COVID-19: Vaccine and testing procedures Megathread Part 2 [Mod Warning - Post #1]

josip

Bit cynical wrote: »

Has the EU bulk deal been beneficial to the member states overall? We know that the US, the UK, a couple of Gulf states and of course Israel are way ahead in their rollout but if we look at what has been achieved by the EU itself we see the likes of Turkey and Switzerland in among the general range of EU countries. In particular the tiny country of Serbia is above the EU average for rollout and will probably surpass Ireland in the next couple of days.

Serbia is vaccinating using BioNTech, Sinopharm and Sputnik.
At this point in time, when people register for a vaccine, they can chose which of the 3 they want.
Supplies of Sinopharm and Sputnik are the reason their percentage vaccinated is going well.
Although Serbia is small compared to the EU, it's population is 70% larger than Ireland, so not exactly tiny.

markodaly

Micky 32 wrote: »

All the above you posted is only your opinion.

True, yet here we are almost a year into it and we are talking about mandatory quarantining. If the Vaccines were the silver bullet, why do this?

Because governments recognise the danger of new variants undermining the vaccine strategy. MM even said it himself, its a race against time.

Where are your links from a reputable source about the SA and Brazilian strain being actually resistant to current vaccines and actually proven?

I didn't actually say this.

Also you missed the part where i have said this particular virus can’t mutate too much without losing much of it’s functionality. So maybe these variants aren’t a bad thing, could be begining to weaken if it keeps mutating.

Your opinion of course.

Polar101

Bit cynical wrote: »

So I would repeat the question, is there any data showing that Eu countries are benefiting having their vaccine allocations handled by the EU as opposed to handling them individually?

Of course there's no data.

But let's say Israel finishes their vaccination programme before any EU country? What then? Their population is protected, but nowhere else in the world is - so they will have to limit international travel. They also paid a lot for a vaccine which was (or will be) available to the EU at a cheaper price.

If you're the first to vaccinate your entire population, great. But since we are in the EU vaccine programme, there's not all that much point in debating that - Ireland will get a share of the EU vaccine allocation (of the EMA approved variety), and the end result will be that much of the EU population will be vaccinated. And at more or less the same time.

If the options are 1) to be like Israel 2) to be like USA, when it comes to how they handled the pandemic or 3) be part of the EU program, I prefer option 3. I don't particularly care which country is on top of a list, I just want to see the entire EU complete the vaccinations as safely and as effectively as possible, but not at any cost.

Melanchthon

Polar101 wrote: »

Of course there's no data.

But let's say Israel finishes their vaccination programme before any EU country? What then? Their population is protected, but nowhere else in the world is - so they will have to limit international travel. They also paid a lot for a vaccine which was (or will be) available to the EU at a cheaper price.

Why would they have to limit international travel once they have herd immunity (via vaccination). In terms of the money, the internal economy is normally very substantial, any time quicker out of even internal restrictions pays for itself multiple times over.

Wolf359f

Bit cynical wrote: »

I'm not sure small size is a great advantage. Yes, if a large country operated in the same way as a small country they would be slower; but in practice, regional distribution centres would be set up so that the driving is not done from the capital city but from one of these local centres. Effectively the large country would be operating as many small countries.

If what you were saying had a basis in reality then countries like Canada or Australia would not have a hope of distributing the vaccine to its population in any reasonable time frame. But that is not the case and we see Canada with its vast land area up there with most much smaller EU countries.

It seemed to me to be a dismissal of legitimate criticism. If Trump had used the same sort of excuse people would jump on him and rightly so, yet under Trump (and now Biden) performance has been better than the EU.

So I would repeat the question, is there any data showing that Eu countries are benefiting having their vaccine allocations handled by the EU as opposed to handling them individually?

