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Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36075757)

Just as Canada suspend use of the Astrazenica vaccine for under 55s the state propoganda machine have yet another puff piece about plucky upstarts Astrazenica being hard done by. It's almost as if they're prepared in advance.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56570364

I'm quite sure a £94bn business isn't going to be exiting what's likely to be a huge money making market for the next few years.

While the vaccine is being supplied "at cost" for now there's no commitment to provide the likely ongoing annual boosters on that basis. I'm sure the Ugandans want to know why they're paying $8 compared to the EU paying $2 per shot also.

Refrigerated transportation costs? Plus are some of the EU per dose costs offset by their capital investment?

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomadking (Post 36075758)

Refrigerated transportation costs? Plus are some of the EU per dose costs offset by their capital investment?

Who knows. Maybe providing them at cost is best effort.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36075759)

Who knows. Maybe providing them at cost is best effort.

I think you’ve arrived at the right answer, by the wrong reasoning.

It’s pretty obvious that “at cost” will be higher to any destination in the heart of Africa than it would be just a short ride down the autobahn from the factory where it’s made. The higher price is indeed “best effort”. Though I totally get you were just trying to be sarcastic.

I suppose costs will vary between the different plants producing it. An already established plant will have lower costs than a brand new one. Later purchasers may be suffering from the effect of the additional costs of increasing capacity.
Apparently shipping is extra, $3/dose.
Link

Quote:

News that Uganda will be paying USD $7 per dose for its 18 million dose order of the Astra Zeneca vaccine – a price that is 20% more than South Africa and roughly triple that being paid by the European Union – sparked anger and outrage around global medicines access advocates – and on social media channels.

The Serum Institute is supplying doses of the vaccine to Brazil, Saudi Arabia and South Africa at $5.25 per dose.

If it's produced at cost and the cost of the raw ingredients rises due to increased global demand, then I'm sure the cost of the vaccine will go up. Everything else being equal.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomadking (Post 36075763)

Isn't shipping part of the cost or do you expect them to supply @ $3/dose shipped free?

Quote:

Originally Posted by pip08456 (Post 36075766)

Isn't shipping part of the cost or do you expect them to supply @ $3/dose shipped free?

Amazon will probably ship it for free . . . if you join Prime and shop in bulk :D

Quote:

Originally Posted by pip08456 (Post 36075747)

Meanwhile this gives pause for thought.

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/arti...ic-propaganda/

Quote:

Panda’s chief argument is that lockdowns cause more death and destruction than the Covid-19 pandemic itself. As such, it has repeatedly lobbied the South African government to loosen restrictions.

But Panda’s core research findings have received withering criticism from independent experts who describe the group’s claims as little more than pseudoscientific disinformation.

In May 2020, for instance, Panda published its seminal report outlining the findings of its actuarial model, which claimed that the impact of lockdown would cause 30 times more deaths than the Covid-19 pandemic itself...

... Two top British experts have now told DM168 that Panda’s actuarial model is deeply flawed. “This paper is unfortunately a complete sham masquerading as science – it would never pass peer review in any reputable journal,” said Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and statistical geneticist at Queen Mary University in London.

“It seems completely out of touch with reality and real-world evidence from across the globe … The estimated fatalities in South Africa from the model are clearly biased downwards – as the total mortality predicted by the model has already come to pass, and been exceeded in South Africa. The toll would have been much higher had the epidemic been allowed to continue unmitigated – we don’t need to imagine this, given this has already happened in some parts of the world.”

Gurdasani, who is published actively in the scientific literature on Covid-19, explained that “most of the assumptions in model” are “unjustified, and not based in real-world evidence or data.” The model ignores the impact of ‘long Covid’ on young people and children, which has been found to occur in between 10%-20% of all infected individuals, including 12%-14% of children.

“It does not consider the impact of this on the economy. Neither does it sufficiently examine the impact of health systems being overwhelmed without lockdowns and the impact of lack of healthcare on the population as a whole.”

She pointed out that the paper’s projection of a 10% increase in excess mortality for 10 years due to lockdown is devoid of “real-world data” that ignores the experience of other countries. The 20% increase in excess deaths in the UK since March 2020, for instance, is almost entirely accounted for by deaths from Covid-19 despite three UK lockdowns.

“While there may have been indirect impact of lockdowns on health, this seems to have been more than offset by fewer deaths from other causes, for example, flu, accidents and so on,” Gurdasani said.

Querying various technical assumptions used in the paper (its extrapolation from fatality rates in New York ignoring more robust datasets from elsewhere; presuming for no reason that “excess mortality loading weights per co-morbidity are 7 times higher for the elderly compared to the young”), she concluded that “the model has wildly overestimated indirect deaths from non-Covid-19 occurring during lockdowns. In fact, the real observational data from South Africa shows the huge impact Covid-19 can have and has had directly on mortality if allowed to spread, and the impact lockdowns have in containing these excess deaths.”

Panda’s Hudson repeatedly predicted in the first half of 2020 that just 10,000 people in South Africa would die of Covid-19.

“We are challenged to understand how any model for South Africa could reasonably produce a death forecast of more than 10,000,” Hudson stated in June 2020.

Analysis by Wits University School of Governance’s Alex van der Heever, published by GroundUp, has convincingly shown that excess deaths in 2020 and 2021 have been almost entirely due to Covid-19. What this strongly suggests is that the total number of Covid-19 deaths in South Africa thus far is nearing 140,000.

Gurdasani’s damning critique of the Panda report was echoed by top economist Professor Jonathan Portes of the School of Politics and Economics at Kings College London, who told DM168 that Panda’s “estimates of longer-term impacts on life expectancy resulting from economic damage are not credible nor based on evidence.”

EU vaccine chaos: Austria threatens to block 100m jab purchase unless it gets bigger share

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is demanding the Commission rethinks its distribution mechanism to allow for a bigger share of jabs to be delivered to his country. The Austrian leader is threatening to block the purchase of 100million doses of vaccines unless Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gives in to his demands.

https://www.express.co.uk/news/polit...azeneca-latest

A considerably less tilted report, with more depth, is given here:

https://www.politico.eu/article/seba...-distribution/

Quote:

Originally Posted by pip08456 (Post 36075766)

Isn't shipping part of the cost or do you expect them to supply @ $3/dose shipped free?

It's in addition to the listed $7 price. Jfman stated it was $8 with no suggestion of additional shipping costs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nomadking (Post 36075785)

It's in addition to the listed $7 price. Jfman stated it was $8 with no suggestion of additional shipping costs.

Sorry ... is your source for '$8 shipping included' Jfman, or an actual authoritative online, linkable resource?

Hundreds not turning up for vaccines.

I'd expect more, as for example here, the mass vac centres are pretty remote if you can't get a lift. No easy bus routes either, and taxis are beyond the means of many. A gaggle of (distanced) people were waiting for taxis home after the jab, and I saw several moaning at the stewards that the trip there was late as "there aren't enough taxis".

The system that was adopted was a letter with a date and time. No way to contact them to postpone it if you were ill or at work.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56575733

The details of prices paid for the vaccines has been collated here by Unicef.

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrI...eafd86059a947b

They can’t help themselves can they!

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-...r-60s-12261200