Discussions about serious topics, for serious people
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Bird on a Fire
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by Bird on a Fire » Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:45 pm
monkey wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:39 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:16 pm
I can't help but think that if two countries' governments just swapped electorates you'd still get all kinds of horse-trading. The powerful elites of each state would just lobby the other electorate, who'd be less informed and less motivated to resist. "Let us open this mine and we'll build some new schools," kind of thing.
At the moment, they just open the mine.
Well, they still have to get permission from whatever regulatory processes are in place. I don't see how making those processes accountable* to people on the other side of the planet would strengthen them.
*Well, as accountable as they currently are to people in the same country, which is often minimally.
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Sciolus
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by Sciolus » Sat Jul 31, 2021 7:45 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote: ↑Sat Jul 31, 2021 1:16 pm
Supra-governmental organisations with democratic mandates are a little less vulnerable to that kind of thing, at least for setting minimum standards.
I always think that one of the great things about how the EU works is that (a) it needs to get agreement from counries across Europe, north and south, west and east, and (b) the decision-making process is largely detached from the electoral cycle of any given country; with the result that it needs a very broad consensus for whatever it does.
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Tue Aug 03, 2021 2:14 pm
High-income countries 'have ordered twice as many jabs as needed', says ex-NZ PM
Of course they did. It allowed the vaccine manufacturers to invest in production and hedged the bet about which ones would work and actually arrive (glares over glasses at AstraZeneca).
But we haven't
received even all of the Pfizer doses yet. Most of the EU is vaccinating as fast as the doses arrive and has similar coverage of its population, which is about 60% at least one dose and 50% both doses. (Vaccinating everyone of age 12 or older means ~90% of the population.)
I know we're not safe until we're
all safe, but I'm proportionally safer if it's the people nearest me who get the other doses. On the other hand, the UK buying doses from India and then only donating doses to Africa when they're about to expire, that isn't really a good look.
covax has shipped over 150 million doses
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Herainestold
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by Herainestold » Wed Aug 04, 2021 12:23 am
shpalman wrote: ↑Tue Aug 03, 2021 2:14 pm
High-income countries 'have ordered twice as many jabs as needed', says ex-NZ PM
Of course they did. It allowed the vaccine manufacturers to invest in production and hedged the bet about which ones would work and actually arrive (glares over glasses at AstraZeneca).
But we haven't
received even all of the Pfizer doses yet. Most of the EU is vaccinating as fast as the doses arrive and has similar coverage of its population, which is about 60% at least one dose and 50% both doses. (Vaccinating everyone of age 12 or older means ~90% of the population.)
I know we're not safe until we're
all safe, but I'm proportionally safer if it's the people nearest me who get the other doses. On the other hand, the UK buying doses from India and then only donating doses to Africa when they're about to expire, that isn't really a good look.
covax has shipped over 150 million doses
NZ is the only developed country to do the right thing on this issue. They sealed the border, locked down hard, and pretty well surpressed the virus within the country. They have vaccinated a little over a million people while donating 1.6 million doses to covax. They can be generous with vaccine donations because their own population is safe. Well done NZ!
Masking forever
Putin is a monster.
Russian socialism will rise again
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Mon Aug 09, 2021 9:15 am
UK set to ‘hoard’ up to 210m doses of Covid vaccine while opposing a temporary waiver to intellectual property rights for Covid-19 vaccines that would allow more companies abroad to manufacture the doses themselves.
only 256.6m jabs will be needed to fulfil the expected demand of vaccinating all over-16s and giving a booster dose to the most vulnerable in autumn.
I've no idea how they get that number for a country with 66 million people in which 75% of adults (considering 53 million adults) are already double-dosed; you'd need about 20 million more doses to finish the adults if they all wanted doses, otherwise 7-8 million to give the second dose to at least those who have had a first dose. It would only be a few million more if you decided to not let teenagers be a reservoir for future covid outbreaks.
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Fishnut
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by Fishnut » Fri Aug 13, 2021 1:54 pm
WHO say that over 75% of the vaccine doses available have been administered in
only 10 countries. Low-income countries have received just over 1%.
it's okay to say "I don't know"
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:47 pm
The Guardian reports that
The Associated Press reports that the international system to share coronavirus vaccines was supposed to guarantee that low and middle-income countries could get doses “without being last in line and at the mercy of unreliable donations, but it has not worked out that way.” The UK is among those who should shoulder much of the blame, it reports.
a report which reports wrote:Under Covax, countries were supposed to give money so vaccines could be set aside, both as donations to poor countries and as an insurance policy for richer ones to buy doses if theirs fell through. Some rich countries, including those in the EU, calculated that they had more than enough doses available through bilateral deals and ceded their allocated Covax doses to poorer countries.
But others, including Britain, tapped into the meagre supply of Covax doses themselves, despite being among the countries that had reserved most of the world’s available vaccines. In the meantime, billions of people in poor countries have yet to receive a single dose.
“The government is a strong champion of Covax,” the UK said, not understanding the point of it, “especially when we can get a bunch of extra vaccines from it.”
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:58 pm
... oh and if anything has "fallen through" it's been EU deliveries of the sh.tty British not-actually-useful-to-anyone AstraZeneca vaccine.
