together.

Imagine the nightmare we’d be in if they chose AZ...

[Luzifer's right hand]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

Pfizer had a relationship with BionTech, they are developing a new kind of flu vaccine together.

Imagine the nightmare we’d be in if they chose AZ...

You mean a worse outcome than the US getting everyone vaccinated before the 4th of July for party reasons and at risk people dying in the rest of the world? Yeah I'm exaggerating but it kinda feels like that right now.  As I said I'm blaming the EU for failing its people not the US goverment for not failing its people. 

[JoannaL]

4 minutes ago, williamjm said:

According to the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/24/world/europe/astrazeneca-vaccine-stockpile-italy.html

 

Thank you for the interesting article!

From it :

"The Italian authorities went to the site after receiving an alert from the European Commission, which found a discrepancy between what the company said it was producing in European Union facilities, and what the facilities themselves were reporting."

So they were trying to hide this supply. Also only AZ is saying that this was for COVAX and EU and , you know, AZ is a lying liar who lies.

 

[rotting sea cow]

22 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I think Germany made a gigantic mistake by allowing Biontech to cooperate with a Pfizer. It is too late now but I hope the EU will learn from its mistakes. You can't cooperate with a US company if lives are at stake.  I'm not blaming the US but the EU failed its people completely on the realpolitik side of things.

Back in the day CureVac was seen as a forerunner. Even Trump attempted a hostile takeover.

But yes, there was (and is) a lot of naivety by European politicians. Somehow they truly put their all trust in multilateralim, but when things get ugly every country take care of their own people first. They thought that once the vaccines are here, people will come and roll up their sleeves and dance as they call the end of the pandemic. Reality is more complicated. In all parts of the equation.

 

[JoannaL]

7 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

You mean a worse outcome than the US getting everyone vaccinated before the 4th of July for party reasons and at risk people dying in the rest of the world? Yeah I'm exaggerating but it kinda feels like that right now.  As I said I'm blaming the EU for failing its people not the US goverment for not failing its people. 

Actually I do not think the Pfizer Biontech cooperperation is a bad thing. Biontech was quite small and I think it is because of Pfizer that they got the phase II and III set up so quickly. So that worked. Also there are no contractual problems with Pfizer, they are delivering reliably , much better than anyone else.

[williamjm]

7 minutes ago, JoannaL said:

Thank you for the interesting article!

From it :

"The Italian authorities went to the site after receiving an alert from the European Commission, which found a discrepancy between what the company said it was producing in European Union facilities, and what the facilities themselves were reporting."

So they were trying to hide this supply. Also only AZ is saying that this was for COVAX and EU and , you know, AZ is a lying liar who lies.

Regardless of whether or not the vaccines were heading somewhere they shouldn't have been it's clear there has been a lack of transparency and a complete breakdown in trust between the EU and AZ.

https://www.ft.com/content/48b28b7e-9161-47a4-9c37-cf89fea2bc12 has a bit more detail on the investigation:

The Italian government said it was asked on Saturday by the European Commission to “verify” some vaccine batches at the Anagni plant. It deployed a team from the Nuclei Antisofisticazioni and Sanità (NAS), an arm of the Italian police force, to the site between Saturday and Sunday. “The inspected lots were found to be destined for Belgium,” it said in a statement.

That statement does seem to leave some questions unanswered, I think it's fair to assume not all the 29 million doses are going to Belgium so I guess they only inspected some small part of it.

 

[Fragile Bird]

18 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

You mean a worse outcome than the US getting everyone vaccinated before the 4th of July for party reasons and at risk people dying in the rest of the world? Yeah I'm exaggerating but it kinda feels like that right now.  As I said I'm blaming the EU for failing its people not the US goverment for not failing its people. 

As JoannaL said, Pfizer is delivering. There would be no “4th of July” party plans without them, so, yes, the teaming up of the two has worked very well for everyone.

Eta: and I think I’ve made very clear my opinion of what the US is doing. 

[Luzifer's right hand]

5 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

As JoannaL said, Pfizer is delivering. There would be no “4th of July” party plans without them, so, yes, the teaming up of the two has worked very well for everyone.

I think it worked well for the US and Isreal not very well for the rest of the world imo. But it is an academic debate at this point I guess. I hope they plan better for the next pandemic. 

[Padraig]

I was waiting for more facts to come to light.

It is very weird.

And as Joanna mentioned, there has been a lot of controversy about Halix supplying the UK over the last week.  And these vaccines in Italy came from Halix for finishing.  So it seems unlikely that the 2 stories are unlinked?  The surprise may be how much vaccines are lying around.  29m!  And when are they to be distributed?

As mentioned, AZ seems to be a have communication problem with the EU (and US to a lesser degree).  A "surprise" is never a good thing.

58 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

France, Italy and Germany didn’t take any up because it was offered from SII and the Indian plant isn’t EU approved. Everyone told me the EU was being supplied from European plants.

Yes.  The EU is being supplied from European plants but it has no intention of taking up vaccines from COVAX.  The reason why the Indian plants weren't approved was because the EU didn't expect any COVAX vaccines (and thus, it didn't need to approve Indian plants).  Subsequently, it has looked at getting (non-COVAX) supplies from India because AZ Europe has failed.  But that is only a recent thing.

29 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

I think it worked well for the US and Isreal not very well for the rest of the world imo.

I'm open minded about this.  The Pfizer-Biontech relationship has worked well.  It existed pre-COVID etc.  But yes, there is an academic question about what would have happened if they got involved with a big German pharma companies like Merck or Bayer instead.  Neither does much vaccines though (IIRC), and hadn't a pre existing relationship with Biontech, so it may have just delayed the rollout.

The real problem is that not enough big European pharma companies were involved with vaccines.  Hopefully that will change.

Edited: Removed mention of AZ only coming from India and Korea.  There was indeed some doses always planned to come from Europe.

[Larry of the Lawn]

My inner cynic wonders how much of this bad press AZ is catching is really just drummed up by competitors.  

[Filippa Eilhart]

lol at the title @Fragile Bird

[Zorral]

Good title, 'Bird.

Been buried in work, so not able to keep up with developments in anything, except to cruise through this forum, so thanks!

In a funny kind of way, it feels as though the regular posters here, we have been going through the pandemic together.  The historian in me thinks it could be an interesting cross view on all the developments to sift through the multiple threads we've had for the pandemic subject, once it is over.  If it really ever will be over, in the sense of over enough that we can go to indoor music clubs in December again, and feel safe.