Coronavirus Vaccine in Taiwan - May/June 2021

The vaccine committee member, Chen Pei-jer, who resigned a few days ago is accused of being an advisor of Zhimeng Biopharma Inc, a Shanghai based company, as the company had allegedly listed him as such on their website. If true would violate the law that restricts government officials from having concurrent jobs in China & other countries.

Chen responded by showing a letter this his role was merely an honorary title.

There was just an article posted in the thread where AZ wanted to produce vaccines here and TW failed to take the offer.

TW could have offered 2000nt for 40 million doses before the vaccines were approved.

They didn’t.

FFS

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AZ wanted high capacity, Taiwan didn’t have the means to do so.

What’s hard to understand about this?

Guy

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And edible gum sounds stupid.

Not sure if same article but basically same content.

talks fell through as the government felt it could not produce the 300 million shots the company had requested

they had talked with AstraZeneca about producing 100 million doses on the firm’s behalf, but the company had said they had hoped for a minimum of 300 million doses.

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So you don’t have to wait around in a line! And you actually will get the shot and not be turned away because too many tickets were printed that day!

This treating people like humans and respecting their time stuff is really going to work a treat!

I read it as hesitancy because they might not be able to. Perhaps I went through it too fast.

They should have mandated that the biotech companies pool their resources to make it happen and paid the necessary costs.

IMO this is similar to the lack of PPE in the US early in the pandemic. No excuse for not getting it done by any means necessary.

Taiwan is looking more and more like a shithole country every day this year isn’t it …

Not fining big businesses and airlines and hotels for causing an outbreak
Basically locking migrants up in their dorms and treating them like garbage and even escorting them too and from work
Letting the privileged and those with connections jump the queue
Doing naff all about the health centers letting peopke jump the queue
Kowtowing to the bosses and not implementing work from home

Utter shambolic. It’s bringing all of the worst things about Taiwan to the surface.

I’m expecting it to break that the Mob— The Bamboo Nipples or whatever they call themselves-- have managed to get a bunch of vaccines ahead of everyone else anytime soon.

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To add to it, antibody concentration == vaccine efficacy

And you need to really suck at making vaccines to not pass the phase 2 trial…

Thats not true, they didnt say they didnt have the means to. They said that producing that many would be difficult,not that didnt have the means. The extra production could have seen Taiwan become a net exporter, but again didnt want to take the risk

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The entire vaccine budget approved by the Legislative Yuan last year was 11.5 billion NT, which was enough to buy 19.6 million doses if BNT would sell the doses at the price that US paid ($19.5 USD). So they didn’t have the money to buy 30 million doses. Would you have spent your entire budget on one unproven vaccine if you were the CDC?

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If that was the budget then you have the problem

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They’ll be cutting more cheques than that, the way this virus is sucking up resources.

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Really? That’s an answer.
So, Thailand got the AZ manufacturing and now has “supply issues”.
Dumb fuq-nuts couldn’t even say “yes, we’ll make that supply # happen”. Taiwan has the ability. If you’re a businessman at a trade show and someone suddenly comes to your cubicle and says, can you make X amount (and it is HUGE for both publicity and profits), you say Yes right then and there and then start fuqqing working on the details ASAP. You don’t say “Sorry, we cannot do that, because we’re stupid at figuring out production.”
Sheet, what is all this MIT crap slogan, if you cannot do it yourself.
So, there is plenty of blame to be dealt around like spoiled 菜 for the AZ manufacturing deal fuq-up.

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Exactly. Taiwan HAD the means. There are companies that do have the ability to do it. So, again, there is big blame sheet that needs to be thrown at CDC Chen and others that fuqqed up that deal.

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You don’t pay it all up front. Milestones. Anyway they needed to allocate more .

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It’s probably due to the amount of face time required, and trying to get back to school normal. I don’t think you can get a bunch of young kids to pay attention to a monitor all day and not be distracted. You’d have to have someone around and baby-sitting them at the same time.

When you’re in Academia Sinica, you’re in Academia Sinica. You don’t care whether the vaccine is made in mainland China, or in the US, or in your own backyard. You care about the science. And science doesn’t care about you, who you are, who your connections are etc etc etc. Science just doesn’t give a shit.

Seems like Tsai is putting undue pressure on the people around her. Even Chen is feeling the heat as of late, when he states “someone” is unhappy.

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In my limited experience in business most of the time the client would boast about their demand and the sales rep have to figure out the actual business. It’s very unlikely they’ll put down 30M in their very first contract.

Want to hear some interesting conspiracy rumor? Some say the government is saving the production line for domestic vaccines.

the [cabbage] is [spoiled]

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