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bob sterman
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by bob sterman » Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:02 pm
shpalman wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:58 pm
... oh and if anything has "fallen through" it's been EU deliveries of the sh.tty British not-actually-useful-to-anyone AstraZeneca vaccine.
Not being dead is quite useful.
Just posted in the AZ thread...data from Chile...
Chris Preston wrote: ↑Sat Aug 14, 2021 6:02 am
Regarding the AstraZeneca vaccine, effectiveness results 14 days after the second dose, among a cohort of 2,380,000 individuals over the age of 16 affiliated to FONASA were:
68.68% effectiveness in preventing symptomatic COVID-19
100% effectiveness in preventing hospitalization
100% effectiveness in preventing ICU admission
100% effectiveness in preventing death
https://chilereports.cl/en/news/2021/08 ... -and-death
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:30 pm
Well it might have saved a lot of people in the EU had the trials tested it properly on older people and had they actually delivered the doses they said they would.
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headshot
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by headshot » Sat Aug 14, 2021 5:54 pm
It might also have been administered more in the EU if European leaders hadn’t made such absurd claims about its safety, thus scaring people into avoiding it.
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Bird on a Fire
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by Bird on a Fire » Wed Oct 06, 2021 1:13 pm
Interesting interview with the Submarine Commander who ran Portugal's world-leading vaccination drive - in particular, what comes next?
He says the priority should be vaccinating poorer countries, rather than locking up more doses in boosters for the rich.
Worth a read
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... ion-covid/
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Herainestold
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by Herainestold » Sat Oct 16, 2021 9:17 pm
Meanwhile China has exported a billion vaccines to the developing countries.
The data analytics company, Airfinity, has tracked global production, and estimates that China has exported commercially 1.1 billion doses (as of 8 October) of its vaccines to 123 countries (as either bulk substances or finished doses).
https://www.bbc.com/news/58808889.amp
Masking forever
Putin is a monster.
Russian socialism will rise again
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Bird on a Fire
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by Bird on a Fire » Sat Oct 16, 2021 9:22 pm
There's definitely a soft power game being lost right now.
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bob sterman
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by bob sterman » Sun Oct 17, 2021 9:52 am
Obviously not good but also not likely a major contributing factor to lack of doses in other parts of the world.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/am ... h-n1278211
The number of doses that went to waste is a small fraction of the more than 438 million doses that were distributed in the country as of Tuesday and the 111.7 million additional doses the U.S. had given to other countries as of Aug. 3..
And a major reason for the wastage is this...
One contributing factor to vaccine waste is the way the vaccines are packaged. Most vaccines for other illnesses come in single-dose vials. But, depending on the equipment used to draw a dose, Moderna’s Covid vaccine has up to 15 doses in a vial, while Pfizer’s has up to six and Johnson & Johnson’s has up to five.
Once a vial is punctured — for example, if a customer requests a vaccination at a retail pharmacy — the clock starts ticking. A vial of Moderna’s vaccine has to be discarded 12 hours after it’s punctured, while Pfizer’s and Johnson & Johnson’s have to be discarded after six hours.
The high number of doses in each vial and the relatively short timeframe for using a vial once it’s been punctured likely contributed to unused doses going to waste.
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Sat Dec 11, 2021 9:45 pm
Arrival of 1bn vaccine doses won’t solve Africa’s Covid crisis, experts say
With 1bn doses of Covid vaccines expected to arrive in Africa in the coming months, concern has shifted to a global shortage of equipment required to deliver them, such as syringes, as well as insufficient planning in some countries that could create bottlenecks in the rollout./quote]
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Mon Jan 03, 2022 6:06 pm
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Fri Feb 18, 2022 8:34 pm
Six African countries to begin making mRNA vaccines as part of WHO scheme
Six African countries – Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia – will be the first on the continent to receive the technology needed to produce their own mRNA vaccines from a scheme headed by the World Health Organization.
The groundbreaking project aims to assist low- and middle-income countries in manufacturing mRNA vaccines at scale and according to international standards, with the aim of ending much of the reliance of African countries on vaccine manufacturers outside the continent.
The announcement comes in the same week that BioNTech, which produces the Pfizer vaccine for Covid-19 – itself an mRNA vaccine – announced it planned to deliver factory facilities built out of shipping containers to several African countries to allow the Pfizer vaccine to be produced on the continent.
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shpalman
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by shpalman » Wed Feb 23, 2022 11:04 am
COVID vaccine supply for global programme outstrips demand for first time
The global project to share COVID-19 vaccines is struggling to place more than 300 million doses in the latest sign the problem with vaccinating the world is now more about demand than supply.
...
As supply and donations have ramped up, however, poorer nations are facing hurdles such as gaps in cold-chain shortage, vaccine hesitancy and a lack of money to support distribution networks, public health officials told Reuters.
... low-income nations only asked for 100 million doses for distribution by the end of May...
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Millennie Al
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by Millennie Al » Fri Mar 11, 2022 2:02 am
Actually, I think that's a rather poor article. It complains about failures, but has very little to say about what should have been done or should now be done. It merely says that a broader range of expertise is needed. So, if the right experts had been involved, what would they have said? The nearest we get is where it says with reference to HIV:
they enlisted social influencers, such as community peers and trusted clinicians, to alter individual behaviors.
But even that is very vague. What did these people do and how did it alter the behaviours?