7 ms·

I've been wondering this myself too. Lockdowns are so expensive that I'd assume every unconventional method to expand the production is taken into use. The situ

by ilkkao 6y ago

I've been wondering this myself too. Lockdowns are so expensive that I'd assume every unconventional method to expand the production is taken into use. The situation is bad but not so bad that competitors could be forced to work together it seems. I expect that the amount of angry people in EU will peak in spring or early summer when UK, US, and Israel are mostly back to normal and we are not.

mytailorisrich 6y ago
> The situation is bad but not so bad that competitors could be forced to work together it seems. And yet this should have been the plan from the very beginning. Considering the vast numbers needed in Europe and the whole world, forcing all available production facilities to produce vaccines should have been part of the plan.
- readittwice 6y ago
  Absolutely, however the EU's politicians are playing dumb and claim that they couldn't foresee that mass production could be a problem. The EU ordered too late and simply not enough. Now they are trying to blame everyone else for their failure.
  - akie 6y ago
    Yes, that's true, but it also has to be said that producing these vaccines is not so simple. It's all new technology, no mRNA vaccine was ever approved before, and you can't just dial up production so easily. Unfortunately. You can't just convert any old pill-factory into a factory that produces these vaccines. Apparently there are supply chain issues as well - some of the things that are needed for the production of this vaccine are in not available in the numbers that are required. But all that being said, I think we should move to war-time production here.
    - readittwice 6y ago
      I can absolutely imagine that scaling production is extremely hard. However I don't have confidence that the same politicians that just claimed that they couldn't foresee problems with mass production did everything in their power to help here last summer. I mean the EU ordered only in November from Biontech and Moderna (and less doses than the companies offered). That doesn't really look like an incentive for companies to look into opening another factory already in summer.
      - hef19898 6y ago
        Just throwing the same numbers in here: The EU ordered 4+ doses per inhabitant by Q4 2020. Deliveries were intially scheduled through Q3 2021, with enough doses to be delivered to reach herd immnity by end of Q2. Not sure how ordering even more, without knowing when said doses would have been available, had helped. EU politician really screwed up in summer 2020, so. They had, besides ordering (which was outsourced to the EU anyway), one job. Planning and setting up operations to vaccinate millions of people in the first 6 months of 2021. That would have included coordination between patient appointments, manufcturing and deliveries (invlving the EU ideally), making sure back-up plans are in place, getting processes up and running to make it as easy as possible to get vaccinated, making sure manufacturers can get necessary support in securing their upstream supply chains when needed and so on. None of that happened. Instead, everyone was so, so happy that Europe had a great summer vacation. And then everyone so so hoped the unsurprising increase in cases starting in October would be just go away. And then everybody so so hoped they could safe Christmas shopping and christmas markets, And then everybody fell back to the only lesson they learned during the first wave: people like politicians that act tough. They just din't realise that back then acting tough, read lockdowns, was inline with expert advice. Basically, the EU had over six months to get ready for an EU-wide vaccination campaign. Member states had also 6 months. And did, it seems, by no means enough, if they did anything at all. This now shows, and everyone is just happy to point at manufacturers and the EU. We'll see how long that story is going to hold water.
        m4rtink 6y ago
        I can confirm the Czech government did basically nothing to prepare for vaccinations till the very last moment - something resembling a mass vaccination plan was only published on Dezember 22th (!) and only now the system seems to be in somehow working state, likely due to not having that many vaccines to process yet.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    They ordered one slightly later than the UK and the US (let's ignore Israel which is basically a large scale trial). The main difference: the EU used normal certification processes, just sped them up considerably. The UK and US used emergncy certification. The volumes the EU ordered initially were absolutely sufficient with 4+ doses per EU inhabitant. Manufacturing capacities were sufficient for that as well. It all started to go south as soon as memeber states looked for scape goats why vaccination happened so slowly. First the manufacturers, then the EU, then the federal government (where applicable). It is a last-mile distribution issue if you will now, not a manufacturing one.
    - VBprogrammer 6y ago
      I think that's a very charitable interpretation of events. Realistically the EU negotiated on behalf of the 27 member countries to try to get the best deal on price, and perhaps more importantly, to avoid the inevitable tensions which would follow from one member country securing more than another member country. This process slowed down the negotiation process. Whether there is any truth in the EUs certification being conducted differently is a bit moot given they have approved the same vaccines based on the same trial data.
      - hef19898 6y ago
