Biden Admin Will Share Millions of AstraZeneca Vaccine Doses Worldwide (politico.com) 149
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Politico: The Biden administration is preparing to send up to 60 million AstraZeneca doses to countries in need over the next several months, once a federal safety review is conducted, according to two senior Biden administration officials. The company has produced about 10 million doses of the vaccine for the U.S. but the FDA has not yet authorized their use. The agency is still examining the doses to ensure they meet the necessary quality control standards. An additional 50 million doses are in production, one of the senior officials said.
It is unclear where the U.S. will send the AstraZeneca doses and whether it will send them through COVAX or directly to individual countries. The administration's decision to commit the doses was first reported by the Associated Press. It comes on the heels of the Biden administration's announcement that it will send India raw materials and components to manufacture Covishield, a version of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the country's Serum Institute. Those materials were already wrapped up in contracts held by the U.S. But the administration decided over the weekend to divert pending orders of vaccine supplies such as filters to India, and to ship additional drugs, test kits and personal protective equipment. The administration has not yet decided whether to send India AstraZeneca doses directly.
It is unclear where the U.S. will send the AstraZeneca doses and whether it will send them through COVAX or directly to individual countries. The administration's decision to commit the doses was first reported by the Associated Press. It comes on the heels of the Biden administration's announcement that it will send India raw materials and components to manufacture Covishield, a version of the AstraZeneca vaccine produced by the country's Serum Institute. Those materials were already wrapped up in contracts held by the U.S. But the administration decided over the weekend to divert pending orders of vaccine supplies such as filters to India, and to ship additional drugs, test kits and personal protective equipment. The administration has not yet decided whether to send India AstraZeneca doses directly.
This is only the beginning (Score:3)
The USA bought way more doses than it needs. Most other rich countries did the same.
Re:This is only the beginning (Score:4, Insightful)
Additionally, production of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is already chugging along since those vaccines received emergency authorization before the others. So the large majority of US COVID-19 vaccine recipients will likely continue to receive one of those two products.
But there is certainly a demand in the US for the single-shot vaccines. Some people will want them by choice; but, also, they will be the go-to vaccines for communities where follow-up may be a problem (e.g. itinerant workers, the homeless).
Re: (Score:2)
Ohh bull pucky, in a truly narcissistic move, they are dumping the astrazeneca vaccine that very few people want in the first world to the third world. The astrazeneca vaccine, the vaccine they would have to pay me to take and a whole damn lot, rather have the virus thanks very much, ohh wait, too late, already had it, so they could not even pay me to take the astrazeneca vaccine (for their extremely corrupt behaviour they should make no money from the vaccine at all).
For fun demand the Russian one, really
Re: (Score:2)
I am curious to know what possible outcome have been considered for doing just that. Appears that there are trials in the works in the UK. https://www.bbc.com/news/healt... [bbc.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Rich countries tended to buy enough shots for their population from every vendor - because they weren't sure if any would work. The US has 500 million J&J shots ordered alone (In case they would need 2 shots per person)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It wasn't the mention of closing borders that was the problem. It was being selective about it. Trump's reason for closing borders was to hurt China, not to stop coronavirus. Because that was his reason and he didn't truly believe coronavirus to be a problem, he chose to be selective and thus ineffective. Closing them all with no exceptions would have been a scientifically proper choice that would have gained support. Most liberals I know were astonished it wasn't being done just as we were astonished that
Half vaccinating the world is really bad (Score:3)
Before vaccines become available there was no evolutionary pressure for the virus to be vaccine resistant, and so any that did occur by chance probably just died out.
With a half vaccinated 3rd world, you are providing a very strong selection pressure to be vaccine resistant. This is a dangerous time. Especially as most of the vaccines work in essentially the same way, simulating the spike protein (with different delivery mechanisms).
Once we start vaccinating, it is essential that we get it out into the wo
Re: (Score:2)
Not only did the US buy more than it needed, it did so in such a way that dozens of countries went without (in spite of them having paid for the doses already).
Re: (Score:2)
this is because of the export ban
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Me? I didn't buy any. But the USA did buy a lot more than 660,000,000.
Re: (Score:2)
The US government hasn't approved the AZ vaccine for domestic use. Why bother keeping it around?
