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"Europe is facing a vaccine disaster. Whereas countries like Israel, Britain and the United States. are quickly moving ahead with vaccinations, the EU is reelin

"Europe is facing a vaccine disaster. Whereas countries like Israel, Britain and the United States. are quickly moving ahead with vaccinations, the EU is reeling from a string of setbacks. " this is a lie, per capita EU is not that bad considering that it is a coordinated effort (as opposed to a singular effort by a singular country). Overall this is Der Spiegel making an opinion article disguised as a news article. Shame on them.

exporectomy 6y ago
Your response is consistent with the claim you called a lie. Adding "considering that ..." allows you to hold the EU to an arbitrarily lower standard than the other countries.
- HugoDaniel 6y ago
  I am a EU citizen, my standards are much higher. EU didn't had to sell their citizens healthcare data to move up the stack (like Israel did). The EU negotiations with these Big Pharma corps made it wait for these 3 countries (Israel, UK and USA). Vaccinations started 1 or 2 months later in EU (depending on country). A fair comparison would be the data of today in EU with the data from 1 or 2 months ago in those countries (per capita). But the big questions are: Why did we have to negotiate vaccines for a global pandemic? Why are countries moving up the stack with Big Pharma? Why is the vaccination rate higher in USA than in Mozambique?
  - exporectomy 6y ago
    To be honest, I don't know a thing about this topic. I just found it odd that you seemed to be acknowledging that what you called a lie could actually have been the truth. You still seem to be acknowledge that the EU is facing setbacks. Why negotiate? Because it's a scarce resource and has to be allocated somehow.
  - oli5679 6y ago
    The pharma companies you mention are all working hard to supply a vaccine to purchasers, at cost. The idea that they have some sort of profit motive and are deliberately delaying the EU is not true. Accounts of journalists, and the companies, suggest EU delayed contracts being signed because of internal disagreements, and haggling over contractual terms.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    My understanding was, that the delay was mostly because the EU went through a fast track version of the normal certification process while the UK and the US used emergency certifications. IMHO, it is not important who started first, but about how fast you get to 65+% of vaccinations. I don't have any issue with delays early on, but right now this mixture of political power games, blaming, panic and agenda pushing is risking the whole European vaccination campaign.
  - vinay427 6y ago
    > A fair comparison would be the data of today in EU with the data from 1 or 2 months ago in those countries (per capita). Why is this a fair comparison? Was the EU frozen in time for 1-2 months last year during which they couldn't respond to the virus?
neilsense 6y ago
"not that bad" -> more people dying
- HugoDaniel 6y ago
  I don't understand this comment. Could you please expand it in a more constructive way? Vaccination is not the only way available to stop the spreading of the virus: - Keep social distancing - Avoid friends and familiar reunions - Wash your hands frequently - Wear a mask - Be careful The top 5 places with most coronavirus deaths are: 1. USA 2. Brazil 3. Mexico 4. India 5. UK None of these are in the EU.
  - Bobblebobble 6y ago
    The parent comment is just saying that a poorly-run vaccination programme results in more deaths than a successful one, everything else being equal. Hope that helps.
    - HugoDaniel 6y ago
      In that logic the parent comment disregards the original comparison operands. Innocuous, irrelevant, if not somewhat offensive and disrespectful.
  - ucha 6y ago
    That's not even true when looking at deaths per capita (because how is total deaths relevant?) If you remove micro-states, the top 5 in deaths per capita is: 1. Belgium 2. Slovenia 3. UK 4. Czech Republic 5. Italy 4 out of 5 are in the EU. Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
    - HugoDaniel 6y ago
      Sort by total deaths. It is true. The parent comment did not specify the metric, every death counts and total deaths is a metric that should not to be disregarded. You are disregarding total deaths, like a robot that only looks at percentages and ratios. These are real people. If you remove micro-states, if you filter by this, if you only consider that, if you spin this enough, if you consider that this metric is invalid, if you this, if you that... then what do we have for such a vague claim such as "-> more people dying"?
thepasswordis 6y ago
The US effort is also not a singular effort. Each state is basically running their own system.
- HugoDaniel 6y ago
  Comparing USA states to countries is a very common practice of uneducated Americans.
  - true_religion 6y ago
    In the case of health care, it’s apt because the federal government cannot force states to take actions. They can only issue guidelines.
    - HugoDaniel 6y ago
