EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls | Hacker News Reader

EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

politico.eu

39 pointsreddotX108 comments

To be honest here in Ireland where majority of vaccinations have been Pfizer people seemed to stop caring about AZ and there is a sizeable chunk of people who are refusing AZ (my own elderly parents and their siblings really scared now and in despair) due to issues recently highlighted (dont shoot messenger, imho risks are small but i can see why some might be hesitant when alternatives are/will be available)

I say the brand damage to AZ due to their own production issues, Oxford due to what seems to be dodgy research trials (still not approved by FDA) and UK where politicians wrapped the vaccine in union jack and hitched it to Brexit bandwagon for jignoistic reasons, means this vaccine is now tainted in peoples eyes with negative associations. Which is a pitty but i see both sides of arguments.

TL.DR a month ago i predicted it be pretty much unusable in europe and thats more or less case. As for AZ if they have broken contracts then yes failure should be punished in courts, but IMNAL! for population at large what matters more is that better vaccines are available faster and this vaccine doesnt lead to further hesitancy.

But the other vaccines also slightly elevate the chance of blood clotting. To less than the elevation caused by the contraceptive pill.

The way I understood it these blood clots are a different kind of blood clot, and almost always deadly. But the amounts of "accepted" blood clots with the contraceptive pill are quite horrific.

I believe a lot of people are missing the point here that you can choose whether or not to the take the pill. Many women I know choose not to take it because of health side effects. The issue of side effects with vaccines is a lot of people feel like they are being coerced through talk of vaccine passports and other measures.

The vaccine clots killed 19/76 cases or something like that in the last report, so not exactly “always deadly”

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Why not mention the very negative mentions of AZ by macron and merkel? Macron even wanted to stop all foreign vaccines and rely on some French one.

I have no love for Putin or Johnson but this most certainly wasn’t down to just their politics. EU leaders are massively at fault here with their rhetoric too.

This is your brain on the Daily Mail, I think... There is no approved French vaccine.

Macron wanted to use this vaccine as a matter of national pride. He talked down Astrazeneca because of it: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/26/french-self-es...

Things have changed a lot since then, it's been forgotten.

I'm not sure how you're getting that from that article (which doesn't even _mention_ AZ). If France had wanted to specifically use a French vaccine it would presumably have pursued an independent purchasing model, like the UK and Hungary.

I'm still waiting too see long term effects of all adenovirus based vaccines. I'm kinda estimating there to be an increased risk of strokes overall.

But I'm constantly baffled at Germany's vaccine response. Remember that Pfizer's vaccine is developed by the German company and that the president of the European commission used to be Germany's Minister of Family/Labour and Defense.

But in a way that's a result of their arrogance, so well deserved in a way.

EDIT: Wow, the responses are seriously out of this world. The German health minister fumbled ordering fast testing kits. In fact Aldi, Germany's biggest cheap supermarket chain started distributing testing kits faster than the German government[1].

They fumbled through the mask ordering and distribution and by inventing a super complicated voucher that was delayed many times to allow for cheap masks[2].

One of Germanies most important health care organizations leaderships told people to make sure they know there is no mask mandate in the office[3], and that a running nose is not a reason to stay home. This is while there were statewide mask mandates and work at home encouragement elsewhere.

You're right that it doesn't matter where BioNtech is from. What does matter however is that they are considered more safe than any of the other vaccines, and that they delivered hundreds of millions of vaccines to the US and elsewhere.

Let's stop pretending that Germany didn't fumbled through every step of the pandemic, they bought AZ because it was cheap not out of solidarity to the US. They made the rules for the EU and are now looking at AZ as the scapegoat.

Did you guys already forget the Luca app nightmare?

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-health-minister-jens...

[2] https://tkare.de/en/berechtigungsschein-the-new-voucher-for-...

[3] https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2021-04/kassenaerztl...

Where it was invented is totally irrelevant to public discourse outside the UK.

