Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

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Herainestold
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by Herainestold » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:27 am

bolo wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:12 am
Herainestold wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 11:24 pm
If they want more vaccines, they'd be better off to take over AZ' plants, produce it themselves, and throw Pascal Soriot in the slammer.
This might possibly result in more vaccine doses this time, but it would likely also result in no vaccine manufacturer ever agreeing to sell high profile vaccines to the EU ever again, so in the longer term it wouldn't exactly be constructive.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by shpalman » Tue Apr 27, 2021 6:05 am

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by bob sterman » Tue Apr 27, 2021 6:21 am

No idea. Don't know what a "legal notice" is!

Presumably it's something you send an entity threatening to take them to court of they don't do something?

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by bob sterman » Tue Apr 27, 2021 4:12 pm

Lines forming at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon???? People getting Pfizer by mistake instead of AZ.

Couple's shock delight after wrong second dose of Covid-19 jab given in vaccine mix-up at GWH
https://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/new ... ix-up-gwh/

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by tom p » Sat May 01, 2021 9:11 am

Blimey, what a load of ill-informed twaddle.
I know that you're a bright lot, and it just shows how ill-served people are by the mass media that this is the speculation you come up with.

Just about the only sensible comment was this one:
bolo wrote:
Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:16 am
bob sterman wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 9:54 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Mon Apr 26, 2021 8:19 pm
EU to sue AstraZeneca.
Anyone got any idea what this legal action could actually achieve? E.g. if the EU action was successful? What would success look like? Diversion of doses destined for other countries with contracts (that's not just the UK)? Compensation for EU? Court action can't speed up cell cultures.
The cynical view would be that success, from the EU perspective, would look like AZ getting the public blame for the AZ fiasco rather than the EU itself.
The court case is all about the politically incompetent UvdL covering her sorry arse as part of her plan to return to Germany as a conquering hero & become the next-but-one chancellor.
Soirot couldn't be arrested for a civil offence of failing to deliver on a contract, any more than I could get the CEO of Tesco arrested for failing to deliver the Ben & Jerry's I put in my online shopping.

***********

7 billionish people need vaccinating. That's either 7 billion JnJ doses or 14 billion other vaccines. Then there's going to be a 2nd batch of vaccines at the end of this year/next year to cover the worst of the variants all in one (Brazil, SA, Kent, India & maybe the next one if it pops up quickly). All in all, something like 15-20 billion more vaccines need to be manufactured and stuck into people over the next 12-18 months or so. That can't be done without ramping up of manufacture of all vaccines.

The risk of blood clots, even of the AZ vaccine, is insignificant compared to the benefit (many orders of magnitude different risk), and it's only really in the EU where their failure to deliver has been an issue & they have been used as a political football. The rest of the world would kill to get hold of it. It's why India put an export ban on the vaccines being produced by the Serum Institute of India (ie the AZ vaccine, aka CHADOX). But we, as a species, need another 5 or so similarly-sized such factories up and running to get the vaccines (whichever ones) into people ASAP. We also need Johnson (de pfeffel, not & Johnson) to stop being a protectionist c.nt & the UK to drop its objections to any country just manufacturing CHADOX.

As for whether AZ will make vaccines again - well, they never really did before. The world would have been better off if Sanofi (who will be manufacturing the BioNTech vaccine from June in a factory in France) or Merck or some other company with more vaccine manufacturing experience had done the deal with Oxford. Then manufacturing and delivery would probably have been faster and they wouldn't have oversold so we would all have realistic expectations.

Lastly, the biggest economy in the world (the EEA) will continue to be a very attractive market to drugs companies. They will just take care not to oversell to us/competitors in the future.

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat May 01, 2021 1:48 pm

tom p wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 9:11 am
The court case is all about the politically incompetent UvdL covering her sorry arse as part of her plan to return to Germany as a conquering hero & become the next-but-one chancellor.
IIRC she only just scraped through at her confirmation by the EP and most of the German people I know who have any interest in politics think she's a lightweight (at best).