Re: (Score:2)
And with all the bad press, even if it were FDA approved, people in the USA which haven't been vaccinated yet (so including most hesitant people) wouldn't want it anyways. They are dragging their feet with approval on purpose. Some people even say AZ will never apply to FDA, for not risking a refusal.
Why would the FDA give emergency use authorization to a vaccine which they no longer need anyways? I mean they need it, but it's no longer urgent so no reason to fast track like they did with the other 3 vaccin
Re: (Score:3)
I wash a car from top to bottom so that dirty water never runs over a clean surface. A similar thought with vaccination would be to vaccinate from the most likely breeding grounds to the least to maximize the odds of getting through the vaccination effort prior to the creation of a vaccination beating variant. If you can make it through before that happens, your chances of never having a vaccination beating variant go up dramatically.
In practice, I think this thought train would focus on areas with the most
Re: This is only the beginning (Score:2)
That would be like washing your hub caps instead of the roof because they are dirtier. Or washing your neighbor's car before your own because he went muddin' and you didn't.
My point is that getting to herd immunity somewhere is better than spreading around the vaccine and getting to herd immunity nowhere. This logic applies to vaccinating hospital staff and nursing home residents before opening up wider eligibility and it applies to getting a whole city or state or country squared away before sharing the we
Re: (Score:2)
Re: This is only the beginning (Score:2)
If there's enough to do it, then sure. There isn't. Between India, Africa, Brazil, Mexico etc we can either have cases falling in the US or rising everywhere including the US.
Re: (Score:2)
Demand in the US is already dropping off due to hesitancy.
Maybe you should focus your energy on persuading your fellow RWNJs that they to even need to get vaccinated.
Re: This is only the beginning (Score:2)
That would mean fewer doses to go around for export ;-P
Re: (Score:2)
The US has given a single dose to less than half its population as of the time of posting this comment.
And precisely zero of those doses were from the AZ vaccine which the USA has not approved for use but somehow felt the need to horde anyway.
You could share 100% of your AZ doses and it wouldn't affect your schedule in the slightest since it's not part of it.
Hoarder looks like hero (Score:4, Interesting)
The press makes it sound like the US is a hero here.
But the US has been sitting on tens of millions of Astra Zeneca vaccines it hasn't even approved while countries that have already paid for Astra Zeneca have 0 doses.
So the hoarder comes out looking like a hero, when in reality the hoarders (US and EU) have created or at least contributed to this problem around the world:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/0... [nytimes.com]
Re:Hoarder looks like hero (Score:5, Insightful)
So the hoarder comes out looking like a hero, when in reality the hoarders (US and EU) have created or at least contributed to this problem around the world
That's one way to look at it, and I certainly understand how particularly from the outside looking in it must feel that way. But at the same time, each country with the technology and money to finance these marvels of modern medicine paid dearly for vaccines with the expectation of protecting their populations. The scattershot approach in the US to pay to reserve massive stockpiles of several vaccines was to prevent the exact problem that has plagued Europe, where if one or two vaccines had issues or showed low efficacy there would be fallbacks. Ultimately that "hoarding" has created a surplus of massively subsidized vaccine, and advanced the science behind creating more at a staggering pace.
I also suspect that if out of a sense of altruism every nation that funded a vaccine had given away equal shares to every other nation on earth, you'd probably have less effect stopping the virus. Every disease that we've managed to eradicate has been destroyed by targeted regional vaccination campaigns, much like fighting a forest fire. You don't spray the hose wildly in the air, you put the fire out one patch at a time. In this case one country at a time.
But in the end, I'm just not sure I understand what people expected. Did you really think the US or EU or China or Russia was going to develop a vaccine and NOT vaccinate their own population first? It would be one thing if this was like Malaria, and the US was largely isolated from it... but to expect these nations to use their vast technological might and wealth to create vaccines then put themselves at the back of the line when their citizens are dying is ridiculous. The US is setting up to ship massive amounts of vaccine roughly 3 months after its population first got substantial access to it, that isn't exactly leaving everyone else out in the cold.
Re: (Score:3)
It was take-a-penny-leave-a-penny money for the United States. An insignificant sum for a country that spends $1.5 trillion a year on its military, more than the rest of the world combined.
Doncha mean worldwide vaccination campaigns? There's a reason why smallpox is exti
Re: (Score:2)
Doncha mean worldwide vaccination campaigns? There's a reason why smallpox is extinct but not polio or measles. The only way to stop covid-19 from being an endemic illness like the noravirus, is for the majority of the world to get vaccinated before it has a chance to mutate.
