AstraZeneca exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-astrazeneca-results-vaccine-liability/astrazeneca-to-be-exempt-from-coronavirus-vaccine-liability-claims-in-most-countries-idUKKCN24V2EN

by ColanR • 6 years ago

109 118 6 years ago

uk.reuters.com

simonblack• 6 years ago

That raises a huge red flag in my mind over its safety.

Big pharmaceutical companies have a history of marketing drugs that aren't quite as good or harmless as they are made out to be.

mrgordon2• 6 years ago

Well you can't have it both ways.

1. We want you to sell us the drug at cost with no profit margin

2. We want you to be responsible for unlimited liability for whatever the drug might eventually do

Oh, and by the way, we want you to rush your testing so you don't have the normal time to verify its safety!

jarym2• 6 years ago

Oh, and by the way, we want you to rush your testing so you don't have the normal time to verify its safety!

This! The public are acutely aware of the predicament that governments have created and most will be very skeptical of a vaccine that's been rushed through like this especially if a regulator says 'sure its totally safe' when we can all see the data to determine that cannot possibly exist in the near future.

ekianjo• 6 years ago

2. We want you to be responsible for unlimited liability for whatever the drug might eventually do

Well, yeah, we don't want a drug that kills more people than it saves, right?

we want you to rush your testing

That's not happening, what will be accelerated will be regulatory approvals and reviews, not clinical trials.

toast0• 6 years ago

This seems inline with at least US practices. Most (many?) vaccines are covered by the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which shields the manufacturer from liability for covered injuries.

foobarbazetc• 6 years ago

Not that it’s relevant in this particular case, but I don’t take anything that’s only approved in the US, because the FDA really doesn’t care, and especially doesn’t care right now.

Most drug companies actually view the US as the beta test country in a lot of ways.

If something makes it to Australia (who are very strict on pharmaceuticals) then it’s usually pretty safe.

refurb6• 6 years ago

As someone who has worked directly with the FDA, this is an absurd position. If anything, the FDA errs on the side of causing no harm versus getting a much needed treatment approved.

And it might be good to know that most countries approve drugs based on the same data - global clinical trials. Australia is looking at the same data as the US when making an approval decision. Some countries require local trials (China and India, I believe).

In addition, there is plenty of collaboration across drug approval bodies when developing or changing regulations. They are all talking to each other to determine the best approach.

Here is a good example of the FDA and TGA (Australia) and Canada approving a new cancer drug together[1]

[1] https://www.fdanews.com/articles/192766-fda-approves-first-c...

Alex39172• 6 years ago

I don’t take anything that’s only approved in the US, because the FDA really doesn’t care, and especially doesn’t care right now.

Alternatively, just don't take anything where the patent hasn't expired. Once the patent has been expired for a few years you'll actually get the truth about the dangers of the drug, because the pharma companies then need to make the old drugs look dangerous in comparison to the new ones. (E.g. why they're publishing fake data about hydroxychloroquine in Lancet and elsewhere.)

s1artibartfast• 6 years ago

In my experience, drugs are approved in the US first and foremost because it is the most lucrative market.

centimeter3• 6 years ago

Most drug companies actually view the US as the beta test country in a lot of ways.

This is mostly wrong, except maybe for vaccines. The EMA, for example, has vastly lower regulatory requirements for most drugs than the FDA. Many sources actually estimate that, on net, the FDA has killed more people than it's saved simply by excessively delaying the availability of new drugs in the US.

Vaccines go through a different process in the US than most drugs, where the vaccine manufacturers self-certify the safety of their drugs and send a report to the FDA, who either signs off on the certification or doesn't. But the FDA doesn't manage any of the trials, unlike with other drugs. Vaccine manufacturers are also more protected from liability than other kinds of drug manufacturers, via the NVICP.

If a non-vaccine drug is approved first in the US, it's almost certainly because the drug is expensive to manufacture and the only country where the manufacturer can expect to break even (at least at first) is the US.

bitcurious• 6 years ago

Most drug companies actually view the US as the beta test country in a lot of ways.

This has more to do with the fact that if you can’t sell it in the US you’re not making any money off of it. The US is a vital market for novel drugs.

m0zg• 6 years ago

That's the problem with a vaccine as compared to a therapeutic. You need to give it to a billion people for it to do any good. Some percentage of those people will have complications and die. If they fuck up with vaccine testing (which could cause the effect opposite of what the vaccine normally does, possibly weeks or _months_ after immunization), _millions_ could die, eclipsing the loss of life from the virus itself.