Arrogance. No. It is very simple: Germany does not have the concept of "National Security" and does not act like that. Germany has many big pharmaceuticals in the country. But guess what: We Germans searched a solution in a European context. We tried to not only vaccinate all of us but also everyone around us. We are exporting the shots all over the world (Canada as an example is supplied by Germany and not by the US).

And that European bureaucracy (consider spending taxpayers money) is screwing things (once in a while) up, is not a new thing.

I would call it naive and not arrogant.

Of course Germany has a concept of national security... and a large sphere of influence to protect that

And it's nothing to be ashamed about. E.g. see https://m.republicworld.com/world-news/rest-of-the-world-new...

Yes you are right. It is just very multi leveled and not directly a budget or law.

I think we are quite active on protecting our interests. Just enforcing a Germany first politic is a complete break from our public agenda.

As a German: this very belief that Germany does not have a concept of national security or national interests and that Germany alone can sacrifice and save the world is the new form of German arrogance.

As a fellow German: yeah, that is a reasonable statement. But you could also see as a idealistic dreamer.

But also: we see permanently how it does not work.

And also: I think we have a quite elaborate way of protecting our interests. Just the tools are so complex and the plans so multi leveled that we often fail.

It's split: Hesitation is for sure here, on the other hand plenty people in age ranges its not recommended for here decide to get it anyways. (Here in Germany its not recommended for <60, but not forbidden to be used)

Yes, but if anything should happen to you because of a non-recommended vaccine you are on your own for treatment and disability pay.

in the US maybe?

No, Germany: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/ifsg/__60.html

Don't know about the US situation.

I'm reading this but the "non-recommended" part is kinda tricky.

It would be one thing to, let's say, get vaccinated with a non-approved vaccine and claim damage, otherwise, unless, let's say AZ is excluded and maybe simply not "preferred" then it should be ok - as per 1. 1. which ok uses "empfohlen" (recommended/endorsed) so maybe it could be argued but I think it's more in favour of being in the scope rather than not

The "empfohlen" (recommended) in the law is usually fulfilled by the vaccination being officially recommended in the vaccination list by the STIKO of the RKI (roughly the vaccine working group of the German disease control office). But the STIKO very explicitly does not recommend AZ under the age of 60.

The Laender (states) may also recommend a vaccine, deviating from the federal STIKO recommendation. But they didn't really do that either, the wording is always very unclear and weasely around AZ. In several press statements, the phrase "auf eigene Gefahr" (at your own peril) has also occured. So I would wait for a clarification.

Edit: medical professionals seem similarly confused about the matter, KVNO is very roughly speaking a doctors guild: https://coronavirus.nrw/haftungsausschluss-bei-impfung-mit-a...

In my opinion, the media and European politicians are responsible for this vaccine skepticism. You reap what you sow.

The politicians banned the vaccine despite there not being scientific evidence to suggest that was a reasonable choice. The media in Europe hyped this up massively.

In the UK, neither of these things happened, and despite there being some degree of skepticism, the vast majority of people are still willing to have the AZ jab.

Under 30s in UK are not recommended AZ jab

Its same in other countries ranging from no restriction to restriction being to anything up to under 60s

not recommended is not same as "banned" stop reading UK tabloids.

Hang on, I don’t think it’s “not recommended” to under 30s. I think under 30s are just given the choice of an alternative vaccine, if they’d like it.

In many EU countries, the vaccine was banned for large segments of the population for extended periods of time.

> In many EU countries, the vaccine was banned for large segments of the population for extended periods of time.

Also happened in Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Norway, Iceland, and some African countries.

Yes, and it was just as incorrect/unscientific in those places too, but we’re discussing the EU here.

> but we’re discussing the EU here.

Yes I know. You seem to be insinuating that it's all the EUs fault, and so I wanted to provide a bit of perspective.

Supply of AZ is so limited in the EU that the EU can afford to be more conservative with recommendations; it's not like de facto restricting AZ to 60-75 (common in European countries) actually slows down vaccination, because there isn't enough AZ available to vaccinate that age group anyway; even if all the AZ is dedicated to it it some of that cohort end up getting Pfizer.

