Coronavirus 3 - Al Pacino's turn to mumble

[doriswilgus]

Here is an excellent article in today’s Mercury newspaper by Martyn Goddard,health policy expert about the Federal government’s botched vaccine rollout.In the article he pretty much backs up everything I said here a couple of months ago about the Government’s over reliance on the AstraZeneca vaccine.I got absolutely flailed by a couple of Liberal hyper partisans here for daring to suggest what everyone now knows to be true-that the government has badly stuffed up the vaccine rollout.Yet everything that has happened subsequently,as well as the government’s constant changes to their initial policies,have vindicated what I said originally.So well done,Doris,for being ahead of the game as usual.

This article is from the June 23 issue of The Mercury Digital Edition. To subscribe, visit https://mercury.digitaleditions.com.au/.
Martyn Goddard



Australia is suffering for its early reliance on just one vaccine, letting other countries surge ahead,

THERE are other developed countries that have botched their vaccine rollouts as comprehensively as Australia. But not many.

The core of the problem is the federal government’s reliance on a single vaccine, the AstraZeneca product, which the government’s own advisers now say should not be given to anyone under 60. That would exclude 83 per cent of the population.

We are now on the end of the queue for supplies of the main alternatives, from Pfizer and Moderna. Most of the countries with which we like to compare ourselves secured their supplies long ago. Our leaders thought they knew better.

So in November they signed two agreements for vaccines they thought could be produced in Australia. One, for 51 million doses of a vaccine developed by Queensland University and CSL, was found to produce HIV antibodies in recipients. That one was cancelled in December. That left us with just one, from Oxford University and AstraZeneca. The government signed up, again with CSL, for 30 million doses to be produced in Melbourne, later increased to 50 million.

There was also an agreement for just 10 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, which could not be manufactured here. As the problems with the mainstay AstraZeneca vaccine escalated, the government scrambled to secure more Pfizer product, another 10 million in February and 20 million more in April.

So if all goes well, we will have 40 million doses by the end of the year. But right now, a critical shortage is looming.

It was not until May that an agreement was signed for 25 million doses of the Moderna vaccine, which uses a similar technology to Pfizer’s and, like it, cannot be made here. Ten million will be of the current formulation and the rest a tweaked version to combat new variants of the virus. The standard-issue doses have been promised to arrive by the end of the year. The rest will be here, according to the government, some time next year.

Meanwhile, the US has administered 175 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 140 million of the Moderna shot.

The logic behind Australia’s original decision to rely so heavily on vaccines which could be produced locally remains unclear. Was this the only reason, or did price have something to do with it?

Drug companies insist on keeping secret the price paid by various governments. Australians have no clear idea of how much our government is paying, or how that influenced their initial choices.

But some information is leaking out, though not in Australia’s case. Six months ago the Belgian budget secretary leaked information on the prices paid within the European Union. For the first time, the world could see the huge difference between the cheapest and most expensive products.

The AstraZeneca vaccine was by far the cheapest, costing EU countries $2.80. Pfizer’s was $19, almost seven times the price. And Moderna’s , at $28.50, the most expensive – more than 10 times AstraZeneca’s cost.

If those prices applied to Australia, the government’s initial 50 million AstraZeneca doses would have cost about $140m, Pfizer’s $950m and Moderna’s $1.425bn. But we are almost certainly paying more.

It’s now clear the EU got an unusually good deal from its suppliers.

The US is paying about 20 per cent more than Europe.

The drug companies are making a great deal of money. Though AstraZeneca says it is supplying its vaccine at cost for as long as the pandemic lasts, analysts for Britain’s Barclays Bank estimate Pfizer will make sales of up to $40bn and Moderna $25bn this year alone.

As vaccines go, these are not unusually expensive. The US government price for each dose of the hepatitis A vaccine is $43, the flu vaccine is $25 and the human papilloma virus vaccine, which prevents cervical cancer, costs $187.

The lowest prices appear to have gone to governments which moved first, and to those which invested in vaccine development. The Australian government did neither.

Pfizer has a well-deserved reputation for playing hardball in price negotiations and Moderna is following the same playbook. Our government, now showing signs of desperation, has put itself into a weak negotiating position in a seller’s market.

It would be absurd to suggest those hard-nosed Americans are not taking advantage of such a strong position — though neither they, nor the government, are in a hurry to give us that information.

If Australia’s decision-makers thought they were saving money by backing a single, cheap vaccine, they were wrong. They are almost certainly paying more as a result, they have large supplies of a problematic vaccine they cannot use, and the nation sees the pandemic stretching on and on.

Martyn Goddard is a health policy analyst based in Hobart.


Copyright © 2021 News Pty Limited

[think positive]

gees Dorus, scary. putting money before lives, i guess thats why they still cant cure cancer etc, no money in cures

[eddiesmith]

Lol, so US got lucky that the one they could produce locally was fine, ignoring the fact they also had J&J which developed the same problems as AZ, but Australia is wrong for going with local manufacturing of a vaccine over one which had far more rigorous storage requirements that couldn't be used everywhere anyway!

The fact thats now changed doesn't change the government made the call they could on the information available to them at the time.

At the end of the day they had 150-200 million doses of vaccines secured, one turned out to be a total dud, one has had issues and the other main one isn't ready yet. It was all a guessing game.

I did laugh at James Merlino on the attack yesterday complaining the Federal Government had over 12 months to get it right, yeah right, 12 months ago a vaccine was not much more than a pipedream!!!

I'm glad that so many hindsight heroes would have been able to foresee problems with AZ and that Pfizer was going to be the best option when they were all still in development...

[stui magpie]

News flash - left wing journalist and self styled health policy expert criticises a Liberal Government.

Of course focus in on the cost.

If you go back in time to when the decision was made on vaccines, before the clot issue, line up the choices and see which way you'd go.

1. All provide similar efficacy, ie they all work
2. mRNA Vaccines (Pfizer) are new technology that have never been used in humans prior to now, outside some limited testing
3. AstraZeneca is based on existing proven well used technology, same as the Flu Shot.
4. Pfizer has stringent storage conditions requiring specialised cold storage creating a supply chain logistics problem, particularly for rural and regional Australia. AstraZeneca can be stored in a standard fridge
5. We have the capability and can be licensed to make AstraZeneca locally, removing reliance on needing to import it. We can't make Pfizer mRNA vaccines locally, we would be reliant on importing all our stocks and at the mercy of Europe.
6. Astrazeneca is cheaper.

With those facts to work with at the time, would anyone seriously make Pfizer the main vaccine?

Interesting that Goddard doesn't even the existence of the first 5 points but focuses only on the last.

[doriswilgus]

It doesn’t take much foresight to see that you shouldn’t be putting all your eggs in the one basket,especially when there were other more effective vaccines available.^

[eddiesmith]

[doriswilgus]

[doriswilgus]

[Pies4shaw]

^ It should be possible to accept both that they made what has turned out to have been a mistake but also that they did so on the best available advice at the time.

[doriswilgus]

That’s probably true.But to pretend that everything is fine and dandy with the rollout and no questions should be asked,is doing the public a great disservice in my opinion^

[stui magpie]

[think positive]

[doriswilgus]

[Dave The Man]

[Dave The Man]

Looks like Sydney/NSW going into Lockdown

https://twitter.com/mjrowland68/status/1407628531387965445