I thought it was stuff that was manufactured in the US and sitting in the US, so i think we (the US) really do have it.
But they haven’t shipped it out due to givens policy, yes.
I just wanted to clarify that it’s not some act of generosity. Those AZ vaccines were bought and paid for by Canada and Mexico.
can you cite any company was forced to do anything? the US committed to purchasing vaccines long before they were approved with options to buy more this year.
From the Atlantic:
In July, the U.S. ordered 600 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. The EU put in its order four months later—for half as many doses,
Actually it’s a function of Warp Speed that the vaccines exist at all.
From the same cite above:
The U.S. threw money at the problem, flooding vaccine makers with billions of dollars in subsidies to increase the speed of vaccine testing and manufacturing.
We could have held on to the vaccines as part of the hedged reserves but chose otherwise. The act of generosity would be the US tax payer who will foot the bill for the rapid development of the vaccines.
Pfizer didn’t get Warp money, so no.
Cite.
Although Pfizer didn’t receive government funding this spring toward research and development of the vaccine, it nevertheless received one of the largest Operation Warp Speed supply contracts to date on July 21.
You can try to split that hair anyway you want but they had a contract worth billions before they had a vaccine. And that was Warp Speed money.
There is nothing in this quote that signifies the US was forcing anybody to do anything. Europe sat on it’s ass for 4 months before they committed to contracts. It was Warp Speed money and contracts that drove research.
And another thing, Pfyzer is far from the only company involved. Using that to say the US didn’t fund Vaccine research is a disingenuous response.
From Wiki cite on Warp Speed:
As of August 2020, eight companies were chosen for funding of some $11 billion to expedite development and preparation for manufacturing their respective vaccine candidates.[
some of the companies listed for research on vaccines and drugs:
| Name | Amount |
|---|---|
| AstraZeneca–University of Oxford | $1.2 billion |
| Johnson & Johnson | $1 billion |
| Merck and IAVI | $38 million |
| Moderna | $1.53 billion |
| Novavax | $1.6 billion for advance commercial-scale manufacturing |
| Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline | $2.1 billion |
Canada had preorders too. In August or something. You’re saying there’s some known standard that America gets their preorders first?
Are you referring to THIS Canada:
Of the countries to buy up more than their fair share of coronavirus shots, Canada tops the chart having secured 8.9 doses per head, the equivalent of enough vaccines to vaccinate each citizen five times over.
the same Canada the US released millions of doses to?
I’ll let some of the proud Canadians hereabouts reply any further.
You’re misunderstanding the article. Canada did indeed place a lot of pre-orders, and was then screwed on many of them, in part because of those export restrictions we’re talking about. With the result that, thinking they were covered by wisely placing a lot of pre-orders, Canada ultimately ended up lagging way, way behind the US and many other countries in per-capita vaccinations.
This is all about actual deliveries, not pre-orders. That’s what matters and what saves lives, not orders. Right now in Ontario there are still thousands of hospital workers still not vaccinated because there’s not enough vaccine, and they’re supposed to be high priority.
Canada signed it’s deals with European suppliers not US suppliers and they fell short of production They did this because they feared the US would use supplies made here first. Which was correct.
from the BBC:
However, European factories are struggling with supply and recently it has been the EU that has been threatening those bans.
Early last year, Canada also signed an agreement with Chinese vaccine-maker CanSino for a vaccine trial, but that deal fell apart. CanSino had initially agreed to bring its vaccine candidate to Canada for testing.
Critics have accused the federal government of failing to move swiftly to secure agreements with the likes of Pfizer and Moderna because it was focused on that failed deal.
Canada lacks domestic production capacity for vaccines.
So now you’re changing your story. You had said (emphasis mine):
Of the countries to buy up more than their fair share of coronavirus shots, Canada tops the chart having secured 8.9 doses per head, the equivalent of enough vaccines to vaccinate each citizen five times over.
the same Canada the US released millions of doses to?