> UK where politicians wrapped the vaccine in union jack and hitched it to Brexit bandwagon for jignoistic reasons

Something I have learnt from the whole AZ business is how much media bias affects your thought process, even on topics which appear to be reported relatively neutrally.

Here in the UK, the implicit messaging I've picked up from the media is that EU politicians have been briefing against AZ in order to discredit Brexit. One (fairly similar) country over, and you've received entirely the opposite message.

> To be honest here in Ireland where majority of vaccinations have been Pfizer people seemed to stop caring about AZ

That's the case now that Pfizer supply has been ramped up, but our vaccine program would be far more progressed if AZ had delivered. Ireland was supposed to get about 1 million AZ doses in Q1, 3 million by end of Q2. Actual number delivered so far is more like 300k.

This is the contract in case anyone wants to read it: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/api/files/attach...

Does anyone know why all of the geopolitical discourse in the UK and Europe has been around arguing over a small supply, rather than about increasing manufacturing capacity?

There are groups which advocate for that, but they often don't have a large (if any) representation.

I don't know any details, but my understanding if that manufacturing vaccines is quite difficult.

Me neither, but I find it hard to believe that it is more difficult than remaining stuck in the pandemic.

The manufacturing process is a matter of precision engineering. "Remaining stuck" is just... psychologically difficult? How do you compare which one is "more difficult"?

Your comment makes absolutely no sense.

I would have taken your question seriously if you didn't follow it up with an over-generalised and rude remark.

As far as I know, Germany helped BioNtech with their new plant but even then it took at least half a year to get that going. And that was despite the fact that they could buy and adapt it instead of building it from scratch.

For example, in software, maybe it takes a single developer a year to build a compiler for some advanced language and we can speed it up to 3 months by adding some people. But could we get to a week by adding 12x more? We can‘t and it may be the same with vaccine production.

All good points indeed!

I was referring more to the discourse, which seems to be about heightening nationalistic sentiments by pitting governments against each other fighting over a small stockpile, rather than highlighting the progress/pitfalls/ongoing support needs of collaborative initiatives to provide scaled solutions.

But maybe this is just a sign that I need to broaden my media inputs, always a good thing to do.

> rather than about increasing manufacturing capacity?

They have looked into increasing supply (see the kerfuffle about the Halix plant) but in the end it seems that the process AZ is using scales poorly. (Not sure how many were produced by the SII, probably not much more than that)

I think AZ delivered approx. 25Mi to the UK and 30Mi to the EU. Compare with Pfizer who delivered somewhere close to 300Mi doses already.

Where do you get that from? There's a huge effort to scale up the production up, which you can see by the weekly increasing output for example of Biontech [0]. Discussing one thing doesn't exclude taking care of another.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-bionte...

Nowhere in particular. Perhaps my sentiment is more a reflection of media coverage focusing on issues like TFA, rather than on increasing supply which is less scandalous.

Thanks for this link. I would much rather that the media kept me up to date on this instead!

From my personal experience (at least the German) media focuses on that as well. I read a lot of articles on how the companies are working to scale the output up. One good and recent example is this article (paywalled) https://www.zeit.de/2021/15/biontech-werk-marburg-corona-imp...

That's good to hear. Maybe I don't read enough UK media widely enough (for health reasons!) to really have a say here, but I don't remember reading similar articles recently. It must be out there though, perhaps in more specialised media.

> for health reasons

I can relate to that, which is also a reason why I now _try_ to consume weekly newspapers (like the linked "Die Zeit") instead of the daily/hourly short-lived news. In my experience the latter tend to report more about "drama" and focus more on negative things, exactly like you said.

I also saw your remark in the other chain:

> I was referring more to the discourse, which seems to be about heightening nationalistic sentiments by pitting governments against each other fighting over a small stockpile

And that also makes sense. I'd say that's something especially prominent nowadays due to Brexit. The amount of news highlighting the failures of the EU certainly got an uptick in the UK and so did the news portraying UK's vaccine import as "egoistic" in the German media. There are certainly more shades to that, but it's pretty obvious from the newspapers as well that the EU and UK are just frustrated with each other currently.