Before someone attempts to read my mind: I, and everyone else in my family, am fully immunized, including some vaccines (e.g. BCG) not normally administered in the US. I also do the flu shot every year.

But I do understand the risks a rushed vaccine could pose, and so I won't be taking it until at least 6 months after the initial wave of vaccination, and a careful study of population-scale safety and efficacy.

deeg• 6 years ago

I'm not sure people understand the scale that vaccines work at. Right now--because we are close to wiping out polio--more people die every year from the polio vaccine than the actual disease. When you give billions of people a vaccine, even a one-in-a-million problem will still lead to thousands of deaths. It could be very hard to have wide-scale vaccines if we allowed people to sue for every death.

(Just to be clear: I am very pro-vax. Get all recommended vaccinations.)

creato• 6 years ago

I don't think the issue is that simple. For example, a Lyme disease vaccine was pulled from the market over dubious safety issues [1]:

This panel, described by one participant as raucous and riotous [35], provided a forum for all of the stakeholders [36]. In support of the vaccine, the FDA summarized the VAERS data and concluded that the evidence did not support a causative association. The vaccine manufacturer, now GlaxoSmithKline following a corporate merger, assured the assembled parties that the LYMErix™ vaccine did not cause harm to its recipients. They reviewed the status of their phase IV post-marketing surveillance. Practising physicians spoke of vaccine efficacy by describing the dramatic reduction in Lyme disease cases in their own practices.
Others raised concerns about the vaccine's safety. Scientists argued a potential role for genetic susceptibility and OspA-related autoimmunity in vaccine complications. Poignant presentations by several ‘vaccine victims’ described in detail their suffering. The prosecuting lawyers for the largest class action suit claimed that manufacturers suppressed reports of adverse events from the licensing trial and provided inadequate warnings to genetically susceptible individuals.
After hearing compelling testimonies from all the interested parties, the panel concluded the benefits of LYMErix™ continued to outweigh its risks. The panel made no changes to the product's labelling or indications. However, the FDA required the manufacturer to provide more vaccine safety and efficacy data by increasing the enrolment in their ongoing phase IV trial. The LYMErix™ vaccine remained available for public use.
Market withdrawal Spawned by the press coverage of vaccine risks and the ongoing litigation, vaccine sales fell off dramatically in 2001. On 26 February 2002 GlaxoSmithKline decided to withdraw LYMErix™ from the market citing poor market performance [37].
On 9 July 2003 the pharmaceutical giant settled the class action suits with Sheller, Ludwig & Bailey as well as several other smaller law firms. The final agreement included over 1 million dollars in legal fees for the prosecuting lawyers, but provided no financial compensation to the ‘vaccine victims’. The plaintiffs’ attorneys stated that the voluntary removal of LYMErix™ from the market accomplished the main goal of the suit. Despite the settlement, the manufacturer continued to deny that LYMErix™ caused harm and indicated that the decision to settle represented a choice based on economic concerns (i.e. the desire to avoid the costs of lengthy litigation) for a product showing relatively poor performance in the market.

1. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2870557/

open-source-ux• 6 years ago

"That raises a huge red flag in my mind over its safety."

In this particular case, AstraZeneca are not doing the research for a COVID-19 vaccine. They have struck an agreement with the University of Oxford to manufacture and distribute the university's COVID-19 vaccine (still under development).

https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-04-30-landmark-partnership-an...

cmiles74• 6 years ago

Keep in mind that they won't be marketing this vaccine at all. They agree to produce the vaccine at no profit.

"To back its claim to forgo profits from the $1.2 billion collaboration in the United States, Astra has even granted the government access to financial accounts related to the venture, according to Dobber."

With no profit at stake, I would bet they sell directly to the governments. I wonder if this means they can make no profit in any country... That would certainly be good news for the world at large but it's not clear to me from the text in the article.

gruez• 6 years ago

That would certainly be good news for the world at large

If they made it for the us "profit free", then sold the patent/manufacturing process to their international subsidiaries for $1, then the rest of the countries and AstraZeneca is benefiting at the expense of the united states. We'd be basically funding the r&d for the vaccine and giving it to AstraZeneca for free.

psychometry4• 6 years ago

The mechanisms of vaccines make them inherently much safer than, say, chemotherapy drugs. I'm not too worried.

sokoloff3• 6 years ago

Far more people are exposed to vaccines than chemotherapy drugs.

onetimemanytime3• 6 years ago

Chemo is given to you after you have a super deadly disease, cancer. Unless you take chemo you are dead in a very short time so you very little to lose and a lot to gain . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hail_Mary_pass

vmception• 6 years ago

It sucks that aspects of this pandemic undermine their own credibility to even us data-driven people.