That I'm saying is it takes time to scale up. people throw up these charts that because we've only vaccinated X this week, that's what we'll do week after week. Canada is a good example.... Started vaccinations 14 Dec and took over 3 weeks to reach 0.5 doses per 100 people, then less than 3 weeks later to quadruple it. Roll out takes time. For larger countries it's a slow start until it ramps up. These charts need to start with approval date etc...
If you compare Canada per 100 people vaccinated and the EU, you can see they are level pegging when you start them on the same day of approval.
But behind Ireland, Denmark, Lithuania (taking away their weeks advantage Canada had)

Would individual countries within the EU do better going solo.... I don't think so. The larger and richer countries maybe. But then you would habe maybe the French betting heavy on Sanofi and making a balls and then perhaps start outbidding smaller states in the EU for Pfizer vaccines. Each individual country would need to spread their bets and some will fail. It would be a nightmare

The fact so many vaccines have proven to be effective means hedging your bet was not the best tactic, but that's hindsight. If Pfizer and AZ failed.... well the UK, Israel and the US would be up **** creek.

Micky 32

markodaly wrote: »

True, yet here we are almost a year into it and we are talking about mandatory quarantining. If the Vaccines were the silver bullet, why do this?

Because governments recognise the danger of new variants undermining the vaccine strategy. MM even said it himself, its a race against time.




I didn't actually say this.



Your opinion of course.

I won’t get into the multi qoute business.

The mandatory quarantine ‘talk’ is mostly due to our awful numbers in this country and the hospital situation. It may also be suggested as a precaution just in case the variants could cause problems. As i have said there’s no hard evidence to suggest there is. Hmmiz posted a link to evidence that the UK strain was actually taking a nosedive in the UK compared to the normal strain. Who knows maybe that mutation made it lose it’s overall strength..... It’s back a few pages if you look.

I have done quite a bit of reading and research about this virus and it does seem it doesn’t have much scope to mutate much without losing functionality, it’s a little more than an opinion. Look it up yourself.

I think it’s obvious some people would love the vaccines to fail. I’d swear some would love this to continue on for whatever sick agenda they have. Or maybe it’s they love being relevent with their “ i told you so” BS.

Come autumn winter this country will be a lot different if the September claim of the population vaccinated holds true, mark this post if you like.

Bit cynical

Polar101 wrote: »

Of course there's no data.

But let's say Israel finishes their vaccination programme before any EU country? What then? Their population is protected, but nowhere else in the world is - so they will have to limit international travel. They also paid a lot for a vaccine which was (or will be) available to the EU at a cheaper price.

But their need to limit international travel will be greatly reduced as so much of their own population will be vaccinated and internally their economy will be far more open. The one possible benefit is that the the EU can get their vaccine shots cheaper but any sort of delay means that that benefit is wiped out almost instantly.

If you're the first to vaccinate your entire population, great. But since we are in the EU vaccine programme, there's not all that much point in debating that - Ireland will get a share of the EU vaccine allocation (of the EMA approved variety), and the end result will be that much of the EU population will be vaccinated. And at more or less the same time.

Well I think it should always be up to debate. We are supposed to be a democratic society where things are publicly debated.

If the options are 1) to be like Israel 2) to be like USA, when it comes to how they handled the pandemic or 3) be part of the EU program, I prefer option 3. I don't particularly care which country is on top of a list, I just want to see the entire EU complete the vaccinations as safely and as effectively as possible, but not at any cost.

However most of the pandemic has been handled individually by EU member states. It is the vaccines that are being handled centrally by the EU and it is here that we are seeing delays. As I said in an earlier post, if the situation was reversed and we had double the vaccines isssued as the US we would quite happily attribute this to the shambolic administration under Trump.

markodaly

Micky 32 wrote: »

The mandatory quarantine ‘talk’ is mostly due to our awful numbers in this country and the hospital situation. It may also be suggested as a precaution just in case the variants could cause problems.

If case the new numbers cause problems?
Bit of an understatement there. The new variant is already causing problems, hence the talk about PCR tests and mandatory quarantine. No one saw the huge spike in numbers, because the modelling didn't take into account the new varient.

I have done quite a bit of reading and research about this virus and it does seem it doesn’t have much scope to mutate much without losing functionality, it’s a little more than an opinion. Look it up yourself.

So, when I put forward a point of view, its an opinion, when you do it should be taken more as fact? OK.

I think it’s obvious some people would love the vaccines to fail. I’d swear some would love this to continue on for whatever sick agenda they have. Or maybe it’s they love being relevent with their “ i told you so” BS.