Arguments over AZ production feckups and vaccine exports stopped weeks ago. And billions have been poured instead into producing mRNA vaccines not just for europe but for the world. The article is about pursuing AZ in courts, its aim is not to increase supply of AZ vaccine which increasingly people are refusing to accept when they know there are (what may or may not be) better alternatives

Increasing manufacturing capacity is happening. BioNTech as the most important producer in Europe has brought multiple additional partners into production as well as an entire new plant, which by itself is churning out 1 billion doses per year when fully operational (they're still scaling up production there AFAIK, but have been shipping doses from there since April). Also, the CureVac vaccine is expected to be authorized in the near future, and manufacturing capacity for that one is being prepared right now, also through manufacturing partnerships within Europe.

But the thing is: while EU agencies like the EMA are involved in these processes, and also monetary grants to finance production increases have been provided in several cases, the EU has a limited number of actions available to "increase manufacturing capacity", especially in the short term (the new BioNTech plant for example was already bought in September, so it took over half a year to get it retrofitted for production). We cannot simply - like the US or UK - declare that everything produced within the EU stays within the EU, with no exceptions. Or well, technically we could, and that would certainly increase the supply in the EU in the short term, but that would have geopolitical repercussions that might in the worst case damage the EU's vaccine production in the long term (because it is at least partially dependent on pre-products sourced from outside the EU), but will for sure cause a lot of damage in international relations. The EU is effectively the world's biggest vaccine exporter in terms of doses, especially when you focus on the mRNA vaccines which have the highest efficacy and least complications and are thus the most sought-after. Limited to just that class of vaccines, the EU even is the single relevant source right now.

The epic fuck-up of the EU body that was responsible for ordering the vaccines in the first place might in the end turn out to be a bad thing for us EU citizens because of slower vaccination, but a good thing for geopolitical relations/tensions as a whole. That's because this fuck-up kind of deters the EU from taking the same isolationist "our citizens first" stance that the US took - politically such a move would now clearly be regarded as a cheap and, most importantly, illegitimate attempt to fix the failure of negotiating proper and broad supply contracts with manufacturers using brute political force, and that effectively stops the EU from taking this step, even if it would technically be a possibility. As a result, all the countries in the world without significant mRNA vaccine production capabilities on their territories at least have realistic access to a single source for their imports, as long as they negotiated supply contracts with the manufacturers early enough. This situation has for example been the key enabler for the huge success of the Israeli's highly acclaimed vaccination campaign, which was powered by vaccine supply from Europe.

I feel like I gained more from this comment than the last month of mainstream media combined, so thank you for sharing.

I would need to refresh myself on the specifics, but either Italy or the EU itself blocked shipments of AstraZeneca from Italy to Australia. I recall France saying they would do the same as this came to a head.

To say that the EU as a whole wouldn’t block exporting is a bit premature when we already have precedent.

The EU has exported 113,5 million doses as of April 13, according to Bloomberg: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-04-14/eu-vaccin...

This is in stark contrast to 0.25 million doses AstraZeneca vaccines that were blocked, which is what you are referring to. That has been the only blocked export as of now, at least according to my information.

We may thus indeed have precedent, but it's a very specific precedent which doesn't really serve as an example for a broad vaccine export ban. That's because the legislation on which this precedent was based does only allow such action in the first place if the manufacturer is lacking behind in serving the existing contracts with the EU (a situation in which AstraZeneca is in, but not BioNTech/Pfizer, the top exporter by number of doses in Europe) or if the target of the shipment is a country that is significantly ahead in its domestic vaccination campaign when compared with the EU. This means that there isn't even suitable legislation to instantiate a broad export ban in the EU right now, but just for smaller, more targeted bans; of course this would ultimately not pose an insurmountable hurdle as EU legislation can be changed by the EU itself, but it sends a pretty clear signal that a blanket ban on exports is nothing that's even considered right now.

