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Comment by Pick-A-Hill2019 | Hacker News Reader

Pick-A-Hill2019

Seems rather short sighted in my opinion given that the current scientific consensus is that Covid will become a seasonal thing as it mutates which means that booster shots will probably be needed. Given that amount of R&D funds that the two companies have put in I would imagine they would be reluctant to join in efforts to produce a vaccination for future variations.

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Presumably the mRNA makers will have ramped production enough that it won't matter by the time anyone needs a booster.

That doesn't appear to be the case, even if you limit it to "enough for rich countries".

Pfizer is predicting that they will be able to produce 250 million doses month by the end of the year, so I guess they are getting there (depending on how long a period is acceptable).

Source?

Moderna (another mRNA vaccine) alone is estimating it will produce between 600M and 1B vaccines in 2021 already: https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/...

Curevac is on track to apply for authorization for another mRNA vaccine in Q2: https://www.biopharma-reporter.com/Article/2021/03/22/CureVa...

It's not out of the question that the EU will be able to supply itself entirely with mRNA (or inactivated virus) past 2021.

Just search for Pfizer 3 billion (that's the annual rate they expect to be at by the end of the year).

The population you want to cover and how long it is allowed to take are both factors in whether production is a limit, so there isn't really one answer as to whether production rate is a factor.

If Covid becomes a seasonal thing (very possible), we will need more efficient treatments, too. For everyone who cannot either get the vaccine at all or didn't manage to get the booster shot on time.

Fortunately it seems lately that some treatments do provide relief to people who are already sick:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00650-7

https://www.dw.com/en/asthma-drug-brings-hope-for-covid-19-t...

Long-term availability of mRNA vaccines is looking great (short-term is bad to middling but delivery promises were kept and even over-fulfilled and there were no relevant hiccups – everything is scaling up as quickly or more quickly than promised) and they seem to be the gold standard. Plus, as a bonus, maybe they are easier to modify.

Price and logistics aren’t really a concern that’s relevant for the EU and mRNA vaccines. It’s cheap enough and easy enough to handle.

The EU Commission has just started negotiations with BioNTech-Pfizer for 1.8 billion additional vaccine doses in 2021-2023: https://twitter.com/vonderleyen/status/1382306561008230400

They're simply betting on mRNA only, so AstraZeneca and J&J won't be needed anymore.

Announcing to the world you really want this particular product and you just cancelled all competing contracts is the best negotiation tactic ever!!1

Its a false report, so no worries (see other comment thread)

short sighted is the mantra in a lot of EU Politics...

In Germany politicians don't think longer then the next TV/Internet shit storm cycle...

It's not reserved to German politicians but the EU democracy apparatus as a whole is broken to the core without any better alternative.

Politicians aren't incentivized to optimize for doing what's right for their constituencies or the greater good but instead they say whatever gets them (re)elected then do whatever their lobby friends who contribute to the party's fund tell them to do, while putting a positive spin on this for the great unwashed.

We have no system in place that holds politicians accountable for the damage they do throughout their careers.

Even when they are forced to resign due to various scandals, they often end up as "consultants" at the businesses they helped get rich with tax-payer money.

I don't disagree but how is that a feature of EU democracy and not democracy in general?

That statement can be applied to a lot of countries outside of the EU, it is not an EU specific problem. It represents a challenge for western democracies that appeared with the recent waves of populist movements (Trump, Brexit, 5 Stars, etc.)

Uninformed cynicism, however, is the exclusive mantra of online commentating.

The EU is disputing the report in question. And even if it were true, they'd probably have some reason than what you're coming up with in the absence of all information, which is basically "let's kill some people".

The point of this decision is that they think mRNA technology is the future, so they're investing in that. While I don't dispute that lots of EU politics is short sighted, this seems to be the direct opposite.

We don't yet have a clear picture of how necessary booster shots will be.

Each mutation that impacts antibody reactivity also has a chance to impact infectiousness, and the proteins targeted by the vaccines are large enough that it isn't trivial to predict the outcome.

So we might need to do boosters, or we might be fine with the vaccines we have now.

Ending a contract would encourage them to do more R&D for more future contracts.

Don't subsidize drugs/vaccines that don't work.

There are 100+ vaccines being worked on. We're fine.

> Don't subsidize drugs/vaccines that don't work.

Why not? Funding vaccine research seems a worthy endeavor even if some of the research doesn’t pan out. The end result doesn’t need to be an immediately usable vaccine in order for the time & money spent to be worthwhile. Even a completely failed vaccine project could yield a piece of information that helps ensure the next project doesn’t fail.

There are different levels of research. Right not Adrenovirus vaccines need to go back to the lab and figure out this clotting issue. Maybe they can, maybe they can't, either way this is a basic research question that needs only a tiny amount of research money. More importantly, that money needs to be spread over a few years.

Most of the vast amounts of research funding given isn't really research, it is scaling up production - a much harder problem that needs much more money. Since we now know of some issues (that would be very hard to find before a large scale roll out - lets not put undeserved fault on anyone here) the labs can focus on them.

> Why not?

Because money is finite? Not every research grant gets funded. So let's start with the most promising ones?

Funding vaccines that are not meeting standards should be dropped so that standards can be met. These companies don't need money for R&D, they have enough and can recoup it if they create a product that the market wants.

But AstraZeneca does work. The idea it doesn't is a fiction peddled by French and German political leaders, it's not based in science.

And this can be clearly seen in the UK covid numbers!

It works, but has inferior efficacy compared to mRNA vaccines. Same for J&J.

If you have a choice, why get AZ? More over second shot is 3 months away, for mRNA it is at most 42 days away.

J&J has one shot, that has efficacy lower event than AZ.

US is vaccinated mostly using mRNA (because AZ took long to approve and J&J came at that time, but is now blocked).

In my country we have the most amount of Pfizer vaccine, AZ screwed us and didn't deliver so why bother with almost non-existent vaccine that has lower efficacy?

J&J delivered todays some vaccines, but I assume it won't do it anymore as it waits to see what happens with clothing.

It's my understanding that efficacy cannot be directly compared like this, as it's a function of what variants were around during the trial, amongst other things. I believe Vice produced a good video on this recently.

Importantly, don't all vaccines currently authorised have 100% protection against death from COVID-19?

Edit: it was Vox, not Vice, and the video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3odScka55A

> Don't subsidize drugs/vaccines that don't work.

Both AZ and J&J have been proven effective. They clearly work. It might not be politically expedient for the EU Commission to emphasize that fact, but it is true nevertheless.

They work, but at least AZ is working hard to NOT deliver vaccines to EU. (and sending those manufactured in EU to the UK).

Remember when Italians found 15M vaccines at the factory? I don't know why AZ representatives aren't prosecuted for such behavior of the company.

So I think it is a good call to wait for the contract to end.

BTW. Work at ~72%, mRNAs are at ~91%. What would you choose if you had both at the table? And what would you choose if you have the 91% at the table and 72% one in the other room?

The 15 million vaccines which the EU and Italy claimed were some secret shipment to the UK without any basis, and actually turned out to be part of their already publicly announced deliveries to the EU and South America (with the latter being vaccines of non-EU origin which they were just packaging)? Those 15 million vaccines? There's been some astoundingly dodgy political narrative-pushing against AZ.

I didn't write it was a secret shipment to the UK. Just that they have hidden 15M doses, that could be used to protect lives. And considering that they were obligated to provide few M of vaccines to EU countries makes it a good case against AZ.

Is reducing the total amount of vaccines to EU from 500M to 200M in the whole 2021 also a dodgy political narrative against AZ?

"The food is terrible, and the portions much too small".

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