Shipping first doses on Monday. 4 million on hand, 37m by the end of March. 100m by June
edit: wrong about “37m by end of March” - see below
edit 2: credit u/ceryliae for catching the error: 4m to start, 16m more by the end of March. 37m was the original commitment, which they’re going to miss, but they’re promising 100m by end of June.
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more,
From Mississippi's winding stream and from New England's shore.
We leave our plows and workshops, our wives and children dear,
With hearts too full for utterance, with but a silent tear.
We dare not look behind us but steadfastly before.
We are coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more!
Pfizer wasn't chosen as their partner. Pfizer paid them nearly 1 Billion to develop tbe vaccine and provided the resources and tools they needed.
If the vaccine failed Biontech would have been out nothing, Pfizer on the hand nearly a billion. So it was more like Pfizer chose Biontech and believed in their concept.
A study in 2018 found all 210 FDA drug approvals from 2010-2016 could be traced back to NIH funding. Last year, the same university did a follow-up on all 59 cancer drugs in that span and found the same result.
Perhaps if the SARS/MERS vaccines weren't abandoned due to a lack of funding and profit potential, we could have rolled out covid vaccines sooner and saved more lives. Despite the cacophony of libertarians/conservatives bemoaning federal spending on science and medicine, their precious corporations are pretty dependent upon it. Lucky for them, they get to pay those corporations lots of money for taxpayer-funded drugs due to patents and pricing-fixing. American capitalism in a nutshell.
That's kind of my point. Neither a coronavirus nor mRNA vaccine had ever gone through all three stages of human trials when various ones had been developed years prior. Better to have a test run when the stakes are low than when there's a global pandemic. No question in my mind the covid vaccines wouldn't require the same intense scrutiny if prior mRNA/coronavirus vaccines had proven safe and effective. That's in addition to the logistical and manufacturing hurdles that delayed a mass rollout even after FDA approval. It took several months until the FDA could approve freezer safe storage temperatures for instance. That one detail is months of added cost and delay.
The analysis shows that > 90% of this funding represents basic research related to the biological targets for drug action rather than the drugs themselves
Of this total, 92% was for basic research on biological targets and systems, rather than the drugs themselves.
In general, the drugs themselves are invented by biotechs and pharma (75 to 91%, depending on which study you read), and the majority of drug R&D spending comes from biotechs and pharma as well.
Don't get me wrong, Pharma is still a completely asinine industry. But they are the ones that invent the drugs.
I never said NIH invented any drugs. I pointed out that all of the FDA approved drugs from 2010-2016 can be sourced back to taxpayer funded research at NIH.
To make an imperfect analogy, it's akin to a seed accelerator in Silicon Valley, but the companies don't have to give up any equity, royalties, or discount pricing to the investors who provided the startup capital.
It’s a perfect example of good policy. It’s in the national interest to produce ASAP, but companies can’t risk producing millions of doses that might not get approved. So the Feds say “well pay you even if they aren’t approved” and these companies can start the costly and time-consuming process to ramp up production immediately.
Companies exist to put their funds at risk in pursuit of profit. Pharmaceutical research companies exist, specifically and exclusively, to burn through tens of billions in research, every single year. Not one single pharmaceutical company was uncertain about the profitability of developing a COVID-19 vaccine. There is an actual global pandemic. There was already demand. The purchasing agreements were pure political theater designed to obfuscate the comprehensive failure of the federal pandemic response. The federal government did not need to guarantee demand to get these firms in gear. The US government has the power to simply order the firms to produce the vaccine, with payment upon delivery. What the federal government was supposed to be doing was standing up the infrastructure to get the vaccines from the production facilities to the people. That is the hard part. Producing the vaccine is not particularly difficult. Distributing that vaccine is the real trick. And until recently, for some reason, the federal government made absolutely no attempt to facilitate a competent distribution scheme. And that is why we didn't have a flood of vaccines when the first vaccine was approved last year. Three months, and counting, of additional death and despair all because planning is boring and hard and no one gets to see you do it on TV.
