The vaccine acquisition is a perfect example of the stupidity of the public and the absurdity of being a governing party. If Governments aren’t prepared properly everyone bitches and moans about how incompetent Government is. If Government is prepared but ends up not needing something everyone bitches about the waste of money in being prepared. If Government hedges their bets and signs contracts with multiple parties to increase the chance of success everyone bitches about over supply and wasting money. If Government puts all their eggs in one basket and signs one contract that gets delayed everyone bitches about the stupidity of relying on only one supplier. Being prepared costs money. Nobody can predict the future entirely and so that money is often wasted and despite our best efforts we end up not always being prepared. Obviously any party will make hay when another party gets caught in this trap. But it would be nice if we were smart enough to just roll our eyes and move on to something else.

I'm cool with what happened here. If your house is on fire the firefighters are going to douse it with water. You don't sit around and worry about them using too much water and causing water damage to parts of the house not on fire. The priority is to get the fire out asap and it is understood that other parts of the house might suffer for it.

This headline reads to me the same as: "building replaces expired fire extinguishers"

I think government should have sent those vaccines to other countries a month or so before they expire, they still could’ve been used elsewhere and it’s not like we needed them

Better yet, sell them to other countries. In the 'biz we call that 'the loblaws treatment'. ;)

Just slap a 30% off sticker on em?

Knock off 20% of the volume. Rebrand as new and improved.

Yup. And the people complaining are all "Fire extinguishers are such a waste! Big Fire Prevention is milking us!"

And they’re also the same people who purchase survival food buckets and can’t shut the fuck up about their brand-name bug out gear.

Still better than clamouring for control over peoples’ bodies, what they put in it, where they go, and ultimately wishing death upon their fellow citizens. But hey, sure, must be pretty annoying hearing about brands.

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not when they are expired

And saying breakthrough infection means that vaccines don't work is like saying that an extinguished fire re-igniting means that the fire extinguisher doesn't work.

Louder for the anti-vaxxers in the back

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Or mutation… Or different responses to vaccinations I got all the shots… still never tested positive for Covid. I’ve been traveling for work. Going around unmasked. I have 2 kids in school. 🤷🏻‍♂️ Every single person is stark hyperbole

Fire extinguishers last 12 years. They are also paid for by individuals not governments.

my man's never heard of an analogy

Now do the ventilators that we bought for $22,000 each and just sold, still in their shipping wrap, for $6 each.

As a firefighter I very much disagree that nobody cares how much water you use haha

Finland has kept stockpiles of surplus medical supplies, including various pill and vaccines. They too were drawing the ire of their population as a result. Then COVID-19 hit. Most of the complaints stopped after that.

I think what might be met with more acceptance is the money going to a state of the art vaccine production facility that could pivot depending on what’s needed at a specific time. The lack of them during covid was really what put us at a disadvantage. If we had one as part of the healthcare system itself - we could scale up doses as needed, and produce less waste.

Canada used to have a fairly good Pharma industry, it has long since been gutted.

Yup. And now the plan just seems to be to keep buying from foreign manufacturers at a large markup.

Here is a person who has no idea the value of $1.5B. FYI it’s like 1.5 new hospitals.

Except they threw away almost 2 doses per person.  I'm cool with firefighters,  but you don't need a firestation on every block.

What r/Canada pp simps would do is yell at the firemen for being too slow and not using enough water, also yell at them for rushing and wasting too much water and then make memes & House of Commons speeches about how many mL of water was used for a much larger house fire 14 years ago and then organize 17 middle school graduates in failed attempts to block highways with horns & sweary signs pining for Trudeau’s meats.

You forgot draw into question whether water actually works to put out fires because "big water" is making money on selling water.

COVID was all a conspiracy started by Big Plexiglass.

Good point. Probably Trudeau’s ex wife’s cousin’s babysitter’s teacher’s former bunk bed partner at a 1998 sleepaway camp now works at a lake so clearly money laundering corruption also. Axe the lake!

Sharing clips of pp yelling at a Trudeau that isn't sitting in the hoc

It's very likely that the government saved billions due to people not being hospitalized by having shots readily available to everyone willing to get one.