No, I don't. Smallpox was eliminated in the US and Europe in the 50's. Campaigns to eliminate it worldwide failed in the early 60's, and a second push by the late 60's led to the elimination of smallpox in South America in 1971, Asia in 1975, and finally Africa in 1977. It's the exact same method we've attempted to use with measles and polio, and have gotten damned close with those too. A targeted push for vaccination in localized areas to raise the immunity threshold to the point it stop community tra
Re: (Score:2)
The United States could have vaccinated a supermajority of the world's population by now for probably the pri
Re: (Score:2)
You can also be blind to the US policies of selfish power fundamentalism while other countries share their vaccines . You can call it soft power if you want. China can afford sharing its vaccines with other countries because they have the virus under control domestically.
The US on the other hand pressures South American countries to refuse the Sputnik vaccine: https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Statistics of exports vs production last month
https://www.statista.com/chart... [statista.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The scattershot approach in the US to pay to reserve massive stockpiles of several vaccines was to prevent the exact problem that has plagued Europe
The USA and Europe applied the exact same approach. The USA preferentially ordered overwhelmingly local Pfizer products and backed it up with a little of the foreigners. The UK preferentially ordered overwhelmingly AZ and backed it up with a little of the foreigners. The EU preferentially ordered Sanofi and backed it up with a little of the foreigners.
Critically here the Sanofi ended up being a dead end so EU is vaccinating 100% based on foreign owned and manufactured products. No country not even the USA h
Re: (Score:3)
The EU is actually suing AZ of non-delivery of vaccines it paid for. The EU invested in the manufacturing capacity and development too.
The EU started out being nice and sharing, but then noticed that nobody else was sharing back so gave up and just concentrated on its own citizens.
But what about my 5G? (Score:3)
I got my AZ vaccination on Friday, but sadly, my 5G reception hasn't gotten any better... I thought it was supposed to improve things? /s
Federal safety review? (Score:2)
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:4, Interesting)
Were you okay when the money was being used to drop bombs on foreign countries?
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Germans could have held out for another decade if Western powers decided not to liberate Europe. And that's assuming they wouldn't be able to beat out the Russians in an engagement if they had more resources. The Germans were certainly more tactically capable than the Russians military until 1945.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
A bunch of the bases the USA took over from the UK have been returned to the nation they are located.
As for the USA bases in the UK, most of those are not going away for a long while because the UK begged the USA to keep them and gave the USA great deals to stay.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Its definitely not all of them or even close to it. The vast majority of those bases closed at the end of WW2 and many more at the end of the cold war.
Re: (Score:2)
When we drop bombs on foreign countries, at least we don't add insult to injury by demanding reparations afterwards, unlike say Europe.
You realise most of "Europe" lost the war right? They were the ones paying the US. $23 billion was the bill for Germany, that would be considered a lot f money now, imagine how much it was 80 years ago.
I use quotes around Europe since I'm not actually sure you realise that Europe isn't a country.
Re: (Score:2)
The US didn't demand reparations. They did however issue loans to allies to prop up their economies during the war when they otherwise would have financially collapsed. WW1 and WW2 financially ruined the British empire and that isn't the US' fault. World wars are expensive.
They also helped rebuild the economies of their former defeated foes. I don't think the Treaty of Versailles had a Marshall Plan in there anywhere.
Re: How much are we charging? (Score:2)
I take it you haven't heard of the Marshall plan. That entire bloc would be part of the third world right now if it weren't for that.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I sure as fuck hope it's not my tax dollars funding vaccinations in foreign countries.
1} It's a shame you're AC so we can't remind you of this when a disaster strikes the US and you need or want foreign aid.
2} It's in your best interest to get COVID stamped out world-wide as fast as possible since it obviously disregards borders and new mutations spring from new infections.
3} Some (but nowhere near all) of these doses have an expiry date which is looming. The US shows no sign of approving AZ, so it's gift or garbage.
4} These gifts may actually require replacement. A shipment previously sent to Canada was labelled a "loan" to satisfy wording of the contracts with the manufacturer preventing reselling.
5} As a Canadian who got his AZ shot this Saturday, I'd gladly offer to send you the $13 CDN ($10 US) but... oh... Anonymous Coward. Too bad.
