Is Russia’s Covid vaccine anything more than a political weapon? Observers say the Sputnik V jab is aimed more at sowing political division than fighting coronavirus https://www.theguardian.com/society...ything-more-than-a-political-weapon-sputnik-v Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has yet to win EU regulatory approval and is likely to play little part in the bloc’s rollout, but it has already achieved what some observers say is one of its objectives – sowing division among, and within, member states. “Sputnik V has become a tool of soft power for Russia,” said Michal Baranowski, a fellow with a US thinktank, the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It’s planted its flag on the vaccine and the political goal of its strategy is to divide the west.” Sputnik’s makers say the shot has been approved in 61 countries and exported to 40. But safety concerns linger, and many EU leaders are sceptical of Russia’s intentions when it has administered fewer than 19m doses to its population of 144 million. Amid growing European concern over repeated Russian cyber-attacks against the west, the Kremlin’s treatment of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny and escalating tensions on the Ukraine border, EU observers say Moscow is deploying Sputnik as another weapon of geopolitical influence. “Russia’s low vaccination rate just doesn’t tally with it having a supposedly cheap, easy-to-make and effective vaccine,” one EU diplomat said. “Either Moscow’s being altruistic, which seems unlikely. Or it’s prioritising geopolitics over Russians’ needs.” So far, only two EU member states, Hungary and Slovakia, have broken with the bloc’s collective approach by ordering the shot, and only Hungary has used it – although Bulgaria is about to open talks, Austria has said it is ready to buy 1m doses and Germany is negotiating for 30m. Others are decidedly less enthusiastic, even frankly hostile. France’s foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, has described the shot as “more a means of propaganda and aggressive diplomacy than of solidarity and assistance”. The prime minister of Lithuania, Ingrida Šimonytė, tweeted in February that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, saw the shot not so much as a “cure for the Russian people” as “another hybrid weapon to divide and rule”. After a lamentably slow early rollout that has only recently started to pick up speed, meanwhile, the European commission says Sputnik V is unlikely to play a part in the EU’s rollout simply because it will not be available in sufficient quantities until the end of 2021, when most Europeans will already be vaccinated. Thierry Breton, the commissioner in charge of vaccine procurement, has said the European Medicines Agency (EMA) is evaluating Sputnik but “still lacks essential data”, while factories in Italy, Spain and Germany that have been named as putative manufacturing sites would take months to come on stream. Hitting back via its official Sputnik V Twitter account, Russia has denied the vaccine is a political tool, or that safety or production capacity are potential issues. “Politicisation of vaccines is unethical and costing lives,” read a typical recent tweet. “Sputnik is undoubtedly one of the best vaccines in the world,” said another. The account has accused EU officials of “bias” and “fake storytelling” and sought to play down the safety concerns that have plagued other viral vector jabs such as AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson. “Biased western media cannot forever ignore real data from the real world that shows Sputnik V is safer and more efficient than mRNA vaccines,” the account said, accusing Breton of continually “misleading the public” over production capacity. An EU study released this week accused Russian and Chinese media of systematically seeking to sow mistrust in western vaccines by sensationalising safety concerns, making unfounded links between shots and deaths in Europe, and promoting Russian and Chinese vaccines as superior. But whether or not the EMA approves Sputnik V and whether or not it ever arrives in sufficient numbers, observers argue it has already done significant damage, with EU national and regional leaders leveraging it for their own political ends. In some countries, it has caused mayhem: the Slovakian prime minister, Igor Matovič, was forced to resign this month amid a bitter dispute over a secret deal to buy 2m doses despite the disagreement of many in his four-party coalition. Making matters worse, the Slovak medicines agency subsequently said the first 200,000 doses were different from the vaccine in the Lancet study and refused to approve them, prompting Matovič to say Slovakia would use a Hungarian lab instead. Sputnik has also cost the health and foreign ministers of the Czech Republic – both opposed to the shot’s deployment without EMA approval – their jobs, fired by the prime minister, Andrej Babiš, following remarks by the pro-Russian president, Miloš Zeman. Only in the wake of a furious diplomatic row last week over Czech allegations that Russia was behind a deadly 2014 blast at an ammunitions warehouse did