If Canada has enough “to vaccinate each citizen five times over”, how come as of early February, the U.K. had vaccinated 20% of its population, the U.S. had vaccinated 13.5%, while Canada had vaccinated barely 3%? Yes, that same Canada, the one the US sent “millions of doses” of the AstraZeneca vaccine to, because they were needed, and because the US concluded they no longer needed it as a backstop to the others.
Yes, there were intermittent supply problems in Europe that caused problems, but there was also a lot of politics, and as EU officials pointed out, the US has effectively also had an export ban, the release of the AZ vaccine being the first and only notable exception.
My point was that your earlier post about Canada’s precautionary overpurchases was extremely misleading and totally incorrect in what it implied. Canada’s plans for its excess pre-orders is to share the vaccine with poorer nations through the World Health Organization COVAX program – if and when they are ever received. Meanwhile supply remains a critical problem.
The latest COVID vaccination data for selected countries, for those interested. The UK is by no means the highest globally, though it is among the largest countries, but Israel is much higher per capita.
While possible, they are the experts and you are not, unless you have been hiding your credentials from us. Thus they are much more likely to be correct than you are.
The one thing I stopped doing in this pandemic was listening to people who “figure things out on their own” rather than the experts, as that was the main source of misinformation about the subject.
Of course, Magiver may be wrong about what the experts say, or cherry picking. That would be relevant information to give. But arguing you are right and the experts are wrong is exactly what people do who say evolution is wrong. It’s not a valid argument, and it looks bad to make it.
As for your actual arguments—I can’t say they’re wrong, but I do notice that you are assuming a lot. You’re assuming causation with your data about vaccine usage decreasing. It’s possible the cause is people learning about the blood clotting problems and/or natural decrease as the most vulnerable get the disease. You are assuming that lack of vaccine and deaths are the same thing, not knowing if people at lower risk are the ones taking their time, while others keep getting it. And that there weren’t other supply issues that were of more importance.
And even if the deaths are higher now, there’s the possibility that pausing reassured the public and means more people will get the vaccine in the long run, resulting in fewer deaths. That was my original argument—though one I’m not wedded to.
I also notice that you are using a whole lot of hindsight bias in your more recent arguments, and such arguments are not valid. When deciding if a decision is correct or incorrect, you can only use the data that existed at the time. You can’t prove someone’s argument wrong because something predicted at likely didn’t happen. That’s a logical fallacy.
I can’t say I know you’re wrong that the pauses killed more people than not pausing. But I’m not the one asserting that I know for sure. All I’ve done is argue that the US already has enough vaccines, and so they have every reason to wait. And that other countries have experts that led to them making the decisions they made, so my null hypothesis is that they were correct.
I would need cites from experts showing that the data was wrong. And not from AstraZeneca or the UK, since they’re inherently biased, pushing their own vaccine.
I know Magiver was making bad arguments early on, acting like you need doctors to do statistics. That was incorrect. But an argument saying he has 20 expert organizations agreeing with him is pretty strong evidence, and needs equally strong evidence to rebut. Either show he’s misunderstood them, he’s cherrypicked, or cite your own experts, and we can compare which experts make the better arguments.
I like how Canada is supposed to be grateful to the US for the mere existence of vaccines because of Warp Speed, even though Pfizer didn’t accept warp speed funds and of course Oxford/AZ received very significant funding from the UK, because US pre-orders count as funding development. Meanwhile, Canada should be ashamed of its pre-orders, which don’t count as funding development I guess? We’re supposed to bow and scrape and say thanks so much because the US is allowing AZ to fill a tiny portion of our order with them (1.5M/20M) with a tiny portion of the stockpile they have sitting on shelves (1.5M/30M) awaiting FDA approval?
I mean, what? It’s just entirely incoherent.
My initial response was a pushpback on FigNorton’s cheep shots on the US.
Kudos to Canada’s intentions to give to the poor with their excess pre-orders.
Canada put it’s eggs in China and the poorly planned European basket. What’s your point? Seriously. The US could just as easily approve the AstraZeneca vaccine and continue with it’s vaccination program and give the excess vaccines to poorer nations through the World Health Organization COVAX program.
