Jesus wept, they unilaterally closed the Irish border without telling the Irish, and you think they can be relied upon to frankly communicate information that increases the pressure accruing to a poorly thought-out vaccine strategy? The EC is obviously running scared on this, I suspect they have been for weeks, it is just now public.
2 Likes
Phizer has been getting a lot of flak as well, but you raise interesting points, I just 1 hour ago read a German article saying that Germany was threatening legal action against Phizer and AZ.
I trust my own health officials much more than a CEO in AZ anyway, and they are saying that AZ have miscommunicated and dropped a bomb shell much too late. I have no reason to doubt my minister of health concerning that.
2 Likes
Not great, but that is not one of the Variants of Concern. The UK one is the most likely to hit Norway, the South African variant is probably the most worrisome - so the fact that it is in the UK is bad. Brazilian one may be as bad as the South African one, hard to know because of questions around the Brazilian data (Bolsonaro effect).
1 Like
I have no trouble believing this all came as a tremendous shock to the Minister of Health of Norway. None at all.
What makes it so much scarier than the other ones?
So let me get this right:
Your suggested version of the truth is that AZ have been warning the EU for quite some time that deliveries would fall well below what originally envisioned but the EC have hidden this information from EU states ? Because I think that’s what you said, which would of course explain the horrific communications, or lack of, from AZ and absolve them from a lot of guilt.
However, that makes absolutely no sense to me, none at all, since AZ have not leaked a word of that, which would probably be in their interest to do.
But time will tell, eventually something like that would get out.
2 Likes
It ( 501Y.V2 ) has the same mutations (mainly N501.Y) that the B.117 has that appear to make it more contagious. But it also has two mutations (E484K and K417N) that have also been observed in Brazil (not genetically linked though) that make it evade antibodies. So the Novavax trial data suggests 95% efficacy of that vaccine against the original strains, 85% versus the UK variant (B.117), but only 60% against the South African one. Not zero efficacy, but give it a chance to mutate some more…
So, in short, as contagious as any strain known, with as much resistance to vaccines as any strain known, all in one package.
3 Likes
I posted a link to an article earlier…it may provide some answers?
1 Like
Why leak? There are two possibilities here. The EC sues, and AZ simply releases everything as part of their defence. Or the EC sues, and AZ gets on with the business of producing vaccines. A leak is a political response by non-politicians. It possibly weakens a legal defence, and worsens the situation if the EC is actually realizing they have a hopeless legal position. In either scenario, a leak at this time does nothing for them.
It is possible that AZ never directly quantified what their shortfall would be, and in the end only provided a snapshot estimate (hence an update ~ 2 weeks later showing higher quantities). But the EC seems to suggest that they were not monitoring output and delivery, naively expecting a truck to back up the building in Brussels until that one moment. I just don’t believe it. Our government is getting daily production updates. The only surprise about the Pfizer one was that they amended it to make it worse in response to EU pressure. Do you really think the EC is not monitoring closely for a contract this important?
Anyway, I am off for some late dinner. Need a substantial meal now before I go to bed, because I feel a tad grumpy with the negative corona news.
Absolute madness for any country to place reliance on a scheduled roll out of a certain amount of vaccines whose number had never been guaranteed and for which the EMA had not yet even approved. Madness.
I frankly don’t believe AZ have been warning the EC and thus the EU and associated states, about the incredibly large shortfall in production. It does not make sense to me. Because this is exactly what several EU states are accusing AZ of not having done.
Time will tell if you are right. But for now, I don’t think it’s likely.
In any case, I need a meal and some sleep. Do take care, you and everyone else.
2 Likes
Need to remember its probably a batch process done on a massive scale.
The closest analogy is creating beer. Lets say you brewed 50L as a hobby. If you stuff it up you ruin the entire batch.
Now imagine that at a 10,000L to 100,000L scale. A half yield in a single run that takes weeks to get to that point, likely translates to millions of vaccines.
3 Likes
So instead you are willing to believe that a multibillion Euro procurement contract with millions of lives at stake was subject to less contract management that the implementation of a contact management database? The idea that this came out of the blue is simply absurd. A simple IT project is probably providing weekly updates, but this wasn’t?
If that is true, it is absolutely shocking negligence. These delivery contracts should be among the most tightly managed in history, not least for the storage requirements and resultant logisitics complications.
Bear in mind that none of the EU states making the accusation are parties to the contract - by design, the EC was in the driver’s seat and would have managed the contracts. The EU states are the end customers, but have no direct relationship. Most of what they know would have been from the EC.
2 Likes
LOL, that is exactly what I was thinking - batch processes in parallel to get scale. Throw in any kind of sensitivity, and it does sound sensitive, and you can get variations in composition that may render it useless or significantly compromise yield. It is probably more akin to yeast production than beer, actually.
2 Likes
Well, if Magnus’ view is representative of many of those relying on the vaccines procured by the EC I have to applaud their propaganda team. And I say that with particular respect because I think highly of Magnus’ critical thinking ability.
This was surely bound to happen - 7 billion people wanting the vaccine all at the same time - somebody is going to be disappointed.
I dont think that’s 100% fair sorry because those figures would have been loosely agreed at the time the contract was signed, probably verbally. You’d be pretty pissed as well to find that came up short. But jumping up and down about it when things are not going to plan isn’t great either. This smacks of a lot people that should be communicating, not doing so to me and then beating the war drum without actually having the discussion first.
1 Like
What’s not fair about it? What about the 800 million or so doses of vaccines that haven’t even got to the stage of applying for approvals?
There are no binding stipulations in the contract for when the doses or how many are to be delivered so why are countries now pretending that there are? The anger appears to be borne from countries being encouraged to place disproportionate reliance on a process that was always very unlikely to meet such expectations.
The EC appears to have banked on every vaccine being ready as anticipated with a set amount of doses. That’s naive, at best. And instead of trying to work with the pharmaceutical companies they launch misconceived attacks on one of only two that have been approved and impose restrictions on both companies ability to meet it’s obligations to third parties, directly risking lives.
I hope AZ’s and Pfizer’s contracts with those outside the EU include a disclaimer should the EU decide to act in such an egregious and pernicious manner.
It is not a matter of risking.lives. The cancelled Pfizer shipments were scheduled to be used in Ontario’s second tier risk long term care homes, including the Barrie long term care home now being ripped apart by the B.117 variant, with 63 of the 129 residents dead in the past week. Their vaccination clinic was scheduled for January 14, but was postponed when Pfizer advised the reduced shipments were in fact not coming at all until late February. January 14 might have been too late anyway, we don’t really know how much of a difference the vaccine would have made after 7-10 days.
It is what it is, the EU acting in its own interests to save its own citizens… But I don’t feel any particular obligation to accept the fairly obvious Pulcinella show at face value.
1 Like