Maybe that is the nub of the debate here, which is not even on topic.
It is easy to dismiss other peoples opinion when you put them into a box and label them something as you don't have any solid argument against it.

Come autumn winter this country will be a lot different if the September claim of the population vaccinated holds true, mark this post if you like.

I agree, it will be different, but do you think life will be like it was back in Feb 2020?

Micky 32

markodaly wrote: »

If case the new numbers cause problems?
Bit of an understatement there. The new variant is already causing problems, hence the talk about PCR tests and mandatory quarantine. No one saw the huge spike in numbers, because the modelling didn't take into account the new varient.




So, when I put forward a point of view, its an opinion, when you do it should be taken more as fact? OK.




Maybe that is the nub of the debate here, which is not even on topic.
It is easy to dismiss other peoples opinion when you put them into a box and label them something as you don't have any solid argument against it.



I agree, it will be different, but do you think life will be like it was back in Feb 2020?

Yes there are people who would love to see the vaccine fail.

The main reason the spike in numbers was Christmas. Everyone got together and travelled to be together. That’s what really happened there. I actually predicted that would happen in my own mind before i ever heard of the uk strain.

Once again you just ignored what i told you about the ‘more transmissable uk strain’. Infections for that strain have took a nosedive in infections compared to the existing strains. My guess it shot itself in the foot by trying to mutate.

I don’t expect everything fully to be normal by autumn but after autumn possibly over another 6/12 months we’ll be quite close to ‘Feb 2020’

Did you know the Spanish flu ( along with other past pandemics) burnt out after 2/3years.

markodaly

Micky 32 wrote: »

Yes there are people who would love to see the vaccine fail.

That is a hilarious conclusion on the points I have made, and it cements my point that for some, anything less than unbridled optimism and the gung-ho attitude that has put us in the latest mess, labels someone 'something', readily dishmissed as a crank and doom monger.

The main reason the spike in numbers was Christmas. Everyone got together and travelled to be together. That’s what really happened there. I actually predicted that would happen in my own mind before i ever heard of the uk strain.

That is amazing, why are you posting here? You should be offering your advice to NEPHET and other public health bodies, who never saw daily cases reaching those high levels of 8,000 a day.

Once again you just ignored what i told you about the ‘more transmissable uk strain’. Infections for that strain have took a nosedive in infections compared to the existing strains. My guess it shot itself in the foot by trying to mutate.

Another guess, to be taken as fact. Got it.

I don’t expect everything fully to be normal by autumn but after autumn possibly over another 6/12 months we’ll be quite close to ‘Feb 2020’

So close to Feb 2020, by say September 2022.... which is what I said.

Did you know the Spanish flu ( along with other past pandemics) burnt out after 2/3years.

Yes, do you know it killed circa 3-5% of the world population at the time?
Unless you are advocating herd immunity, its a pointless comparision.

Micky 32

So you reckon the anti vaxxers wouldn’t love to see the vaccines to fail?

You mustn’t be very bright if you think xmas had nothing to do with the spike in infections, but i suppose like Boris it was easier to blame the new strain wasn’t it more than his failures, right? Do you know what christmas is about? Maybe you should google it and learn something.. yes i did predict it would be a **** show afterwards. It was obvious the end result. So what’s your problem with that?

No i didn’t say Sept 22, i said up to. 6-12 months full normality.. that could mean march 22. We’ll be well on our way by the last quarter of this year.

Spanish flu is a good comparison. It mutated into something weaker. It happens with pandemics. It could happen to Covid 19 and mostly likely will. The vaccines will speed up the process. That will even up the herd immmunity playing ground vs the Spanish virus. They never had a vaccine for the Spanish virus. All pandemics are short lived.

nommm

https://twitter.com/davekeating/status/1353589667917144064?s=21
EU not happy with AstraZeneca at all.

is_that_so

nommm wrote: »

https://twitter.com/davekeating/status/1353589667917144064?s=21
EU not happy with AstraZeneca at all.

Yeah, but we need a little less finger pointing and more of countries explaining what that means in terms of their own vaccination programmes. Despite the loud misgivings about ours we are getting regular updates.