I don't think the EU has ever been what one would call a nimble organisation, but at least historically they kind of recognised that. The nearly-invoking-Article-16 debacle would never have happened with Juncker and Tusk in charge, even if it most of the action did take place after lunch on a Friday.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by jdc » Sat May 01, 2021 3:52 pm

tom p wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 9:11 am
The world would have been better off if Sanofi (who will be manufacturing the BioNTech vaccine from June in a factory in France) or Merck or some other company with more vaccine manufacturing experience had done the deal with Oxford. Then manufacturing and delivery would probably have been faster and they wouldn't have oversold so we would all have realistic expectations.
It would have been Merck but for Hancock. Apparently Oxford had agreed a deal with them but Hancock refused to approve it.
With the university and Merck "as close to signing on the dotted line as they could be", he stopped it going ahead, because he didn't want to risk the intellectual property rights for the Oxford vaccine ending up in the hands of a single American company.

"He was just meant to confirm he was happy, and then it would have happened immediately," said the former adviser. "But he wasn't, and overruled officials to block the deal."
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-rej ... y-12204044

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat May 01, 2021 5:18 pm

I suspect that in the minds of a certain category of nostalgic Tory, AstraZeneca is still the pharmaceutical arm of Imperial Chemical Industries.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by shpalman » Sun May 02, 2021 4:06 pm

jdc wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 3:52 pm
tom p wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 9:11 am
The world would have been better off if Sanofi (who will be manufacturing the BioNTech vaccine from June in a factory in France) or Merck or some other company with more vaccine manufacturing experience had done the deal with Oxford. Then manufacturing and delivery would probably have been faster and they wouldn't have oversold so we would all have realistic expectations.
It would have been Merck but for Hancock. Apparently Oxford had agreed a deal with them but Hancock refused to approve it.
With the university and Merck "as close to signing on the dotted line as they could be", he stopped it going ahead, because he didn't want to risk the intellectual property rights for the Oxford vaccine ending up in the hands of a single American company.

"He was just meant to confirm he was happy, and then it would have happened immediately," said the former adviser. "But he wasn't, and overruled officials to block the deal."
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-rej ... y-12204044
Oxford/AstraZeneca seems to have worked out fine for the UK though somehow. It's just the EU who got messed about (and then, of course, any country expecting to get it via the covax scheme, which the EU has contributed to).
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by tom p » Mon May 03, 2021 1:52 pm

jdc wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 3:52 pm
tom p wrote:
Sat May 01, 2021 9:11 am
The world would have been better off if Sanofi (who will be manufacturing the BioNTech vaccine from June in a factory in France) or Merck or some other company with more vaccine manufacturing experience had done the deal with Oxford. Then manufacturing and delivery would probably have been faster and they wouldn't have oversold so we would all have realistic expectations.
It would have been Merck but for Hancock. Apparently Oxford had agreed a deal with them but Hancock refused to approve it.
With the university and Merck "as close to signing on the dotted line as they could be", he stopped it going ahead, because he didn't want to risk the intellectual property rights for the Oxford vaccine ending up in the hands of a single American company.

"He was just meant to confirm he was happy, and then it would have happened immediately," said the former adviser. "But he wasn't, and overruled officials to block the deal."
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-rej ... y-12204044
Blimey, I didn't know that. cheers

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by shpalman » Sun May 09, 2021 1:09 pm

EU has not yet ordered more AstraZeneca vaccines
The European Union has not yet made any new orders for AstraZeneca vaccines beyond June when their contract ends, European Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said on Sunday.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by shpalman » Mon May 10, 2021 4:06 pm

AstraZeneca has just hit its EU delivery target

It was the target from January though.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 10, 2021 9:14 pm


The European Union has not made any new orders for AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccines beyond June when their contract ends, European Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said on Sunday, after the EU signed a deal with Pfizer-BioNTech (PFE.N).

Breton also said he expected the costs of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to be higher than the earlier versions.

