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> EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all. Ouch. Reading this from Canada hurts. (We are way behind EU and I would be

> EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all. Ouch. Reading this from Canada hurts. (We are way behind EU and I would be very surprised if we get ahead of them at any point).

macromagnon 6y ago
Canada has no large scale vaccine production capacity so even if they could license the production they couldn't produce any decent amount any time soon.
- katbyte 6y ago
  I hope this is something that changes post pandemic.
  - macintux 6y ago
    I just hope there is a post-pandemic era. Too many unknowns still about the mutations and whether they’ll out-maneuver the vaccines.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      Lots of reason for optimism. The vaccines can be retargeted, and like the flu vaccine, approved with a faster trial. And the mRNA vaccine production can continue to scale up. So if there is a need for a new vaccine, we can likely deploy it with a shorter interval to availability and much larger initial volume. We can also become more disciplined. We don't need to go all the way to a strictly enforced lock down to improve on the social distancing that we've done the last year (at least, not in the US). And we can try to get people to more widely accept contact tracing/tracking.
      - macintux 6y ago
        Right, but for the most part your optimism is about better managing an ongoing pandemic, which is certainly not what most are hoping for.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        Get the active infections down and roll out a (well targeted) vaccine quickly and you end a pandemic. I'm saying there's reason to be optimistic that we will be able to respond successfully even if the current vaccines don't end the pandemic (and it likely would be reasonably quick too, our tools are much better now than 12 months ago). At some level of production capacity, convincing people in high risk areas to social distance and convincing people to get another vaccination are the hard parts.
    - nradov 6y ago
      We are in the post-pandemic era of HCoV-OC43 despite not having a vaccine. It is very similar to SARS-CoV-2 and there is circumstantial evidence that it caused the pandemic of 1889. The only reason it kills few people today is that most of us are infected as youths and build up immunity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/
volkl48 6y ago
Uh, why do you think that? You don't appear to be behind the EU in any substantial way. (2.61 doses/100 administered for EU, 2.49/100 for Canada) https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... ---- You've purchased more vaccine relative to population than basically anyone else in the world and you appear to be higher than the EU in terms of the line for deliveries. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/contracts-purchasing-agreements.html https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  > Uh, why do you think that? It has been an unfolding story for the past couple of weeks. I wish I know of an article which summarized everything with a timeline, but I do not. The gist of it is that, Canada has purchased many vaccines, but they will not be coming soon enough. It also lacks the leverage that US, UK, and EU have in terms of the production being domestic. So when Pfizer ran into production issues, initially they planned to cut Canada's deliveries by ~50% for 4 weeks but EU's by a 8% for 2 weeks. Of course the issue has developed since then, but the central issue remains the same: Canada is not a priority for getting vaccines, and does not have the leverage to make itself the priority. I am deeply concerned that EU would simply block exports to Canada to make up for the shortfalls in its share of the vaccines. Even before the new laws, that was close to what was happening in practice, with deliveries to Canada being affected most and to EU the least. Also, Canada's not being far behind is because we started earlier. We have seen our vaccine doses administered per capita ranking go from 6th to 21st. Most of the countries that got ahead of us are the EU countries. And every day, we fall behind more and more EU countries, as our deliveries have been deprioritized compared to EU's. Or at least so it seems. We won't know the full truth until the dust settles. Probably a year from now.
  - SECProto 6y ago
    > initially they planned to cut Canada's deliveries by ~50% for 4 weeks but EU's by a 8% for 2 weeks. This is simply because of different contractual obligations to the different parties. If I owe you $100 by the end of year, but owe someone else $20 by end of month, I'm going to give full priority to repaying the other person. > I am deeply concerned that EU would simply block exports to Canada to make up for the shortfalls in its share of the vaccines. Unwarranted: they've explicitly said they won't. Lots of articles on your news source of choice. one random example: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/01/28/news/eu-health-official-blasts-slow-vaccine-delivery-canada https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/01/28/news/eu-health-o... As a fellow Canadian, it simply doesn't seem to be a big deal yet. May become one, but whatever.

