COVID Vaccine !

[Blue Hills]

Well, the UK AZ contract is not public, so we do not know for sure if it is a lie...

Well unless I am very much mistaken, the "simultaneous" was an outright lie.

Are you saying it wasn't?

On the "identical", if it would support its claim, and that AZ didn't just commit to "best efforts", why doesn't the EU quote the relevant bit of their contract?

And if AZ has broken a contractual agreement one would expect the EU would take legal steps open to them to remedy this, not threaten retaliatory measures against third parties.

This all smells to me, and apart from the EU's mistakes and sluggishness in procurement rather smells of politicos trying to protect themselves by briefing against others and spreading rumour.

So it's doubly bad.

Britain doesn't have any monopoly on lying wriggling shyster politicos, despite what some folk would have you believe.

 

[SpokeyDokey]

Wife has been volunteer marshalling at Grasmere (Lake District) this week and they have been jabbing patients (?) from Carlisle (over an hour away), some from Yorkshire, Lancashire and as far away as Northumberland!

 

[Pale Rider]

Wife has been volunteer marshalling at Grasmere (Lake District) this week and they have been jabbing patients (?) from Carlisle (over an hour away), some from Yorkshire, Lancashire and as far away as Northumberland!

Vaccine tourism?

Priti Patel will be outraged.

 

[Kajjal]

I was half watching that when it went out very early today.
Seemed fairly reasonable from what I picked up.
There was a french MEP on channel 4 news a few days ago who said:
paraphrase:
that the EU signed identical contracts simultaneously with the UK.
Unless I am very much mistaken there is at least one total lie there.
When challenged she seemed somewhat tight lipped.
In my view the EU is looking extremely shoddy over all this.

I rather worry what some folk/citizens in the EU are being fed,

The position is some countries like with PPE etc. put an explicit export ban on vaccines in place quickly.
some simply haven’t exported vaccines.
some initially exported vaccines but have now stopped.
Others exported 40,000,000+ vaccines from various producers
Where is becomes more complicated is the later have not received the vaccine imports they were due from a specific manufacturer while simultaneously been accused of vaccine nationalism while exporting significant amounts and failure while not extensively blocking vaccine exports which could have improved their vaccination rates.

 

[Kajjal]

Wife has been volunteer marshalling at Grasmere (Lake District) this week and they have been jabbing patients (?) from Carlisle (over an hour away), some from Yorkshire, Lancashire and as far away as Northumberland!

The take up by people has been great and my wife was very pleased how well run the vaccination centre she went to was. This is a great credit to all involved

 

[Blue Hills]

The position is some countries like with PPE etc. put an explicit export ban on vaccines in place quickly.
some simply haven’t exported vaccines.
some initially exported vaccines but have now stopped.
Others exported 40,000,000+ vaccines from various producers
Where is becomes more complicated is the later have not received the vaccine imports they were due from a specific manufacturer while simultaneously been accused of vaccine nationalism while exporting significant amounts and failure while not extensively blocking vaccine exports which could have improved their vaccination rates.

You haven't actually addressed the question of the contracts though.
And seem to be following some in the EU who would have you believe/be happy for you to have the idea that the EU makes vaccine. The EU does not as far as I know make vaccines, companies like AZ do.
Halting deliveries of stuff which isn't yours and then redirecting it, if this what is threatened, strikes me as a form of piracy.

 

[Kajjal]

You haven't actually addressed the question of the contracts though.
And seem to be following some in the EU who would have you believe/be happy for you to have the idea that the EU makes vaccine. The EU does not as far as I know make vaccines, companies like AZ do.
Halting deliveries of stuff which isn't yours and then redirecting it, if this what is threatened, strikes me as a form of piracy.

The contracts are unknown, the only public information was the EU got a better price from AZ and like many has not recieved what it was promised from AZ. I am not sure I would go as far as your view the UK not exporting vaccines is a form of piracy but it is hardly along the lines of working together internationally.

 

[Blue Hills]

The contracts are unknown, the only public information was the EU got a better price from AZ and like many has not recieved what it was promised from AZ. I am not sure I would go as far as your view the UK not exporting vaccines is a form of piracy but it is hardly along the lines of working together internationally.

But can't the contracts be revealed by the apparently aggrieved party, the EU? In support of their case? If not, why not?
What I'd also like to know is what is the EU theory for why AZ is supposedly unfairly favouring the UK? How do they explain it? Some sort of weird anglophilia, a residual fondness for James Bond films and the Beatles? Their apparent lack of an explanation for this also seems odd/suspicious to me.
I wasn't referring to possibly piracy with regard to the UK but with regard to the EU and member states - the Italian move against stuff destined for Australia, the vague EU threats about possible future action against stuff destined for places outside the EU.

