General COVID-19 Vaccine Discussion

[drron]

I still don't understand why the work on the UQ vaccine was abandoned. I don't see transitory positive HIV results as an issue. An HIV viral load test would quickly have sorted out which people really had HIV.

But basically would create too much work as nearly everyone got a positive HIV test.You couldn't ignore them because some might really have had HIV.

 

[Batterytraveller]

I have to respectfully disagree with almost everyone.

Anyone keeping an eye on US, UK or european news that by around June last year we were falling behind with vaccine procurement. Countries were signing up to 6 or 7 vaccine types with very little guarantee of efficacy, and doing those deals through our winter, as Victoria was entering its second lockdown.

Let’s also not forget that the orange homunculus in the White House had a massive incentive to get vaccination started by November 3rd. (2 days before November 5th)

It was never just about the tech, yes we spread our bets somewhat on that, but also about time to market, manufacturing capability, all of the other myriad things that can go wrong.

The other thing that was abundantly clear a year ago was that there was not going to be such thing as ‘too much vaccine’. There’s nearly 8 billion humans on this planet and they all need 2 jabs. As a rich country we have a moral obligation, and a massive self-interest, in helping everyone get vaccinated as quickly as possible. To take one example, how much more good could we be doing in Indonesia, helping with their Sinovac issues, if we were all fully vaxxed right now.

The government chose penny pinching over risk mitigation, and over helping our friends and neighbours.

 

[suze2000]

But basically would create too much work as nearly everyone got a positive HIV test.You couldn't ignore them because some might really have had HIV.

Maybe, but really how many people get HIV tests? It's not like it's a common thing for doctors to request.

 

[TheRealTMA]

Interesting uk video about the upcoming Freedom Day on 19th July.

 

[auriga]

We ordered 4 different vaccines.
1 mRNA.
1 live virus.AZ
1 protein based sub unit vaccine.UQ.
1 Nanoparticle protein delivery.Novavax.

Quite frankly ordering 4 vaccines which use different technologies is hedging your bets.
No one last year argued we should have ordered more different types of vaccine.
The selective use of the retrospectroscope has been overdone this year.

but....
ordering only 10M doses of Pfizer initially, what sort of a hedge was that?

 

[pagingjoan]

Interesting uk video about the upcoming Freedom Day on 19th July.

Thank you for posting that link.
Parallels with a situation closer to home.

 

[drron]

Maybe, but really how many people get HIV tests? It's not like it's a common thing for doctors to request.

More common than you think.You don't hear about it now as excellent treatment available.Which is why the vaccine is a problem.Have to do extra tests on everyone as you can't afford to miss a case of HIV.

 

[suze2000]

More common than you think.You don't hear about it now as excellent treatment available.Which is why the vaccine is a problem.Have to do extra tests on everyone as you can't afford to miss a case of HIV.

But a question before you order the test: eg, have you had the UQ vaccine recently? (because it's supposed to have been a transitory positive, which means it's only a concern for a period of time, not your whole life) might lead to follow-up testing and less of a panic. Pretty sure it's standard procedure for a 1st time positive to send it to VIDRL here in Vic for confirmation and a viral load is added on automatically as well where I work. I just don't see that the numbers of false positives - if it IS truly transitory - would be so high as to make it prohibitive. If it turned out NOT to be transitory, however... well that justifies abandoning it.

 

[drron]

I have to respectfully disagree with almost everyone.

Anyone keeping an eye on US, UK or european news that by around June last year we were falling behind with vaccine procurement. Countries were signing up to 6 or 7 vaccine types with very little guarantee of efficacy, and doing those deals through our winter, as Victoria was entering its second lockdown.

Let’s also not forget that the orange homunculus in the White House had a massive incentive to get vaccination started by November 3rd. (2 days before November 5th)

It was never just about the tech, yes we spread our bets somewhat on that, but also about time to market, manufacturing capability, all of the other myriad things that can go wrong.

The other thing that was abundantly clear a year ago was that there was not going to be such thing as ‘too much vaccine’. There’s nearly 8 billion humans on this planet and they all need 2 jabs. As a rich country we have a moral obligation, and a massive self-interest, in helping everyone get vaccinated as quickly as possible. To take one example, how much more good could we be doing in Indonesia, helping with their Sinovac issues, if we were all fully vaxxed right now.

