Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
And there we have it!
Someone made a decision based on cost.
No, they likely did not. When the Australian government placed its order for AstraZeneca nobody knew what the delivered cost of any of the vaccines was going to be.
Moreover - and this seems to be lost on many - coming into the pandemic, despite 25 years of trying no pharmaceutical company had ever produced an mRNA vaccine. None, nobody, zilch, zero. mRNA vaccines had been spruiked as a concept for years - a good mate of mine did his PhD thesis on them back in the mid-1990s - but the concept had never been made real. Viral vector vaccines, on the hand, were a proven commodity. So, in what at the time looked like a prudent, low-medium risk decision the Australian government initially committed to a viral vector vaccine - AstraZeneca - and a molecular clamp technology vaccine - the University of Queensland v451- that they knew could both be manufactured here.
Of course, in the this pile-on mentality to just sh^tcan the government at every turn, what's also lost is that the initial decisions taken by the United States and the EU on vaccine acquisition were heavily biased towards which vaccine? AstraZeneca! Why? Probably the same reason - lower delivery risk. The Yanks ordered 300 million doses of AstraZeneca essentially right out of the blocks. Their commitment to Pfizer at that stage was around one third of that, 100 million doses.
Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
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.
Yes, and 'if only' the fox hadn't stopped to scratch itself it would have caught the rabbit. If only.
Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
From January this year, when it still wasn't a race:Quote:
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.
From January this year, when it still wasn't a race:The Pfizer vaccine is better (on current data) than AZ.
Wrong measure of efficacy! Stage III trial vaccine efficacy against symptomatic infection is the wrong measure for comparing vaccines largely because the prevailing conditions in which the trials are conducted vary. The vaccine efficacies that count from a public health perspective are efficacy against hospitalisation, efficacy against ICU admissions and efficacy against deaths. On those measures, AstraZeneca and Pfizer were, and still are, line ball.
Originally Posted by
Lead Balloon
Aren't Australians worth the better vaccine?
At the time, both AstraZeneca and Pfizer were line ball on key efficacy measures. The latter was by then known to be eight times the cost of the former. Additionally, at that time Pfizer was failing to hit its production and delivery targets such that the EU was embargoing AstraZeneca to make up the shortfalls. You tell me which one you'd be opting for at that time.