Prague announce it would no longer be seeking to purchase any of the vaccine. Elsewhere in post-communist Europe, Hungary’s Brussels-baiting leader, Viktor Orbán, who has long fostered close relations with Russia, has gleefully bypassed both the bloc’s joint procurement programme and EMA authorisation to buy 2m doses, while outside the EU, Serbia has become a champion vaccinator thanks to Sputnik. In western Europe, regional politicians have also sought to score points against national governments through Sputnik deals: the conservative leader of Madrid in Socialist-led Spain; the far-right president of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur region in France; the opposition Democratic party leader of Italy’s Campania region. In Germany, where federal elections in September have turned the country’s early shortage of vaccines into a particularly burning issue nationwide with politicians of all colours under heavy pressure to find solutions, three states including Bavaria have either struck or are negotiating Sputnik deals. The federal health minister, Jens Spahn, has said Berlin is in talks on a national deal but stressed any rollout will depend on EMA approval and Sputnik V supplies would have to arrive within the next couple of month or be too late. For Baranowski, Sputnik’s rushed approval, online propaganda and carefully selected destinations add up to a Russian strategy that is “neither innocent nor humanitarian. It is part of exactly the same game, of dividing the west, that we see in Moscow’s use of military power, cybersecurity, energy security.” And it’s working, he said: “It’s dividing various European actors pretty well. Until Sputnik V has EMA approval – at which stage, of course, there’s no problem: the world needs vaccines – it’s become a political litmus test for whether you are for or against the EU’s programme. That’s eroding confidence. And that’s what Putin wants.” Early western doubts about Sputnik V’s efficacy after Russia approved it last August – without the results of full clinical trials – were partly dispelled by a peer-reviewed late-stage trial published in the Lancet in February which showed it was almost 92% effective. Moscow’s Gamaleya Institute laboratory and the Russian Direct Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund backing the shot, have since said scientists had found Sputnik V 97.6% effective in “real-world” data from 3.8 million people. The EMA’s director, Emer Cooke, however, confirmed last week the agency’s approval process, which began late because of a lack of manufacturer data, was “really at a very early stage”, saying the agency had yet to start reviewing any “real-world” safety records, for example on potential side-effects of the vaccine. Among other things, the agency is looking into whether clinical trials met so-called “good clinical practice” standards after some soldiers and state employees Russia said took part in them reportedly claimed they had been pressured into doing so.
So what do the Russians do when a regulator reveals that their vaccine is complete crap with no quality control... Russian vaccine developer plans to sue Brazilian regulator for defamation https://www.reuters.com/business/he...regulator-false-information-about-2021-04-29/
Latest vaccine news is vaccines are irrelevant if the Biden administration continues to allow Covid positive illegals to enter the country with a wide variety of new variants. Nice plan Joe, if the goal is permanent lockdown.
Many undeveloped countries do not have government medical approval operations focused on performing their own Phase 3 trails and reviewing submitted paperwork. These countries depend on WHO approval of a vaccine before effectively having their government regulators rubber-stamp it. Due to this WHO approval of vaccines is important to many nations. I will note that no Russian or Chinese vaccines have approved by WHO. WHO lists anti-Covid Moderna vaccine for emergency use https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-04-anti-covid-moderna-vaccine-emergency.html The World Health Organization on Friday said it had listed the anti-COVID-19 Moderna vaccine for emergency use. The listing procedure helps countries unable to assess a vaccine's effectiveness themselves have access as quickly as possible and allow the Covax vaccine sharing scheme and other partners to distribute it to poorer countries. The US vaccine is the fifth jab to earn WHO's emergency listing. The US Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for the Moderna vaccine on 18 December 2020 and a marketing authorisation valid throughout the European Union was granted by the European Medicines Agency on 6 January 2021. WHO said in a statement that its Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE) had found the Moderna vaccine to have an efficacy of 94.1 percent. The other vaccines listed for emergency use by WHO are Pfizer BioNTech; AstraZeneca; Serum Institute of India; and Janssen. Moderna on Thursday said it expected to produce up to three billion doses of its vaccine in 2022 through new funding commitments to boost supply at manufacturing sites in Europe and the US.
