From the AstraZeneca comments

Transverse Myletitis has a background incidence of 4/million in the US. Currently there are 2 cases reported out of 18,000 people who have already been administered the vaccine. Of those two, one was diagnosed with concurrent MS (another neurodegenerative autoimmune condition known to cause TM and whose population has a 2000% relative risk increase in developing TM depending on criteria used) and one has not had details released.

With 18,000 data points, a “1%” risk would require there to be 178 missed cases. Odds of that are astronomically low. Much more likely, if there were any real correlation (which again seems rather unlikely) we are looking at something 80+) and would STILL result in fewer deaths than waiting. If the choice were this or letting Covid become endemic with just an influenza fatality rate, this would again be the more ethical choice. Economically 1.1 million being totally disabled would be somewhere around $3 trillion, which again would be vastly cheaper than ending transmission through current social policies. In terms of raw lives lost, a 1% incidence would easily be less than letting Covid run.

People say we need more numbers, but funny enough their doom and gloom scenarios invariably involve scenarios that are necessarily imply that all the trial data to date is spurious and/or that even if true are less deadly than waiting.

And note that this argument has no justification for pausing the trial. With 2 data points, 1 of which is almost certainly spurious for the general population, the solution is to keep administering it.

Reality is that regulators and drug companies are simply not doing a cost benefit calculation that weights the currently dying at all in the US. I am hoping that the drug companies are being amoral profit seekers and are hoping to just browbeat the FDA once the Brits get things settled and the US policy scene (one way or the other) stops being about Mr. Trump.

That is from MR commentator Sure.  And also from him:

The other thing to remember is that a lot of pharma’s actual business is not as much discovery of new entities, rather they buy up rights to a lot of those and then take somebody else’s work through the years long process of approval. For big pharma much of their comparative advantage is in navigating an expensive, byzantine approval process. Take that away and they might face far more competition from smaller firms and potentially foreign firms that can manage the new landscape better.

Lastly, pharma lives in fear of the regulators while trying to suborn them. Going against them FDA bureaucrats (who are unlikely to want to de facto kill their own jobs) risks one of them grinding an axe and slow walking a blockbuster approval or fast walking a biosimilar approval. Either of those actions will easily change the net profit for a pharma firm by more than they could possibly make off a Covid vaccine.

Currently, faster has very little upside for them. They have pre-commitment so they are going to get paid even if they are slow. There are dozen odd vaccines coming down the pike and one, maybe two, will take the lion’s share of the market once the immediate crisis is over. They are mostly doing this to win goodwill and being the guy whose vaccine kills 2,000 people is bad if your competitors kill only 5. From a public health perspective, we would be better with the less safe vaccine a month sooner than the safer vaccine a month later (and ideally we would get both and swap promptly). For the pharma firms, the calculus just goes towards being as slow as the rest of pack and being ungodly thorough.

Perhaps things will improve in a few weeks’ time.

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