Is Pfizer's Vaccine Plan Fair?

Prognosis: Misconception

Bloomberg

Health & Fitness, Science

4.1 • 838 Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2021

⏱️ 19 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vaccine distribution still has the feel of a zero-sum game. Five days after Israel received 700,000 doses of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine, Pfizer told other non-U.S. customers that it would cut supplies while it briefly closed a facility in Belgium.

The disparity in vaccine allocation is the product of a company struggling to apportion doses while demand far exceeds supply. Stephanie Baker and Cynthia Koons reported for Bloomberg Businessweek that the company has determined how many doses a country gets through an opaque process that appears to involve a mix of order size, position in the queue, production forecasts, calls from world leaders, and of course the desire to make a profit.

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0:00.0	What could you do if your data was working for you and not against you? With Bloomberg delivering
0:07.3	enterprise data directly to your systems, you get easy access to the details you want, optimized for
0:14.1	higher level analysis, and financial data experts committed to helping you maximize your every move.
0:24.0	Our data is made for more, so you can show the world what you're made of. Visit Bloomberg.com slash enterprise data to learn more.
0:30.6	Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day 356 since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today's main story,
0:43.0	demand for the Pfizer vaccine from everywhere in the world far outstripped supply. That means the
0:50.5	company has made tough decisions about how much to supply to different countries.
0:55.7	And many world leaders aren't happy about the way they've done it.
1:01.6	But first, here's what happened in virus news today.
1:10.4	People in the U.S. are warming to the idea of getting a vaccine.
1:15.9	A Pew Research poll shows COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy in the country is ebbing.
1:22.3	But the same study shows that partisan differences in people's intention to get vaccinated is widening.
1:30.3	In November, 39% of people said they probably, or definitely, wouldn't get a shot.
1:37.3	That number declined to 30% in February.
1:42.3	About three-quarters agree that widespread vaccination would help the economy,
1:48.3	though Republicans are less prone to that view than Democrats. The vaccine being developed by
1:56.6	AstraZeneca and Oxford University appears to protect against the Brazilian variant of the disease.
2:03.5	A person familiar with the matter told Reuters, the shot will not need to be modified
2:08.4	to protect against the Brazil P1 variant. Results come from a study by Oxford University that has not yet
2:16.7	been made public.
2:18.9	Finally, Canada's public health agency licensed Johnson & Johnson's coronavirus vaccine,
2:26.0	making it the fourth shot available in the country.
	...

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