macromagnon 6y ago

Canada has no large scale vaccine production capacity so even if they could license the production they couldn't produce any decent amount any time soon.

katbyte 6y ago
I hope this is something that changes post pandemic.
- macintux 6y ago
  I just hope there is a post-pandemic era. Too many unknowns still about the mutations and whether they’ll out-maneuver the vaccines.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Lots of reason for optimism. The vaccines can be retargeted, and like the flu vaccine, approved with a faster trial. And the mRNA vaccine production can continue to scale up. So if there is a need for a new vaccine, we can likely deploy it with a shorter interval to availability and much larger initial volume. We can also become more disciplined. We don't need to go all the way to a strictly enforced lock down to improve on the social distancing that we've done the last year (at least, not in the US). And we can try to get people to more widely accept contact tracing/tracking.
    - macintux 6y ago
      Right, but for the most part your optimism is about better managing an ongoing pandemic, which is certainly not what most are hoping for.
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        Get the active infections down and roll out a (well targeted) vaccine quickly and you end a pandemic. I'm saying there's reason to be optimistic that we will be able to respond successfully even if the current vaccines don't end the pandemic (and it likely would be reasonably quick too, our tools are much better now than 12 months ago). At some level of production capacity, convincing people in high risk areas to social distance and convincing people to get another vaccination are the hard parts.
  - nradov 6y ago
    We are in the post-pandemic era of HCoV-OC43 despite not having a vaccine. It is very similar to SARS-CoV-2 and there is circumstantial evidence that it caused the pandemic of 1889. The only reason it kills few people today is that most of us are infected as youths and build up immunity. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7252012/

volkl48 6y ago

Uh, why do you think that? You don't appear to be behind the EU in any substantial way. (2.61 doses/100 administered for EU, 2.49/100 for Canada) https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... ---- You've purchased more vaccine relative to population than basically anyone else in the world and you appear to be higher than the EU in terms of the line for deliveries. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/contracts-purchasing-agreements.html https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo...

smnrchrds 6y ago
> Uh, why do you think that? It has been an unfolding story for the past couple of weeks. I wish I know of an article which summarized everything with a timeline, but I do not. The gist of it is that, Canada has purchased many vaccines, but they will not be coming soon enough. It also lacks the leverage that US, UK, and EU have in terms of the production being domestic. So when Pfizer ran into production issues, initially they planned to cut Canada's deliveries by ~50% for 4 weeks but EU's by a 8% for 2 weeks. Of course the issue has developed since then, but the central issue remains the same: Canada is not a priority for getting vaccines, and does not have the leverage to make itself the priority. I am deeply concerned that EU would simply block exports to Canada to make up for the shortfalls in its share of the vaccines. Even before the new laws, that was close to what was happening in practice, with deliveries to Canada being affected most and to EU the least. Also, Canada's not being far behind is because we started earlier. We have seen our vaccine doses administered per capita ranking go from 6th to 21st. Most of the countries that got ahead of us are the EU countries. And every day, we fall behind more and more EU countries, as our deliveries have been deprioritized compared to EU's. Or at least so it seems. We won't know the full truth until the dust settles. Probably a year from now.
- SECProto 6y ago
  > initially they planned to cut Canada's deliveries by ~50% for 4 weeks but EU's by a 8% for 2 weeks. This is simply because of different contractual obligations to the different parties. If I owe you $100 by the end of year, but owe someone else $20 by end of month, I'm going to give full priority to repaying the other person. > I am deeply concerned that EU would simply block exports to Canada to make up for the shortfalls in its share of the vaccines. Unwarranted: they've explicitly said they won't. Lots of articles on your news source of choice. one random example: https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/01/28/news/eu-health-official-blasts-slow-vaccine-delivery-canada https://www.nationalobserver.com/2021/01/28/news/eu-health-o... As a fellow Canadian, it simply doesn't seem to be a big deal yet. May become one, but whatever.