        I don't think it is charitable. The EU had to juggle 27 individual countries, one central certification and Brexit. They had to avoid a situation in which rich countries, e.g. Germany, outbids poorer countries, e.g. Hungary or Greee. They managed to do that. They over purchased, they split orders betwen suppliers thus further minimizing the risk. And they did all that using normal certification. They even pointed out, quite clearly, that the actual managemen of vaccination campaigns, the vaccine ordering and the national distribution is up to the member states. The last part shows very different results, e.g. in germany Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is far ahead in per capita vaccines. Bavaria for example is behind them. All we won with focusing on the supply of vaccines so far in a shutdown of Pfizer's pant in Belgium to produce more doses, which are not needed, at a later point of time. And a nasty contract dipute with AZ after the media and, at least IMHO, politians singled out AZ as a scape goat.
  - cmrdporcupine 6y ago
    FWIW Canada did the same thing and our federal gov't is paying the same political price. Trump reserved the US manufactured supply for themselves, only, so Canada is reliant on EU exports, which is kind of crazy to think about, geographically. My understanding is many Canadian officials were caught off guard by the fact that the vaccine became available Q1 2021, they were thinking Q2/Q3 2021 was more likely and so much of the purchase deals were geared around that.
throwaway4good 6y ago
The American factories are only producing for Americans. The European ones are producing for the whole world.
- FooBarWidget 6y ago
  Are they? Didn't the EU put up a vaccine export ban? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55860540 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55860540
  - corty 6y ago
    No, they are currently just requiring export licenses "to get an overview". Up to now, all export requests have been granted and there are large parts of the world where no license is required: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/weltwirtschaft/eu-impfstoffe-exporte-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/weltwirtschaft/eu-impfs... Overall I would call it useless EU blustering, there won't be an export ban, no matter what happens. It is just the minimum required measure to save face.
    - bb123 6y ago
      Also lets not forget that this was specifically targeting the UK, not the rest of the world.
      - emteycz 6y ago
        Are you saying EU specifically tried to ban export to UK while export to the rest of the world is ok?
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        Reason077 6y ago
        There is/was a contract dispute between the EU and AstraZeneca regarding supply of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU wanted AstraZeneca to supply additional vaccine from it's UK-based factories, which are already contracted to supply the UK. The export registration requirements (not an export ban) are, at least in part, in response to this dispute. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/30/lawyers-disagree-over-astrazenecas-duty-to-supply-vaccines-to-eu https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/30/lawyers-dis...
MarcusE1W 6y ago
I think currently the main reason why not more factories produce the BionTech/Pfizer Vaccine is that it is quite difficult to manufacture and so it takes time to set up additional capacity. As far as I know several competitors are in discussion to build additional capacity. Of course there is the question why this has not been done earlier.
- m4rtink 6y ago
  It kinda reminds me of the current cutting edge chip shortage - eq. the special microfluidics machines needed for mRNA vaccines VS EUV machines needed for cutting edge ASIC manufacturing.
aquadrop 6y ago
Yes, I was wondering that very much myself. I remember talks about ramping up production preemptively, starting from spring, to have large stock of vaccine available when they are approved. Bill Gates talked about that specifically, taking like first 5 most promising vaccine candidates and starting production ramp up immediately, even risking the possibility they will not be approved and wasting some money. I thought "Finally, some good strategy". Money risked with such an approach would still be minuscule compared to losses due to pandemic and covid relief funding. But looks like that didn't happen, which is just another sign how badly world handled the pandemic. There's an article related to this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SruhzksSgHWSuxm7b/covid-bill-gates-and-vaccine-production https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SruhzksSgHWSuxm7b/covid-bill...
- bluGill 6y ago
  Pfizer and moderna were not in the most promising vaccines list. MRNA was too new and untried. I'm not sure why Oxford/az wasn't ramped up more though, they were the ones everyone was waiting for.
  - aquadrop 6y ago
    Moderna received WARP funding though, I think they definitely were on the list of most promising vaccines. There were 6 most promising western vaccines: Biontech, Moderna, J&J, Oxford, Novavax and Sanofi. It was clear they were the ones needing preemptive production. Sanofi didn't play out, but others are doing ok.
hef19898 6y ago
Sanofi is starting production of the Biontech / Pfizer stuff this summer. They have delays in their own mRNA vaccine. So yes, competitors are cooperating. And it gives you an idea of the production difficulties.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
The US just signed two contracts for additional deliveries of 100 million doses each of two vaccines (Pfizer & Moderna, I believe?) I doubt that these companies can make such deliveries without first fulfilling the contracts they have with the EU. I looked it up at the time, and they have. contracts with hundreds of millions of doses for the EU. So what I believe will happen is that deliveries will grow extremely fast at some point before July, when new production capacities come online. Consider what would happen if capacities increased dramatically: any advantage some countries have right now will shrink, when measured in time, from "months" to maybe just a few weeks. The real end of lockdowns may well still coincide.