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:5, Informative)
Keep the $10. It's money well spent, IMO.
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:5, Interesting)
As an American who would really rather not treat my neighbor to the north as an Enemy, recognizing the importance of everything you said (as well as making sure we have good relations), I hope we can send you as many covid shots as we can spare. Keep the $10. It's money well spent, IMO.
Thank you very, very much for the sentiment, friend.
That said, I'd be 100% okay with the millions of doses this article is about going to places that need them even more than we do. Not just because I've got my first dose, but because I'm not a sociopath, I'd be totally okay if they all went to say... India. Just as the rest of the world grieved when Americans were dying in droves last year, we're sympathetic today.
Re: (Score:2)
An example I recently read, Chicago (already in debt) schools now give 750,000 free meals to "needy" school kids annually.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect there's a lot of misinformation with that statement.
Suspect no more: Here's the budget [google.com] (see page 198). And, it looks like it's exploding [suntimes.com]!
Re: (Score:2)
Also, the second link/article shows how you're paying for it, as it's federal money. It's greatly Hispanic there now, and very likely they're undocumented immigrants as the numbers seemed to grow too quickly for them to represent natural births versus inward movement.
Re: (Score:2)
Keep the $10. It's money well spent, IMO.
Actually, its money already spent. In order to ensure the US could vaccinate its entire population as rapidly as possible, they basically wrapped up contracts which would buy doses before the vaccine manufacturers completed phase III trials. The US has already bought more vaccine than the population of the US, and that includes as much as 20% of the US population that will choose not to get vaccinated.
Personally, I suspect Canadians would be happier to purchase Pfizer and Moderna at top dollar, than take
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Canada is behind but not as far as you think.
Canada opted for a delayed second dose strategy. I think it's a good choice, given the efficacy of the first dose is much greater than half of the efficacy of the combined doses.
But it means that while about 30% got a first dose, almost none got a second one yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
So as more things ar eknown, mixing and matching Vaccines doesn't look to be an issue, and may in fact be beneficial as it slightly broadens the immune system response. Secondly, as a rule, the only reason why Pfizer and the like initially set the delay at 2 weeks was because that was the shortest time it was safe to do it, and they needed ot get the testing done ASAP. With many vaccines, the response actually improves with a greater time between the initial exposure and the booster.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The USA is not doing it because they have a lot more doses. Also, the approved protocol is 3 weeks.
In Canada, 4 months is about the time we need to give everyone a first shot. So it doesn't make sense to go longer than that anyways.
Re: (Score:2)
Canada's first dose vaccination rate is closer to 20% than 30%. I don't expect that we'll even break 50% before summer.
I think that the delayed second dose strategy we are adopting here is moronic. For one thing, it leaves people with only single-dose effectiveness for 3 months... although the effectiveness is good, it's not as good as two-dose effectiveness, which gives more opportunity for the virus to spread covertly, and possibly even develop an immunity to the vaccine before we've gotten rid the
Re: (Score:3)
Canada's first dose vaccination rate is closer to 20% than 30%.
Not it's not. It's 32 doses injected per 100. Some received two. So in total 30% of the population got at least one dose. We reached 20% on April 12th.
I don't expect that we'll even break 50% before summer.
Should be possible. They repeatedly said that every adult will be offered one dose before July 1st. There will be enough vaccine for that.
Of course if vaccine hesitancy is high, we may not achieve it.
I think that the delayed second dose strategy we are adopting here is moronic. For one thing, it leaves people with only single-dose effectiveness for 3 months... although the effectiveness is good, it's not as good as two-dose effectiveness, which gives more opportunity for the virus to spread covertly, and possibly even develop an immunity to the vaccine before we've gotten rid the thing.
So you would prefer having only 16% fully vaccinated people instead of 30% single dose and a few with two doses?
The virus can mutate on every transmission. We ne
Re: (Score:2)
I believe this statistic includes second doses, which means that the number of people in Canada who have received a vaccination is still under 25%.
I wrote to my MLA because health matters are dealt with on a provincial level. I had hoped that either my concerns would be taken seriously and passed along or I would receive
Re: (Score:2)
I believe this statistic includes second doses, which means that the number of people in Canada who have received a vaccination is still under 25%.
That not what the numbers I've read says.
