Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisseaton | Hacker News Reader

> “We do not have just one vaccine. We have several.”

I thought their problem was they didn't have access to vaccines over in Europe, not that they had a large stock to pick and choose from.

View on HN

Today? Yes.

Expected vaccine deliveries for Germany (pop. 80m):

Q1: Biontech 12.4m, Moderna 1.8m, AZ 5.7m

Q2: Biontech 40.2m, Moderna 6.4m, AZ 12.4-15.m, JJ: 10.1m, Curevac 1.4m

2021 (total): Biontech 100.7m, Moderna 78m, AZ: 56.3m, JJ: 36.7m, Curevac: 24.5m, Sanofi: 27.5

Source: https://www.bundesgesundheitsministerium.de/fileadmin/Dateie...

I think in the first quarter, BioNTech/Pfizer delivered almost 2.5 to 3 times as many doses to the EU as AZ did. Temporarily not having AZ until it is clear how to proceed is bad but not a total disaster. Encountering problems with the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine would have been much, much worse. Moderna isn’t in widespread use here yet.

That was a temporary problem, they have started to arrive in big numbers this week. Hopefully it will keep increasing.

> That was a temporary problem

I guess it's a permanent problem if you're dead because of it.

Well, yes, I can confirm you that death people will stay that way, but you asked if the problem was that there was not enough vaccines so, I answered.

Not really, it’s likely that you don’t care anymore.

In Denmark the halt of the AstraZeneca will delay vaccinations by approximately two weeks.

That seems like a really long time to me. Did you post this comment thinking it sounds short?

For what it is worth, I read it as a neutral statement: it is literally just the official estimate of the impact in terms of time.

We've been dealing with the pandemic for over a year (it was originally going to be a few weeks to "flatten the curve"). What's 2 more weeks?

> What's 2 more weeks?

A few thousand dead bodies at the current rate.

Denmark has ~2500 deaths since the beginning of the pandemics. Your numbers are off.

Context is across the whole of Europe. Still a couple of thousand of people dying every week in Europe.

Yes your original reply was, but this specific childthread is talking about Denmark and how stopping the AZ vaccine pushes back their estimates by two weeks. This will likely cause preventable death in Denmark but those numbers are not in the thousands.

AZ is not suspended in all of Europe. Most countries continue to use it, some of them -- France and Germany among then -- limiting the vaccine to people beyond a certain age (France: 55, Germany: 60), who are at a greater risk from Covid and who are also the next large group to be vaccinated.

> limiting the vaccine to people beyond a certain age (France: 55

Wait - I thought France said AztraZeneca wasn't effective for people over 65? Are they just giving it to people 55-65 therefore? And shouldn't those people have already been vaccinated by now anyway?

Presumably you're being intentionally obtuse, but whatever. France (and Germany) initially said the recommendation for those groups was pending additional data on efficacy in those age groups, which was lacking in the phase 3 trials. This data has since been submitted and the recommendation extended to elderly people.

> initially said the recommendation for those groups was pending additional data on efficacy in those age groups

Hang on that’s not not actually what the French said is it? They actually said there was data and that the data said it was ineffective.

"Last month France approved use of the vaccine for under-65s only, citing lack of data for older people."

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56242617

But if you read more carefully what they specifically said was:

> Everything points to thinking it is quasi-ineffective on people older than 65, some say those 60 years or older.

So they said there was data that said it was ineffective, not that there wasn't enough data.

Apparently Macron said that, though I can find very little beyond that one quote. I doubt that's what the vaccination boards (whatever their equivalent of the EMA is) in France said when they recommended limiting vaccination to under <threshold age>, but I haven't really looked it up. The German Stiko was quite clear on it, anyway.

Edit to add: ... and while Stiko, ie. the vaccination board, was quite clear on it, I'm sure there were like two dozen high ranking politicians in Germany in January who either didn't read or were unable to understand the Stiko recommendation and claimed that AZ is known to be ineffective. Most politicians aren't trained scientists, and unfortunately it shows.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com