It has, and Pfizer and Biontec in particular have scaled up production quite effectively (delivering more than originally committed). AstraZeneca is fairly dramatically behind on production (delivered about 33% of commitments in the EU so far), and at this point it feels like the European Commission has basically abandoned it; its contract is apparently not getting renewed.

> the point of the legal proceedings is to make it mandatory for AstraZeneca to provide the doses set out in its EU contract

The point of a contract is always that fulfilling the contract is mandatory.

That said, legal proceedings won't make anything go faster any more than other attempts at what sounds like plan economy.

As far as I understand it the levels of what “mandatory” mean were different in the Uk contract to the eu one. So it’s not quite true that that’s always the point, there are shades of gray which is exactly where this went wrong.

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I don't understand how you could possibly call this an attempt at plan economy, unless you consider all solicitation of a product by a government to be plan economy?

How is this fundamentally any different from the US's purchasing of doses from BioNTech/Pfizer? I'm sure the US would take legal action against Pfizer if they weren't delivering doses according to the agreement?

> How is this fundamentally any different from the US's purchasing of doses from BioNTech/Pfizer?

It isn't. It's just that "euroskeptics" will distort arguments for the sole purpose of hating and dividing

You're spreading prejudice, conspiracy theories and hatred.

Because the doses provided are a function of how well the tool chain works and not of weather or not they have to meet a particular target or at what level the target is set.

"The EU is attempting a planned economy because the amount of doses depends on how well the production tool chain works". I don't think that follows? Is there a missing link here?

> The point of a contract is always that fulfilling the contract is mandatory.

This is true of almost zero contracts.

The quality of leadership has really declined. Western countries seem to be run exclusively by petty managers.

There's almost no "we shall fight them on the beaches" or "not because they are easy but because they are hard" and way more process, lawsuits, committees, etc. As it turns out, you need some charisma and vision to effectively do things.

I honestly don't understand your comment.

"we shall fight them on the beaches" is war-time motivational speech. We live in peace-time (in Europe at least). In a stable, peace-time society, disputes are solved in courts.

An acute crisis requires a different mindset. When you shut down half of your economy, introduce curfew, try to keep people in their homes, and plenty of people are also dying, you're not at war but it's not quite peacetime either.

https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/scientists-against...

"we shall fight them on the beaches" was not about metaphorical war. I was about real war, with real bombs falling and real enemy boots ready to invade.

The above post is about a contractual dispute, for which a lawsuit is the obvious path. I still don't understand what you'd expect.

I got the spirit of the comment. At the beginning of the pandemic, there should've been overwhelming support for therapeutics and vaccines.

Multiple countries should've been preparing manufacturing facilities well in advance, and those that couldn't should've been scrambling to order from every vendor just in case. A "war effort" if you will. Instead we got a very inward and reactionary response (lockdowns etc) but lacked that longer term visionary response which required foresight of only six months.

The following is my speculation, but - it's probably a consequence of having mostly lawyers in charge, and having elected representatives rather far removed from a direct democratic vote as in the case of the EU (although non-EU countries mostly responded in the same way by ignoring therapeutics and vaccines too)

> we got a very inward and reactionary response (lockdowns etc) [...] it's probably a consequence of having mostly lawyers in charge

I disagree. Lockdowns were not proposed by lawyers or politicians, but rather the scientific community. In fact, in countries were the scientific advice was ignored, you had the fewest restrictions.

Also, "At the beginning of the pandemic, there should've been overwhelming support for therapeutics and vaccines." shows what the problem really is.

This is the politicians POV, in my opinion. A kind of mythical man-month for science. Long-term investment must be made in fundamental science so we can have nice things like mRNA vaccines. The politicians mentality of "pour millions in research" and they'll come up with something in two weeks is a real problem. Pure and fundamental research must be supported continuously, which is something politicians typically don't.

