China to provide 2 billion doses of vaccine to world this year

China to provide 2 billion doses of vaccine to world this year

I just read this and wanted to share it. I am a bit surprised that they would do this but it may be an attempt to avoid long and drawn out legal battles over their culpability in the virus traveling the world.

This would probably be a welcome helping hand in poorer countries that don't have the means to purchase the vaccinations outright.

What do you think?

 

No thanks.

 

Can only imagine what the Chinese would put in it.

 

Like maybe they should be working an a vaccine for the NEXT one to escape from their flea-trap labs.......

 

No fracking way. Just imagine what’s in it.

 

All of you are hysterical. I was thinking the same thing but tried to be "neutral" in my OP.

 

China has been generous with countries that the west has bypassed, or countries that can't afford the top tier vaccines.

Sinovac is a crappy vaccine in terms of efficacy, but better than nothing.

 

MM, what have you heard about Sinovac? I know some people were upset that Putin wouldn't disclose which vaccine he received with some saying that he didn't trust his own country's product but he hasn't made any statement on that speculation.

 

So, just to be clear this is the Chinese one.

I have a lot of relatives in the Philippines and this is the go-to vaccine. Although they now have ordered some pfizer. Presumably at a lower price.

According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (Chile), Sinovac has an efficacy rate of 65.9% against Covid-19, is 87.5% effective at preventing hospitalisation and 86.3% effective at preventing death. Little data about its effectiveness against the Delta variant.

So that's a pretty middling results. But better than nothing.

A big advantage is that can be stored above freezing. Moderna's vaccine needs to be stored at -20C and Pfizer's vaccine at -70C. As you can imagine this is quite appealing for third world countries, especially with rural distribution.

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2107715

 

China has been taking every opportunity to push soft power for a long time now. This doesn't surprise me.

 

Not with a gun to my head. I'd eat a bullet first.

 

Maybe dark soy sauce with a hint toasted sesame oil and untreated Yangtze River water....

 

And some MSG for flavoring!

 

They're definitely filling a vacuum, throughout the Pacific, Asia and Africa. I predict South America is next.

However it's purely economic soft power. They have very little to offer in terms of cultural leadership.

 

I think it would be good if not a single dose enters the U.S.

 

China is filling a serious gap that the USA can not fill.

Our vaccines were bought and paid for by giant amounts of our tax dollars

We essentially purchased the creation of these vaccines with our tax dollars, but the administration demanded that the contract be changed to make the resulting vaccines become fully the property of the drug corporations that carried out the work we paid for. That was a change made by our federal administration.

So, the US is hamstrung in trying to help nations which are seriously struggling - the nations where new variants are emerging, due to the population of COVID victims there.

Unlike China, the USA can not do what needs to be done, because the US has no rights to these vaccines.


We get left in a position of us the wealthy caring for ourselves alone, while China works to help these people of so many nations struggling with COVID.

And, these other nations absolutely know that.

 

Smart move on China's part. It buys them influence and more UN votes.

 

It also leaves them looking benevolent. That will come in quite handy if they are found complicit or culpable in the release of the virus.

 

Assuming they are covering up for something hits me as depraved.

We help other nations, too. And, we do that with full self interest in mind. Suggesting China wouldn't do that is ridiculous.

The only news in this case is that the USA decided to say FU to third world nations when it comes to COVID.

And, China didn't.

 

Oh, I don't KNOW if they are covering up anything or not. I know their worldview is quite different from ours. My comment comes from my own questions about what they knew and when. I don't watch television and I don't look for news online unless I see a headline of interest somewhere. I do that because I'm too sensitive and it hurts me to hear so much bad news all the time.

The FIRST I, personally, heard of COVID was when I went for a doctor's appointment and they asked screening questions about my travel to/from there and/or exposure to anyone who may have traveled to/from there. I came home and looked it up and learned about the alarmist doctor. He basically put out a video warning about how bad it was and that it was OUT. The China government either had the police pick him up or question him or something like that. He died a few days later. That was December 2019.

I'm struggling with the reasoning behind silencing him instead of warning the rest of the world. It could be just good old fashion bureaucracy. I don't know either way.

I didn't intend to suggest that if that's what you're saying.

Right. It had more to do with the manufacturers not wanting to share the proprietary information for other countries to make their own vaccines. At the time, @CenterField posted quite strongly about why we (the US) should donate what we could.

Nope. They didn't.

 

Well, we have donated significant numbers of doses already.
And yes, of course it makes sense. We have a surplus. We have pretty much vaccinated almost everybody who wants a vaccine. People can walk into any Walgreens or similar these days, even without an appointment, and get it. At the end of the day they often throw away doses that went unused and will spoil.

So, why wouldn't we help other countries? It's not only the ethical and humanitarian thing to do, but also serves our interests - getting good will (a.k.a. vaccine diplomacy), decreasing the influence on those countries of our geopolitical enemies Russia and China (who will step in if we don't do it), AND decreasing the likelihood that these poorly vaccinated countries will give birth to nasty variants that will come back to bite us.

There isn't a single good reason for not doing it, and there are lots of good reasons for doing it. Those who think F... the other countries are being extremely short-sighed.

This said, I wouldn't help other countries if we didn't have a surplus. It's like the oxygen mask in a plane. You don yours first before you help your seat neighbor, including because if you don't and you pass out, you won't be able to help him.

 

Sounds like a conflict of interest- create the virus, with some help money from the US, and let it loose from your lab to reek havoc on the world. And then, prohibit international organizations from entering your country to investigate. Engage in massive subterfuge.

And, then “donate” vaccines to fight the said created virus to poor countries in order to appear compassionate, all the while, no telling what is contained inside these vaccines.

Sure, the US can do more, but so can European countries and the Big Pharma themselves. Didn’t Bill Gates buy a bunch of vaccines for some countries in Africa?

why would anyone trust the CCP?

 

This IS my internal struggle. I like to believe that most people are good at heart but real life just isn't all that pretty.

I basically asked the same question around the time that we were waiting on shipments of masks and medical supplies from China. I was told that I was being paranoid. It all is just a bit "too close for comfort" for me.

 

Im not taking that one either.

 

You're in the US, right? They aren't donating to us. Your immune system is probably like Kryptonite from the work you do.