Originally Posted by
MickG0105
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 vaccine 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.
Yes, and 'if only' the fox hadn't stopped to scratch itself it would have caught the rabbit. If only.
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.
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.
Curious that you refer to speaking against the Federal Government's efforts to be a "pile on" yet you write dismissive commentary about the Victorian Government "of sign me up to CCP belt and road fame".
Seems to me that your comments just smack 'slightly' of apologetics for what has effectively been on several criteria one of the worst governments we've had in Canberra - Robodebt, millions spent locking up 2 adults and 2 children, couldn't run a census competently when every other government has managed it ok for the preceding 114 years, my favourite was in the Abbott era he set up a committee to see how the Commonwealth could save money and it was abandoned after spending $M's more than budgeted, NBN a complete waste of money, spent more on copper to replace copper when fibre was a fraction of the cost, you couldn't write this stuff and have it accepted as not exaggerated for an episode of Yes Prime Minister.... why should the vaccine roll out be any different... and that's before we get into the absolute stacking of the AAT and mean legislation to attack charities that don't say nice things about the government as well as millions spent to try and discredit political oponent and sports and carpark rorts....