True but subject to change at any time. In late April, WHO said it would meet to review/approval/non-approval of Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines. A month ago I would have said that that process would go fast but since then several countries have moaned about the vaccines not working so I don't know where they will end out on the requirement of at least 50% effectivity. What happened was that - much like Amazon reviews- China offered places like Turkey, Malaysia, and Brazil lots of free vaccine in return for good reviews, hoping that the vaccine would be good and that they were on the right side with China for even more deliveries. That little scheme has gotten shaky of late. Many of those countries- there are some other South American ones too- are hoping that something else that is affordable will come along and be part of Covax. Some people/countries, myself included, think that should include Astrazenica- warts and all. As overly-discussed, everything is not about the U.S. when it comes to AZ and risk-to-benefit and cost. In regard to Sputnik, Germany says it is doing its own review so that will either help or hurt that vaccine if it seeks Covax approval. Depends on how their trial goes. In an ideal world, Russia does good trials of Russian vaccines- not Germany- but whatever. Radical I guess.
CVS, Walgreens Wasted Hundreds of Thousands of COVID-19 Vaccinations: CDC https://www.thedailybeast.com/cvs-w...eds-of-thousands-of-covid-19-vaccinations-cdc The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 182,874 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been wasted due to poor planning of the vaccine rollout, NBC News reports. Of the wasted vaccines, the CVS pharmacy chain was responsible for nearly half and Walgreens was responsible for 21 percent. More than 60 percent of the wasted doses were those supplied by Pfizer, which was the first vaccine to roll out and which incurred problems with ultracold temperature requirements. The two pharmacy chains wasted more vaccines than states, U.S. territories, and federal agencies combined, the CDC found. While it is unclear from the data exactly why the chains had such difficulties, NBC News suggests that CVS and Walgreens were leaned on heavily to vaccinate residents and staff members of long-term care facilities. CVS said that “nearly all” their vaccine waste happened during the long-term-care program. Read it at NBC News
Denmark Cuts Johnson & Johnson From Covid-19 Vaccine Program https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...rtedly-cuts-j-j-from-covid-19-vaccine-program Denmark won’t use Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine in its immunization program, because the benefits don’t outweigh the risk of blood clots, according to the country’s health authority. The suspension comes less than a month after Denmark became the first European Union member to drop AstraZeneca Plc for similar reasons. Monday’s decision was first reported by the BT newspaper. The Danish Health Authority said it took into account the current situation in Denmark where the virus is under relative control and most unvaccinated people are young and healthy. Denmark had pre-ordered about 7 million vaccine shots from J&J, more than from any other producer. The decision to drop the company from its inoculation program delays the national vaccine rollout by four weeks, the health authority said. According to the previous schedule, all Danes would have been offered a vaccine by early August.
Federal regulators are said to be preparing to expand use of Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine to adolescents as young as 12 by next week. Monday, May 3, 2021 5:27 PM EST Eager parents have been counting down the weeks since Pfizer announced results from its trial in adolescents, showing the vaccine is at least as effective in that age group as it is in adults. Vaccinating children is also key to raising the level of herd immunity in the population and bringing down the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/health/pfizer-covid-vaccine-teens.html
Oh Man, Team Ruskie takes a blow. When Brazil rejects your vaccine, your only market is in Mogadishu or something. Reminds my of my very early days of making home brew. My best friend said to me: "Your home brew is just right. If it were any worse I could not drink it but if it were any better you would not give me so much." Yeh, I feel the Ruskies' pain. Let's show some compassion for them. Brazil Defends Decision to Reject Russia’s Covid-19 Vaccine, Citing Safety and Efficacy https://www.wsj.com/articles/brazil...ussias-sputnik-v-covid-19-vaccine-11620064520
There is more and more concern the US will not reach herd immunity and Covid will become a mainstay in our country. I wonder if years of repeated Covid infections will increase the neurological impacts of Covid on the unvaccinated.