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> Countries (notably the US) didn't work through the past year to build out socialized manufacturing capacity for additional dose production I was under the as

> Countries (notably the US) didn't work through the past year to build out socialized manufacturing capacity for additional dose production I was under the assumption that Project Warp Speed explicitly directed funding from the US government to help ramp up production while vaccines were still being tested. Did that not happen?

throwawayboise 6y ago
It did happen. But mRNA vaccines are new. The capacity needed to be built all along the supply chain. Months isn't a lot of time when you're talking about building new brick and mortar procduction infrastructure.
maxerickson 6y ago
It did, it just wasn't ambitious enough. There were separate grants, but the preorders were only enough to cover the entire population if multiple vaccines were approved. I guess it is possible that production was scaled up as fast as possible, but it seems that there was a lack of imagination in the planning process (setting low goals, not anticipating far enough ahead, etc).
- Throwawayaerlei 6y ago
  From the now taken down Operation Warp Speed page, see here https://web.archive.org/web/20210119000857/https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explaining-operation-warp-speed/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210119000857/https://www.hhs.g... 300 million doses from AZ, 100 million from Novavax, as mentioned in my other comment 100 million from Pfizer, 100 million from Sanofi/GSK which as mentioned failed, and a 100 million from Johnson and Johnson. Also mentions we signed the second 100 million dose contract with Moderna December 11th, that would be based their results which led to their submitting their application for an FDA Emergency Use Authorization on November 30th. See also lots of details on supply chain spending, well over a billion dollars. So while you're technically correct, with how much effort it takes to ramp up production, see how Johnson and Johnson isn't going to meet their early 12 million dose promise, I don't see our general approach as being wrong. Signing multiple 700 million dose contracts would not in any way speed production, that only happens when you get an initial contract and start making it. Which is exactly what Moderna and Pfizer did, quite some time before getting EUAs, lots of doses were shipped within days. Where I live, for Pfizer the Monday after the FDA's Friday issuance of an EUA. To a hospital which had rented an ultra-cold freezer to store it, a lot of work and money has gone into this hole process.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Yeah, like $12 billion dollars. We are spending trillions on relief, so it's worth asking if more money spent on production could have accelerated things. A few tens of billions more would have been cheap! The vaccine shipments here (Michigan) have accelerated considerably since December, implying a pretty small head start on manufacturing. The distribution trends tab on https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98178_103214_103272-547150--,00.html https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98178_1032... shows the shipments.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      A large part of the head start wasn't manufacturing the vaccine, it was setting up the factories to manufacture the vaccine.
- InTheArena 6y ago
  I know this is the party line right now but it’s nothing more then Joe Biden is doing his best to set low expectations and to revamp history. I’m a committed never Trumper. But there’s no question that warp speed has been a insane success. Biden set at the bar as low as warp speed was already achieving. There are 1 million valid reasons to hate Trump. This might be the only reason to think his government did a reasonable job at one task.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    They knew they had clinical vaccine candidates in February! The whole development timeline starts with one of the good vaccines already existing. We honestly don't have the information to evaluate whether they set reasonable targets or not.
    - Throwawayaerlei 6y ago
      20/20 hindsight. And Moderna's candidate was designed by January 13th, a weekend after the first sequences from China were uploaded to Western databases, but before we knew we'd even need it. You should learn more about the whole process; did you know everyone has to wait two weeks for sterility testing of finished vaccines? What's entailed in Phase I, II and III trials? That the latter tend to cost a billion dollars plus or minus, and take months? How very long the FDA takes to decide things, three weeks for Pfizer/BioNTech. More money is not the solution to every technical problem!!! I would think those of us who hang out on Hacker News would be intimately aware of this.

throwawayboise 6y ago

It did happen. But mRNA vaccines are new. The capacity needed to be built all along the supply chain. Months isn't a lot of time when you're talking about building new brick and mortar procduction infrastructure.

maxerickson 6y ago

It did, it just wasn't ambitious enough. There were separate grants, but the preorders were only enough to cover the entire population if multiple vaccines were approved. I guess it is possible that production was scaled up as fast as possible, but it seems that there was a lack of imagination in the planning process (setting low goals, not anticipating far enough ahead, etc).

Throwawayaerlei 6y ago
From the now taken down Operation Warp Speed page, see here https://web.archive.org/web/20210119000857/https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/explaining-operation-warp-speed/index.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210119000857/https://www.hhs.g... 300 million doses from AZ, 100 million from Novavax, as mentioned in my other comment 100 million from Pfizer, 100 million from Sanofi/GSK which as mentioned failed, and a 100 million from Johnson and Johnson. Also mentions we signed the second 100 million dose contract with Moderna December 11th, that would be based their results which led to their submitting their application for an FDA Emergency Use Authorization on November 30th. See also lots of details on supply chain spending, well over a billion dollars. So while you're technically correct, with how much effort it takes to ramp up production, see how Johnson and Johnson isn't going to meet their early 12 million dose promise, I don't see our general approach as being wrong. Signing multiple 700 million dose contracts would not in any way speed production, that only happens when you get an initial contract and start making it. Which is exactly what Moderna and Pfizer did, quite some time before getting EUAs, lots of doses were shipped within days. Where I live, for Pfizer the Monday after the FDA's Friday issuance of an EUA. To a hospital which had rented an ultra-cold freezer to store it, a lot of work and money has gone into this hole process.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Yeah, like $12 billion dollars. We are spending trillions on relief, so it's worth asking if more money spent on production could have accelerated things. A few tens of billions more would have been cheap! The vaccine shipments here (Michigan) have accelerated considerably since December, implying a pretty small head start on manufacturing. The distribution trends tab on https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98178_103214_103272-547150--,00.html https://www.michigan.gov/coronavirus/0,9753,7-406-98178_1032... shows the shipments.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    A large part of the head start wasn't manufacturing the vaccine, it was setting up the factories to manufacture the vaccine.
InTheArena 6y ago
I know this is the party line right now but it’s nothing more then Joe Biden is doing his best to set low expectations and to revamp history. I’m a committed never Trumper. But there’s no question that warp speed has been a insane success. Biden set at the bar as low as warp speed was already achieving. There are 1 million valid reasons to hate Trump. This might be the only reason to think his government did a reasonable job at one task.
- maxerickson 6y ago
  They knew they had clinical vaccine candidates in February! The whole development timeline starts with one of the good vaccines already existing. We honestly don't have the information to evaluate whether they set reasonable targets or not.
  - Throwawayaerlei 6y ago
    20/20 hindsight. And Moderna's candidate was designed by January 13th, a weekend after the first sequences from China were uploaded to Western databases, but before we knew we'd even need it. You should learn more about the whole process; did you know everyone has to wait two weeks for sterility testing of finished vaccines? What's entailed in Phase I, II and III trials? That the latter tend to cost a billion dollars plus or minus, and take months? How very long the FDA takes to decide things, three weeks for Pfizer/BioNTech. More money is not the solution to every technical problem!!! I would think those of us who hang out on Hacker News would be intimately aware of this.