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"Unlike the US and Europe, Canada dragged its heels on pre-ordering vaccines" Canada was one of the first countries to pre-order vaccines, signing massive agre

"Unlike the US and Europe, Canada dragged its heels on pre-ordering vaccines" Canada was one of the first countries to pre-order vaccines, signing massive agreements with just about every candidate maker. I'm aware of literally a single deal happening with another country prior to Canada's orders. What thwarted Canada's efforts was that the US defacto nationalized the medical establishment in that country, while Canada had basically become beholden to larger centers courtesy of an over reliance on free trade. With the US production nationalized, Canada, and truly the rest of the world, had to rely upon manufacturing in Europe. The EU at times lurched towards protectionism but never did, and Canada is in its debt. Though in the wake of it Canada has committed to no less than four vaccine manufacturing plants, including mRNA vaccines. Lesson learned. `"Bold” strategy? Canada had no option if they wanted to vaccinate quickly.' Yes, it was a strategy. The manufacturers were dictating a timeline for shots that would have meant that the number of people fully vaccinated would be quicker, but the number of people partly vaccinated would be much slower. People much smarter than you or I did an analysis and decided on another approach, including mixing shots. And yes, of course it was because of a supply constraint (for reasons mentioned elsewhere, but having positively nothing to do with Canada "dragging it's heels"), otherwise such approaches wouldn't be necessary, no?