Sky King

Being in the EU is great when it comes to having to throw your weight around a bit. Imagine just being little ole Ireland in this scenario. They'd basically shrug and tell us to f*** off. And out politicians would do the same to us.

eoinbn

nommm wrote: »

https://twitter.com/davekeating/status/1353589667917144064?s=21
EU not happy with AstraZeneca at all.

Some serious accusations that are unlikely to be true. It was also reported that Astrazeneca are unable to commit to their Q2 target. That would suggest that the plant in Belgium just isn't up to producing the quantities. Either that is down to under investment, which could be blamed on AZ, or someone has screwed up within the outsourced company. It is likely the latter.

titan18

eoinbn wrote: »

Some serious accusations that are unlikely to be true. It was also reported that Astrazeneca are unable to commit to their Q2 target. That would suggest that the plant in Belgium just isn't up to producing the quantities. Either that is down to under investment, which could be blamed on AZ, or someone has screwed up within the outsourced company. It is likely the latter.

Tbf, AstraZenica had months to see if that was the case and should have rectified it or notified it sooner to the EU.

ixoy

If anything, AZ is just coming across as a bit... sloppy. First, it was the manner in which the trials were held (ultimately beneficial but even so). Then it's the inability to meet promised production deadlines.

Is there any means for them to divert doses from other plants or are they all spoken for? Is it only the EU affected (which seems to be the case)?

gally74

Europe is short here, if the vaccines need cars, We'ed be fine with the German and French,

For the vaccines, it is mainly US and UK owned....

its a strategic gap wihtin the EU?

eoinbn

titan18 wrote: »

Tbf, AstraZenica had months to see if that was the case and should have rectified it or notified it sooner to the EU.

Agreed. This should of been flagged far earlier. Astrazeneca's management of their vaccine has been dreadful.

Gael23

Have they been sold to the US instead? Either that or someone has severely screwed up within AZ. They were supposed to have been stockpiling since late last year

gally74

gally74 wrote: »

Europe is short here, if the vaccines need cars, We'ed be fine with the German and French,

For the vaccines, it is mainly US and UK owned....

its a strategic gap wihtin the EU?

AstraZenaca is Swedish/British founded following the merger of Astra and Zeneca. Their Chairman is Swedish and CEO is French.

Janssen is a Belgian subsidiary of J&J and headquartered in Belgium

BioNtech are German

Of the other vaccines in development - Sanofi are French, Curevac are German.

Gile_na_gile

eoinbn wrote: »

Agreed. This should of been flagged far earlier. Astrazeneca's management of their vaccine has been dreadful.

It has, but this is also a communication breakdown, and the commissioner needs tough questions too. Why were there no periodic checks on production? What are we sleepwalking into next re: j&j, curevac, novovax etc.?

RugbyLad11

Sky King wrote: »

Being in the EU is great when it comes to having to throw your weight around a bit. Imagine just being little ole Ireland in this scenario. They'd basically shrug and tell us to f*** off. And out politicians would do the same to us.

But we are a tiny country. We could've buying enough to vaccinate our entire country by summer. Just look at Israel and UAE etc

RugbyLad11

Why can't some of these vaccine companies give the license to the vaccine, and allow the vaccine to be made at more European plants??

muddypuppy

(I didn't see this posted) The Irish Times has an interesting article with some insights on how the vaccine distribution works in Ireland. Nothing too technical, but good to see: https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/inside-the-dublin-warehouse-at-the-centre-of-the-covid-19-vaccine-rollout-1.4466656

is_that_so

RugbyLad11 wrote: »

But we are a tiny country. We could've buying enough to vaccinate our entire country by summer. Just look at Israel and UAE etc

It was decided quite some back that the EU would do the buying. It made sense as the EMA is the approval authority and the last thing we want is EU countries outbidding each other for supplies. Those two are all about the money although Israel will provide the rest of us with a lot of valuable post-vaccination data.
Remember these supply issues are temporary and were well telegraphed in advance, although not the current AZ hiccup.

CIARAN_BOYLE

RugbyLad11 wrote: »

Why can't some of these vaccine companies give the license to the vaccine, and allow the vaccine to be made at more European plants??