      Still there are a lot of variables to consider: production, distribution, shares, access, storage, etc... In comparison to USA states, the European countries are a real mess: lots of small autonomous areas, language barriers everywhere (with some places only speaking particular dialects), hospital networks and management with wild variations (with a crude mix of private / public / semi-private-public / church / volunteer), population distribution with radical variations between country (hey Spain, how are things?), train network that still doesn't quite commute between countries because someone 2 centuries ago said that there might be a war coming anytime soon, etc... To top all that, countries are much faster in claiming their autonomy than states (they are countries after all). This single fact has big implications in coordinated efforts.
      - Udik 6y ago
        European countries are not (just) states, they're sovereign nations. And that's the big issue of the EU. The whole system is organised in such a way that each nation can retain most of its power, which is almost always greater than that of the EU institutions.
    - skissane 6y ago
ucha 6y ago
The EU is 3x worse than the US, 4-5x worse than the UK and about 20x worse than Israel. It's one of the few - maybe the only - developed "countries" that has both a record number of cases and low vaccination rates. How is that not bad? A lot of pro-EU people refuse to blame to commission because they see it, justly, as a vindication of the Brits who warned of the EU bureaucracy when they left. But IMO, being pro-EU starts by naming the problems in the commission so that they can be fixed.
- HugoDaniel 6y ago
  Please provide data. How did you make the comparison? Does it consider that these countries moved up the priority stack through shady tactics and started vaccination earlier than the EU? Are you analysing the numbers per capita? total? average in 7 days? Please be constructive.
  - danielfoster 6y ago
    The data is easily available by searching Google. The EU has been slow to order doses from viable partners and always seems to be the last to approve new vaccines. Some EU countries are only now giving their first vaccines. What shady tactics did other countries use? To be fair it’s not reasonable to demand someone show data and then allude to “shady tactics” without providing evidence, though I don’t doubt that shady tactics were probably used all around.
    - HugoDaniel 6y ago
      Does not answer the question or expand on what time interval the data is collected. However, since you played the Google card, please take it back: "What shady tactics did other countries use?" Also easily available by searching Google.
      - MichaelRazum 6y ago
        Id doesn't matter at all. Facts are: Other countries placed their bets faster and started vaccination faster. First come first serve, don't see anything wrong with it. Maybe the EU should also use shady tactics but it sounds more like a huge corruption and bureaucracy disaster. By the way Biotech offered more vaccines and it was refused (even the CEO of Biotech gave an interview and said it was very confusing how the EU negotiated).
oli5679 6y ago
The EU has administered 2 doses per hundred citizens. The UK and US have administered 12 and 8 respectively. The EU treated this like a procurement exercise, fussing over price and process and not buying sufficiently diverse portfolio. UK and US treated this like an emergency. Every day of lockdown costs close to total vaccines expenditure, so they moved fast. Now the EU is scapegoating a company that is producing the vaccine at cost, faster than other firms, because it is more advanced in its separate UK supply chain, that was established and approved to start distribution months ahead of EU. Saying the EU process was different so it is understandable that it took longer, because it saved some cost or saved some duplication of procurement energy is missing the point. This is a disaster. The only thing that matters is speed! Spiegel's article is not a 'lie'.
- HugoDaniel 6y ago
  Its a coordinated effort, a fair comparison needs to at least take that into consideration. Even so: Why are you comparing "today" EU numbers with those of countries that started a one or two months earlier? If so, what makes you think that is a fair comparison (even disregarding the cost of the coordinated effort)? Can we compare "today" EU numbers with those of countries that have just started vaccinations? Would that be fair?
  - HugoDaniel 6y ago
    Doesn't it sound fishy to you when Der Spiegel compares a multi-country federation with multiple-languages and cultures to a single country with 9 million habitants with known shady non-democratic practices (like selling the data of its own citizens to move ahead of the vaccination stack)?
    - oli5679 6y ago
      USA has administered 28m vaccines compared to the EU's 12m, despite having a smaller population. I don't have any info on this 'shady non-democratic practice', but the reasons I have seen for other countries getting vaccines earlier is that they committed funds to build up capacity earlier while the EU haggled on price and liability law. I am grateful for vaccine manufacturers for working around the clock to develop, demontrate validity of and manufacture, at cost, millions of doses. Scapegoating them seems misguided to me. If you have some evidence for this shadiness, can you share it?

exporectomy 6y ago

Your response is consistent with the claim you called a lie. Adding "considering that ..." allows you to hold the EU to an arbitrarily lower standard than the other countries.