The Commission last month launched legal action against AstraZeneca for not respecting its contract for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines and for not having a “reliable” plan to ensure timely deliveries.

"We did not renew the order after June. We’ll see what happens," Breton told France Inter radio. He did not rule out a potential renewal at a later stage.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu ... 021-05-09/

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by shpalman » Mon May 10, 2021 9:15 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon May 10, 2021 9:14 pm

The European Union has not made any new orders for AstraZeneca (AZN.L) vaccines beyond June when their contract ends, European Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said on Sunday, after the EU signed a deal with Pfizer-BioNTech (PFE.N).

Breton also said he expected the costs of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines to be higher than the earlier versions.

The Commission last month launched legal action against AstraZeneca for not respecting its contract for the supply of COVID-19 vaccines and for not having a “reliable” plan to ensure timely deliveries.

"We did not renew the order after June. We’ll see what happens," Breton told France Inter radio. He did not rule out a potential renewal at a later stage.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu ... 021-05-09/
Literally the same link two posts up.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by Woodchopper » Tue May 11, 2021 8:34 am

shpalman wrote:
Mon May 10, 2021 9:15 pm
Literally the same link two posts up.
Sorry, was posting quickly while on my phone.

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by shpalman » Tue May 11, 2021 2:49 pm

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by sTeamTraen » Sat May 29, 2021 1:16 pm

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by Herainestold » Sat May 29, 2021 8:21 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 1:16 pm
Does the AstraZeneca vaccine have a future?

(QTWTAI...IABMCTT)
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by Gfamily » Sat May 29, 2021 8:33 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 8:21 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 1:16 pm
Does the AstraZeneca vaccine have a future?

(QTWTAI...IABMCTT)
Behind a formidable paywall. Can you give us a precis?
As ever with ft articles, if you google the words in the headline ( Does the AstraZeneca vaccine have a future? ) and the first google result should be the ft article itself which will open freely.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by bob sterman » Sat May 29, 2021 8:44 pm

I don't think it's got much of a future.

I suspect immune responses to the adenovirus vector will limit the extent to which it can be tweaked to provide a "booster" for new variants.

And given that Johnson & Johnson's adenovirus vector vaccine also seems to have clot risk problems (albeit at a lower rate) this could be inherent to this vector approach.

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 31, 2021 7:26 am

bob sterman wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 8:44 pm
I don't think it's got much of a future.

I suspect immune responses to the adenovirus vector will limit the extent to which it can be tweaked to provide a "booster" for new variants.

And given that Johnson & Johnson's adenovirus vector vaccine also seems to have clot risk problems (albeit at a lower rate) this could be inherent to this vector approach.
Its still significantly cheaper than Pfizer and others, so in poorer countries there may well still be a cost benefit argument for using the AZ vaccine. Its still better than not being vaccinated and there aren't enough doses of the other vaccines for everyone.

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by shpalman » Mon May 31, 2021 7:38 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 7:26 am
bob sterman wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 8:44 pm
I don't think it's got much of a future.

I suspect immune responses to the adenovirus vector will limit the extent to which it can be tweaked to provide a "booster" for new variants.

And given that Johnson & Johnson's adenovirus vector vaccine also seems to have clot risk problems (albeit at a lower rate) this could be inherent to this vector approach.
Its still significantly cheaper than Pfizer and others, so in poorer countries there may well still be a cost benefit argument for using the AZ vaccine. Its still better than not being vaccinated and there aren't enough doses of the other vaccines for everyone.
In the EU, Pfizer is managing to follow its rollout schedule such that we'll have received something like 0.5 doses per head of population by the end of June.

AstraZeneca said they would have delivered a bit less than that (~0.43) by the end of June but they've so far delivered about 0.12 doses per head. Maybe they'll actually reach about ~0.17 by the end of June, barely 40% of what they said they would. So at least over here it's been the AZ of which there weren't enough of, but then again, people are choosing Pfizer if given a choice (although significant numbers are choosing AstraZeneca now compared to Pfizer eventually).

