Originally Posted by
MickG0105
You're welcome.
Now, for the cost conscious, what I think might have been a missing element in the AstraZeneca versus Pfizer vaccine discussion - the relative costs.
Pfizer at $26 a dose is eight times the cost of AstraZeneca at $3.25 a dose. mRNA vaccines are very, very expensive to produce compared to more traditional approaches such as viral vector. That eightfold difference in cost is just the factory-gate production cost. Shipping Pfizer is two to three times more expensive than AstraZeneca due to the fact that it must be shipped frozen as opposed to just refrigerated.
When ATAGI changed the advice on AstraZeneca from for over 50 to for over 60 that cost the best part of $100 million just in swap out costs.
And there we have it!
Someone made a decision based on cost. But if only that someone had realised that the real costs of that decision would be vastly more than chump change like the "$100 million" to which you referred.
From January this year, when it still wasn't a race:
Clinical trials for both vaccines have shown they’re broadly safe.
In terms of efficacy, the Pfizer vaccine protects 94.5% of people from developing COVID.
The AstraZeneca shot protects 70% of people on average — still pretty good and on par with the protection given by a flu vaccine in a good year.
The Pfizer vaccine is better (on current data) than AZ.
Aren't Australians
worth the better vaccine?