The government chose penny pinching over risk mitigation, and over helping our friends and neighbours.

the USA ordered 2 mRNA vaccines both produced in the USA.The initial orders were for 100 million doses.
The USA then ordered 2 live virus vaccines.AZ and J&J.their initial Pfizer order was for 100 million doses with an option for another 100 million.They did order 300 million of the AZ vaccine.
The 5th vaccine is Novavax also 100 million.The 6th is the Sanofi/GSK vaccine which has been delayed .
So now they use the 2 mRNA vaccines,a little J&J and 2 others yet to be supplied.

MSN

The EU also orered 6 vaccines.3 mRNA vaccines.The 3rd was Curevac which wasn't good for over 50s so still not used.
They also ordered 2 live virus vaccines AZ and J&J both now suffer with the clot issue.
The 6th vaccine was the Sanofi/GSK again delayed.
The EU also had problems with delivery of the Pfizer and AZ vaccine.They did order 100 million doses of Pfizer but turned down an offer of 500 million more as it was too expensive.

The EU's vaccine strategy - the key points

As the EU Commission gets entangled in a dispute with one of the vaccine producers and gets heat for the perceived slow roll-out of the vaccines, we take a look at what the EU has done and not done.

euobserver.com

EU to order more Pfizer vaccine after declining earlier offer

The European Union will take up its option to buy up to 100 million more doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine after turning down an opportunity in July for a much bigger deal, according to EU officials and an internal document.

www.reuters.com

The UK did order 8 vaccines.Again Pfizer,Moderna,AZ and J&J.
They also ordered Curevac,Novavax and Sanofi/GSK which have not been delivered.
The 8th was Valneva which is an inactivated Covid virus.Possibly because they promised to manufacture in the UK.It has had several problems and is still not being delivered.4 of the vaccines will be manufactured in the UK.Pfizer,AZ,novavax and Valneva.
Their initial order for Pfizer was 30 million.

The eight Covid-19 vaccines ordered by the UK Government

The UK has secured access to 517 million doses of eight of the most promising Covid-19 vaccines

www.business-live.co.uk

Now this month both the US and the EU have begun talks with Valneva but so has Australia.

A vaccine from France is said to be 'variant proof' — here's what we know about it

It sounds too good to be true: a vaccine that can protect against future coronavirus variants. But governments around the world are keen to learn more about the Valneva jab, writes Adam Taylor.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Lynda2475]

Maybe, but really how many people get HIV tests? It's not like it's a common thing for doctors to request.

It is actually reasonably common, especially amongst gay community, sex workers, health care, charity workers dealing with drug addicts and anyone who happens to accidently step on touch a discarded syringe. HIV is still circulating, it just doesnt develop into full blown AIDS as much as it did in the late 80s and 90s due to better treatements.

Ive not met anyone in Australia who has had Covid (although two friend in US had it), but I have met people with HIV through volunteer program at one of my jobs.

HIV is a reportable disease like TB and Covid. Anyone who tests positive cant just say oh I had the UQ vaccine. Because there are many people who rely on regular HIV testign to be accurate, they cant afford to introduce a sizeable number of false positives.

 

[drron]

But a question before you order the test: eg, have you had the UQ vaccine recently? (because it's supposed to have been a transitory positive, which means it's only a concern for a period of time, not your whole life) might lead to follow-up testing and less of a panic. Pretty sure it's standard procedure for a 1st time positive to send it to VIDRL here in Vic for confirmation and a viral load is added on automatically as well where I work. I just don't see that the numbers of false positives - if it IS truly transitory - would be so high as to make it prohibitive. If it turned out NOT to be transitory, however... well that justifies abandoning it.

The problem was that way too many got a false positive and the costs of doing extra testing would be enormous.
The team plus other experts all agreed to pulling the vaccine as it was configured.however they are working on tweaking the vaccine to overcome the problem but that sets it back 12-18 months.

There is no actual HIV in UQ vaccine trial participants, but there are complications

Scientists knew there was a possibility the University of Queensland vaccine could cause trial participants to return a false-positive HIV test but they still felt it was worth proceeding. Until now.

www.abc.net.au

 

[jonboixxx]

But we will still have the problems of
1) Logistics, i.e. ramping up getting it distributed and into peoples arms
2) Vaccine hesitancy

This problem should have been solved by our excellent primary health networks(PHN). They have previously shown a capacity to deliver capably and quickly. In terms of hesitancy, there has been little report that I have seen, of the excellent work that PHN has been performing of providing credible and supportive information to their patients. If supply wasn't an issue, PHN's would have had this done by now without the grandiose of max hubs that some posters suggest are a panacea.

 

[ethernet]

News: How effective are coronavirus vaccines against the Delta variant?