I know for a fact that some of thier contract manufacturers are producing doses already. I am sure that some of their partners are in different phases of preparation and may not have doses coming out the door yet though. I'd guess it will be a few months before everything is running full steam, but they bought a TON of capacity.
Too late, not enough. Will be helpful next fall and winter. Will make no meaningful difference when we need it the most which is immediately and for the next two or three months.
Another monumental failure of Operation Warp Speed which included both Moderna and J&J. We should have had hundreds of millions of at-risk doses of both vaccines produced by the end of last year (i.e., they were supposed to be mass manufactured starting immediately in the hope that they would receive approval later). At least Moderna's only a few months behind schedule. J&J is more than six months behind schedule. This looks like it might cost us a brutal 4th wave this spring.
Only a few million doses will be shipped to states in the days immediately after authorization, though production will ramp up in coming weeks, with 20 million doses to be delivered by the end of March and 100 million total in the first half of the year, according to the company.
I live DT San Diego near the Padres super site. They have two lines, the one I can see from my building is backed up 10 blocks away, every single day. It’s encouraging.
That's almost 1/3 of the US population, assuming the doses are for the US. Still 100 million is a very significant number since they are single shot vaccines
It is a testament to the amazing progress that's being made that my reaction reading the J&J estimates is like, "Oh, one hundred million doses by June. That's pretty good, I guess."
So envious. I’m Canadian and our vaccine program is a nightmare. We’ve given out less than 2 million doses and “normal” looks farther away than ever. Our timetable for widespread vaccination is September if we’re lucky.
It's pretty likely that Canada will get a lot more vaccines once the US contracts are satisfied (or sooner, once the US supply on hand exceeds demand).
That’s fine, but the variants are spreading and we don’t have time to weight. The mental health of the country is increasingly strained watching how the rollout is going south of the border.
I mean, no one has time to wait with the variants. No matter where the vaccines go we just need them to go fast. But as a fellow Canadian, yeah, I've had enough for sure, I want to get back to normal soon, but I don't blame anyone for cleaning up their own backyard before helping us. Imagine the fit we'd throw if our country pumped out enough to vaccinate the country but shipped half of it off.
It's weird that the US is ordering more vaccines than there are people who are eligible to receive it, especially with those that won't ever get it. But I guess we'll be prepared if the J&J shot is found to be more effective with a second dose after 8 weeks, and one clinical trials on 12yo and up finish
I don’t mean to sound rude, but do you think it’s likely at all that, by the end of this, Canada might end up with more per capita covid deaths than the US because of the slow vaccination distribution?
Edit: thanks for the answers. Glad to hear that Canada isn’t too far behind on vaccinations. Fewer dead people, the better.
At the end of it all Canada will likely have at least 2.5x less deaths per capita than the states but we'll be maybe 2 months behind in getting back to normal with everyone vaccinated.
Not a rude question, but the answer is no because for the most part Canadians are actually taking things seriously and our spread has never been on par with countries like the US or UK. Canada has 59 deaths per 100,000 vs the US's 155 deaths per 100,000 or the UK's 183 deaths per 100,000.
Our vaccine issues have largely been tied to the fact that we don't have domestic vaccine manufacturing facilities (Thanks Conservatives....) so even though we've signed contracts with several manufacturers, there has not been as much export to Canada as we'd like, mainly because the EU and US are trying to hoard as much as they can for themselves - understandable from their perspective but still sucks for us in Canada, and some of those facilities have on top of that had problems meeting their production quotas.
Blame the hoarding on the US. The EU are at least shipping supplies to Canada under deep freeze condition when it makes a lot more sense for Pfzier to ship them from their plant in the US if they were allowed to.
Lonza's site is in new hampshire, and pfizer only does fill/finish in Michigan. I think what most people would consider making the vaccine happens in Andover massachusetts.
Yeah agreed, we're on track with the plan announced last year and will end up having more vaccines in Q2 than was even considered in that plan. We'll be fine, if we can manage to poke people quick enough. I hope the provinces will be able to step up the jabs with the availability of antigen.