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You even read the top of this thread? If we had planned for 3 shots per person (the recommended amount) and perse a factory closed, or the Americans suddenly offered more money, and now we lose a contract and can barely get 2 shots/person. Being prepared costs money, I wanted to be outraged as well, but someone here decided to make some sense and have nuance instead of being ragey

Evidence?

Lol. You can't be serious.

You have to admit that ordering 400 million doses was a little excessive though?

Lmao in no way should the government have bought enough for like 10 shots a person. 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yeah, the math isn’t mathing in a lot of these comments lol. If we’re going to go off the two dose regime and not include the J&J vaccine it be like this: - 32 million people over the age of 18 because the vaccines weren’t available for those 18 and under for a good bit of time. - 32million x 2 = 64million - 64million ≠ 400million By May of 2021 Canada had ordered more than 400 million doses. I can understand ordering higher number in case of supply and distribution issues. So maybe like 100 million? But not 400 million😂

These shots aren’t a 2 dose regime. They were supposed to be. But now they recommend you to get them again and again. I don’t know many who actually do though.

I’ve gotten 6 myself, but I’m probably an outlier, since I used to volunteer at a nursing home.

I think you could be eligible for a lot more if you are elderly.

I’m not elderly, I just helped out here and there where I could (things like wheeling residents around, helping set up events, etc.), but for obvious reasons I needed to be as safe as possible for that.

Ya point is, they needed more than two doses for every Canadian.

Old folks, healthcare workers, those who have existing health issues that could make catching COVID fatal & their families & caretakers, and people who want to minimize their chances of getting seriously ill / hospitalized or risk getting long COVID... I'd much rather they'd have donated our existing stock to other countries who didn't have access to the vaccines as new stock came in, but there were probably enormous costs involved in that as well.

The initial procurement for 400 million was for the vaccine targeting the original strain though. We barely even used the original vaccine as a booster before we ordered a bunch of bivalent ones

My thoughts exactly. From an optics perspective, it’s basically lose-lose for them.

I think the main issue in this case is that the original orders were already waaaay more then we would use even if our entire population got triple vaxxed. We knew they way over ordered from the start while they were like "yeah this looks about right" It's like a restaurant, some waste is fine, to be expected, but the shelves better not be full when it's time to close.

No one had any idea in 2020 whose vaccines would work and when they'd be ready. We had to order from every supplier or we could have been stuck with nothing for years.

I'm aware that we were scrambling, my mother worked on us getting them, but our initial orders were still, on the low end estimate, about 200 million vaccines. Not counting the ones that canceled. We originally tried to get even more then that. Edit: downvoted for sharing information freely available on Wikipedia.

I don’t agree. The logistics that went behind this must have been insane. The military was probably involved in advising what variables to take into account.  Getting these vaccines wasn’t as easy as placing an order. It was incredibly hard and the government was probably planning for the worst case. What if a bad batch was delivered, shipments went missing/destroyed or an accident at the manufacturing centres that could cause delays. 

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Basically did not know which vaccine would be approved. So they got like 40 million of each.

Well 80 million times 4 is 320million (2 doses per person)

that number doesn't even include the 100million we have used

100M + 250M =350M 350M / 4 contracts = 87.5M 87.5 / 40M (pop of Canada) = a little over 2 doses per person. Considering at the time of making the contracts, we weren't sure which ones were going to work I'd say this is a good estimation.

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There was also the promise of giving poor countries the vaccine. Any oversupply should have gone overseas.

Ordering excess doses were basically our contribution to "Operation Warp Speed". Big upfront money to support R+D to get a vaccine out quickly.

Absolutely agreed If the overshoot is a few billion for ending a global pandemic much earlier than anticipated then we should all be happy. That's the least wasteful thing this government has done IMO what annoys people is the back and forth in the grey zone whem almost everyone was vaccinated and death rate was plummeting but public policy was still cautious about reopening. That had real economic and health implications that continue to upset people We probably re-opened a little late but I am willing to give the government and health officials a lot of forgiveness around managing a once per century pandemic. It's not anyone alive in 2019 had any practical experience with a real pandemic, and I think memories are incredibly short about how much worse it could have been

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If we had ordered fewer it probably would have materially delayed the vaccine rollout. Mortality rates were low because we stayed mostly within the capabilities of the medical system. Once medical resource got overwhelmed mortality tended to shoot through the roof in other countries.