jszymborski 5y ago
Speaking of nationalising the medical industry: Fun fact, Canada was the home of Connaught labs, a publicly owned laboratory which was the first lab to produce the Salk's Polio vaccine, and went on to produce the Smallpox vaccine. In the 1970s, however, Canada went on a privatizing spree (incidentally, the same gov't that ratified NAFTA), and Connaught was privatised and sold many time since. More info here https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/03/11/the-public-lab-that-could-have-helped-fight-covid-19-pandemic.html https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/03/11/the-...
- refurb 5y ago
  Canadian pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing is almost entirely gone at this point. A big part of that was little interest in supporting the industry from the government. Apparently a vaccine manufacturer approached the government a while back and got a tepid response so decided to invest elsewhere.
  - jszymborski 5y ago
    That's definitely true, but I've some hope we'll be getting some back with the new gov't labs being built, and the AI hubs in Montreal and Toronto pushing the pharmacogenetics story.
- wk_end 5y ago
  Your dates are a little off. The 70s had little to do with it - Canada’s privatization spree under Mulroney lined up with Reagan and Thatcher. So Connaught Labs was destroyed in the 80s by the Mulroney Conservatives. And NAFTA was ratified in the 90s by the Chretian Liberals, although it was Mulroney’s baby.
  - jszymborski 5y ago
    Yup you're totally right. I got mixed up with Connaught's sale to the Canada Development Corporation in 1972, and again confusing NAFTA's ratification with Mulroney's gov't.
- jbay808 5y ago
  Canadian companies contributed significantly to developing these vaccines too. Vancouver-based Acuitas Therapeutics developed the lipid nanoparticle delivery mechanism for the Pfizer vaccine, for example. There are others as well. This article lists three Vancouver companies: https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-supply-chain-of-the-pfizer-biontech-and-moderna-covid-19-vaccines/ https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-suppl... And that's not even mentioning Vancouver biotech unicorn AbCellera, which has developed an antibody treatment.
ipaddr 5y ago
Canada signed the most deals but are you aware that Canada had delivery dates months scheduled for months later in the contracts which is why Canada had no recourse but to wait. Just to keep face 250k dose were flown in before the year but the contracts expected some delivery by March but most by summer.
- jeromegv 5y ago
  And what is your point? The only countries that had a large amount of doses in the first few months of 2021 were the countries producing the vaccine. There was no way that the US would produce for export before vaccinating their own population. Canada had no local production. There was literally nothing they could do but wait. Its of course a problem not to have local production. But it’s not a lack of orders that was the issue, everything was ordered early in 2020, there was just no doses available.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Israel beat the US in vaccination rate. ”Israel cast a wide net last year when trying to secure vaccine doses at the height of the pandemic and pre-ordered from a number of companies.” By April of 2021 it was already giving excess doses away. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/with-enough-supplies-israel-looks-re-route-astrazeneca-vaccine-delivery-2021-04-21/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/with-enough-suppli...
    - pastage 5y ago
      Yes they acted faster with more political capital at stake AFAIK, in the end the important part is how free trade countries reacted to the pandemic. There is a lot to say about acting in a way that hinders pandemic compared to making nations feel safe.
      - azernik 5y ago
        Israel is a "free trade country". If you were a rich nation, it was eminently possibly to get early delivery dates written into your contracts. Canada decided not to for some reason (cost?) and in actual fact deeply regretted it.
jeeeb 5y ago
Not to hijack this too much but the Australian vaccine rollout has been widely panned but much of the problems come down to a choice to rely on domestically manufactured AZ vaccines. In a different timeline if the AZ vaccine hadn’t been associated with rare blood clotting, if Pfizer/Moderna hasn’t been able to scale manufacturing as well that strategy would be looking very good. It’s interesting to think that Canada and other nations that instead depended on international supply chains ultimately did much better though.
- femto 5y ago
  The great hope of Australia's vaccine strategy was the University of Queensland's "Molecular Clamp". Unfortunately the clamp molecule, derived from part of the AIDS virus, triggered false positives in AIDS tests. They used that particular molecule as it was available and time scales were tight. A revised version is being developed with a new clamp molecule, but it won't be ready for the current round of vaccinations. https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2021-04-26/university-queensland-covid-19-vaccine-research-molecular-clamp/100050240 https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2021-04-26/university-que...
  - nradov 5y ago
    Are false positive HIV tests really such a problem? I think most elderly patients wouldn't be concerned about that.
    - pbaka 5y ago
      Oh my sweet summer child. You wouldn't believe how much "action" goes on at night in those old age retirement communities.
- orra 5y ago
  Where Australia really messed up was basically stopping use of AstraZeneca entirely (IIRC). Blood clot risk is much higher the younger you are[1]. It would have been far better to continue using AstraZeneca, but limit it to a certain age and older. [1] For example, 1.1 of the specific clots per 100 000 vaccinations of people in their 20s, falling to 0.2 per 100 000 in their 60s. https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/communicating-potential-benefits-and-harms-astra-zeneca-covid-19-vaccine/ https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/communicating-pote...
victorhooi 5y ago
I'm not sure I buy this (about Canada). Israel was one of the first to vaccinate most of their population - and they are a tiny country with no domestic manufacturing of the vaccines. Although Israel quite openly stated they paid a premium to get early access to vaccines. So basically, it was simply a question of commercials, and ponying up the cahs. Singapore did likewise - basically bought out every vaccine they could on the open market, and rushed to vaccinate their population. I live in Australia, and it does appear our nation's leaders dragged their feet on the vaccine. Our Prime Minister even publicly stated "It's not a race", regarding vaccinating the population. A letter leaked recently, which showed Pfizer's managing director requesting an urgent meeting with our health minister, so we could get millions of doses. Pfizer was then told that the health minister wasn't available to talk with them, it got fobbed to some underlying in his department, then the deal got adragged out for six months after that - in the meantime, the UK and US signed up: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/12/in-hindsight-there-was-no-foresight-how-australia-bungled-its-pfizer-covid-deal https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/12/in-hi...
- mthoms 5y ago
  What part don't you buy? https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-has-reserved-more-vaccine-doses-per-person-than-anywhere-1.1533041 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-has-reserved-more-vaccine...
- defaultname 5y ago
  Israel is a small nation (1/4 the size of Canada, which itself is a small nation) which agreed to do data sharing with the vaccine makers [1]. It effectively became a testbed. 100% of Israel's Pfizer and Moderna vaccines came from Europe. Israel was an extreme outlier. It is not a counterpoint whatsoever. Israel got priority first shipping before Canada, and even the European countries that hosted the factories. Many of these comments are weird in that they seem to hold Canada's vaccination effort as some sort of failure. In reality it was one of the most rapid on the planet, dramatically faster than just about every other OECD country outside of the US (courtesy of nationalizing production) and the UK (courtesy of protectionism), and then testbed Israel. I'm not sure what you don't buy -- the fact that Canada signed up early and for massive quantities is very well accepted fact. The reality that Pfizer and Moderna's European factories became massively oversubscribed (while US factories were basically off limits to everyone else) is also accepted fact. [1] - Even if Canada was suitable as a testbed (e.g. it's too large and distributed), healthcare is run at the provincial level. There are 13 sovereign healthcare agencies, and this is constitutionally decreed, so it was unlikely to have been possible even if the country agreed to do it.

