5 ms·

For reference: https://howfarbehindiscanada.com/ https://howfarbehindiscanada.com/ Canada was hovering around 35-40th in the world for doses administered per c

For reference: https://howfarbehindiscanada.com/ https://howfarbehindiscanada.com/ Canada was hovering around 35-40th in the world for doses administered per capita until the USA "loaned" us 1.5M doses of AZ; now we're steady around 15th place, but well behind countries like the USA and UK.

arcticbull 6y ago
Fifth out of 37 OECD member countries in terms of the percentage of the population vaccinated to date. [1, 2] I don't think either of these metrics is perfect, the ideal metric is what percentage of the old, sick, etc - the vulnerable folks - have been vaccinated. Point of interest, one thing 4 of the 5 OECD member states above Canada have in common is that they manufacture the vaccine at home. Considering Canada does not manufacture ([edit] COVID) vaccines, I'd say that Canada is doing very well - top quintile of the OECD pack. Could be better, could be worse. [edit] I'm actually surprised how close Canada's vaccination rate is to the US - 35% vs 45%. Given all the critical press, I'd assume the discrepancy was much larger. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations [2] https://imgur.com/a/XlL2J12 https://imgur.com/a/XlL2J12
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > Point of interest, one thing 4 of the 5 OECD member states above Canada have in common is that they manufacture the vaccine at home. That's smart. Why did the current administration decide not to do it in Canada?
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Current administration? Developing a vaccine supply chain takes a very long time, it's not like firing up a tire factory. Trudeau's Liberals have held office for 5 years, with Harper's Conservatives holding office from 2006-2015. I think without pointing fingers, the COVID situation has shown the world just how fragile global supply chains are in times of stress. The US learned this lesson with PPE, if you remember that debacle. Hopefully Canada invests in such capacity moving forward.
    - cperciva 6y ago
      Canada produces lots of vaccines -- we just happen to not produce any COVID-19 vaccines.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Connought Labs, once a Crown Corporation, was sold to Sanofi who continues to operate the campus in Toronto, and GSK has a campus in Ste Foy [1]. Neither Sanofi nor GSK were able to develop a COVID vaccine in time and their facilities could not be re-tooled to produce the vaccines that we do have. There is not sufficient capacity to take on this challenge at this time, as to your point, those facilities are occupied producing other necessary drugs and vaccines. Canada was once a dominant player in the vaccine game, but those days are long since passed, especially after the privatization of Connought under Mulroney. In my opinion this would be a good opportunity to revisit a Crown Corporation devoted to vaccine development, as it does appear the public sector is not well set up to cater to this national security need. We are just 38M people after all. Maybe under the NRC? [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/domestic-vaccine-manufacturing-canada-1.6004427 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/domestic-vaccine-manufactur...
  - kuschku 6y ago
    Not every country has the capacity and ability to manufacture everything locally. With increased globalisation we're also seeing countries specializing in certain industries. Generally it was understood that most western countries would not abuse this dependency for their own benefit, as they all were counter-dependent on each other. Obviously, as so often, the US and UK didn't get that memo.
    - makomk 6y ago
      Most reasonably large developed countries probably have the capacity if they care enough - for example, I don't think the UK was particularly well-equipped to do local vaccine manufacturing, most of the pharmaceutical industry here buggered off to other countries long ago along with the other manufacturing, but the government cared enough (and distrusted the US enough) to insist on local production anyway.
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        Yup, Canada privatized Connought labs under Mulroney in the 80s. I think with a population of 38M and a private sector not particularly equipped to provide this service, revisiting a Crown Corporation might not be a bad path forward. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught_Laboratories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught_Laboratories
    - TMWNN 6y ago
      >Obviously, as so often, the US and UK didn't get that memo. There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries. The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine, because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries. The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities. Canada also bet on CanSino because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract. Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it. If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exports, similar to what the EU did implement recently? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
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- stormbrew 6y ago
  > I'm actually surprised how close Canada's vaccination rate is to the US - 35% vs 45%. The comparison is deceptive, since most of those 45% of Americans have finished two doses (apparently 32% as of May 4 [1]) while very few of the Canadians have (3% [2]). In other words, we've put a fair bit less than half as many shots in arms per person. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/9609011... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/9609011...
