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AstraZeneca to be exempt from Covid vaccine liability claims in most countries
- andreareina 6y ago> AstraZeneca, Britain’s second-largest drugmaker, has pledged to supply a total of more than 2 billion doses at no profit in agreements with the United States, Britain and European countries, among other nations and organisations. Not unreasonable.
- dehrmann 6y agoThis actually seems fair. If they were held liable for anything less than gross negligence, we'd have the vaccine in 2025.
- Moru 6y agoIsn't this standard practice with any vaccine?
- bobthebuilders 6y agoYup. But given that all the government's want to push this out like it's code on a Friday night, sacrifices were made.
- ulfw 6y agoOh you prefer living like this for another five years?
- CyberRabbi 6y agoOur choices: rushed vaccine without legal recourse or forced lockdown... how did we get here? What happened to the law and our human rights?
- ulfw 6y agoYou forgot the whole "people are dying of it" thing Rabbi. If that wasn't the case and people just got blue hands for a day from exposure, we wouldn't be where we are.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoPeople who are scared of dying can stay indoors and take rushed vaccines if they want, that doesn’t justify corrupting the law and trampling on everyone’s human rights.
- WalterBright 6y agoYou don't have to take the vaccine if you don't want to. Your rights aren't being trampled on.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoYes, my rights have been trampled on... I’ve had to close my coffee shop because the government says I cannot provide a service to people who willingly want it. And I lost my lease in October after taking multiple loans just hoping this would end, so now I roast coffee out of my house. This isn’t about individuals being “forced” to take the vaccine. policy is being made on a systemic level, either promote a traditionally undertested vaccine to the public, without their ability to seek damages, or restrict their rights to voluntarily gather and do business
- ulfw 6y agoOh look at you. If people would take the vaccine you condemn, they'd be able to come back to your coffee shop. But that's not what you want either it seems.
- CyberRabbi 6y agoI didn’t condemn any vaccine... I’m condemning the corruption of the legal process by removing people’s ability to seek damages from a vaccine and I’m condemning mandatory “lockdowns” that violate the rights of innocent people. The existence of a vaccine should absolutely have no effect on anyone’s ability to do business with anyone else. That should be their decision to make. My life has been ruined from this. I’m blown away that I have to state this in a liberal democracy.
- mjevans 6y agoIf we didn't it'd get pushed out like herd immunity does in colleges with rampant frat parties. Can you imagine the carnage and 'natural herd immunity' of 5 years of all of the holidays everyone ignoring the quarantines would give us?
- RobertRoberts 6y agoThis is totally insane. Imagine if a company did this with air bags, guns for the army, tires or brakes for cars... Or any kind of food for people? Just a little considerations for the ramifications of shoving this through out panic instead of well founded science shows what horrific tragedy this could cause with no repercussions for this company what so ever. No profit?? Look up Hollywood accounting to show how the "for no profit" can mean something other than what you think it means.
- sudeepj 6y agoIn this case it is not. This is essentially a tradeoff. The covid vaccine lifecycle has been way more short than other vaccines. Naturally the probability of some going wrong is higher. The scientists, countries and the entire world is taking a calculated risk. Desperate times call for desperate measures.
- RobertRoberts 6y agoWho would support a vaccine that does more damage than good? Its _not_ an unlikely scenario at all. Anti-science decisions should not be made based on irrational panic.
- riffraff 6y agothis is not anti-science, it's, as GP said, a calculated decision. It's not _impossible_ the vaccine does more damage than good, but it is _unlikely_, because we have some initial data and experience with previous similar things. This does not mean the vaccine is surely effective and without side effects, but it is not unreasonable to start deploying it because a ton of people are currently suffering because of the epidemic, and it can only get worse.
- RobertRoberts 6y agoIf saving lives was _really_ the goal, you would push for making tobacco illegal long before risky vaccines. Tobacco has already killed magnitudes more people than covid ever will.
- partiallypro 6y agoWithout waiving liability it makes it difficult for companies to ever develop vaccines they can distribute. That's why the US passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act in the 80s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Injury_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...
- RobertRoberts 6y agoNo other medicine requires this protection.
- mistermann 6y ago"...makes it difficult for companies to ever develop vaccines they can distribute" seems like a bit of a stretch, at least based on the evidence provided on Wikipedia. Surely the companies find having no liability makes things much easier though.
- swang 6y agoMentioned in the article, AstraZeneca is already covered under PREPA in the US PREPA removes the right to a jury trial for persons injured by a covered vaccine, unless a plaintiff can provide clear evidence of willful misconduct that resulted in death or serious physical injury. The act instructs the HHS secretary to write regulations "that further restrict the scope of actions or omissions by a covered person" that constitute willful misconduct. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Readiness_and_Emergency_Preparedness_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Readiness_and_Emergency...
- RobertRoberts 6y agoWhy isn't it publicly available knowledge about who won damages against vaccine makers like every other court case? The motives behind this protection are hidden.
- olliej 6y agoThey really aren’t - if they’re open to liability claims from a vaccine they developed in months, vs the usual decade+ timeframe there is no reason for them to distribute the vaccine. If anything it actively compels delaying so that they can get a better idea of the risk. Whether or not you think the trade off is worth it is reasonable. Spouting nonsense about “hidden” reasons is conspiracy theory nonsense.
