Pfizer backs down over ‘unreasonable’ terms in South Africa vaccine deal

Yes you cannot go through a normal court. The US uses a vaccination compensation fund. If someone is harmed by vaccines, they can make a claim with evidence in a special court and the court will determine the compensation. Each dose sold has a 25 cent surcharge to fund these claims. For Covid I think they will do it differently since the government is paying directly.

https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html

Well Americans always explain why they pay more for drugs is that they subsidise the rest of the world(drug companies). One could say the US economy is based around the people(government) giving money(subsidising) to the rich(drug companies). So the terms may not seem unreasonable in the us but are in other countries. Since the condition is effectively the government covering the risk rather than the drug company paying for insurance like they should in a market economy

I’m pretty sure this is the case in the UK too - Pfizer basically immune from any claims resulting from side effects etc.

I think the difference is that in the U.S. there is a law that protects Pfizer from lawsuits. In South Africa they wanted assets incase such a law isn't enforced or exists?

Yes and the reason why vaccine injury funds were developed are:

"It was created in the 1980s, after lawsuits against vaccine companies and health care providers threatened to cause vaccine shortages and reduce U.S. vaccination rates, which could have caused a resurgence of vaccine preventable diseases."

https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html

You think it's reasonable to let companies rake huge profits without any responsibility? And that's how it should be... because it's the norm in America?

I find this world view concerning

Reading closely, it looks like they are still indemnified. It seems like the only term that was struck out was the one demanding sovereign assets as collateral.

With my cynical hat on, that clause feels like a tactic - an unreasonable demand that tests desperation but also allows for a face-saving concession in negotiations.

Too late for that. Indemnity is a condition of Emergency Use Authorization in place by the FDA in the USA, Canada, anywhere else I know of.

The vax has been rushed to market and the risk of unpleasant side effects is probably a lot higher than normal.

Throughout the chain of manufacturing, sales and distribution will be a myriad of people with a profit motive, so even if feedback starts to be received that the drug is causing nasty things to happen, the risk of news suppression and continued sale is probably high. E.g., if power goes out at a storage facility and the temperature at which the drug is held exceeds recommended levels, people might still sell it to get their income and avoid blame even though they know the batch has limited usefulness. Pfizer probably has to protect itself from these elements of fraud and / or negligence which are probably exacerbated by the basic risk of the drug's effects and efficacy.

If the drug has been rushed to market, it is probably not only the drug's effects which have been compromised, but the security and integrity of the entire supply chain that will support how, when and where the drug is administered and by whom.

Yes, Pfizer could just package 100 million vials of tap water and send them to SA. However, whether SA was powerless to do something to the co or not as a result of the agreements it had signed, I very much doubt Pfizer would last long after the news of its behaviour reached the rest of the world. I am sure it still needs to ensure that it does the best job it can.

On the other hand, politicians are masters of the blame game and of wriggling out of any agreement. Even if their language does not allow for deniability, circumstances may change so that old agreements are rendered unenforceable.

I have no doubt that if SA (or many other countries) found it to their advantage to not honour their side of the agreement when circumstances allowed, that they would do so - potentially even without raising any spurious reason to do so other than "we don't want to and you can't make us".

So although I find the terms Pfizer negotiated distasteful, I do not blame them.

I do wonder, though, whether their terms are universally the same for all countries they deal with here. I suspect not, because SA does not have the power of USA or China or even Australia. It is far easier to say to SA 'we do not believe you, so give us the rights to your military base as a guarantee' than it is to say this to many other countries.

But, much of the blame for this poor negotiating position rests with SA itself.

> Uh, yeah, no. I fully support my country's stance on this. We simply cannot afford to indemnify an multinational company from their own product.

Your choice then. In the EU and NA, wherever nations pride themselves on their vaccination drives, either the makers of the vaccines have been indemnified by law or everyone who wants the vaccine has to sign an indemnification clause before getting the vaccine. In Germany the latter is the case.

It is a highly rational concern to distrust highly experimental vaccines, which these vaccines all are. The question in the risk calculation is, can you afford to position yourself against a means that can lessen the impact of a highly damaging virus? Perhaps individuals should make that choice, if states don't want to.

Then they simply may not sell it.

The potential liabilities are gigantic, and the risk calculation may put the equation under water.

It's the problem with a lot of medical products, particularly vaccines which are hard for pharma companies to market.

But it's made worse in regimes that are either litigious, have little in the way of caps over civil claims, or have Justice Systems which are compromised.

South Africa is a very corrupt state, it's just too easy for that system to act in a way that does not have integrity.

That's the real world risk/reward equation and it's unavoidable.

It's for similar reasons that it's a lot harder to raise financing for building infrastructure in SA (or anything else) than otherwise - the interest rates charged are considerably more as there's greater risk of failure, or problems, and even addressing commercial concerns becomes difficult if the justice system is compromised. For this reason, the loans to SA would have those risks 'priced in' at much higher interest rates ... which by the way is the other way pharma companies would normally give on the indemnity issue negotiation - by raising prices, but price becomes a problem for other ethical reasons.

Interesting read, but the website author is a bit wacky and conspiratorial.

"If you were wondering why Ivermectin was suppressed..."

As someone who has a been party to a contract like this, not much of it is all that unusual.

The CDC holds patents for vaccines.

Companies can do good things and simultaneously be criticized for the bad shit they do.

Nobody forgot about anything.

Pfizer now sees $33.5 billion in 2021 vaccine sales, up from $26 billion, and says a third dose of its #COVID19 shot "strongly" boosts protection against the Delta variant.

> “If vaccines are so safe, why does nobody take responsibility for the side-effects?”

Well in the case of the current one, it's because we really, really want them and the governments of the countries buying them are happy to waive liability in this case to combat a pandemic that's killed about 4 million people round the world.

Pharma companies that have managed to create something so useful in such a short time and at such a huge scale pretty much deserve to do well. I don't begrudge them a bit of a bonus off the back of this.

> Number one argument I hear is “If vaccines are so safe, why does nobody take responsibility for the side-effects?”. And to some extent, they’re right, you know.

Aren't people saying the government does compensate people who experience side effects? https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html