 

[Eric Olthwaite]

The contracts are unknown, the only public information was the EU got a better price from AZ and like many has not recieved what it was promised from AZ. I am not sure I would go as far as your view the UK not exporting vaccines is a form of piracy but it is hardly along the lines of working together internationally.

They are not unknown, the AZ CEO is on record (Republicca article) as stating that the EU contract was signed 3 months after the UK contract and has less binding commitments.

 

[Blue Hills]

They are not unknown, the AZ CEO is on record (Republicca article) as stating that the EU contract was signed 3 months after the UK contract and has less binding commitments.

ah, this rings a bell - i may even have read the article - hell this covid and this row has been going on a long time - if you or anyone else has a link for the article, please post.

 

[Unkraut]

The head of the German ethics council, who was party to government and EU policy on vaccines, made the following comment last night.

The American and British policy on procurement was like playing rugby, the EU like playing chess. The former in effect barged everyone else out of the way a (policy that clearly has had advantages to those countries).

Should the EU now put an export stop on deliveries to the UK, this would mean the EU is now playing rugby - doing what the British have done from the beginning. (Juncker is right to advise against going down this road though imo.)

She said the EU signed a contract with AZ one day before the British - I know the EU date was 27th August 2020. (Edit - just found a link stating ... even though the U.K. contract was signed just a day after the one with the EU. https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-the-eu-and-uk-astrazeneca-contracts/ Curiosity satisfied!)

I think there are various reasons for the increase in temperature over the vaccine programme.

AZ has massively failed to supply the EU with the vaccines contracted for the first quarter of 2021. Deliveries to the UK were maintained. This may have been in accordance with the UK contract with AZ, but if so the UK shouldn't now complain about vaccine nationalism on the part of the EU.

Both the EU and the UK have agreed to supply third world countries. Apart from this, both the US and the UK have exported no doses of vaccines to other countries around the world. Zilch. The EU has exported 40 million doses, and I think last night they said this was now 70 million, and they showed a map of them including Canada Australia and New Zealand!

Almost a third of all doses injected in the UK were manufactured and exported from the territory of the EU. Whilst the British have been admired for getting on with the vaccination, this fact ought to reduce British boasting about it. The trade off for the faster rate in Britain has been a slower rate on the continent and other parts of the world.

The EU policy still deserves criticism - the Americans signed up for 600 million doses for a population of 330 million in July, the EU for 300 million doses for a population of 450 million at the end of November. This must have been for BionTech.

The slowness to order was in part due to some member states worrying about price and liability. vdL couldn't simply ignore this. Agreement across all 27 had to be achieved, and for the EU it actually went fairly quickly, but we now know not quickly enough.

 

[Eric Olthwaite]

ah, this rings a bell - i may even have read the article - hell this covid and this row has been going on a long time - if you or anyone else has a link for the article, please post.

https://www.repubblica.it/cronaca/2...azeneca_coronavirus_covid_vaccines-284349628/

"Anyway, we didn't commit with the EU, by the way. It's not a commitment we have to Europe: it’s a best effort, we said we are going to make our best effort. The reason why we said that is because Europe at the time wanted to be supplied more or less at the same time as the UK, even though the contract was signed three months later. So we said, “ok, we're going to do our best, we’re going to try, but we cannot commit contractually because we are three months behind UK”. We knew it was a super stretch goal and we know it's a big issue, this pandemic. But our contract is not a contractual commitment. It's a best effort. Basically we said we're going to try our best, but we can't guarantee we're going to succeed. In fact, getting there, we are a little bit delayed"

 

[roubaixtuesday]

AZ has massively failed to supply the EU with the vaccines contracted for the first quarter of 2021. Deliveries to the UK were maintained. This may have been in accordance with the UK contract with AZ, but if so the UK shouldn't now complain about vaccine nationalism on the part of the EU.

Lots of focus on contracted volumes. They're near irrelevant in reality. AFAICT:

AZ set up a UK supply chain, in the UK, paid for by the UK govt.

AZ then set up an EU supply chain, essentially paid for by the EU.

The UK supply chain is more limited in scale, and has operated pretty much as hoped (though started later than planned).
The EU supply chain has proved much harder to get up to speed. This is very unsurprising; that so many vaccines have been delivered so quickly is more surprising.

The contract is for "best efforts" to meet a "schedule". There is no "contracted volume" and AZ has not failed to meet their contract. Unless AZ isn't trying (seems rather unlikely, to put it mildly), they are fulfilling their contract.

 

[Pale Rider]

Lots of focus on contracted volumes. They're near irrelevant in reality.

Lots of words from the EU which are certainly irrelevant.

They don't, and have never, understood the concept of 'get the job done'.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

Lots of words from the EU which are certainly irrelevant.

They don't, and have never, understood the concept of 'get the job done'.

I have no clue what you're on about.

And I suspect, other than a vague desire to say nasty things about bad EU, do you.