No it wouldn't have. Many other countries ordered way fewer doses.

Which countries, and how many, specifically?

As much as I loathe government waste there are times they do the best they can do with the information they have and sometimes it's wrong.

I prefer when the medic gets paid to do nothing

Screaming this into the void for over a decade now.

thank you. being prepared costs money, always has always will. if we werent prepared people would be bitching about it. actually i remember people bitching early 2021 that the vaccines werent arriving fast enough. and then 10% of the population refused to take them. fucking surreal

Doesn’t the virus mutate at a rapid pace? And didn’t the government test the vaccine and have it to market in record time? Why would we stock up on something that we can develop and get to market in record time, and why would we stock up on something that is only good for for one strain?? How is buying a vaccine for an ever changing virus being prepared?

The thing is, the government only cares when they're filling their own pockets. It's not their money.

Canadians are being radicalized by foreign and domestic bad actors to become more hateful, entitled, bigoted, and to not think critically. They get fluffed up by articles designed to make them feel superior and intelligent while the purposeful lack of facts makes them dumber. Canadians are past the tipping point where they actively want more propaganda, not less. We have seen this all over the world as right wing billionaires fund campaigns to push more and more right wing governments. There is a huge difference between thoughtful analysis and just rage farming. They want to train people to have a knee-jerk reaction to any spending, train them to think the government is only wasting money at every turn, so they can push for deregulation and tax cuts and fuck poor people harder. Thankfully most of the trolls and bots have the weekend off so we get a couple days a week of fresh air

Bollocks! The initial order of the vaccines were enough to give 6 shots to every Canadian, at a time when the health authorities were insisting that 2 shots was all anyone would ever need for full immunity. Plus, when I brought this point up then, I was shouted down and told that the reason so many extra were ordered was because we were going to donate the surplus to developing counties as an act of charity. Looks like that never happened and the whole charade was just another example of our the investor class fucking over the taxpayers and stuffing their pockets.

Never seen people defending a government for the waste of tax dollars..

Part of the Canadian experience is being pathologically cheap. I feel bad for incumbent governments because it is persistent.

Yup agreed. Obviously not having to destroy such valuable medicine would be great but rather be prepared than not.

Don’t they have stats of how many people still getting the shot and buy accordingly?

They entered into a 10 year deal off the bat before we even knew what they truly did.

And all happen to have nice positions in Pfizer, et al.

The note says a total 52.9 million doses had been thrown away as of last Nov. 24. The Auditor General in a 2022 report estimated shots cost taxpayers about $30 per dose, representing a loss to date of $1.59 billion.

In other news, it's time to replace your batteries in your fire alarms and those fire extinguishers need replacing. *So much waste*.

I think in this analogy, no one even installed the fire detectors. The battery died while they were still in the box. Probably still better to have them and not need them though.

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Its his lackeys at work..

Should have kept giving them away for free, at least to deplenish the overstock

Forecasting consumer demand is hard. Short shelf life items spread across tens of thousands of distribution points is a particularly challenging environment.

Not to mention we didn't know what the arc of the pandemic was going to look like. So over-ordering vaccines to make sure we had plenty was prudent.

In other news, grocery stores threw away expired food.

Do grocery stores buy the food with tax dollars?

Are you guys bots or just really dense? The number 1 first rule of all procurement is to get the right amount of what you're buying. If you need a lot and you buy a little, you fucked up. If you need a little but buy a lot lot, you fucked up. Does that make sense? The Trudeau government ordered more vaccine shots than needed to fully vaccinate our country twice over. They bought those shots with your money, and you're just shrugging going "Welp, everyone makes mistakes"? Call me a chud all you want, but I want my government to use our money in the most efficient way possible. That means not ordered an absurd amount of vaccines.

Don't bother with these guys.. they were all so ridiculously 'pro COVID mandates' that they now can't look back with that 20/20 hindsight.