So I'm not optimistic about AZ being able to vaccinate the world when they've so heavily failed to meet their obligations in the EU.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 31, 2021 8:21 am

shpalman wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 7:38 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 7:26 am
bob sterman wrote:
Sat May 29, 2021 8:44 pm
I don't think it's got much of a future.

I suspect immune responses to the adenovirus vector will limit the extent to which it can be tweaked to provide a "booster" for new variants.

And given that Johnson & Johnson's adenovirus vector vaccine also seems to have clot risk problems (albeit at a lower rate) this could be inherent to this vector approach.
Its still significantly cheaper than Pfizer and others, so in poorer countries there may well still be a cost benefit argument for using the AZ vaccine. Its still better than not being vaccinated and there aren't enough doses of the other vaccines for everyone.
In the EU, Pfizer is managing to follow its rollout schedule such that we'll have received something like 0.5 doses per head of population by the end of June.

AstraZeneca said they would have delivered a bit less than that (~0.43) by the end of June but they've so far delivered about 0.12 doses per head. Maybe they'll actually reach about ~0.17 by the end of June, barely 40% of what they said they would. So at least over here it's been the AZ of which there weren't enough of, but then again, people are choosing Pfizer if given a choice (although significant numbers are choosing AstraZeneca now compared to Pfizer eventually).

So I'm not optimistic about AZ being able to vaccinate the world when they've so heavily failed to meet their obligations in the EU.
Certainly. I was thinking about the longer term prospects. Europe will have vaccinated everyone by the end of the year. But its going to take much longer for the rest of the world. I think there is still a logic for a much cheaper AZ vaccine in developing countries.

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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by Herainestold » Mon May 31, 2021 1:15 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 8:21 am
shpalman wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 7:38 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 7:26 am


Its still significantly cheaper than Pfizer and others, so in poorer countries there may well still be a cost benefit argument for using the AZ vaccine. Its still better than not being vaccinated and there aren't enough doses of the other vaccines for everyone.
In the EU, Pfizer is managing to follow its rollout schedule such that we'll have received something like 0.5 doses per head of population by the end of June.

AstraZeneca said they would have delivered a bit less than that (~0.43) by the end of June but they've so far delivered about 0.12 doses per head. Maybe they'll actually reach about ~0.17 by the end of June, barely 40% of what they said they would. So at least over here it's been the AZ of which there weren't enough of, but then again, people are choosing Pfizer if given a choice (although significant numbers are choosing AstraZeneca now compared to Pfizer eventually).

So I'm not optimistic about AZ being able to vaccinate the world when they've so heavily failed to meet their obligations in the EU.
Certainly. I was thinking about the longer term prospects. Europe will have vaccinated everyone by the end of the year. But its going to take much longer for the rest of the world. I think there is still a logic for a much cheaper AZ vaccine in developing countries.
If they can resolve their production difficulties. Vaccinating billions of people requires billions of vaccines x2. AZ doesn't seem to be able to do that.
Pfizer has done better with the supposedly more difficult and complex mRNA vaccine.
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Re: Is it all over for the AstraZeneca vaccine?

Post by sTeamTraen » Mon May 31, 2021 11:10 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Mon May 31, 2021 1:15 pm
If they can resolve their production difficulties. Vaccinating billions of people requires billions of vaccines x2. AZ doesn't seem to be able to do that.
Pfizer has done better with the supposedly more difficult and complex mRNA vaccine.
The great thing about the Janssen (J&J) vaccine is that by only having one dose, you almost completely eliminate logistics. You can turn up in a village somewhere with a van and vaccinate everyone who wants it, give them a card and move on. No need to coordinate follow-up in three or eight weeks time. It probably allows you to vaccinate three or four times the number of people for the same amount of resources. It's also that rare thing in economics, a good that everyone wants but nobody wants or can really use more than one of (give or take the possibility of a local black market in some cases, I suppose).
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