jszymborski 5y ago

Speaking of nationalising the medical industry: Fun fact, Canada was the home of Connaught labs, a publicly owned laboratory which was the first lab to produce the Salk's Polio vaccine, and went on to produce the Smallpox vaccine. In the 1970s, however, Canada went on a privatizing spree (incidentally, the same gov't that ratified NAFTA), and Connaught was privatised and sold many time since. More info here https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/03/11/the-public-lab-that-could-have-helped-fight-covid-19-pandemic.html https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/03/11/the-...

refurb 5y ago
Canadian pharmaceutical R&D and manufacturing is almost entirely gone at this point. A big part of that was little interest in supporting the industry from the government. Apparently a vaccine manufacturer approached the government a while back and got a tepid response so decided to invest elsewhere.
- jszymborski 5y ago
  That's definitely true, but I've some hope we'll be getting some back with the new gov't labs being built, and the AI hubs in Montreal and Toronto pushing the pharmacogenetics story.
wk_end 5y ago
Your dates are a little off. The 70s had little to do with it - Canada’s privatization spree under Mulroney lined up with Reagan and Thatcher. So Connaught Labs was destroyed in the 80s by the Mulroney Conservatives. And NAFTA was ratified in the 90s by the Chretian Liberals, although it was Mulroney’s baby.
- jszymborski 5y ago
  Yup you're totally right. I got mixed up with Connaught's sale to the Canada Development Corporation in 1972, and again confusing NAFTA's ratification with Mulroney's gov't.
jbay808 5y ago
Canadian companies contributed significantly to developing these vaccines too. Vancouver-based Acuitas Therapeutics developed the lipid nanoparticle delivery mechanism for the Pfizer vaccine, for example. There are others as well. This article lists three Vancouver companies: https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-supply-chain-of-the-pfizer-biontech-and-moderna-covid-19-vaccines/ https://blog.jonasneubert.com/2021/01/10/exploring-the-suppl... And that's not even mentioning Vancouver biotech unicorn AbCellera, which has developed an antibody treatment.

ipaddr 5y ago

Canada signed the most deals but are you aware that Canada had delivery dates months scheduled for months later in the contracts which is why Canada had no recourse but to wait. Just to keep face 250k dose were flown in before the year but the contracts expected some delivery by March but most by summer.

jeromegv 5y ago
And what is your point? The only countries that had a large amount of doses in the first few months of 2021 were the countries producing the vaccine. There was no way that the US would produce for export before vaccinating their own population. Canada had no local production. There was literally nothing they could do but wait. Its of course a problem not to have local production. But it’s not a lack of orders that was the issue, everything was ordered early in 2020, there was just no doses available.
- refurb 5y ago
  Israel beat the US in vaccination rate. ”Israel cast a wide net last year when trying to secure vaccine doses at the height of the pandemic and pre-ordered from a number of companies.” By April of 2021 it was already giving excess doses away. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/with-enough-supplies-israel-looks-re-route-astrazeneca-vaccine-delivery-2021-04-21/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/with-enough-suppli...
  - pastage 5y ago
    Yes they acted faster with more political capital at stake AFAIK, in the end the important part is how free trade countries reacted to the pandemic. There is a lot to say about acting in a way that hinders pandemic compared to making nations feel safe.
    - azernik 5y ago
      Israel is a "free trade country". If you were a rich nation, it was eminently possibly to get early delivery dates written into your contracts. Canada decided not to for some reason (cost?) and in actual fact deeply regretted it.