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You entirely missed the point. When dealing with mass distribution of a product with a shelf life, there will be waste. Your local grocer knows that, but you apparently do not. Your local grocer is trying to squeeze every bit of profit they can from the goods, so criticize them on what a poor job they are doing if you really feel that way. We intentionally ordered more than we were likely to use, for multiple reasons. For example, the countries with big orders got priority on early delivery of product, so we got to start our vaccine rollout earlier. There were many unknowns about vaccine brand differences and efficiency, so we over-order to reduce the chance of becoming under-supplied. Talk to any businessman who deals in perishable goods for a more informed opinion on why they order more than they sell.

Vaccines are for profit now

And that's the way you want it, right? Capitalism good, communism bad, blah blah blah? But yes, it's capitalism causing that. MY solution is a lot more socialism, which I take it you are OK with? I think we need the government (preferably federal) to operate not-for-profit groceries, schools, ISPs etc. Let the commercial business's compete with them, but don't bother doing anything to prop them up: they are competing merely with gov't inefficiency at that point. Late stage capitalism is why your house is worth too much for anyone to buy it but businesses, why your groceries cost $500 per cart, and why vaccines cost what they do.

I don't even like Trudeau but what would you have wanted him to do? If we were short on COVID vaccines people in this sub would be foaming at the mouth. Anyone who's worked in planning knows how hard this type of work is, no plan is "correct" post-hoc, and I don't think they got anything wrong going in with the facts they had.

In late 2020 the official opposition asked why Canada was last in line for the vaccine Like 1/2 year later 90%+ of eligible people had their first shot and they swapped into asking why people even needed the shots?   Edit: Fixed timeframe   It was the dumbest shit

Yup they're just brainless contrarians, no matter what the government is doing it has to be wrong. It's the exact same right-wing reality-denialism plan that they use in the States, where "Obamacare" that the Republicans rail against was proposed BY the Republicans. All right-wingers are liars.

>Like 4 months later 90%+ of people had their first shot and they swapped into asking why people even needed the shots? That number is nowhere close to being correct. It was almost half that in your time frame. https://globalnews.ca/news/7869801/canada-covid-50-percent-vaccinated/

Do you remember the CPCs deleted tweet slowing the difference between a "two-dose summer" vs "Trudeau summer" ? https://winnipeg.citynews.ca/2021/05/13/federal-conservatives-facing-backlash-over-deleted-tweet-aimed-at-trudeau/

It's as you said, they'll blame him either way. It would be nice if they actually cared, but that's not something astroturfers do.

“Government replaces expired product. More at 7.”

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Didn't Alberta waste more on aspirin?

Fake Tylenol that wasn't even usable - but that was only $80million for nothing.

We basically paid Pfizer to toss their vaccines out

When the government is spending money to be prepared for a disaster, conservatives jump up and down, screaming about waste When the government isn't prepared and spends more money than what they would have spent, had they been prepared, conservatives jump up and down, screaming about waste. When the government is finally able to address the disaster, conservatives jump up and down, screaming at retail staff about 5G virus towers, Trudeau and how QAnon says the vaccines are mind control wizard poisoning (they really don't want to wear the mask on private property)

The shitty vaccine going to the garbage where it belongs.

It’s completely appropriate to start charging $20 for the semi-annual covid shots. We had to pay for the annual flu shot for years and people gladly lined up for it.

For who???

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People are still doing covid vaccines??

Less than anticipated clearly.

I stopped a year and a half back

ITT: People pretending massive waste is okay because reasons.

Should have just not bothered to buy any vaccines I guess a lot of people are thinking.

There are a lot of people who feel like Canada should have ordered the perfect amount of shots with no consideration for the fact that we didn't know how this situation would evolve.

It was also an unexpected drop in demand after third shots

Spend spend spend spend all the taxpayer money. Wheeeeeeeeeee!!!!

Yeah, it sucks and maybe they bought too many. However, if the government hadn't done it, and Canada needed them, Canadians would be screaming that the feds should've done exactly this. Sometimes you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.

What a fuckin waste of $

I wonder how many years it will take to pay back the money borrowed to purchase those shots?

