What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

brickster69 · 24-02-2021 09:10PM

fly_agaric wrote: »

Not sure what you're getting at here or how who did the R&D is very relevant?
The point is the US, like the UK and only a few other countries has the companies and industrial base to produce large amounts of Covid-19 vaccine locally.

But the UK never had that capability at all. they have big drug companies but this is a total different sector. It was literally built up in 9 months from scratch.

fly_agaric · 24-02-2021 09:27PM

brickster69 wrote: »

But the UK never had that capability at all. they have big drug companies but this is a total different sector. It was literally built up in 9 months from scratch.

I don't know enough about the industry or what the UK/companies there had or did not have (pre Covid).
They certainly are able to churn out the Covid-19 vaccines now anyway.

Aegir wrote:

It was the complete opposite in the UK’s case. They have little in the way of vaccine manufacturing capacity, so they would have been dependent on importing a vaccine just as they were with PPE. The world became a complete nationalistic cluster **** over PPE and they weren’t going to let this happen again, so they set about creating their own capability. Hence the investment in Oxford Biodynamica, Valvena in Scotland and Fuji film in Stockton on Tees.

The UK unlike the US (and more like the rest of us) remains somewhat dependent on importing vaccines, but yes, far less than it would have been.

brickster69 · 24-02-2021 09:30PM

fly_agaric wrote: »

I don't know enough about the industry or what the UK/companies there had or did not have (pre Covid).
They certainly are able to churn out the Covid-19 vaccines now anyway.

UK had zero capability of manufacturing vaccines 9 months ago.

fly_agaric · 24-02-2021 09:36PM

brickster69 wrote: »

UK had zero capability of manufacturing vaccines 9 months ago.

Okay, I believe you.
I know this is the "internet" and I'm probably supposed to argue with you now, try to pull something out of my arsé (or google) to try to prove you wrong etc. but I always found that a bit of a waste of time! :pac:

deeperlearning · 24-02-2021 09:41PM

brickster69 wrote: »

UK had zero capability of manufacturing vaccines 9 months ago.

If the South African variant takes hold in the UK, as it is likely to do, the UK could find itself effectively back to zero capability for quite some time.

brickster69 · 24-02-2021 09:53PM

deeperlearning wrote: »

If the South African variant takes hold in the UK, as it is likely to do, the UK could find itself effectively back to zero capability for quite some time.

Bet your laughing like f..k at the one eh. Hahaha

AngeloArgue · 24-02-2021 10:03PM

deeperlearning wrote: »

If the South African variant takes hold in the UK, as it is likely to do, the UK could find itself effectively back to zero capability for quite some time.

You believe that the AstraZeneca vaccine has "zero capability" against the South African variant?

What will make you happy?

A double blind longitudinal study on 30k+ participants over several years for every variation of a rapidly evolving virus during a global pandemic that has had huge societal and economic upheavals?

Tippbhoy1 · 24-02-2021 10:05PM

Aegir wrote: »

There is no flip flopping. You need to get this idea of nationalisation out of your head.

What the U.K. has done (I am presuming) is ring fenced certain manufacturing facilities in the U.K. for U.K. only supply. They can do this because they paid for those facilities to be converted to enable production to take place.

You don’t even mention the pharma company anymore at least. We know with a reasonable assumption what has happened in the UK although it took a while to get there in this discussion... my point remains consistent that the EU should have been informed of any commitments that could
impact them, uk manufacturing was covered in the EU contract. I remain consistent, I don’t have a major issue with the UK nationalising all UK production despite commitments made by the private company, but I do have a major issue with the dishonesty. I don’t care if the UK paid for every penny spent on research and every penny for manufacturing, which they didn’t by the way, but even if they did, it was still dishonest. In the unlikely event that AZ made an arbitrary decision and then told the UK government, it was still dishonest on both parties.

It makes you wonder was a new contract done the next day with the UK after the agreement with the EU when they saw the quantities and the risk. I wouldn’t put anything past Boris and co at this stage. The damage is done, there’s no going back on it now.

brickster69 · 24-02-2021 10:08PM

AngeloArgue wrote: »

You believe that the AstraZeneca vaccine has "zero capability" against the South African variant?

What will make you happy?

