So, the current working theory about Africa is that they have really good contact-tracing systems (because they still have lots of infectious diseases) and people comply more with infection control measures (because they still have infectious diseases).
The trouble with the developed world is that public health has been so successful that people appear to have forgotten why we need it.
Among other factors, South America seems to show the strong winter seasonality pattern typical of coronavirus infections (not just SARS-CoV2). Much of Africa does not (the continent spans northern and southern hemispheres to a greater degree, and has far more population in a tropical belt), though South Africa seems to.
The majority of people in South America are partially or mostly of American Indian descent. It's been generally known for a long time that American Indians are hit harder by the flu. Some research papers on covid seem to indicate a similar trend. As such, it may not be so surprising to see worse numbers in a continent of people genetically susceptible to the disease.
Africa is also pretty easy. Median age in Africa is 19.7. Median age in Europe is 42.5. Median age in the US is 37.9.
We know that young people are very unlikely to die from covid, so a place that skews so young would have fewer deaths.
Likewise, given the large number of much more lethal diseases in Africa combined with young age and poor medical facilities, people with preexisting conditions are much less common and are much more likely to be killed by other, more lethal diseases.
This is not correct. If you adjust for population size, most of highly-developed Europe is doing much worse than the USA right now. That includes Germany, Switzerland, etc.
The US has had 34k cases and 760 deaths per million people. Germany has had 10k cases and 152 deaths per million people. So Germany has done 3 to 5 times better than the US so far. The only Western European country that has clearly worse numbers than the US is Belgium and in part that may be because they have a much broader definition of deaths with COVID19.
How do you figure that? Taking the example of Germany, their numbers of new cases and new deaths from the same source are ~2x less than the US per population. By what metric is Germany doing much worse than the USA right now?
At this writing, Europe as a whole has a population of 747.8 million, and 14.1 million COVID-19 cases, for a population-adjusted rate of 18,900 per million.
The US incidence rate is 34,400/1M, 182% of Europe's.
EU has 8.57m active cases for a 11,500/1M active case rate.
US has 4.23m active cases, for 12,800/1M active case rate.
Note that Spain, UK, Netherlands, and Sweden don't report on active or recovered cases. Nor does the US state of Oregon.
The margin is much thinner, though reported data still give the edge to the EU. Given that Spain and the UK represent large current EU outbreaks, that margin could shift to the advantage of the US.
I'll note that US cases are continuing to grow largely unhindered whilst several EU outbreaks (notably France) may have peaked as lockdowns' impacts are seen.
It is difficult but its not because of the price, although that's there too. It's that developing countries may not have the infrastructure to transport and store the vaccine at the recommended temperature of -70C.
The moderna vaccine does not need -70c, juste -20 to be stored indefinitely (regular freezer), and even higher than that if you can ship relatively quickly (i.e weeks)
Developed countries don't have infrastructure for -70C distribution. The US is going to struggle to actually distribute the Pfizer vaccine. It's not like your local CVS has a freezer that goes down to -70C. Dry ice is possible but there's a shortage of that, too. Nobody has ever distributed a vaccine that needs to be stored at -70C.
The Moderna one is much easier, you just need a normal freezer. Which is fine for developed countries, will still be a challenge elsewhere (but one they're used to, it's not the first vaccine that needs to be kept cold)
There is no shortage of dry ice. The input (CO2) is a byproduct of industrial processes (ethanol in particular) and so the market is completely glutted. It is also used for a number of industrial process so there is plenty of infrastructure to produce it in any city.
Poor countries might face a different issue even if they get hold of vaccines - some of them (not sure if just Pfizer's) need to be kept in really cold environments [1]. Thus some countries will struggle with distributing it.
Pfizer's is the worst, and they give you 5 days at more normal temperatures. It will be more much difficult logistically, but if needed anywhere in the world is 5 days from any place else if it is important enough.
It doesn't seem to be rich vs poor countries in this case. The Moderna vaccine is expensive. Too expensive, even for some developed countries that rejected it as an option.
If the US government is happy to hand out billions in funding and then pay a high price for the doses, why would a private company not take advantage of this?
Somehow the EU/UK convinced AstraZeneca to sell the Oxford vaccine at production cost.
> If the US government is happy to hand out billions in funding and then pay a high price for the doses, why would a private company not take advantage of this?
The US government paid Moderna $1B to fund the development and $1.5B for 100 million doses. They are paying Pfizer $1.9B for 100 million doses of their vaccine. I don't consider $25/dose (maximum) or $19/dose to be "a high price".
It is a high price when you consider low income countries. For example, in Sudan the average monthly income is about ~$49. That's less than the cost of a 2 dose regime of this vaccine. That's a $2 billion price tag to vaccine all 40+ million Sudanese. Africa has 1.2 billion people. It is going to be extraordinarily expensive and difficult to eradicate COVID globally, so we are going to need cheaper vaccines to help us do that.
There is no reason other than political will stopping the WHO and developed nations from subsidizing the purchase of vaccines for places like Africa. In fact, I don't think there is any vaccine that a country like Sudan could afford to administer without such subsidies. Additionally, I suspect the cost of distributing and administering the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in those areas is going to dwarf the raw cost of the doses anyway, considering the temperature sensitivities of the front runner candidates.
That said, the person I was replying to was claiming the price was too high for some developed nations.
> Moderna said it would charge other governments from $32 to $37 per dose. The charge to the United States, which has already committed about $2.5 billion to help develop Moderna’s vaccine and buy doses, comes out to about $24.80 a shot
Yes, they're expecting to profit to some degree, but those charges don't look to be particularly out of line for a newer vaccine from a quick skim of price data.
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I can't see how any developed country would choose to pass on it at that cost if available to them while others are still under development/not available in sufficient supply.
The economic damage this is causing is massive and anything that gets you past this even slightly faster is more than worth that price.
You could vaccinate the whole UK population for $2.3bn (in medication costs). The pandemic is causing vastly more economic damage than that to the UK.
Through only August, COVID has cost just the UK government (to say nothing of other economic damage) over $277bn (@current exchange rates). The vaccine could cost half, it could cost 5x as much, but it would still be absurd to do anything other than pay it and get it out to as much of your population as you can if it's available to distribute and other vaccines aren't.
Even if you've got something else in the works, if buying what you can of this gets you "reopened/normal" a month or two earlier than not, it's still an obvious economic win for any developed country.
The cost to manufacture is cheap as chips - governments pay $3-$10 per shot when they buy millions. Transporting and administering increases the price but not significantly.
Of course a country that could pay $1bn half a year ago in advance on the chance that the vaccine works will be ahead in the production queue in front of a poor country that only now puts in orders.
Bill Gates was there looking for answers as well. And he has been working with some companies for long enough to get ahead of the line just because he was there before this need.
The worst hit places per https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/07/15/tracking... seem to be Latin American; Mexico, Peru, Ecuador.
It is possible that Africa simply lacks the data.