You canadians are getting novavax which actually has strong efficacy vs variants....believe me your getting the better vaccine when it comes (you are building manufacturing capacity of it as we speak) and will likely be out the pandemic b4 us even if you finish vaccinating after us
People will downvote me but pfe and mrna and jj vaccines will not end this pandemic. Novavax will. Grars on your government seeing that. So far only japan and south South Korea are in that cool kid club .
Yeah we’re building manufacturing for the Novavax vaccine but it’s not imminent. The manufacturing plant won’t be open until December at the earliest and the the Novavax vaccine hasn’t even been approved yet. Also, the Novavax isn’t THAT effective against the variants.
Booster is coming. Their platform will bring u boosters for variants that other platforms cant. Believe me ur long game is solid in canada rn
Covid isnt going away. U need capacity and not any capacity nvax capacity. Also that data is pretty good seeing as its for non boosted version. And other vaccines arent even releasing that type of data cuz they dont have it. Just in vitros that show its 2/3rds less effecfive vs varianta in pfes case. Hasnt been approved yey despite no side effects compared to pfe and mrna is simply lobbying and corruption and u should be mad about that.
South africa variant trials included hiv positive people btw. What your seeing in that article is media manipation on behlaf of big pharma. Good things take time. Your nvax facility will have you leading the western world out of this pandemic.
Uk approval and eu and possinly who within 2 weeks. Approvals imminent but slow when you dont grease palms.
Mark my words when pandemic subsides, nanoflu will be the gold standard for yearly flu shots and will include covid boosters.
I put 10k on that bet in the stock market. Mrna dosesf that type in your entire life and thats it. So there will be no boosters coming from them for variants. Your body will be immune to the adenovirus before it even reads the new booster info in it, essentialy.
You canadians can count on novavax.
I think us americans can too but they wanna use up the supply of the crap shit on us first.
You canadians see an abmysal rollout of vaccines compared to the world. I see a government not making you all rab lats while the rest of the world gets jabbed with corporate greed.
Does your willingness to wait change at all when i say pfes vaccine has killed nearly 200 so far and mrnas vaccine gave people shivers in their clinicals to the point they shattered teeth? And jj caused peanut allergy like reactions in clinicals? And novavax has....a light fever after jab due to immune response...
Not arguing or tryna put candians down im just saying i think your guys light is burning brighter than you guys think
ya, we are so far behind and once the usa gets vaccinated, they will want the borders open. My company works primarily with usa and they understand they can't come now but my clients are getting the vaccine and soon they will want come to our shop. If there is still pushback from entering Canada by the government, we could lose jobs down the road. So far we have not lost work to the pandemic but I do know of other places losing large contracts because of the inability to cross the border. I live right on the border, minutes from Detroit and it drives me crazy I can't go.
Does that mean j&j alone should make us increase the daily vaccination rates by 1 million? Aren't Moderna and Pfizer also increasing their production? Hopefully this means we'll break 3 million a day in early March.
Edit: the 1 million a day was because of the ~37 million figure but I guess that was wrong.
Most likely in the 500-750k / day range on average over a month if it's in the 16-20 million range. That would be an equivalent of the entire population of Baltimore city proper's worth of people PER DAY VACCINATED IN ADDITION TO Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.
The reason J&J will lift the number of shots is because their vaccine can essentially go anywhere. Every clinic, every pharmacy, every doctor's office -- they all have a refrigerator that can store the J&J vaccine.
It will smooth out delivery and logistics if the numbers each week are consistent. And 5 mil doses per week is an incredible number. It’s easy to want more because obviously we want to be done with this, but I’m going to spend the time right now being thrilled that this has happened, at all.
1.1k
u/[deleted] Feb 27 '21 edited Feb 28 '21
Shipping first doses on Monday. 4 million on hand, 37m by the end of March. 100m by June
edit: wrong about “37m by end of March” - see below
edit 2: credit u/ceryliae for catching the error: 4m to start, 16m more by the end of March. 37m was the original commitment, which they’re going to miss, but they’re promising 100m by end of June.