Really makes it difficult.

kelnos• 6 years ago

This doesn't surprise me at all. Consider that the US has a federal agency set up specifically to pay out vaccination harm claims, and intentionally sets a low bar for those payouts. The rationale is that getting lots and lots of people vaccinated is a public good, so it's best to reassure people that if something bad happens that seems to be even vaguely correlated with a vaccine they take, they'll be taken care of financially.

Certainly this particular vaccine situation is unique, but indemnifying AstraZeneca, especially after asking them to sell the vaccine at cost, doesn't seem unreasonable.

Legogris2• 6 years ago

after asking them to sell the vaccine at cost

Reading the article it sounds like it’s supposed to be a break-even affair.

tyingq• 6 years ago

The effect this has on, for example, tv commercials, is amusing.

There are actual aired television commercials where the quickly spoken disclaimers include "death" as a side effect. I only notice this because I have subtitles enabled. They say it very fast.

zackees• 6 years ago

All vaccines in the USA have exempted by liability protections since 1986.

They are also exempt from all double blind placebo testing by the FDA because they have carved out a special exemption. Vaccines are classified as “biologics” which is a relic from the cold war era.

If someone gets vaccine damaged they have to go through a special vaccine court, which to this day has paid out $4.5 billion. Getting an award requires the awardee signing an NDA as a requirement.

mountainboy• 6 years ago

upvoted. this is the most important information in this thread.

castevictim• 6 years ago

If that sounded like red flag, Indian Government had given a specific date - August 15(this year) for the launch of their vaccine from a private company, by which the labs conducting trials for their vaccine should finish all three phases of vaccine trials and give approval[0]. When did the enrollment of participants for the trial start? July 7th(this year).

Why August 15? It is independence day and PM would like to make an announcement that India created the worlds first vaccine.

[0]https://scroll.in/article/966815/with-demand-for-vaccine-by-...

centimeter3• 6 years ago

Vaccine companies in general get special (lower liability) legal treatment. https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html

onetimemanytime3• 6 years ago

the virus is killing tens of thousands a day. You want a vaccine as fast as possible? This is it. BUT...

Take it or leave. The, say $2 Billion in, profits that AstraZeneca can make from the vaccine don't justify being sued by 3 billion people for every headache or miscarriage. Or for real problems it may cause. By the way, in USA vaccine suits are settled by a special fund https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/index.html otherwise no one would make them.

username90• 6 years ago

the virus is killing tens of thousands a day.

There hasn't been a single day with over ten thousand worldwide deaths from corona so far.

CodeWriter23• 6 years ago

That raises a huge red flag in my mind over its safety.

The Childhood Immunization Act of 1986 indemnifies all vaccine makers in the United States and requires a $0.75 Federal Excise Tax per dose that the government uses to indemnify vaccine manufacturers. Also, any such lawsuits can only be filed in The US Court of Federal Claims, an administrative court. No features of common litigation like discovery, expert witnesses, etc.

hannob• 6 years ago

I would usually be with you. I feel this is an exception. For obvious reasons (it's urgent, it's important, it's more important than any of the usual medical interventions).

But also for other reasons. Here's the thing: Once a covid vaccine becomes available I expect pretty much every expert on the topic to look at the data, to think about the safety and many of them will comment on it. If there are concerns about the safety of this vaccine then someone will tell us.

What I want to express is this: We will know plenty of things about how risky a vaccine will be. We will have to make decisions. Both as a society and as individuals. Those decisions won't be easy. But I'm not really concerned that we won't hear about the downsides of a potential vaccine.

HeadsUpHigh• 6 years ago

You can't have it both ways. It either comes fast and cheap or it takes much longer, it's safer and much more expensive.

Obviously here some countries will choose the former at least for the early coronavirus vaccines. This could create a useful middle-ground where the most vulnerable groups are vaccinated early and the rest of the population waits for post-release data.