Look, I'm not trying to argue that lockdowns were a bad idea or what have you. Just that they were the easiest cognitively for non-technical politicians.

The hard, longer-term work of building out local vaccine manufacturing and distribution wasn't done because it required way more foresight, executive planning ability and basic scientific/medical knowledge.

The other contributing factor is that politicians don't want to be embarrassed if they create some expensive manufacturing facility which ends up being unused. Better to just not make it at all and you'll be safe - after all, that's what everyone else did.

Lack of spending on science research is one thing, but couldn't they have at least imported a little talent to create redundant vaccine manufacturing facilities to deal with just this one acute crisis? It seems like the only person thinking about that was Bill Gates? Why can't our elected leaders show the same leadership? The only country that I'd expect to have this kind of technocratic vision and execution would be China.

Lockdowns _did_ have a non-technical interpretation. The main purpose was to avoid everyone getting sick at the same time so that hospitals wouldn't run out of beds.

I think the main problem with politicians was that they hesitated because they wanted to have two contradictory things: lockdowns to slow down the pandemic (until vaccines were ready) and keeping the economy going "as normal". IMO you can't square that circle.

> Multiple countries should've been preparing manufacturing facilities well in advance

They _did_. The only reason that production has gone as well as it has (particularly with Pfizer and Biontec) is massive public and private investment in facilities.

Just look at how the "leaders" in place got there. Backroom deals instead of elections. Von der Leyen did not achieve a single thing in her career except for hiring consultants.

Our politicians are mostly lawyers, the job they and their staff do is all about laws. And even at that they suck, as is evident by the long list of laws they pass which are then denied by the supreme courts as unconstitutional.

We still don't have a good way of finding the best leaders and putting them in the potions where they are most effective, neither in politics nor in the economy (although there are positive examples of people and mechanisms in both).

I think we are super complacent with our representative democracy and we are failing to develop it further and make it better.

> The quality of leadership has really declined. Western countries seem to be run exclusively by petty managers.

Most Western countries are either run by Conservatives (as their voters don't vote for the Conservatives but rather against "communists") or by populists who rose to power because people were fed up too much (e.g. Macron, BoJo).

The problem with voting for a party only because the other party is worse is that it places no pressure on the "not as bad" party to improve and keep themselves accountable.

Another cause, especially in Eastern Europe with Hungary's Orban but also in Germany with BILD or Fox "News" in the US, is media that is either directly controlled or massively influenced by government politics. A constant barrage of propaganda will always keep voters for the Conservative parties.

> There's almost no "we shall fight them on the beaches" or "not because they are easy but because they are hard" and way more process, lawsuits, committees, etc.

Are you... suggesting dealing with AZ's failure to deliver by storming their offices, or something? Like, what is the actual actionable thing that the EC should be doing here, other than legal action?

At this point, AZ must really regret having gone down the road of working with Oxford to supply a Covid vaccine. They are not even making money off it at the moment. Pfizer on the other hand hit gold with their BioNTech collaboration. They are making 10+ B this year and probably even more in brand value. AZ on the other hand lost billions of brand value. Is there a morale of this story?

I bet a lot of people will hate to hear that but I think the morale of the story is "Don't overpromise and underdeliver".

So far that hasn't hurt Elon Musk a bit...

High risks, high rewards?

The moral of the story is, don't contract to deliver 100 million widgets in a quarter and then actually deliver 30 million widgets. It's pretty simple; remove the vaccine context and there's nothing at all controversial going on here.

Missing production forecasts is one thing, but missing them by this much is unusual and will usually result in trouble for the manufacturer.

Really, I'd say it's more the case that Oxford is regretting working with AZ, rather than a more established vaccine manufacturer.

also don't fulfil 1 contract at 100% and another one at 30%..

A couple of months ago Politico also reported that the EU had waived its right to sue in the AZ contract[1], so what gives? Would it kill Politico to give some additional context when a story seems to blatantly contradict its own reporting?

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/coronavirus-vaccine-europe-c...