They explicitly list the number of people who received at least one dose. And for Canada it's 30%. Total number of injected dose is another graph. For Canada it's 32%.
https://ourworldindata.org/cov... [ourworldindata.org]
More than once, Canada was promised something and then either things fell through, or else there were delays. I've lost track of how many promises were made to Canada which have yet to materialize. I'll believe Canada is in good shape for COVID when I see it actually happening, not because of what is somehow "expected" to happen. Canada will get there, eventually... but not for a while, I fear.
I still think you are a bit pessimistic, but I get what you say. I definitely hope you end up wrong.
Mathematically, it is inescapable that the amount of time that it will take everyone to get fully vaccinated is exactly the same, regardless of the delay between doses.
Of course.
The only difference is how quickly we get to partial immunization levels. The longer a person remains only partially vaccinated, the more likely it is that their up to 30% remaining subjectivity to the virus will be exploited by some random contact either at work or during a public transit commute, perpetuating spread to younger members of their household.who are much more unlikely to be vaccinated.
The numbers I've seen are not 70% protection after one dose and 95% after the second. It's more like 85-90% two weeks after the first dose.
The idea of delaying the second dose *WELL* beyond manufacturer guidelines
We have to understand
Re: (Score:2)
As a fellow Canadian you shouldn't give the impression that everything is sunshine and lollipops here. The latest figures show the U.S. has fully vaccinated 28% of their populace whereas Canada has done the same for less than 3%. Does that qualify it as a shit show?
I'm sorry... I don't know where in my post I gave any impression of how things are here. I was trying to be philosophical, not political.
That said, for a country with zero domestic manufacturing capacity that won't have domestic manufacturing capacity for almost another year, I don't know that I'd say it's a shit show. I'm kind of amazed we've landed the doses we have when the whole world so desperately needs them.
I'm not of the belief that handling of the pandemic has been flawless here, federally or
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, the slow vaccine rollout is the one thing I don't blame our pretty boy drama teacher for. He massively over-invested in vaccines and we still got screwed over. Things he can be blamed for: Not activating the quarantine act until everyone begged him to and our current leaky swiss cheeese of border protection where if you don't qualify for one of many exemtions you can still post an instagram video [680news.com] of yourself walking out of the airport.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Everyone knows viruses will easily be stopped at the customs check.
Re: (Score:2)
And just because it's in everyone's interest to stamp it out as fast as possible, that doesn't mean the USA has to foot the bill for the entire fucking world. Even if we could afford it, we shouldn't do it. It isn't America's job to pick up the slack for every government that can't do its job. It's the job of the cit
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, Canada's amazingly wonderful single-payer healthcare system can't buy or produce it's own vaccines? I'll keep that in mind next time another American says we should adopt your system.
RECORDPLAYERSCREECH.MP3
Hang on a moment there. You have tripped some bullshit agenda sensors and we'll just take a moment to evaluate what caused that.
First up, you say "can't buy or produce"? But... we can and have been buying as much as is available for sale. We've committed - and paid for - something like nine doses per Canadian citizen. We've purchased nearly or actually the most per-capita vaccine supply of any nation.
Second, you're pretending this isn't a unique, specific situation. Any syst
Re: (Score:2)
Ignore him. He's just a Trump supporting shit for brains. Now you learn what poison Americans have to deal with.
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not up with the latest in pharma ownership, but isn't AZ a European company? Why would the US not send their local product (Pfizer etc)?
It doesn't matter who developed the vaccine (the Pfizer-BioNTech was developed in Germany, by the way). It's who own it.
The USA ordered 300 million AstraZeneca doses, most of which is not yet produced but will at some point. Some (most?) of it is to be made in the US. The USA bans COVID-19 vaccine exports, so it's not as if AstraZeneca could use these doses to fulfill other contracts (such as the one with the EU) anyways. Otherwise they would ship them to countries like Canada. Canada ordered 20 million AstraZeneca doses explicitly made in the USA, but didn't get any so far. At least from that contract. The USA, however, did LOAN 1.5 million AZ doses from its own 300 million order to Canada.
The USA is still not done with vaccination, so is not exporting its Pfizer doses yet. However, since the AstraZeneca is not yet FDA approved, why let it rot in fridges instead of sending them where it can be useful?
Re: (Score:2)
The USA bans COVID-19 vaccine exports, so it's not as if AstraZeneca could use these doses to fulfill other contracts (such as the one with the EU) anyways.