1,687 US deaths per 1 million
603 Canadian deaths per 1 million
what should the US do given the death count? What do you think was the point of Warp Speed?
Canada is not responsible for the stupid politicization of Covid responses in the US that have led to refusal to adopt appropriate mitigation policies. That said, I am not particularly blaming the US for its actions. I just object to your characterization of the release for export of 1.5M doses of a vaccine that we’ve paid for as some sort of grand charitable gesture.
Also, Canada put its eggs in every basket. Calling them poorly planned is simply ignorant. Canada engaged with China on the CanSino vaccine, because it was an adaptation of a joint Canada-China developed SARS vaccine project that had been shelved when there was no SARS around to permit Phase 3 trials. It was our IP, Chinese manufacturing. It was far and away our best shot at an early vaccine, and that vaccine, our vaccine, has actually completed Phase 3 trials and is moving into production. But China fucked us over because of the Meng Wanzhou affair, which I might point out is entirely the fault of the US. It’s so nice to be batted back and forth between global superpowers over a spat that ought to have nothing to do with us, thanks so much.
Meanwhile, the “poorly planned” European purchases have been the only purchases that are coming through for us. How does that make them poorly planned? They’re the plans that have had the best results. We should have contracted to purchase American production instead, so we could wait till June to receive our first vaccines?
Canada of course has no one but itself to blame for the general position it is in, having allowed its domestic vaccine production capacity to be bought out by foreign companies decades ago and later dismantled/moved out of country. That aside, however, it’s simply bizarre the criticisms from all sides about how we’ve been doing too much, not enough, or simply the wrong things to acquire vaccines, when in fact the government has opted to do pretty much all the things available to us in the hopes that at least some come through. Don’t worry, though, we are paying attention to which allies are screwing us over less than the others, and we’re not likely to forget any time soon.
Yeah, Canada acted as prudently as it could, given that it doesn’t have any domestic vaccine production capacity.
I have to admit, back last fall, when vaccines were being developed but not yet available, i looked up where the various candidates were being manufactured and was relieved to see that several were being manufactured in the US, and some even in my state. I was not following the details of the politics, but i assumed that there were likely to be “grabs” by countries that could do that. And i thought Trump was less likely to be able to screw my state over since we had a manufacturing plant.
Fortunately, a lot of those vaccines have worked out, and Canada is likely to get a decent supply in upcoming months. Thanks in no small part to its forethought in buying several. And good on Canada for explicitly promising to donate the excess to Covax.
That’s just one big argument from authority. It also ignores the fact that the 20 countries in question do not represent the totality of responses to the situation. They may have paused use of the vaccine but many others did not, Are you saying those other experts have no validity?
Those well-known laypeople the WHO also recommended continuing the roll-out because the benefits of doing so far outweighed the risks.
The data available was the same for everyone, the calculation of risk v benefit was easy enough to make. The criticism I have was of a certain group of countries that came to a conclusion on that calculation and made a political decision to halt the vaccine roll-out.
And I don’t appreciate the obviously pejorative comparison of my views to those of creationists. That is not a fair reflection of where the balance of evidence lies in this case.
I am but not without reason. I gave a link to a chart that shows the upward lines of european vaccine roll-out. It came to a crashing halt at the time of the AZ issue and is now a couple of million behind where the trend was taking them.
I am assuming that that shortfall is as a result of stopping the use of the AZ vaccine. I don’t think that is an unreasonable assumption.
Europe in general don’t have enough vaccines and are having a hard time getting those they do have into arms. Unlike the USA there was no alternative they could swap to.
In Europe, A halt in the usage of the AZ vaccine leads directly to less coverage. Less coverage leads to deaths. If you have a counter to that I’d be glad to hear it.
For the first part yes, that’s why I never claimed the shortfall was all due to the withdrawal of AZ.
For the second part, I don’t know what you are trying to say. Why would more vulnerable people getting the disease lead to a big drop in a specific week?
