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Isn't the vaccination distribution a zero sum game between nation states? Supply is limited. Some countries will get it sooner than others. Europe lost the bit

by kharak 6y ago

Isn't the vaccination distribution a zero sum game between nation states? Supply is limited. Some countries will get it sooner than others. Europe lost the bit against several other powers. Not to my surprise, I must say.

scrollaway 6y ago
Is it zero sum? People keep saying that but if you give the suppliers more money, that allows them to scale up more and faster. It's not a given that they're just at 100 percent of their production capacity.
- kharak 6y ago
  Actually, they do seem to be at their limit. There have been articles about this (which I merely glanced over). Scaling up manufacturing for vaccines, especially new RNA based ones, isn't something that scales infinitely with money. Not in the short or medium term, at least. In some cases, scaling up required downscaling of current production. Searched for the well written article I've seen, to link it here, but I'm only getting SEO bullshit.
- bodyfour 6y ago
  Just about any part of production that could be scaled up by throwing money at the problem has had billions of dollars flowing in its direction.
bzbarsky 6y ago
> Isn't the vaccination distribution a zero sum game between nation states? It's complicated. Right now there are vaccines that have been purchased and produced but not delivered due to regulatory approval issues (70 million from just one manufacturer, according to https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/14/we-took-a-huge-risk-the-indian-firm-making-more-covid-jabs-than-anyone https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/14/w... ), vaccines being delivered but not used (see https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... "Supply used" statistics), and so forth. Blaming supply constraints is a great cover for these organizational and regulatory failings, though. "We don't have enough vaccine" sure sounds better than "we've only bothered to use 60% of the vaccine we got our hands on" (hello, Rhode Island and D.C.).

by kharak 6y ago

scrollaway 6y ago

Is it zero sum? People keep saying that but if you give the suppliers more money, that allows them to scale up more and faster. It's not a given that they're just at 100 percent of their production capacity.

kharak 6y ago
Actually, they do seem to be at their limit. There have been articles about this (which I merely glanced over). Scaling up manufacturing for vaccines, especially new RNA based ones, isn't something that scales infinitely with money. Not in the short or medium term, at least. In some cases, scaling up required downscaling of current production. Searched for the well written article I've seen, to link it here, but I'm only getting SEO bullshit.
bodyfour 6y ago
Just about any part of production that could be scaled up by throwing money at the problem has had billions of dollars flowing in its direction.

bzbarsky 6y ago

> Isn't the vaccination distribution a zero sum game between nation states? It's complicated. Right now there are vaccines that have been purchased and produced but not delivered due to regulatory approval issues (70 million from just one manufacturer, according to https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/14/we-took-a-huge-risk-the-indian-firm-making-more-covid-jabs-than-anyone https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/feb/14/w... ), vaccines being delivered but not used (see https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-glo... "Supply used" statistics), and so forth. Blaming supply constraints is a great cover for these organizational and regulatory failings, though. "We don't have enough vaccine" sure sounds better than "we've only bothered to use 60% of the vaccine we got our hands on" (hello, Rhode Island and D.C.).