I'm sure that AZ has been released from the contractual wording that resulted in that condition by now.
The USA is still not done with vaccination, so is not exporting its Pfizer doses yet.
Yup. But Pfizer is not beholden to all of the contractual stipulations of "Operation Warp Speed". In fact, the US doesn't "ban" covid vaccine export; it only requires that vaccine manufacturers be able to fill the US schedule first, before committing and sending out vaccine to other countries. Pfizer does export overseas (otherwise Israel would not be vaccinated), but only its excess capacity after meet
Re: (Score:2)
The USA bans COVID-19 vaccine exports, so it's not as if AstraZeneca could use these doses to fulfill other contracts (such as the one with the EU) anyways.
I'm sure that AZ has been released from the contractual wording that resulted in that condition by now.
Not aware of it. Surely it must be in the news if it's the case isn't it?
Did AstraZeneca itself (not the US governement) export any dose from the USA yet ?
In fact, the US doesn't "ban" covid vaccine export; it only requires that vaccine manufacturers be able to fill the US schedule first, before committing and sending out vaccine to other countries. Pfizer does export overseas (otherwise Israel would not be vaccinated), but only its excess capacity after meeting US contracts (which it may have competed at this point).
It's a ban, yes. Pfizer/Moderna can't export from the USA to the highest bidders, even if they never committed not to do so in their contract.
Trump used an executive order to do so, and Biden left it as is.
But anyways you are mixing things here. Pfizer was only able to provide doses to Israel because it is exporting from Belgium, not the USA.
The USA can't
Re: (Score:2)
It's a ban, yes
No, its not. Pfizer & Moderna vaccine will be flying out of US factories to overseas, once P & M have completed their vaccine shipments pre-purchased by the USG.
No vaccine makers completed phase 3 trials yet, from what I understand.
You complete enough of the phase 3 trials that the FDA feels okay giving them the EUA. AZ wasn't even able to do that last year. They tried to cobble together two smaller trials, with different controls, and tried to pass it off as a phase 3 trial. FDA shot them down, and AZ had to go back to the drawing board.
Yes, just give them to Covax and problem is solved.
Why bother? The US already
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not up with the latest in pharma ownership, but isn't AZ a European company? Why would the US not send their local product (Pfizer etc)?
Same reason Europe struggles to get Pfizer vaccines whereas Israel lead the world in vaccinating it's people. It doesn't matter what nationality of a country is. What matters is where the vaccines are manufactured and if that country has export restrictions or preferential clauses like the US and UK do (and more recently EU though I thought they lifted theirs).
Re: (Score:2)
Israel didn't make any vaccine.
Re: (Score:2)
But yeah, it's a BS argument.
Re: (Score:2)
What an odd thing to say while taking advantage of a vaccine created in Germany by Turkish immigrants [nytimes.com].
Re: How much are we charging? (Score:4, Informative)
The science you are referring to was invented by the English, and earlier by the Chinese. If everyone was a proponent of the isolationism you are proposing you very likely wouldnâ(TM)t be alive as your ancestors wouldnâ(TM)t have survived.
I doubt that matters to you, however. People with a nationalistic mindset arenâ(TM)t so much interested in history as they are at imagining a world that never was and never will be and then selling the âoedreamâ to others who are equally delusional. We already know how that ends.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I sure as fuck hope it's not my tax dollars funding vaccinations in foreign countries.
You realize the difference between "the US is selling a vaccine to country X" vs "the US is giving a vaccine to country X" is an insanely cost-effective PR campaign.
Not to mention the fact that giving vs selling means the US is now able to "donate" the vaccines according to other geopolitical priorities, like gathering favours or simply prioritizing restarting the economies of trading partners.
So yeah, even if you're trying to be an obnoxiously greedy asshole it's still a better idea to give the vaccines away.
Re: (Score:2)
so when some other country brews up and sends over a new variant that gets around the vaccine and gives your mom pneumonia, you'll at least be happy that your fucking tax dollars didn't go towards vaccinations there
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't we buy those for us? (Score:2)
Re:How much are we charging? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course it will be a bit lower than 100% in a large enough population. And more attention is given to the fact that the relative risk reduction for contracting the disease was "only" 76%, which is lower than mRNA.