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    Yes, however, there's no evidence that's less effective in the near term, and there's mounting evidence that spreading out the second dose is as effective - or more so. [1] So I guess it depends on what you're trying to measure. tl;dr: is that spreading out the dosage of Moderna vaccine to 9-15 weeks actually makes it a more effective vaccine. Spreading out Pfizer, more relevant to Canada, also reduces the number of hospitalizations and deaths over the recommended schedule. [1] [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001211 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
    - refurb 6y ago
      Your reference is a modeling exercise and says nothing about vaccine effectiveness in an individual.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - arcticbull 6y ago
        There's individual data, too. [1] There's a lot of data coming out about this and it's pretty much a trade-off. You get more people some level of immunity, reducing spread, and you improve the quality of the immunity with a delayed dose vs. immediate turn. The results of this primary analysis of two doses of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 were consistent with those seen in the interim analysis of the trials and confirm that the vaccine is efficacious, with results varying by dose interval in exploratory analyses. A 3-month dose interval might have advantages over a programme with a short dose interval for roll-out of a pandemic vaccine to protect the largest number of individuals in the population as early as possible when supplies are scarce, while also improving protection after receiving a second dose. There's a lot of work going on now to study this, and the results coming out are all pointing at this being a pretty good path forward. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00432-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
- cperciva 6y ago
  I'm actually surprised how close Canada's vaccination rate is to the US That's because you're looking at first doses only. The numbers for fully vaccinated residents are very different -- Canada's policy is explicitly "we don't have enough vaccine to give everyone two doses yet, so we're going to give first doses first and second doses up to 4 months later".
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    As I posted elsewhere with references the data shows that’s actually preferable. You get better quality immunity and reduce the number of deaths and hospitalizations by waiting 9-15 weeks vs the prescribed 4. [1] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00432-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
1024core 6y ago
> USA "loaned" us 1.5M doses of AZ USA has no choice. By agreement, USA cannot give vaccines to someone else, as the indemnity agreements ("can't be sued") don't transfer.
- bawolff 6y ago
  USA could have modified their agreements with the manufacturer of AZ so that they could fill their agreements with other countries before the usa one destined for a warehouse the usa had no intention to use. Or just get canada to agree to the terms. Pretty sure canada has already agreed to similar terms elsewhere.
stormbrew 6y ago
I don't think the AZ doses really did a lot for getting Canada there? It was mostly Phizer finally starting to deliver. We've been getting that much Phizer every 1-2wks for a while now. Current make-up of delivered doses is: Phizer: 11m Moderna: 3.5m AZ: 2.3m
- cperciva 6y ago
  The gap between 15th place and 40th place is pretty small -- it's essentially a many-way tie between EU countries.
  - arcticbull 6y ago
    And for the record, Canada is above the entire EU pack. [edit] I originally said "except the UK" but uh, well, we all know what happened there.
ping_pong 6y ago
Canada is only 15th because they aren't doing a 2nd dose until 4 months later. So you can't compare Canada to places that are actually scheduling the 2nd shot properly. NO ONE is getting their second shot. That's a complete hack because Pfizer and Moderna both said not to push the 2nd shot past their recommended time period. If Canada did their 2nd dose in the 3-4 weeks as required by Pfizer and Moderna, their rank would drop precipitously. Personally I understand what they are doing, they are going breadth first to slow down the spread, but I hate the propaganda that is saying that somehow Canada is doing "great". They aren't. They completely bundled the vaccine.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Is the goal of the vaccine not to slow/stop the spread? If Canadians end up needing a third shot some time down the line, but the first one spread out does it's job, isn't that ok? Far from bungled, I'd say they made the best of what they had.
- surfmike 6y ago
  I don’t know that anyone has said Canada is going great on vaccination, especially compared to its neighbor. The delayed 2nd shot is a resourceful strategy (also employed in the UK) to get higher population immunity from fewer shots in the short term.
- Exmoor 6y ago
  Vaccine makers have little incentive to recommend dosing intervals different than what they they ran in their studies, but I have yet to see a shred of evidence indicating that mRNA vaccines lose much effectiveness after 3-4 weeks and some evidence that effectiveness keeps increasing. I wish the US had used the single-dose strategy for anyone under 65 as I think our cases would've started shrinking much earlier than they actually have.
- raydev 6y ago
  > NO ONE is getting their second shot This is false. The numbers might be small, but people are certainly getting and have already gotten their second doses in the last couple months.