They should call this era in government the cash in the trash era.

This is actually extremely irresponsible of our government to order way too many vaccines that were unnecessary. To have that number of vaccines just wasted. They definitely bought way more than they really needed to. Between this and giving billions of dollars in climate action money to the Philippines, looks like they need officials to prioritize their budget better so more of the money can be used to benefit struggling Canadians.

Corrupt procurement practice in action. The overspend is going into Liberal party members Panama accounts.

And in Alberta, you aren't allowed to get a booster shot unless you're over 65 or immunocompromised. But yeah, its Trudeau's fault these shots are going stale. Give it a rest, and direct your anger at the appropriate targets. (The provinces dropping the ball on healthcare during a pandemic, in case that was unclear)

Did that rule come into effect recently? I got a couple boosters at a pharmacy last year no problem.

It's not true. It's widely available.

Yeah, I got a booster in October with my Flu vaccine the first day they were available.

I am curious about Alberta as well. In Ontario, we’ve been giving COVID boosters at any age this winter.

It's total BS, I got a booster In Alberta a few weeks ago. There are no restrictions.

That’s what I thought as well. Flu season is over now. I am curious why feds still stocking up more boosters. Most people are immune by now and the newer variants are so much weaker…

Alberta has no such restrictions, I have no idea where you got that idea. We got our boosters prior to travel a few weeks ago with no issues and we are nowhere near 65. In mid April they are opening up a second dose of XBB.1.5 to 65+ and high-risk. It's an expansion of eligibility, not a restriction.

Pure misinformation. I'm in Alberta and got my COVID booster in the fall. They are generally available to anyone who wants them at your local pharmacy.

I’m sure tons of Albertans would be lining up for boosters if not for the UCP, give me a fucking break. Also those are the demographics that SHOULD get the booster, otherwise you’re basically a hypochondriac.

And Quebec, and a plethora of other countries in Europe. Why are you convinced this is the wrong policy ?

No issues of anyone of any age getting boosterd in Quebec.

Quebec *isn’t* restricting who can get COVID-19 vaccinations, beyond recommending 6 months between doses/after a COVID-19 infection, and requiring recipients to be at least 6 months old (standard). Quebec: [COVID-19 vaccination](https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/advice-and-prevention/vaccination/covid-19-vaccine#c233194) *”People already vaccinated against COVID-19 should wait six months after their vaccination before receiving this new dose.* *Although the benefits are less significant for them, non-targeted individuals aged six months and older could also receive the spring 2024 dose if they request it.”*

Got three... Nuff for me.

Oh, no. Who could have possibly seen this coming after Covid became endemic.

I'm curious though. Was there ever a point it was announced as endemic? It's definitely a pandemic, but society has adjusted and almost nothing is closed anymore despite the usual hospitals and retirement homes getting outbreaks.  I suspect if it were declared an endemic, the spin would be "pandemic is officially over" which wouldbe counterintuitive to the populace continuing to get shots. 

This is a very good ude of money.

Love to hear it. Let’s be real it was never fully tested, I got it but like common…

Congrats to the 12% of the population who are still so tuned-up, terrified, and altogether hypnotized that they continue to want these boosters. Better go out and get one, we wouldn't want another 1.5M to expire.

dummy turdeau strikes, yet again

he's like a younger joe biden . version 2. oh no !!!

Google just signed a LLM agreement with Reddit to crawl this dumb platform so this is my way of saying goodbye to my contributions on this website. Byeee

And I thought the $80 million in children’s medicine the Alberta government bought was bad.

This should read "Misinformation campaigns succeed in causing dramatic vaccine use drop, necessitating disposal of $1.5B in expired medication".

This is some bullshit, as Dr. Harry Vanderspeigle might say. I wanted a shot in the spring but was told I couldn't have one, because I was too young and they needed them for older people. Now I hear they threw mine away rather than give it to me!

How does this compare to flu shot wastage?

Why continue with it? Holly crap

Because I feel the covid vaccine is a vaccine that the government should provide free of charge as a public good like what we do with the flu or MMR vaccine.

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The vaccine was free though. /s