jeeeb 5y ago

Not to hijack this too much but the Australian vaccine rollout has been widely panned but much of the problems come down to a choice to rely on domestically manufactured AZ vaccines. In a different timeline if the AZ vaccine hadn’t been associated with rare blood clotting, if Pfizer/Moderna hasn’t been able to scale manufacturing as well that strategy would be looking very good. It’s interesting to think that Canada and other nations that instead depended on international supply chains ultimately did much better though.

femto 5y ago
The great hope of Australia's vaccine strategy was the University of Queensland's "Molecular Clamp". Unfortunately the clamp molecule, derived from part of the AIDS virus, triggered false positives in AIDS tests. They used that particular molecule as it was available and time scales were tight. A revised version is being developed with a new clamp molecule, but it won't be ready for the current round of vaccinations. https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2021-04-26/university-queensland-covid-19-vaccine-research-molecular-clamp/100050240 https://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2021-04-26/university-que...
- nradov 5y ago
  Are false positive HIV tests really such a problem? I think most elderly patients wouldn't be concerned about that.
  - pbaka 5y ago
    Oh my sweet summer child. You wouldn't believe how much "action" goes on at night in those old age retirement communities.
orra 5y ago
Where Australia really messed up was basically stopping use of AstraZeneca entirely (IIRC). Blood clot risk is much higher the younger you are[1]. It would have been far better to continue using AstraZeneca, but limit it to a certain age and older. [1] For example, 1.1 of the specific clots per 100 000 vaccinations of people in their 20s, falling to 0.2 per 100 000 in their 60s. https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/communicating-potential-benefits-and-harms-astra-zeneca-covid-19-vaccine/ https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/news/communicating-pote...

victorhooi 5y ago

I'm not sure I buy this (about Canada). Israel was one of the first to vaccinate most of their population - and they are a tiny country with no domestic manufacturing of the vaccines. Although Israel quite openly stated they paid a premium to get early access to vaccines. So basically, it was simply a question of commercials, and ponying up the cahs. Singapore did likewise - basically bought out every vaccine they could on the open market, and rushed to vaccinate their population. I live in Australia, and it does appear our nation's leaders dragged their feet on the vaccine. Our Prime Minister even publicly stated "It's not a race", regarding vaccinating the population. A letter leaked recently, which showed Pfizer's managing director requesting an urgent meeting with our health minister, so we could get millions of doses. Pfizer was then told that the health minister wasn't available to talk with them, it got fobbed to some underlying in his department, then the deal got adragged out for six months after that - in the meantime, the UK and US signed up: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/12/in-hindsight-there-was-no-foresight-how-australia-bungled-its-pfizer-covid-deal https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/12/in-hi...

mthoms 5y ago
What part don't you buy? https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-has-reserved-more-vaccine-doses-per-person-than-anywhere-1.1533041 https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-has-reserved-more-vaccine...
defaultname 5y ago
Israel is a small nation (1/4 the size of Canada, which itself is a small nation) which agreed to do data sharing with the vaccine makers [1]. It effectively became a testbed. 100% of Israel's Pfizer and Moderna vaccines came from Europe. Israel was an extreme outlier. It is not a counterpoint whatsoever. Israel got priority first shipping before Canada, and even the European countries that hosted the factories. Many of these comments are weird in that they seem to hold Canada's vaccination effort as some sort of failure. In reality it was one of the most rapid on the planet, dramatically faster than just about every other OECD country outside of the US (courtesy of nationalizing production) and the UK (courtesy of protectionism), and then testbed Israel. I'm not sure what you don't buy -- the fact that Canada signed up early and for massive quantities is very well accepted fact. The reality that Pfizer and Moderna's European factories became massively oversubscribed (while US factories were basically off limits to everyone else) is also accepted fact. [1] - Even if Canada was suitable as a testbed (e.g. it's too large and distributed), healthcare is run at the provincial level. There are 13 sovereign healthcare agencies, and this is constitutionally decreed, so it was unlikely to have been possible even if the country agreed to do it.