IfOnlyYouKnew• 6 years ago

That's probably... fine?

these vaccines are developed in a process far more open than any typical pharmaceutical research. The risks at issue here are unlikely to be of the bad-faith variety that can be discouraged with liability.

Instead, these will be genuine known and unknown unknowns. There will be a lot of scrutiny, which will allow governments and the public at large to make these decisions under uncertainty with the benefit of the best possible information at the time.

With the company not enjoying a significant informational advantage, the moral and practical case for liability just doesn't make any sense.

That is a standard approach for the otherwise intractable collision of a legal system that apportions the damages of anything that goes wrong on the party mostly responsible for it, and the medical reality of almost all interventions coming with some potential for grievous harm: by default, your surgeon would always be "responsible", in sense of civil law, not morality or criminal law. Because the general principle allocates responsibility with those making decisions.

"Informed consent" is about getting you into a position to make decisions, and thereby share in the responsibility.

mrgordon2• 6 years ago

Well put

WalterBright2• 6 years ago

apportions the damages of anything that goes wrong on the party mostly responsible for it

That is usually interpreted to mean the party with the money gets stuck with the damages. Nobody sues a penniless person.

mrweasel• 6 years ago

The Covid-19 vaccine is also expected to be ready in an amazingly short time frame compared to normal vaccine development. If we’re asking for a vaccine in 2020/2021 we have to accept that it may have serious flaws and side effects.

I’m fine with the exemption, it’s the speed of development and testing that concerns me. We can’t possibly know the side effects after short trials.

PragmaticPulp• 6 years ago

In the United States, an existing law from 2005 likely already covers these cases anyway:

The United States, however, already has a law to exclude tort claims from products that help control a public-health crises in the form of the 2005 Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness, or PREP Act.

It's also important to note that AstraZeneca has also pledged to supply the doses with no profit:

AstraZeneca, Britain’s second-largest drugmaker, has pledged to supply a total of more than 2 billion doses at no profit in agreements with the United States, Britain and European countries, among other nations and organisations.

The exemption from liability claims is a function of the massive scale, the rushed timeline, and the lack of profit to defend claims in court.

When you're supplying a vaccine at the scale of billions of people, it's inevitable that many people will convince themselves that the vaccine is the cause of unrelated medical issues. Even if the vaccine turns out to be just as benign as every other vaccine out there, having tens or hundreds of thousands of people attempt to sue these companies under the mistaken notion that the vaccine caused their problems could be extremely costly.

The alternative would be a much more expensive vaccine (profit margins to buffer against potential losses) delivered much later (additional years of safety testing and R&D).

rubyn00bie• 6 years ago

I am okay with this... mostly because I don't think even someone/organization with the best intentions could possibly ship this without establishing this sort of clause up front.

If anything, not doing so, would make me _more_ concerned because it seems like overconfidence, or refusing to acknowledge how long it normally takes to do clinical trials on something before releasing it the public.

I know there are predatory pharmaceutical companies who would put their own profits way ahead of others... I just don't think in a global pandemic its going to be easy to intentionally lie about, or misrepresent, the effects of a cure to said pandemic. No amount of signed contracts would protect the company from the sheer volume of people marching to take their heads.

refurb6• 6 years ago

This should not surprise anyone. Giving an exemption from vaccine injury is pretty standard and there is a fund for payouts if children are injured by a vaccine. This isn’t the only exemption.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_I...

aaron695• 6 years ago

“This is a unique situation where we as a company simply cannot take the risk if in ... four years the vaccine is showing side effects,”

It's going to be well known any of the vaccines available will be considered risky.

I'm not sure people are considering how society will react to that.

Mirioron• 6 years ago

I'm not sure people are considering how society will react to that.

There will be a decent chunk of people that will be very apprehensive and they will probably be relentlessly shamed for their apprehension. Look at the amount of shaming that goes on regarding masks. I don't think there would be any less for a vaccine that somebody doesn't want to take. It'll probably just deepen the divide between people even further.

It's also completely reasonable for the company to take the stance they do.

supernova87a• 6 years ago

I wonder if any stats or math go into this decision, and what the thresholds/limits of risk are? Or perhaps they're programmed into the criteria for what is accepted as the eventual vaccine.

Because this decision is most definitely making a call about the value of saved lives / avoided sickness, versus the likelihood of unintentionally caused sickness due to vaccine side effects.

I wonder what the acceptable numbers / risk percentages are.

jarym2• 6 years ago

I understand why but on the other hand, there is a sense these vaccines are being rushed and the obvious question is what corners have been cut (if any).

