Look how many doses of vaccine the USG was contracting for/ NY Times Jan 2021

I am reposting this NYT article as it is one of several I blogged about last year regarding the large numbers of doses of COVID vaccines governments were buying, when they ought to have had no idea how much they would need...and certainly not 2.1 billion doses for the USA with resale forbidden.  What did they know and when?  Was the whole bloody pandemic an excuse to keep giving us "boosters" of something, and/or to create a reason we would need vaccine passports, to keep up with the boosters?

I can think of no benign explanations for this--if you know of one, please post it.

Thursday, January 28, 2021

USG buys too much vaccine. Governments Sign Secret Vaccine Deals: Here’s What They Hide/ NYT

Check out this NY Times article published today. The US government is buying much more vaccine than is needed for every American. But it also has signed contracts restricting the overseas sale of some of its purchases.  So if it can't be sold, why is the government committed to buying so much?  Is the plan to give everyone frequent boosters?  The contracts are extremely secret.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/28/world/europe/vaccine-secret-contracts-prices.html

Multibillion-dollar contracts give drug makers liability shields, patent ownership and leeway on delivery dates and pricing — and promises that much of it will not be made public.

When members of the European Parliament sat down this month to read the first publicly available contract for purchasing coronavirus vaccines, they noticed something missing. Actually, a lot missing.

The price per dose? Redacted. The rollout schedule? Redacted. The amount of money being paid up front? Redacted.

And that contract, between the German pharmaceutical company CureVac and the European Union, is considered one of the world’s most transparent.

Governments have poured billions of dollars into helping drug companies develop vaccines and are spending billions more to buy doses. But the details of those deals largely remain secret, with governments and public health organizations acquiescing to drug company demands for secrecy.

Just weeks into the vaccination campaign, that secrecy is already making accountability difficult. The drug companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca recently announced that they would miss their European delivery targets, causing widespread concern as dangerous virus variants spread. But the terms of their contracts remain closely guarded secrets, making it difficult to question company or government officials about either blame or recourse.

Available documents, however suggest that drug companies demanded, and received, flexible delivery schedules, patent protection and immunity from liability if anything goes wrong. In some instances, countries are prohibited from donating or reselling doses, a ban that could hamper efforts to get vaccines to poor countries.

Governments are cutting at least three types of vaccine deals: Some are buying directly from pharmaceutical companies. Others are buying through regional bodies like the European Union or the African Union. Many will turn to the nonprofit Covax program, an alliance of more than 190 countries, which is buying from the drug makers with an eye toward making vaccines available worldwide, especially to poor countries free or at reduced cost. Some governments have signed deals with manufacturers and Covax alike.

The United States has secured 400 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, enough for 200 million people, and is close to arranging 200 million additional doses by summer, with options to buy up to 500 million more. It also has advance purchase agreements for more than 1 billion doses from four other companies whose inoculations do not yet have U.S. regulatory approval.

The European Commission, the European Union’s executive branch negotiating on behalf of its 27 member states, has nearly 2.3 billion doses under contract and is negotiating for about 300 million more, according to data collected by UNICEF and Airfinity, a science analytics company...

Covax says it has agreements for just over 2 billion vaccine doses although it, too, is keeping its contracts secret. Only about a dozen of the 92 countries that qualify for vaccine subsidies under the alliance have managed to secure separate deals with individual companies, for a combined 500 million doses.

The CureVac contract, for example, prohibits European countries from reselling, exporting or donating doses — including to Covax — without permission from the company. Some contracts in the United States have similar restrictions...

Companies Get Liability Protection

In the United States, drug companies are shielded from nearly all liability if their vaccines don’t work or cause serious side effects. The government covered Covid-19 drug makers under the PREP Act, a 2005 law intended to speed up access to medicine during health emergencies.

That means that people cannot sue the companies, even in cases of negligence or recklessness. The only exceptions are cases of proven, “willful misconduct.”

Drug companies are seeking similar liability waivers in negotiations with other countries... The CureVac-E.U. contract does shield the company from significant liability, but with exceptions. Those exceptions are redacted...