Previously I asked how effective were the vaccines compared with Delta, as MLM had very low numbers. I suggest Israel sends a message that Pfizer at 64% against delta (flawed study?) is going to be awful news for would be international travel.

French adverts for getting the jab

https://twitter.com/x/status/1402506086767333377

There is no comparison: The new Australian ads are duds, dull and flat, failing send the core message: vaccinate to get places open.

 

[mviy]

They need to set dates and/or vaccination percentages to get things opened up. Then they can build those into ads. A problem is that we are still a long way off what any of those targets are likely to be, though that should start to change fairly quickly as vaccine supply improves.

 

[TheRealTMA]

The new ads from the Feds are appalling. Arm yourself sounds like some campaign in the southern US states against coming terrorists from the north and the terrible scare add in NSW using an actor who does not qualify for a vaccine is embarrassing.

Why didn’t they do an add with Hemsworth or ask Barty to promote vaccines?

 

[jonboixxx]

Why didn’t they do an add with Hemsworth or ask Barty to promote vaccines?

Reach and penetration?

 

[Batterytraveller]

the USA ordered 2 mRNA vaccines both produced in the USA.The initial orders were for 100 million doses.
The USA then ordered 2 live virus vaccines.AZ and J&J.their initial Pfizer order was for 100 million doses with an option for another 100 million.They did order 300 million of the AZ vaccine.
The 5th vaccine is Novavax also 100 million.The 6th is the Sanofi/GSK vaccine which has been delayed .
So now they use the 2 mRNA vaccines,a little J&J and 2 others yet to be supplied.

MSN

The EU also orered 6 vaccines.3 mRNA vaccines.The 3rd was Curevac which wasn't good for over 50s so still not used.
They also ordered 2 live virus vaccines AZ and J&J both now suffer with the clot issue.
The 6th vaccine was the Sanofi/GSK again delayed.
The EU also had problems with delivery of the Pfizer and AZ vaccine.They did order 100 million doses of Pfizer but turned down an offer of 500 million more as it was too expensive.

The EU's vaccine strategy - the key points

As the EU Commission gets entangled in a dispute with one of the vaccine producers and gets heat for the perceived slow roll-out of the vaccines, we take a look at what the EU has done and not done.

euobserver.com

EU to order more Pfizer vaccine after declining earlier offer

The European Union will take up its option to buy up to 100 million more doses of Pfizer and BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine after turning down an opportunity in July for a much bigger deal, according to EU officials and an internal document.

www.reuters.com

The UK did order 8 vaccines.Again Pfizer,Moderna,AZ and J&J.
They also ordered Curevac,Novavax and Sanofi/GSK which have not been delivered.
The 8th was Valneva which is an inactivated Covid virus.Possibly because they promised to manufacture in the UK.It has had several problems and is still not being delivered.4 of the vaccines will be manufactured in the UK.Pfizer,AZ,novavax and Valneva.
Their initial order for Pfizer was 30 million.

The eight Covid-19 vaccines ordered by the UK Government

The UK has secured access to 517 million doses of eight of the most promising Covid-19 vaccines

www.business-live.co.uk

Now this month both the US and the EU have begun talks with Valneva but so has Australia.

A vaccine from France is said to be 'variant proof' — here's what we know about it

It sounds too good to be true: a vaccine that can protect against future coronavirus variants. But governments around the world are keen to learn more about the Valneva jab, writes Adam Taylor.

www.abc.net.au

So what your saying is other governments ordered more and different vaccines earlier, and got them delivered earlier. The fact that these countries have more of their population vaccinated, proves my point.

 

[jonboixxx]

I take any quote from a Pfizer executive with the proverbial grain of salt as they are masters of spin.in this case he is tripped up by an unfortunate fact.

Yes, I've never been a fan, they can afford it though;

biggest-pharmaceutical-lawsuits

 

[drron]

So what your saying is other governments ordered more and different vaccines earlier, and got them delivered earlier. The fact that these countries have more of their population vaccinated, proves my point.

Not sure how you got that out of those numbers.Basically they had the same problems as Australia in picking vaccines.Of the US original orders were 100 million Pfizer and 100 million Pfizer for a population of adults of 300 million.
The EU ordered 100 million doses of Pfizer initially and turned down an offer of an extra 500 million doses for a population of 450 million.
The advantage they and Europe have had is that they are large vaccine manufacturers.
Interesting that the UK seems to have done the best and they are the only ones who have used significant amounts of AZ.

 

[TheRealTMA]

Reach and penetration?

So the current ad has any?