The last thing we would need is for anti-vaxxers to have a genuine concern and this raises many red flags.

So many governments have failed at every turn to deal with this virus it hardly inspires confidence that we should trust them on this especially as they are all desperate to get economies back on track so their own control procedures may be softened. And if there are significant side-effects I doubt there's globally any 'compensation' fund large enough.

ghthor• 6 years ago

Dont worry, anyone that had a kid legitimately hurt by a vaccine is looking at the people cheering on a vaccine and thinks you are crazy.

pastrami_panda7• 6 years ago

In Stockholm about 20% of the population now have antibodies, despite a lot social distancing. We have plenty of hospital beds ready in the event the number of people with respiratory problems would rise. No one is using face masks and the official consensus is that it doesn't provide enough contamination protection to be currently worthwhile. We keep our gatherings small and avoid crowds or close interactions where possible. Our authorities in control of elderly homes really did screw up in the early parts of the outbreak though, and a lot of elderly people lost their lives because of that. But overall things are moving toward a more normal society each day. I'm far removed from the belief that we need a rushed vaccine to cope with this pandemic. I can't speak for other countries and their strategies though but this is a local correspondence from the ground sort of speak.

mattigames2• 6 years ago

Stockholm as less than 1 million people, is not smart to compare it with anything bigger I think.

pastrami_panda7• 6 years ago

I'm not comparing anything, just reporting what I'm seeing. I will say I'm glad we have an authority basing their decisions on the well being of the people based on the science we have at hand rather than political clout though.

refurb6• 6 years ago

Thanks for sharing.

I chuckle a bit when I read "country X was one of the few that dealt with Covid the right way". To me, it's funny to call out the winner when when the "race" has just started.

Come back in 2 years and we'll see which country had the right approach. It wouldn't surprise me it's Sweden.

tialaramex4• 6 years ago

Come back in 2 years and we'll see which country had the right approach. It wouldn't surprise me it's Sweden.

This would be very difficult. There are two elements you'd need to be right.

On the one hand the pandemic has to turn out to be unstoppable. No vaccine, no amount of test & trace, it just spreads forever and so Sweden is "lucky" to have already had the worst of it as every country undergoes wave after wave. But all signs so far are quite the contrary.

On the other hand, no improvements to gold standard treatment, even though we've already seen some small improvements those somehow are reversed.

Without that second one, Sweden has excess deaths because it used less-than-great treatments due to inexperience, while other countries get to learn from history when, (in that two extra years) lots of their people supposedly get the virus and need treating.

Sweden's gamble made very little sense when it was made. I will say one thing for Anders, his position is that if you make this gamble, you must stick with it. There is no point taking such a gamble and then chickening out after a week or two as some countries did. That makes sense, but it was a bad gamble.

acd• 6 years ago

One also have to account for T-cell immunity which is double that of normal anti body immunity. 14.5 percent of Sweden capital Stockholm population had antibodies according to COVID-19 test lab Werlabs. If you take 14.5 + 2x14.5 you get 43.5 percent that have immune system protection from COVID-19 in Stockholm. 43.5 percent is close to when we get herd immunity. In smaller cities in Sweden there is not the same population immunity so it may still spread there up to the herd immunity point. People still can get infected by a spreader if about 43.5 percent have immune system response.

Werlabs anti body measures of Stockholm news https://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/werlabs/pressreleases/nivaan-a...

Herd immunity possible at above 40 percent https://www.svd.se/ny-berakning-stockholm-kan-na-immunitet-i...

T-cell response https://svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/immunitet-mot-corona-storre-a...

fpgaminer• 6 years ago

In Stockholm about 20% of the population now have antibodies, despite a lot social distancing.

Maybe ... it's because of this:

No one is using face masks and the official consensus is that it doesn't provide enough contamination protection to be currently worthwhile.

All the evidence I've seen is quite clear; masks are effective.

And let's consider that the U.S., seen by many to be the worst handler of this pandemic thus far, is currently only ~8% of the way done. Yet Stockholm has already _blown_ through 33%.

Sweden, on the whole, is at 9.4%; again surpassing the U.S. by a good chunk.

I feel like the point of your comment was to suggest that Stockholm is doing well. The data is clear that they are not. In fact, they are doing quite poorly. I would take a good hard look at anyone in your government not vehemently pushing for mask use.