- RobertRoberts 6y ago> "... there is no reason for them to distribute the vaccine." If this were true, then it would apply equally to all medicines with the same risk levels. But it doesn't.
- dna_polymerase 6y agoDo people really insist on AstraZeneca (or any other company) to provide a vaccine in record time at no profit and risking their whole operation on top of that? Usually I'm in the more liability for everyone camp, but in this case it is obvious that this makes no sense.
- gyzmau 6y agoI would argue, that the urgency shouldn't be a reason to rush out a new (not new in development but never commercialized) way to make vaccine never tested at big scale. Especially if we can make vaccine the "traditional"(Inactivated virus) way which we can.
- xiphias2 6y agoThere were lots lf problems with the testing, so now it looks like the FDA wants to retry Phase 3. The results already look underwhelming for old people though. I myself will go for an mRNA vaccine.
- gyzmau 6y agoTo be fair I am not very confident either in the mRNA. I am very sad than only China used the inactivated virus way. I would like to have the same known technology developed by another country (But yes that statement is totally bias). Beside I am following as well the development of Pasteur-Gsk vaccine using a way with a higher degree of confidence (already in use in commercialized vaccine). Personally if I can I wont take either mRNA from pfizer/Moderna or adenovirus from Oxford Astrozeneca. If you want here another of my comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285249#25286854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25285249#25286854
- xiphias2 6y agoI read it, but still don't understand your main concern with the mRNA vaccine. It's unproven, and we don't know the long term side effects in human, but from all data that we have already about the technology it looks safe. You can wait, but I'm an asthmatic person who has problems with breathing when there's air pollution, and my parents are over 70, so for me and them it looks like it's the safer way to live longer
- ornornor 6y agoThat’s what really bothers me with this vaccine. I’m absolutely pro vaccine and I have all my vaccines up to date. But they’re vaccines that have been around for decades and for which we understand the side and long term effects pretty well. I don’t feel very comfortable getting an injection developed in such a short time, for which we don’t really know the long term effects, using a completely new way of immunizing (I don’t think there are any other mRNA vaccines in use?)... and apparently the vaccine maker isn’t comfortable either if they’re looking for total liability exemption.
- AndrewBissell 6y agoYes, mRNA is a completely new vaccination technique and we have no idea what the long-term complications from it might be.
- ornornor 6y agoCurious why you were downvoted. We don’t have the data on long term effect from mRNA vaccines, that’s a fact. The AZ vaccine isn’t mRNA it would seem, but the other ones are so that’s still relevant.
- AndrewBissell 6y agoThe AZ vaccine style has seen somewhat wider deployment so we know a little more about it, but it's still a mixed bag: https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/Adenoviral-vectors-new-COVID-19/98/i19 https://cen.acs.org/pharmaceuticals/vaccines/Adenoviral-vect...
- khuey 6y agoThe AstraZeneca vaccine is not an mRNA vaccine. It's also another new technique but it's not that one.
- ornornor 6y agoRight. Either way, it’s a process we don’t have much data about. I really hate to feel this way because I’m absolutely for universal vaccination as a principle. But this will give so much ammo to conspiracy lovers and antivaxxers :/
- bawolff 6y agoUgh, this seems like a terrible idea, if for no other reason ths it gives massive fuel to antivaxers.
- prudhvis 6y agoWhy does this feel like, this code works in our dev environment, we`ll push this to production without much testing.
- pkulak 6y agoBecause we're in the middle of an incident.
- AndrewBissell 6y agoBy a conservative estimate the incident is threat to about 0.5% of the servers. To prevent that, we're talking about pushing code to all of them.
- klodolph 6y agoYou’ve stretched the analogy until it broke, just like a balloon with too much air.
- riffraff 6y agoIt's 0.5% deaths only in perfect conditions, which go out of the window without measures which very few countries are able to enforce. And you also have to account for people with permanent damage who didn't die, and for the economic and social effects of lockdowns even if a single country manages to keep this under control, because not everyone else will. And you don't have to push the vaccine to everyone, it's also useful if you just deploy it where it's more likely to be necessary.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago"Across 51 locations, the median COVID-19 infection fatality rate was 0.27% (corrected 0.23%). ... In people < 70 years, infection fatality rates ranged from 0.00% to 0.31% with crude and corrected medians of 0.05%." https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf
- sto_hristo 6y agoNot surprised. As these vaccines are force pushed out of the door by basically everyone (outside forces like regulators), the producers have all the right to request such a thing. People want 100% guarantees, but such a thing is impossible in the real world. There have to be compromises, otherwise the producers will simply bail out and the crisis continues. Whoever can deliver that 100% guarantee, can step up and get all those billions in profits, but until then... no room for complains.
- jmnicolas 6y ago> People want 100% guarantees, but such a thing is impossible in the real world. There have to be compromises [...] I wouldn't mind IF people were aware they're basically alpha testers AND if vaccination isn't mandatory. The way I see it they're not going to force vaccination, but most of the places you want to go will require it: you want to travel, go to the restaurant, watch a movie? Where's your vaccination card? I'm the kind of guy that waits at least 1 year before upgrading my OS, I'm certainly not going to get something injected in my body before all the bugs have been ironed out.
- Hoasi 6y agoPreviously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24253406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24253406
- LaundroMat 6y agoThey would have had a lot less flack if they had just put a low price tag on it.