He does not care. He keeps forgetting about the half a million Irish people living in the UK. You will get balaclava man turning up next,
you watch.

fly_agaric · 24-02-2021 10:13PM

deeperlearning wrote: »

If the South African variant takes hold in the UK, as it is likely to do, the UK could find itself effectively back to zero capability for quite some time.

Let's hope not.
Not a fan of the current UK govt. or how they go about things, but whatever the rights + wrongs of this AZ controversy it is very important that these vaccination programmes are a complete success now.

AngeloArgue · 24-02-2021 10:13PM

brickster69 wrote: »

He does not care. He keeps forgetting about the half a million Irish people living in the UK. You will get balaclava man turning up next.

I guess he might write a letter to the Department of Health, The European Medicines Agency and the NIAC warning them of it's impending uselessness. What's his advice to the 10s of 1000s of front line HCWs due to be vaccinated with the AZ vaccine?

brickster69 · 24-02-2021 10:23PM

AngeloArgue wrote: »

What's his advice to the 10s of 1000s of front line HCWs due to be vaccinated with the AZ vaccine?

Well that's not too bad really. It could be worse Ireland could be giving it to all those over 70's. Imagine what a catastrophe that would be.

24-02-2021 10:30PM

Tippbhoy1 wrote: »

You don’t even mention the pharma company anymore at least. We know with a reasonable assumption what has happened in the UK although it took a while to get there in this discussion... my point remains consistent that the EU should have been informed of any commitments that could
impact them, uk manufacturing was covered in the EU contract. I remain consistent, I don’t have a major issue with the UK nationalising all UK production despite commitments made by the private company, but I do have a major issue with the dishonesty. I don’t care if the UK paid for every penny spent on research and every penny for manufacturing, which they didn’t by the way, but even if they did, it was still dishonest. In the unlikely event that AZ made an arbitrary decision and then told the UK government, it was still dishonest on both parties.

It makes you wonder was a new contract done the next day with the UK after the agreement with the EU when they saw the quantities and the risk. I wouldn’t put anything past Boris and co at this stage. The damage is done, there’s no going back on it now.

Honestly, please stop.

I’ve tried to make this as simple as possible, but you fail to grasp how supply chains work.

There is nothing in the agreement between AZ and the UK that prevents AZ meeting their obligations. The factories in the uk are as relevant to the AZ/Eu contract as the ones in Australia or India.

What should have happened and what the Eu clearly wanted, was for AZ to produce the vaccines within the Eu. The fact that the factories failed to get up to speed in time has nothing to do with the agreement between AZ and the U.K.

There were no lies or deceit, just a poor start up.

AngeloArgue · 24-02-2021 10:34PM

Point scoring and media mistruths has damaged the vaccination program in France and Germany.

Because of vaccine hesitancy hundreds of thousands of doses are lying unused in stockpiles while people are dying

Ireland is set to receive 1 million+ doses of AstraZeneca.

Lets hope we don't start going down the same road.

24-02-2021 10:41PM

AngeloArgue wrote: »

Point scoring and media mistruths has damaged the vaccination program in France and Germany.

Because of vaccine hesitancy hundreds of thousands of doses are lying unused in stockpiles while people are dying

Ireland is set to receive 1 million+ doses of AstraZeneca.

Lets hope we don't start going down the same road.

It should be like a housing list. Refuse whatever you are offered and go to the back of the queue.

brickster69 · 24-02-2021 10:42PM

AngeloArgue wrote: »

Point scoring and media mistruths has damaged the vaccination program in France and Germany.

Because of vaccine hesitancy hundreds of thousands of doses are lying unused in stockpiles while people are dying

Ireland is set to receive 1 million+ doses of AstraZeneca.

Lets hope we don't start going down the same road.

I don't care anymore. You watch in the next 2 weeks the data will come out saying it is totally effective in all ages based on 10 million tests, and they still won't accept it and allow thousands more older vulnerable people to die.

No one will say it, but that that is the truth of it.

NeuralNetwork · 24-02-2021 10:51PM

I don’t think Irish commentators appreciate the extreme anti vaxxer stuff in France and I’m hearing similar about Germany.

France has a growing issue with all sorts of crazy around vaccines, 5G, any kind of radio transmission system, wires or technology in general and it has been entertained in a way that would never have happened a decade or two ago. Strongly held opinions and facts are being confused much as they were in Trumps America, just with a slightly different set of topics, without the religiosity and more left leaning.

For all the assumptions that Germany is a bastion of science, it also has some seriously out there notions about alternative medicine in the mainstream too:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/10/ginger-root-and-meteorite-dust-the-steiner-covid-cures-offered-in-germany

Irish attitudes to vaccines and particularly these ones are extremely science and pragmatism based and so are the attitudes in the U.K.

I think the British Twitter bubble is interpreting everything as Brexit politics. The reality is that this row with AstraZeneca has spurred a whole load of vaccine hesitancy and inflamed what was already a huge issue. It’s nothing to do with nationalism, but rather with anti science ans conspiracy theories circulating around that are being given more credence by these rows.

The mess in Brussels today with people failing to turn up seems to have been more about just an administration mess that resulted in a lot of people not actually getting their invitations by email. I think that one may be being misinterpreted online too.

[url] https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/156548/almost-75-of-brussels-primary-care-workers-dont-show-up-for-vaccine-inge-neven-gdpr-heysel-pacheco-vaccinnet-astrazeneca-van-gucht-moderna-alain-maron/[/url]

brickster69 · 24-02-2021 11:09PM

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

I don’t think Irish commentators appreciate the extreme anti vaxxer stuff in France and I’m hearing similar about Germany.

France has a growing issue with all sorts of crazy around vaccines, 5G, any kind of radio transmission system, wires or technology in general and it has been entertained in a way that would never have happened a decade or two ago. Strongly held opinions and facts are being confused much as they were in Trumps America, just with a slightly different set of topics, without the religiosity and more left leaning.

For all the assumptions that Germany is a bastion of science, it also has some seriously out there notions about alternative medicine in the mainstream too:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/10/ginger-root-and-meteorite-dust-the-steiner-covid-cures-offered-in-germany

Irish attitudes to vaccines and particularly these ones are extremely science and pragmatism based and so are the attitudes in the U.K.

I think the British Twitter bubble is interpreting everything as Brexit politics. The reality is that this row with AstraZeneca has spurred a whole load of vaccine hesitancy and inflamed what was already a huge issue. It’s nothing to do with nationalism, but rather with anti science ans conspiracy theories circulating around that are being given more credence by these rows.

The mess in Brussels today with people failing to turn up seems to have been more about just an administration mess that resulted in a lot of people not actually getting their invitations by email. I think that one may be being misinterpreted online too.

The main concern for other countries is the knock on effects of supply in the near term. If Germany and France are having minimal uptake of certain vaccines for whatever reason, then surely the pressure will grow on the Governments to deliver the vaccine(s) what they are happy with.

Given the population size of these could have a knock on effect of certain vaccines being delivered to other states.

astrofool · 24-02-2021 11:19PM

People forget trumpy had a lot of anti-vax beliefs until COVID came along.

Tippbhoy1 · 24-02-2021 11:23PM

Aegir wrote: »

Honestly, please stop.

I’ve tried to make this as simple as possible, but you fail to grasp how supply chains work.

There is nothing in the agreement between AZ and the UK that prevents AZ meeting their obligations. The factories in the uk are as relevant to the AZ/Eu contract as the ones in Australia or India.

What should have happened and what the Eu clearly wanted, was for AZ to produce the vaccines within the Eu. The fact that the factories failed to get up to speed in time has nothing to do with the agreement between AZ and the U.K.

There were no lies or deceit, just a poor start up.

Supply from the uk factories were included in the EU contract.

I can appreciate that you believe what you write and that you want national borders to be the limits of supply chains now this position suits the uk, but I can assure you they are not. Where do you think your Pfizer supply is coming from? Where do you think some of the AZ vaccine came from outside the UK?

Regardless, all of this is just debating technicalities, if you step out of it for a minute it doesn’t change the fact that AZ/UK control access to the vaccine, there have been supply issues, EU lose out, AZ/UK tells EU last minute despite knowing for ages, prioritising the UK supply as per other agreement that they should have flagged, and not making any effort to put the agreement right. Fair enough, just be honest about it for once.

I see UK were blaming slow down in vaccinations this week down to a supply issue from Pfizer, which Pfizer have denied. Wonder where the truth is on that one ðŸ€”

NeuralNetwork · 24-02-2021 11:25PM

The issue I would be more concerned about is the knock on impact several large continental countries failing to reach 75% uptake might have or dragging the rollout for months and months as new variants keep spinning up because of vaccine hesitancy or political anti vaxxers.

It’s quite possible you could end up with huge disparities between different parts of Europe on this and it won’t be about the types of vaccines, but refusal to take them and that has significant mobility and economic challenges in Europe and beyond.

The worrying issue with this spat to me is what it’s inflaming. I would just caution against seeing this through the lens of British tabloids that think the world revolves around Brexit or some anti British bias. That doesn’t appear to be where this is coming from. It’s the shaking of confidence by what looks like an argument over facts.

Also I would say the EMA has to be beyond reproach on this, as it has a lot of credibility at stake if it is seen to be pushed by politics and ultimately that would probably result in far worse impacts than a slightly slow, but methodical approval processes.

We are seeing this more as a vaccine race here and some of that is because we are perceiving that we are significantly lagging the U.K. rollout, which has been very rapid. The commentary I’m watching and reading from France in particular is just a lot more circumspect about everything. There’s no real sense of comparison with the U.K. on it and from what I can see some of that is also replicated in Germany and likely elsewhere too.

You can’t generalise about Europe though. It has a large number of cultures, political spheres and media bubbles that don’t always interconnect.

astrofool wrote: »

People forget trumpy had a lot of anti-vax beliefs until COVID came along.

Absolutely. It only became useful to him when he could frame it like the space race and make it a popular, nationalistic cause. Johnson has done that in the U.K. and to be fair to him, it’s the one time that he’s used his popular political skills to get behind a good cause.

I think Ireland needs to start seeing and appreciating that we are moving relatively fast and see that acceleration too. If we get to the stage we have a vaccine programme we can be proud of, it will be a much better sense of light at the end of the tunnel than all the bickering that’s going on right now that could even risk undermining it. That’s been really annoying me about how this is being communicated.

The HSE is far from the national treasure status the NHS holds and that’s a challenge, but it’s potentially doing a very good job in this rollout and I think for the sake of the people involved, we probably do need to get behind them just for this one big task.

The “only in Ireland” stuff is starting to get really depressing online and I think the government communication here is pathetic at the moment. There needs to be a sense we are actually achieving something. That’s being lost.

FFS, screw ups aside, we just got from a position of having the worst covid spike in the world and have managed to get it down to very low levels again in a matter of a few weeks. That’s something we need to be giving everyone in the country some sense of achievement for. As a society we reigned it in at record speed.

Strazdas · 24-02-2021 11:33PM

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

The issue I would be more concerned about is the knock on impact several large continental countries failing to reach 75% uptake might have or dragging the rollout for months and months as new variants keep spinning up because of vaccine hesitancy or political anti vaxxers.

It’s quite possible you could end up with huge disparities between different parts of Europe on this and it won’t be about the types of vaccines, but refusal to take them and that has significant mobility and economic challenges in Europe and beyond.

The worrying issue with this spat to me is what it’s inflaming. I would just caution against seeing this through the lens of British tabloids that think the world revolves around Brexit or some anti British bias. That doesn’t appear to be where this is coming from. It’s the shaking of confidence by what looks like an argument over facts.

Also I would say the EMA has to be beyond reproach on this, as it has a lot of credibility at stake if it is seen to be pushed by politics and ultimately that would probably result in far worse impacts than a slightly slow, but methodical approval processes.

We are seeing this more as a vaccine race here and some of that is because we are perceiving that we are significantly lagging the U.K. rollout, which has been very rapid. The commentary I’m watching and reading from France in particular is just a lot more circumspect about everything. There’s no real sense of comparison with the U.K. on it and from what I can see some of that is also replicated in Germany and likely elsewhere too.

You can’t generalise about Europe though. It has a large number of cultures, political spheres and media bubbles that don’t always interconnect.

The problem is everyone in Europe is lagging behind the UK, so it's not a good comparison (no more than you would compare yourself to the worst performing nation).

The Irish rollout is pretty fast and one of the quickest in the EU.

NeuralNetwork · 24-02-2021 11:45PM

Strazdas wrote: »

The problem is everyone in Europe is lagging behind the UK, so it's not a good comparison (no more than you would compare yourself to the worst performing nation).