It isn’t an assumption. In a population with the disease on the rise, less available vaccines means less vaccinations and will lead to more deaths.
That isn’t the situation in Europe. They are under a pretty strict vaccine roll-out that sees the most at risk getting it first. The ones less at risk cannot jump the queue. They are no-where near getting through those priority groups. Less vaccinations means more vulnerable people being vulnerable for longer.
Sure, if there was a supply issue that caused that stalling at the same time as the AZ pause then the pause will not have had any net effect on deaths.
Still would not have made the pause sensible in my estimation.
A possibility. Not one that is being borne out in the short term at least.
If it is shown in the future that the course of action taken in those countries has lead to an increased confidence in vaccines and a greater uptake then I’ll be happy to concede it was the right thing to do.
No, no, no. Absolutely no hindsight required. The only data I used was the data that existed and was available to everyone. I dealt solely in the real and defendable. I was not the one bringing in “bad batches” for which no evidence ever existed.
There were certain number of general thrombosis events (not statistically significant), there were a much smaller number of curious clotting events which potentially were significant but amounted to perhaps 1 death per 3 million doses administered.
I allowed that it was possible the vaccine caused those events (though not yet proved) but that the pause in AZ use left millions unprotected and that the risk from that lack of coverage was greater than that posed by those rare events.
Taking a conservative estimate, In a region with 100 infections/100k per week and rising, an unvaccinated cohort of 2.5 million unprotected for an extra week would see 2,500 un-necessary infections and at least 50 unnecessary deaths and hundreds more badly affected. In that same cohort a pause may see 1 avoided death due to a serious clotting event, and that is only if the hypothesised link is true.
That is the real risk/benefit of a vaccination pause in Europe, probably even worse seeing as the numbers are currently on a steep rise.
Show me precisely where I’ve done that and If I’m wrong I’ll correct it.
All I know for sure, from the data that is available to everyone, is that the risk/benefit calculation has always suggested that we keep using it. Nothing has changed.
Where I differ from some of those who recommended pausing is that the calculation was obvious before the pause, the pause did not change that calculation and ultimately was not necessary to carry out a thorough investigation (an investigation that I 100% support)
This is a crucial point. I agree that that is a sensible course of action. Where alternative vaccines are available and no slowdown in the roll-out would result then a country would be right to pause. And why? because the risk/benefit calculation in those circumstances is different. But the situation in the USA is not the one faced by Europe.
Which experts are correct? the groups that decided to pause or the groups that didn’t recommend it (which included the WHO, The MHRA, the EMEA) The balance of opinions on this is not “me v everyone” else, not even close.
Why would you need that? seeing as neither my argument nor anyone else’s is based on a premise of flawed data but rather a criticism of an over-cautious response to the data by some groups.
Neither the UK nor AstraZeneca have claimed flawed data either, nor have any of the other expert bodies who recommended to keep using it. Everyone is basing their decisions on the same data that contains the same signals of potential adverse events and the same evidence of efficacy and protection.
It is just that some groups recommended a pause (not all by a long shot) and others did not.
If you are interested in inherent bias, I’m sure you’ll also note that the same E.U. countries who form the bulk of those quick to stop using the AZ vaccine are the same ones who have been involved in a long-running and acrimonious dispute with AZ over supply issues.
No, he hasn’t misunderstood what they’ve done but he has cherrypicked the groups that recommended a pause whilst ignoring the fact that many other equivalent expert groups have recommended to continue using it. The 20 countries mentioned do not constitute an overwhelming majority of those countries currently using the vaccine. It has approval in over 70 countries as we speak.
How strong is “pretty strong”? Are the equivalent organisations who recommend to continue the equivalent of creationists? Do they not count as having expert opinions?
I’d be happy to explore and critique any statement by one of those 20 countries that explains how they came to their own calculation of risk/benefit and so came to recommend a pause. I’ve yet to see anything beyond a general expression of caution. (what I believe to be over-caution which isn’t and never was warranted by the data presented)