arcticbull 6y ago

Fifth out of 37 OECD member countries in terms of the percentage of the population vaccinated to date. [1, 2] I don't think either of these metrics is perfect, the ideal metric is what percentage of the old, sick, etc - the vulnerable folks - have been vaccinated. Point of interest, one thing 4 of the 5 OECD member states above Canada have in common is that they manufacture the vaccine at home. Considering Canada does not manufacture ([edit] COVID) vaccines, I'd say that Canada is doing very well - top quintile of the OECD pack. Could be better, could be worse. [edit] I'm actually surprised how close Canada's vaccination rate is to the US - 35% vs 45%. Given all the critical press, I'd assume the discrepancy was much larger. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations [2] https://imgur.com/a/XlL2J12 https://imgur.com/a/XlL2J12

908B64B197 6y ago
> Point of interest, one thing 4 of the 5 OECD member states above Canada have in common is that they manufacture the vaccine at home. That's smart. Why did the current administration decide not to do it in Canada?
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Current administration? Developing a vaccine supply chain takes a very long time, it's not like firing up a tire factory. Trudeau's Liberals have held office for 5 years, with Harper's Conservatives holding office from 2006-2015. I think without pointing fingers, the COVID situation has shown the world just how fragile global supply chains are in times of stress. The US learned this lesson with PPE, if you remember that debacle. Hopefully Canada invests in such capacity moving forward.
  - cperciva 6y ago
    Canada produces lots of vaccines -- we just happen to not produce any COVID-19 vaccines.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Connought Labs, once a Crown Corporation, was sold to Sanofi who continues to operate the campus in Toronto, and GSK has a campus in Ste Foy [1]. Neither Sanofi nor GSK were able to develop a COVID vaccine in time and their facilities could not be re-tooled to produce the vaccines that we do have. There is not sufficient capacity to take on this challenge at this time, as to your point, those facilities are occupied producing other necessary drugs and vaccines. Canada was once a dominant player in the vaccine game, but those days are long since passed, especially after the privatization of Connought under Mulroney. In my opinion this would be a good opportunity to revisit a Crown Corporation devoted to vaccine development, as it does appear the public sector is not well set up to cater to this national security need. We are just 38M people after all. Maybe under the NRC? [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/domestic-vaccine-manufacturing-canada-1.6004427 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/domestic-vaccine-manufactur...
- kuschku 6y ago
  Not every country has the capacity and ability to manufacture everything locally. With increased globalisation we're also seeing countries specializing in certain industries. Generally it was understood that most western countries would not abuse this dependency for their own benefit, as they all were counter-dependent on each other. Obviously, as so often, the US and UK didn't get that memo.
  - makomk 6y ago
    Most reasonably large developed countries probably have the capacity if they care enough - for example, I don't think the UK was particularly well-equipped to do local vaccine manufacturing, most of the pharmaceutical industry here buggered off to other countries long ago along with the other manufacturing, but the government cared enough (and distrusted the US enough) to insist on local production anyway.
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      Yup, Canada privatized Connought labs under Mulroney in the 80s. I think with a population of 38M and a private sector not particularly equipped to provide this service, revisiting a Crown Corporation might not be a bad path forward. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught_Laboratories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connaught_Laboratories
  - TMWNN 6y ago
    >Obviously, as so often, the US and UK didn't get that memo. There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries. The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine, because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries. The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities. Canada also bet on CanSino because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract. Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it. If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exports, similar to what the EU did implement recently? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
stormbrew 6y ago
> I'm actually surprised how close Canada's vaccination rate is to the US - 35% vs 45%. The comparison is deceptive, since most of those 45% of Americans have finished two doses (apparently 32% as of May 4 [1]) while very few of the Canadians have (3% [2]). In other words, we've put a fair bit less than half as many shots in arms per person. [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/9609011... [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/960901166/how-is-the-covid-19-vaccination-campaign-going-in-your-state https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/01/28/9609011...
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Yes, however, there's no evidence that's less effective in the near term, and there's mounting evidence that spreading out the second dose is as effective - or more so. [1] So I guess it depends on what you're trying to measure. tl;dr: is that spreading out the dosage of Moderna vaccine to 9-15 weeks actually makes it a more effective vaccine. Spreading out Pfizer, more relevant to Canada, also reduces the number of hospitalizations and deaths over the recommended schedule. [1] [1] https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3001211 https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...
  - refurb 6y ago
    Your reference is a modeling exercise and says nothing about vaccine effectiveness in an individual.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - arcticbull 6y ago
      There's individual data, too. [1] There's a lot of data coming out about this and it's pretty much a trade-off. You get more people some level of immunity, reducing spread, and you improve the quality of the immunity with a delayed dose vs. immediate turn. The results of this primary analysis of two doses of ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 were consistent with those seen in the interim analysis of the trials and confirm that the vaccine is efficacious, with results varying by dose interval in exploratory analyses. A 3-month dose interval might have advantages over a programme with a short dose interval for roll-out of a pandemic vaccine to protect the largest number of individuals in the population as early as possible when supplies are scarce, while also improving protection after receiving a second dose. There's a lot of work going on now to study this, and the results coming out are all pointing at this being a pretty good path forward. [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00432-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
cperciva 6y ago
I'm actually surprised how close Canada's vaccination rate is to the US That's because you're looking at first doses only. The numbers for fully vaccinated residents are very different -- Canada's policy is explicitly "we don't have enough vaccine to give everyone two doses yet, so we're going to give first doses first and second doses up to 4 months later".
- arcticbull 6y ago
  As I posted elsewhere with references the data shows that’s actually preferable. You get better quality immunity and reduce the number of deaths and hospitalizations by waiting 9-15 weeks vs the prescribed 4. [1] [1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00432-3/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

