I'm staring to think these are industry attacks on a company that is in competition with others. AZ's vaccine is quite similar to J&J but AZ is getting all the criticism. If AZ is so unsafe why has there not been huge issues in the UK where so many got AZ.
Something fishy is going on. Either at AZ or from the outside.
AstraZeneca has no experience developing vaccines. As a result they’ve massively screwed up multiple times before. Frankly, even the original approval they got from the UK should never have been given, considering how tainted their original trials in Brazil were.
Basically what seems to have happened is that Oxford university developed the vaccine, required that companies who wanted to manufacture and sell it should not make a profit, and therefore only got companies with little vaccine development experience, such as AstraZeneca, which probably due to their lack of experience has been making mistake after mistake.
That being said, we have seen that with COVID the vast majority of vaccines have been extremely successful (some like the Russian and Chinese ones were deployed without complete testing and were shown to have great results), and since we are confident the AZ vaccine is safe enough, ans we can see the impact in the UK, there’s a strong justification to authorize using it even without proper results.
Just not in the US, which already has access to enough vaccines for its population without needing the AZ zone.
This comment is a valuable contribution to the discussion wrt AZ's lack of experience & screw ups.
Although I disagree that there was any reason to hold up UK approval, there was clear safety and effectiveness evidence that overwhelmed any doubts about safety in spite of the screw ups.
But I have zero sympathy for AZ even if many, many people are compounding their errors.
Agree. Even the vaccine could have been done better - the spike protein RNA in the vaccine doesn't use the prefusion stabilization trick like the others.
Seems like anything made by this company should contain warnings like
"This manufacturer has never released an approved vaccine"
and
"This manufacturer is not allowed to make a profit on this product, so there is no monetary incentive to ensure quality after the product is authorized for emergency use"
I fully expect the same quality as soviet era cars.
Why don't we look at the actual data instead of supposing? Presumably because it wouldn't support your conclusion in the slightest. Please don't promote anti vaxxer misinformation.
AstraZeneca has staked their reputation as an extremely large firm that makes all sorts of pharmaceuticals on the safety and efficacy of this vaccine, the idea that they have no incentive to ensure the quality of the product is absolutely bonkers.
Hilariously Lada cars - the Soviet era cars being referenced I expect - were exported for the express purpose of making a profit!
They can fall back on the usual refrain. "We didn't know" "We couldn't have known" "We used the best data available at the time" and they also have a new out "Blame Oxford, it was their drug" etc.
What's Pfizer's reputation? Seems to be fine among the masses, despite decades of mismanagement and killing people.
AZ has genuinely fucked up a couple times. They accidentally gave some trial participants half the intended dose (https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55086927), and now appear to have made a mistake in reporting data.
They're procedural fuckups. Never should've happened, but neither one inherently says "the vaccine is unsafe".
AZ has genuinely fucked up a couple times. They accidentally gave some trial participants half the intended dose
That was an Oxford fuck up, as were most of the other early clinical trial ones as far as we know. As others have explained, this is not a normal small organization plus Big Pharma arrangement, and after the EU went crazy I'll bet AZ is now regretting ever getting involved.
AZ's catastrophic fuck up from that testing mistake which should have burned a lot of their credibility was to use that data which in the long term didn't pan out to make a blended claim of higher efficacy than they could at that time legitimately support.
This shouldn’t be downvoted it’s accurate. Several screw ups happened during the trials. AZ and Oxford are now paying the price for that lack of trust.
The company licensing and distributing their vaccine at cost and many times cheaper than the others is getting lots of negative stories and comments in the media, who could possibly benefit from this.
The Russian Sputnik V vaccine is as effective as the Western ones. Fr all its flaws the Soviet Union was a scientific, educational and health giant, and its successor Russian state still is. The Sinopec (Chinese) one is only about 60-70% effective, on the other hand, and unless given away for free, it's hard to understand why any country would want it.
The concerns about Sputnik are geopolitical in nature (weakening the sanctions regime against Russia for its doings in Ukraine, and the persecution of Navalny), not sanitary ones.
The concerns about Sputnik are geopolitical in nature
Not entirely. Their politicians boasted about it being the world's first "registered" vaccine a month before its Phase III trial started, that was an own goal completely of their making. It was only months later where they were able to finish their Phase III trial with very good results, but a few weeks behind the two mRNA vaccines.
So in other words exactly like Astra Zeneca. A good vaccine whose reputation was marred by nationalism-driven botched design of experiment and clinical trials.
That said, the effectiveness of Sputnik V has been established to Western standards now, so the only reason for the EU to refuse it when it is in crying need for vaccines is political, not scientific or medical.
Given the sheer amount of potential profit at stake, it's not surprising that some skullduggery is happening. However, given the speed of the rollout of the various vaccines, and the corresponding number of people injected with them, the companies invovled should be absolutely above reproach in these matters.
The fact that, even when lives are at stake, companies cannot resist temptation, is why there are regulations. Try complaining about the regulations that were relaxed to allow this all to happen, however, and suddenly I'm an anti-vaxxer.
I was responding to the parent comment that such headlines are just competing vaccine compaines attempting to destroy the reputation of their competitors. Assuming that is the reason behind this headline (which, is not a given), I'm just pointing out that would not be surprising.
Something fishy is going on. Either at AZ or from the outside.