by ilkkao 6y ago

mytailorisrich 6y ago

> The situation is bad but not so bad that competitors could be forced to work together it seems. And yet this should have been the plan from the very beginning. Considering the vast numbers needed in Europe and the whole world, forcing all available production facilities to produce vaccines should have been part of the plan.

readittwice 6y ago
Absolutely, however the EU's politicians are playing dumb and claim that they couldn't foresee that mass production could be a problem. The EU ordered too late and simply not enough. Now they are trying to blame everyone else for their failure.
- akie 6y ago
  Yes, that's true, but it also has to be said that producing these vaccines is not so simple. It's all new technology, no mRNA vaccine was ever approved before, and you can't just dial up production so easily. Unfortunately. You can't just convert any old pill-factory into a factory that produces these vaccines. Apparently there are supply chain issues as well - some of the things that are needed for the production of this vaccine are in not available in the numbers that are required. But all that being said, I think we should move to war-time production here.
  - readittwice 6y ago
    I can absolutely imagine that scaling production is extremely hard. However I don't have confidence that the same politicians that just claimed that they couldn't foresee problems with mass production did everything in their power to help here last summer. I mean the EU ordered only in November from Biontech and Moderna (and less doses than the companies offered). That doesn't really look like an incentive for companies to look into opening another factory already in summer.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Just throwing the same numbers in here: The EU ordered 4+ doses per inhabitant by Q4 2020. Deliveries were intially scheduled through Q3 2021, with enough doses to be delivered to reach herd immnity by end of Q2. Not sure how ordering even more, without knowing when said doses would have been available, had helped. EU politician really screwed up in summer 2020, so. They had, besides ordering (which was outsourced to the EU anyway), one job. Planning and setting up operations to vaccinate millions of people in the first 6 months of 2021. That would have included coordination between patient appointments, manufcturing and deliveries (invlving the EU ideally), making sure back-up plans are in place, getting processes up and running to make it as easy as possible to get vaccinated, making sure manufacturers can get necessary support in securing their upstream supply chains when needed and so on. None of that happened. Instead, everyone was so, so happy that Europe had a great summer vacation. And then everyone so so hoped the unsurprising increase in cases starting in October would be just go away. And then everybody so so hoped they could safe Christmas shopping and christmas markets, And then everybody fell back to the only lesson they learned during the first wave: people like politicians that act tough. They just din't realise that back then acting tough, read lockdowns, was inline with expert advice. Basically, the EU had over six months to get ready for an EU-wide vaccination campaign. Member states had also 6 months. And did, it seems, by no means enough, if they did anything at all. This now shows, and everyone is just happy to point at manufacturers and the EU. We'll see how long that story is going to hold water.
      - m4rtink 6y ago
        I can confirm the Czech government did basically nothing to prepare for vaccinations till the very last moment - something resembling a mass vaccination plan was only published on Dezember 22th (!) and only now the system seems to be in somehow working state, likely due to not having that many vaccines to process yet.
- hef19898 6y ago
  They ordered one slightly later than the UK and the US (let's ignore Israel which is basically a large scale trial). The main difference: the EU used normal certification processes, just sped them up considerably. The UK and US used emergncy certification. The volumes the EU ordered initially were absolutely sufficient with 4+ doses per EU inhabitant. Manufacturing capacities were sufficient for that as well. It all started to go south as soon as memeber states looked for scape goats why vaccination happened so slowly. First the manufacturers, then the EU, then the federal government (where applicable). It is a last-mile distribution issue if you will now, not a manufacturing one.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    I think that's a very charitable interpretation of events. Realistically the EU negotiated on behalf of the 27 member countries to try to get the best deal on price, and perhaps more importantly, to avoid the inevitable tensions which would follow from one member country securing more than another member country. This process slowed down the negotiation process. Whether there is any truth in the EUs certification being conducted differently is a bit moot given they have approved the same vaccines based on the same trial data.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      I don't think it is charitable. The EU had to juggle 27 individual countries, one central certification and Brexit. They had to avoid a situation in which rich countries, e.g. Germany, outbids poorer countries, e.g. Hungary or Greee. They managed to do that. They over purchased, they split orders betwen suppliers thus further minimizing the risk. And they did all that using normal certification. They even pointed out, quite clearly, that the actual managemen of vaccination campaigns, the vaccine ordering and the national distribution is up to the member states. The last part shows very different results, e.g. in germany Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is far ahead in per capita vaccines. Bavaria for example is behind them. All we won with focusing on the supply of vaccines so far in a shutdown of Pfizer's pant in Belgium to produce more doses, which are not needed, at a later point of time. And a nasty contract dipute with AZ after the media and, at least IMHO, politians singled out AZ as a scape goat.
- cmrdporcupine 6y ago
  FWIW Canada did the same thing and our federal gov't is paying the same political price. Trump reserved the US manufactured supply for themselves, only, so Canada is reliant on EU exports, which is kind of crazy to think about, geographically. My understanding is many Canadian officials were caught off guard by the fact that the vaccine became available Q1 2021, they were thinking Q2/Q3 2021 was more likely and so much of the purchase deals were geared around that.

throwaway4good 6y ago

The American factories are only producing for Americans. The European ones are producing for the whole world.

FooBarWidget 6y ago
Are they? Didn't the EU put up a vaccine export ban? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55860540 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55860540
- corty 6y ago
  No, they are currently just requiring export licenses "to get an overview". Up to now, all export requests have been granted and there are large parts of the world where no license is required: https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/weltwirtschaft/eu-impfstoffe-exporte-101.html https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/weltwirtschaft/eu-impfs... Overall I would call it useless EU blustering, there won't be an export ban, no matter what happens. It is just the minimum required measure to save face.
  - bb123 6y ago
    Also lets not forget that this was specifically targeting the UK, not the rest of the world.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      Are you saying EU specifically tried to ban export to UK while export to the rest of the world is ok?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - Reason077 6y ago
        There is/was a contract dispute between the EU and AstraZeneca regarding supply of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU wanted AstraZeneca to supply additional vaccine from it's UK-based factories, which are already contracted to supply the UK. The export registration requirements (not an export ban) are, at least in part, in response to this dispute. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/30/lawyers-disagree-over-astrazenecas-duty-to-supply-vaccines-to-eu https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/30/lawyers-dis...

MarcusE1W 6y ago

I think currently the main reason why not more factories produce the BionTech/Pfizer Vaccine is that it is quite difficult to manufacture and so it takes time to set up additional capacity. As far as I know several competitors are in discussion to build additional capacity. Of course there is the question why this has not been done earlier.

m4rtink 6y ago
It kinda reminds me of the current cutting edge chip shortage - eq. the special microfluidics machines needed for mRNA vaccines VS EUV machines needed for cutting edge ASIC manufacturing.

aquadrop 6y ago

Yes, I was wondering that very much myself. I remember talks about ramping up production preemptively, starting from spring, to have large stock of vaccine available when they are approved. Bill Gates talked about that specifically, taking like first 5 most promising vaccine candidates and starting production ramp up immediately, even risking the possibility they will not be approved and wasting some money. I thought "Finally, some good strategy". Money risked with such an approach would still be minuscule compared to losses due to pandemic and covid relief funding. But looks like that didn't happen, which is just another sign how badly world handled the pandemic. There's an article related to this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SruhzksSgHWSuxm7b/covid-bill-gates-and-vaccine-production https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/SruhzksSgHWSuxm7b/covid-bill...

bluGill 6y ago
Pfizer and moderna were not in the most promising vaccines list. MRNA was too new and untried. I'm not sure why Oxford/az wasn't ramped up more though, they were the ones everyone was waiting for.
- aquadrop 6y ago
  Moderna received WARP funding though, I think they definitely were on the list of most promising vaccines. There were 6 most promising western vaccines: Biontech, Moderna, J&J, Oxford, Novavax and Sanofi. It was clear they were the ones needing preemptive production. Sanofi didn't play out, but others are doing ok.

hef19898 6y ago

Sanofi is starting production of the Biontech / Pfizer stuff this summer. They have delays in their own mRNA vaccine. So yes, competitors are cooperating. And it gives you an idea of the production difficulties.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

The US just signed two contracts for additional deliveries of 100 million doses each of two vaccines (Pfizer & Moderna, I believe?) I doubt that these companies can make such deliveries without first fulfilling the contracts they have with the EU. I looked it up at the time, and they have. contracts with hundreds of millions of doses for the EU. So what I believe will happen is that deliveries will grow extremely fast at some point before July, when new production capacities come online. Consider what would happen if capacities increased dramatically: any advantage some countries have right now will shrink, when measured in time, from "months" to maybe just a few weeks. The real end of lockdowns may well still coincide.