But the lead story ought to be the reduction in risk of death, which is still excellent. And for the number of cases reduced per dollar spent, i.e. in a resource-limited environment like India, the cheaper medicines are more effective on that basis. (I'm not just talking about arbitrary pricing decisions by drugmakers - the mRNA vaccines consume far more resources in manufacture and distribution).
Re: (Score:2)
I think the question here is not about the effectiveness of AstraZeneca and J&J but about the occasional death related to vaccination. Obviously many are still stuck at the phase 3 study numbers comparing Pfizer/Moderna to others, but the main reason why AstraZeneca and J&J are not being used by the EU and US is because of the investigation on (rare) deaths.
Which is still, for many countries, a net win in number of deaths. But still a debatable subject for young patients who may die from it. Now yo
Re: (Score:3)
For us Europeans, it looks like Astra Zeneca had treated us wrongly, delivering 30 million doses out of 100 million promised in first quarter.
As such, basically we have abandoned AstraZeneca and are buying from the companies that actually delivered - Pfizer and Moderna.
Johnson and Johnson has niche uses (one shot vaccination is much better short-term than two shot, especially the 56-days between AstraZeneca doses).
As for blood clots, (in Romania at least) Pfizer has a similar rate to AstraZeneca - on the or
Re: (Score:2)
As such, basically we have abandoned AstraZeneca and are buying from the companies that actually delivered - Pfizer and Moderna.
Except that Pfizer and Moderna will only sell you the capacity that is leftover after fulfilling contracted vaccines for the US. Furthermore, Pfizer and Moderna is significantly more expensive than AZ (& J&J). Meanwhile the EU is trying to nickel and dime all the vaccine manufacturers, which is also why its significantly behind the US in vaccinating its entire population. If the EU cared about reducing deaths and existing populations where covid can mutate, they'd be taking anything they could ge
Re: (Score:2)
https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-c... [hotnews.ro]
In Romania were recorded 7 cases of thrombosis after vaccination - 4 after Pfizer and 3 after AstraZeneca. No link between vaccination and thrombosis was found.
To be fair, Pfizer has the lion share of vaccinations in Romania - 2.4 millions doses of Pfizer (includes both the initial shot and the booster shot), 300k doses of Moderna and some 420k of AstraZeneca:
https://vaccinare-covid.gov.ro... [vaccinare-covid.gov.ro]
(web sites in Romanian)
Well, while neither case was proven (no causality only coinci
Re: (Score:2)
You understand with the same population number, people get thrombosis without getting vaccinated?
Re: (Score:2)
Beggars can't be choosers
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We now have data from the only country to have used ALL vaccines on ALL age groups using the same staff and medical system - Hungary.
The results per 100 000 doses administered are as follows (official Hungarian Health Service data, published end of last week translated into English from their spy language)
Vaccine | Incidence of COVID19 per 100K administered | Deaths per 100K administered
Astra Zenecca | 700 | 7
SinoPharm | 356 | 16
Morerna | 1
And we all should believe these data (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But not as good as the vaccines we're using ourselves.
Doesn't need to be. The endgame is not the same as polio. We're not trying to eradicate the virus and doing so would be a fool's errand considering this is a coronavirus we're talking about.
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you can use the tax money saved to launch your entire fucking country into space.
I'd be up for that.
Especially if we can start by sending the liberals to L4 and the conservatives to L5, or vice-versa. We could solve a LOT MORE problems that way.
(But then I was a member of the L5 society back in its early days, so it would be a dream finally come true.)
Reminds me of "The Church of Latter Day Saints O.T.H.S." (Of The Holy Starship), a notional life-extetion / space-habitat church. They wanted to asc
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Vaccine hesitancy is hitting in the united states. Having tens of millions of stockpiled vaccines that aren't even approved for use in the US isn't going to convince those people to get the shots. Might as well give them to people who desperately want them
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because we need to shut down outbreaks worldwide to reduce the rise of new variants.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Astra-Zeneca vaccine is not "rotting shit". It's about as effective as taking just the first dose of any of the others (and virtually identical to taking just the first dose of Russia's Sputnik.)
(Assuming I haven't got it confused with another vaccine) It cuts the chances of getting the disease by a factor of several (three or more), the chances of getting the severe form by a factor of much more (seven-ish) and of dying by a factor so large that nobody in the trials died. That might not live up to th
But it's really GOOD shit, mrs Krushkie! (Score:2)
Looked it up. It's even better. From the US testing: