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Comment by SamBam | Hacker News Reader

Does anyone have any insights as to why it seems like AZ has mismanaged everything from the start?

There's plenty of blame to go around.

The EU started negotiating later and signed a contract with fewer remedies than the UK (https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...). It's not at all surprising that AZ is focusing their efforts on the UK.

Right, the contract with the EU alone explains why they fail to meet their commitments, have trouble with the manufacturing plant, screw up the dosing in the trials, and don't promptly provide proper paperwork to authorities during at basically all stages of the process.

Must have been some contract...

the only guess going around is that they're not a traditional vaccine manufacturer. as such, they don't have the expertise for this kind of a roll out.

but this is still a guess at this point.

I was wondering that, but they seem to be a more mature company than Moderna, and have more experience with bringing out products in general.

Did Moderna get more support from other companies/the government?

Moderna got 955 million for investment of their vaccine back in May, and an additional 1.53 billion back in August for the purchase of 100 million doses which has also further been increased to 300 million doses now: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/14/the-us-has-already-invested-...

And I guess the unstated conclusion is that they wisely spent a chunk of that money on hiring people with a long history of FDA compliance, regulatory guidelines, international export regulations, and product management?

(I suppose my point is that I would have expected such teething problems from a young company like Moderna, but they seem to have done everything right.)

Yes, that money came from the US government program literally codenamed "Operation Warp Speed" which was set up as a public–private partnership initiated by the United States government to facilitate and accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

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