1024core 6y ago

> USA "loaned" us 1.5M doses of AZ USA has no choice. By agreement, USA cannot give vaccines to someone else, as the indemnity agreements ("can't be sued") don't transfer.

bawolff 6y ago
USA could have modified their agreements with the manufacturer of AZ so that they could fill their agreements with other countries before the usa one destined for a warehouse the usa had no intention to use. Or just get canada to agree to the terms. Pretty sure canada has already agreed to similar terms elsewhere.

stormbrew 6y ago

I don't think the AZ doses really did a lot for getting Canada there? It was mostly Phizer finally starting to deliver. We've been getting that much Phizer every 1-2wks for a while now. Current make-up of delivered doses is: Phizer: 11m Moderna: 3.5m AZ: 2.3m

cperciva 6y ago
The gap between 15th place and 40th place is pretty small -- it's essentially a many-way tie between EU countries.
- arcticbull 6y ago
  And for the record, Canada is above the entire EU pack. [edit] I originally said "except the UK" but uh, well, we all know what happened there.

ping_pong 6y ago

Canada is only 15th because they aren't doing a 2nd dose until 4 months later. So you can't compare Canada to places that are actually scheduling the 2nd shot properly. NO ONE is getting their second shot. That's a complete hack because Pfizer and Moderna both said not to push the 2nd shot past their recommended time period. If Canada did their 2nd dose in the 3-4 weeks as required by Pfizer and Moderna, their rank would drop precipitously. Personally I understand what they are doing, they are going breadth first to slow down the spread, but I hate the propaganda that is saying that somehow Canada is doing "great". They aren't. They completely bundled the vaccine.

arcticbull 6y ago
Is the goal of the vaccine not to slow/stop the spread? If Canadians end up needing a third shot some time down the line, but the first one spread out does it's job, isn't that ok? Far from bungled, I'd say they made the best of what they had.
surfmike 6y ago
I don’t know that anyone has said Canada is going great on vaccination, especially compared to its neighbor. The delayed 2nd shot is a resourceful strategy (also employed in the UK) to get higher population immunity from fewer shots in the short term.
Exmoor 6y ago
Vaccine makers have little incentive to recommend dosing intervals different than what they they ran in their studies, but I have yet to see a shred of evidence indicating that mRNA vaccines lose much effectiveness after 3-4 weeks and some evidence that effectiveness keeps increasing. I wish the US had used the single-dose strategy for anyone under 65 as I think our cases would've started shrinking much earlier than they actually have.
raydev 6y ago
> NO ONE is getting their second shot This is false. The numbers might be small, but people are certainly getting and have already gotten their second doses in the last couple months.