Apples vs oranges comparison you made, they probably given indemnity in case of unknown sideefects as other vaccines were given in europe, us etc

This seems to be a contractual dispute.

Why didn't you read the article I linked? It says:

"The contract makes clear the Commission and EU countries can't sue the drugmaker for a host of issues, most notably if there are 'delays in delivery of the Vaccine under this Agreement.'"

The EU is hitting top bureaucratic legalize idiocy. Who cares if AZ breached the contract if it takes years of legal battle to find out?

The EU needs to focus on getting more vaccines. I would suggest to start trail/approval processes for the vaccines from Russia and China. In particular China has shown the capacity and a willingness to export.

So let's eat our pride and focus on getting the pandemic under control.

So, it's totally possible that the EU isn't doing enough to approve alternative vaccines, I don't know.

But dude, the EU is huge. They're capable of pursuing multiple avenues at once. I don't understand why they shouldn't try to get more doses from AZ _at the same time as_ trying to approve and procure vaccines from other sources. It's not one or the other.

Sure. I am just frustrated like probably so many other Europeans on EU's handling of this.

To me EU has been naive and unable to protect the interests and lives of Europeans when other countries went for war-like export controls and aggressive poaching of vaccine companies / resources.

I have posted this before:

https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1372897635577761803

https://www.axios.com/countries-producing-most-coronavirus-v...

Sorry if this is considered off-topic, but I mus thave surely missed something about why AstraZeneca is seemingly the only choice on the vaccine market.

I am German, we developed the Pfizer vaccine, but there is _no_ news about it, it seems like the AZ vaccine is the only option.

Is it a case that Pfizer wasn't viable, wasn't used here, or only made lucrative contracts with other countries, or is it being used, quietly without drama because they are fulfilling their obligations, unlike AZ who seems to be in the news every day.

I celebrated the success of the scientists (Turkish immigrants) who developed it, after the waves and waves of racism in Germany, having immigrants develop a vaccine helped vindicate some of our nation's political decisions to open the doors and borders, that we do in fact benefit, and, sadly now they seem to be invisible again.

There are a couple, Moderna, Pfizer/Biontech, Johnson&Johnson, AZ and Curevac (soon to be approved as it seems). AZ is the cheapest one (Oxford has them selling at cost so far) and was seen as the most promising last summer.

AZ is getting a shit loaf of bad press, so everything AZ related is "news".

All vaccines are effective and working, Pfizer as well as AZ.

What? The Biontech-vaccine is mentioned all the time in news about vaccination progress and vaccine distribution. I really wonder how you could have gotten the impression that it isn't used.

I can't remember exact values but my guess is this friction comes from the price point.

AZ was negotiated at something like less than 2 euros per shot for EU markets, and the Pfizer contracts varied wildly for different countries but it was negotiated at about 15 euros per shot for EU.

With my cynical hat on if you are having to vaccinate millions that order of magnitude difference probably matters.

What I haven't seen anyone discuss at the EC level is what would be the maths of just paying premium Israel prices for the Pfizer vaccine?

Would the economic benefits of get out of this mess as quickly as possible outweigh the extra euros per shot spent on vaccination. My guess is it would likely pay off but then again I am not a European Commissioner.

I remember the exact values, at least the ones published on public media (German ZDF):

The negotiation wasn't about the purchasing prise of a shot, but about the price to "reserve a shot". Germany spent ca. 4€ per capita on "reserving an AZ shot", which adds up to a total spending of ca. 350M€.

Just to have a comparison:

- Last time I bought a beer in a pub in Munich a paid more than 4€

- Just last week Germany spent 1.7B€ on a Syrian topic, which obviously won't change anything, neither for Syria, nor for Germany

- The lockdown - ongoing since November - costs 3 to 4B€ per week

The only one acting not like a moron in this situation is AZ: selling the vaccine to whoever pays the highest price. If the German politicians could pay the highest price, but doesn't want to, whose fault is that?

Funny fact: a friend of mine gets paid to support German R&D on measuring COVID concentration in the sewers to develop an early-warning-system. He says this money should be used to buy vaccines instead of founding some random R&D.