Theres a few reasons

1. MRNA is a complex new technology and needs bespoke plants. The entire world production capacity for mrna vaccines is making Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Curevac is going through trials at the moment but they have an agreement with Pfizer to license the Pfizer vaccine if their own mrna vaccine isn't as good or takes too long to get approved. It would be 6 months at least before any non other company built plants to produce an mRNA vaccine.

2. The Oxford vaccine is in large scale production and has been licensed to manufacturers in other countries. If anyone wanted to license it they Oxford and Astra Zenaca would probably approve but financially it wouldn't make sense for anyone as its essentially being sold at cost. Any license would probably require the same (sold at cost).

IRISHSPORTSGUY

is_that_so wrote: »

It was decided quite some back that the EU would do the buying. It made sense as the EMA is the approval authority and the last thing we want is EU countries outbidding each other for supplies. Those two are all about the money although Israel will provide the rest of us with a lot of valuable post-vaccination data.
Remember these supply issues are temporary and were well telegraphed in advance, although not the current AZ hiccup.

We are one of the richest countries in Europe. We'd have been near the front of the queue along with the Scandinavian countries, Germany, France, Netherlands and Austria.

Eastern Europe would be suffering badly though.

NeuralNetwork

is_that_so wrote: »

It was decided quite some back that the EU would do the buying. It made sense as the EMA is the approval authority and the last thing we want is EU countries outbidding each other for supplies. Those two are all about the money although Israel will provide the rest of us with a lot of valuable post-vaccination data.
Remember these supply issues are temporary and were well telegraphed in advance, although not the current AZ hiccup.

I think the biggest issue is the EU programme has been focused on a less panicked approach to this and getting it right. However, there's some degree of pushing for value for money too and you can see that with different countries having different agendas. Our and Germany's money-no-object approach may be ok in the short term, but if this turns into a multi-annual regular booster shot type of of situation the EU is going to need the capacity to have reliable and constantly updating vaccines available for years to come.

If you look at what's going on the UK had an absolutely massive and uncontrolled outbreak (and still do) and went down the route of rushing into authorising vaccines that may or may not have worked. They got lucky in terms of how things panned out, but had AstraZeneca's vaccine not worked it could have been a total disaster. You could very easily argue that our spike was largely caused by exposure to the UK's out of control problems, rather than they're doing particularly wonderfully at managing this.

The EU was slower to authorise Astrazeneca because the data just was not there to do it. We will know, possibly on Wednesday, whether that's good to go. It will be very interesting to see what the EMA has made of the data.

The Astrazeneca manufacturing hiccup is just that. There's no way anyone could have foreseen that. I don't think those kinds of things are avoidable. It will hopefully be smoothed over more rapidly than some of the media coverage has been suggesting.

I would also caution against getting over wrapped up in UK coverage of "The EU is floundering." Unfortunately, due to Brexit vitriol there's a lot of very nasty commentary from UK tabloids and even non-tabloids at times. They're looking for any opportunity to justify Brexit, but also to put the boot into the EU, just out of sheer nastiness. If you look at some of their coverage, particularly in the likes of the Daily Express, it's not much more than a comic-book aimed at Brexiteers.

Meanwhile, the Pfizer and BioNTech glitch is not really a glitch at all. They are ramping up their capacity to an enormous scale through updating an existing plant and also adding capacity that BioNTech itself has purchased from Novartis. So you are going to have hundreds of millions of dose capacity for that vaccine quite rapidly.

If you look at what happened with PPE, you can see why the EU working en bloc may have been a lot safer for most of us. There was HUGE panic buying and countries hoovering up supplies. Even outside of this situation, Ireland hasn't always been able to get great value for money on drugs and medicine and if you look at say the flu vaccine campaign, we had supply problems because the global supply was being hoovered up.

The strategy is there for a reason and I think we could second guess it all we like but there are ups and downs to going it alone too. Maybe we might have been able to pull off something like Israel, or maybe we'd have had a situation where 27+ wealthy European countries would have been competing head to head for supplies and driving the global prices way way up and grabbing supply chains. That was very much the case in the early days with PPE and other supplies. You even had countries seizing supplies and banning exports.

Gael23

Public sector unions are kicking up that their members should be higher up the priority list