I'm far removed from the belief that we need a rushed vaccine to cope with this pandemic.

I cannot for the life of me fathom why the impending death of 60,000 fellow citizens, and 600,000 disabled with chronic illness wouldn't convince someone that a vaccine is needed ASAP.

tigershark4• 6 years ago

They have done extremely poorly with 10 times the deaths/M of Finland, 12 times the ones of Norway and the same deaths/M as Italy.

anoncake4• 6 years ago

masks are effective.

At delaying herd immunity and prolonging the pandemic.

Vinnl2• 6 years ago

All the evidence I've seen is quite clear; masks are effective.

Isn't there a lot of nuance to that, in the sense that it depends on other factors? As far as I understand it, the advisory body in the Netherlands (which sounds like it's in a similar situation to Sweden) does consider masks to be effective, but marginally so, in the sense that compared to social distancing, they are far less effective in combating the spread. And since they can't tell for sure yet to what extent the wearing of masks affects people's adherence to social distancing, they are afraid that mandating masks might be counterproductive if it leads to less distancing.

pastrami_panda7• 6 years ago

I cannot for the life of me fathom why the impending death of 60,000 fellow citizens, and 600,000 disabled with chronic illness wouldn't convince someone that a vaccine is needed ASAP.

I deliberately wrote that a _rushed_ vaccine is not needed. All the side effects need to be carefully considered. Even some vaccines that weren't necessarily rushed proved to have really horrible side effects when deployed to the population at scale.

I'm simply saying Stockholm is probably approaching 50% immunity soon (T-cell + antibody). If you isolate the outlier event that is the very poor treatment at the elderly homes at the start of the outbreak, causing a huge part of our deaths numbers, you get a completely different picture.

tigershark4• 6 years ago

You forgot to say that you have basically the same deaths/M as Italy, and these increased drastically in the last part of the outbreak, not in the early part. The difference is that Italy was completely unprepared while you had all the information needed to mitigate the impact, as your Nordic neighbours did very well.

pastrami_panda7• 6 years ago

I did adress it though, but I formatted the post poorly since it was very late. I did acknowledge that in the beginning the authority in charge of elderly homes messed up, badly. But it's unfortunate that this fuck up drags the whole strategy into the ground. I'm very confident that had we simply enforced stricter care in the elderly homes that huge chunk of people would've not died in the beginning and fractions would speak a whole nother story. The strategy is working, unfortunately the media doesn't want it to work. As the other guy said in this thread add up the estimate for T-cell immunity and we're likely approaching 50% immunity.

But sure, all those people in elderly homes got the short end of the stick in the beginning. But please be level headed and don't judge the whole strategy on that.

Animats• 6 years ago

The US has nationalized liability for vaccines. It's a consequence of a number of mostly-bogus lawsuits. Vaccines are in general not very profitable. No repeat sales.

"Cures are nice, but the money is in chronic conditions." That's all too real. Look at the history of ulcer treatments.

sys_64738• 6 years ago

The Zeneca part is formerly ICI of toxic chemicals fame. Some things never change.

jahaja• 6 years ago

So for a for-profit corporation to produce a vaccine it needs to be completely risk free? This is not the first time market forces are suspended as soon as something needs to be reliably done.

pama• 6 years ago

The risk is very high that such agreements lead to long term harm by providing fuel to anti Vaxxers and reducing the effectiveness of vaccines. Wasn’t this scary example enough for politicians to learn to forever kill these kind of deals? https://www.buzzfeed.com/shaunlintern/these-nhs-staff-were-t...

new26283• 6 years ago

It's amazing that the only danger you see is that it is fuel to anti-vaxxers. What if it is actually harmful at scale?

DanBC• 6 years ago

Read the link, they give an example of a vaccine (pandemrix) that was harmful at scale. 1 in about 50,000 people given pandemrix developed narcolepsy.

mzs• 6 years ago

It's probably because of the adjuvant. It's needed for the vaccine to be effective but people can have reactions to it. With so many people to get vaccinated it could lead to frivolous class actions.

rolph• 6 years ago

with no liability it wont matter if the vaccine is saline or cyanide or safe. where is the motivation to get it right?

svrb• 6 years ago

The scary thing is that anyone who takes the scientific approach and to wait and see if the drug has serious side-effects will be accused of being anti-vaxx and socially ostracized.

AstraZeneca exempt from coronavirus vaccine liability claims in most countries

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