>> selling the vaccine to whoever pays the highest price

It does not appear the AZ are shipping vaccine to customers based on price. We know that Pfizer are, which is why Israel has been able to pay them a premium to get vaccines first.

Rather, AZ appear to have set up manufacturing dedicated to particular contracts - for instance separate manufacturing in the EU, manufacturing in the UK, manufacturing in the US, and manufacturing in Latin America. They seem to have written contracts that say 'you get what your dedicated manufacturing produces'.

The dispute between the EU and AZ is about whether the UK counts as being in the EU - in my opinion AZ appear to have taken money from the UK to build factories there, included those factories in the EU's contracted dedicated manufacturing when they should not have, and then refused to give the EU the vaccines from these factories.

This became relevant because AZ manufacturing yields are lower than expected - less vaccine than expected is being produced for a given amount of manufacturing capacity - so the bugs in their contractual arrangements have become visible.

So, I agree that AZ screwed up, but I disagree with your model of why.

> They seem to have written contracts that say 'you get what your dedicated manufacturing produces'.

It came a couple of weeks ago in the news that 29M AZ shots, hidden in an Italian harbour, waiting to be shipped out of Europe, were found by the authorities. As I said -> selling the vaccine to whoever pays the highest price.

These are murky waters - I don't believe anyone involved.

To correct what you wrote, they were found in a warehouse at a bottling plant, not a harbor, and half of them were COVAX shots that had been produced by the South American supply chain and had just come through Europe for bottling and QC.

The other half were EU shots - held back because the EU had not yet given regulatory approval to the bottling plant.

The allegation, made by un-named sources, is that AZ were deliberately delayed this regulatory approval, presumably by being slow to file paperwork. As there is obvious hostility towards AZ, it is also possible factors on the EU side were causing a delay.

I would say that, having raided a factory with great fanfair looking undeclared stockpiles, saying you found one, and then discovering it was declared and all above board, one way out of the PR problem would be to anonymously make an allegation like that. On the other hand, maybe it's true. Who knows.

With that said... once you start thinking AZ are secretly holding vaccines back to smuggle out of Europe like some Columbian cartel, you are well into QAnon teritory. They would be risking a lot to do that - they are already facing so much for failing to meet a contract, actually smuggling drugs would destory the company. Why would they do it?

Let's agree that we disagree. Like the German public news and the online media disagree on this topic.

> I don't believe anyone involved

I like the version "I don't believe anyone if money and/or politics is involved".

The main problem with the Pfizer vaccine is that there is not enough of it. The government of my country gladly orders any Pfizer doses that are offered, but it's not enough. People here generally favor the Pfizer vaccine over the AstraZeneca vaccine, given all the bad press of the latter. Pfizer is very well known and desirable, that's not the problem.

AstraZeneca on the other hand promised plentiful quantities, and my country made plans based on those promises, but AstraZeneca failed to deliver. I guess the EU feels screwed over.

I am not sure where you currently are, so maybe I misunderstand the question. Sorry if that's the case.

> there is _no_ news about it

There is regular news about Biontech/Pfitzer in Germany. Including additional deliveries based on eu negotiations [1] and it needing yearly refreshments [2].

Further, the vaccine distribution in germany is like this [3]:

Biontech 18mio

AZ 6mio

Moderna 1.8mio

[1] https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/de/statem...

[2] https://www.n-tv.de/panorama/Biontech-braucht-wohl-jaehrlich...

[3] https://impfdashboard.de

Turkish immigrants were welcomed into the country, selectively, with a planned system and for job vacancies.

Today’s immigrants are illegally crossing borders and refusing to register at the first non-hostile country. They are not using official channels, or even legal systems.

I’d just like to point out that difference since you bought the racism card into the debate competely unnecessarily.

Eh? Most vaccines being used in Germany, and everywhere else in Europe, are pfizer/biontec. AZ accounts for maybe 25% of supply and dropping.

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