The Irish rollout is pretty fast and one of the quickest in the EU.

That’s relevant here in Ireland but in much of continental Europe that comparison isn’t really being made and the British media is as relevant as the Italian media is here. So you have any idea what Italian tabloids or panel shows on TG24, Mediaset TGCom or RAI News are saying? That’s pretty much how much attention is paid to The Daily Express or Sky News U.K. in France etc

The issues blowing up are largely around vaccine hesitancy and in some cases inefficient administration issues.

All the AstraZeneca issue did was fling in a load of questions about why facts keep being reported differently, an unseemly looking fight and if you’re someone who has major distrust of “big pharma” it basically starts confirming your, almost certainly unfounded, fears and biases about regulatory transparency, safety etc and set off no end of conspiracy theorists and anti science / conventional medicine types online.

AngeloArgue · 25-02-2021 12:17AM

Tippbhoy1 wrote: »

Supply from the uk factories were included in the EU contract.

I can appreciate that you believe what you write and that you want national borders to be the limits of supply chains now this position suits the uk, but I can assure you they are not. Where do you think your Pfizer supply is coming from? Where do you think some of the AZ vaccine came from outside the UK?

Regardless, all of this is just debating technicalities, if you step out of it for a minute it doesn’t change the fact that AZ/UK control access to the vaccine, there have been supply issues, EU lose out, AZ/UK tells EU last minute despite knowing for ages, prioritising the UK supply as per other agreement that they should have flagged, and not making any effort to put the agreement right. Fair enough, just be honest about it for once.

I see UK were blaming slow down in vaccinations this week down to a supply issue from Pfizer, which Pfizer have denied. Wonder where the truth is on that one &#55356;&#56340;

Every one of the approved vaccine producers have had delays to their projected supply figures but only AstraZeneca are singled out for particular wrath and fury.

Why is that?

brickster69 · 25-02-2021 12:21AM

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Also I would say the EMA has to be beyond reproach on this, as it has a lot of credibility at stake if it is seen to be pushed by politics and ultimately that would probably result in far worse impacts than a slightly slow, but methodical approval processes.

I agree with this. Having a centralized independent body for the approval of medicines is good.

But do you not feel it's trust as an organisation has now been eroded. Fair enough member states can do as it wants on a health basis, but you would be quite sure that people involved in that group would be quite despondent with how things turned out, given the seriousness of the matter.

What is the point of it, if member states do not recognize it's expertise and advice and all do different things?

brickster69 · 25-02-2021 12:25AM

AngeloArgue wrote: »

Every one of the approved vaccine producers have had delays to their projected supply figures but only AstraZeneca are singled out for particular wrath and fury.

Why is that?

Everyone knows why. Money !

AngeloArgue · 25-02-2021 12:28AM

NeuralNetwork wrote: »

Also I would say the EMA has to be beyond reproach on this, as it has a lot of credibility at stake if it is seen to be pushed by politics and ultimately that would probably result in far worse impacts than a slightly slow, but methodical approval processes.

I would remind you that the EMA have approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for adults of all ages.

It was individual nations that started to put caveats to its use

brickster69 · 25-02-2021 12:32AM

AngeloArgue wrote: »

I would remind you that the EMA have approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for adults of all ages.

It was individual nations that started to put caveats to its use

Bad enough with vaccines, imagine if they start doing it with planes or something. One plane is accepted in one country but not in another. Total chaos

joebloggs32 · 25-02-2021 12:39AM

Its funny how those who constantly look for opportunities to knock this country completely disregarded any comparison to the UK six months ago if you were discussing case numbers or death rates per capita. They would instantly point to other nations like New Zealand, Taiwan etc.

Now all of a sudden its all about the success of the UK, and why cant we be more like them, completely ignoring our ties to the EU and the skullduggery AZ has pulled.

I am convinced their delay in applying for EMA approval was down to their inability to meet their deliveries.

Strazdas · 25-02-2021 12:42AM

AngeloArgue wrote: »

I would remind you that the EMA have approved the AstraZeneca vaccine for adults of all ages.

It was individual nations that started to put caveats to its use

But even then, it was the health authorities in each country that made the decision. Governments have no say in vaccine efficacy or whether it should be given or not.

What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

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