HugoDaniel 6y ago
I am a EU citizen, my standards are much higher. EU didn't had to sell their citizens healthcare data to move up the stack (like Israel did). The EU negotiations with these Big Pharma corps made it wait for these 3 countries (Israel, UK and USA). Vaccinations started 1 or 2 months later in EU (depending on country). A fair comparison would be the data of today in EU with the data from 1 or 2 months ago in those countries (per capita). But the big questions are: Why did we have to negotiate vaccines for a global pandemic? Why are countries moving up the stack with Big Pharma? Why is the vaccination rate higher in USA than in Mozambique?
- exporectomy 6y ago
  To be honest, I don't know a thing about this topic. I just found it odd that you seemed to be acknowledging that what you called a lie could actually have been the truth. You still seem to be acknowledge that the EU is facing setbacks. Why negotiate? Because it's a scarce resource and has to be allocated somehow.
- oli5679 6y ago
  The pharma companies you mention are all working hard to supply a vaccine to purchasers, at cost. The idea that they have some sort of profit motive and are deliberately delaying the EU is not true. Accounts of journalists, and the companies, suggest EU delayed contracts being signed because of internal disagreements, and haggling over contractual terms.
- hef19898 6y ago
  My understanding was, that the delay was mostly because the EU went through a fast track version of the normal certification process while the UK and the US used emergency certifications. IMHO, it is not important who started first, but about how fast you get to 65+% of vaccinations. I don't have any issue with delays early on, but right now this mixture of political power games, blaming, panic and agenda pushing is risking the whole European vaccination campaign.
- vinay427 6y ago
  > A fair comparison would be the data of today in EU with the data from 1 or 2 months ago in those countries (per capita). Why is this a fair comparison? Was the EU frozen in time for 1-2 months last year during which they couldn't respond to the virus?

neilsense 6y ago

"not that bad" -> more people dying

HugoDaniel 6y ago
I don't understand this comment. Could you please expand it in a more constructive way? Vaccination is not the only way available to stop the spreading of the virus: - Keep social distancing - Avoid friends and familiar reunions - Wash your hands frequently - Wear a mask - Be careful The top 5 places with most coronavirus deaths are: 1. USA 2. Brazil 3. Mexico 4. India 5. UK None of these are in the EU.
- Bobblebobble 6y ago
  The parent comment is just saying that a poorly-run vaccination programme results in more deaths than a successful one, everything else being equal. Hope that helps.
  - HugoDaniel 6y ago
    In that logic the parent comment disregards the original comparison operands. Innocuous, irrelevant, if not somewhat offensive and disrespectful.
- ucha 6y ago
  That's not even true when looking at deaths per capita (because how is total deaths relevant?) If you remove micro-states, the top 5 in deaths per capita is: 1. Belgium 2. Slovenia 3. UK 4. Czech Republic 5. Italy 4 out of 5 are in the EU. Source: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
  - HugoDaniel 6y ago
    Sort by total deaths. It is true. The parent comment did not specify the metric, every death counts and total deaths is a metric that should not to be disregarded. You are disregarding total deaths, like a robot that only looks at percentages and ratios. These are real people. If you remove micro-states, if you filter by this, if you only consider that, if you spin this enough, if you consider that this metric is invalid, if you this, if you that... then what do we have for such a vague claim such as "-> more people dying"?

thepasswordis 6y ago

The US effort is also not a singular effort. Each state is basically running their own system.

HugoDaniel 6y ago
Comparing USA states to countries is a very common practice of uneducated Americans.
- true_religion 6y ago
  In the case of health care, it’s apt because the federal government cannot force states to take actions. They can only issue guidelines.
  - HugoDaniel 6y ago
    Still there are a lot of variables to consider: production, distribution, shares, access, storage, etc... In comparison to USA states, the European countries are a real mess: lots of small autonomous areas, language barriers everywhere (with some places only speaking particular dialects), hospital networks and management with wild variations (with a crude mix of private / public / semi-private-public / church / volunteer), population distribution with radical variations between country (hey Spain, how are things?), train network that still doesn't quite commute between countries because someone 2 centuries ago said that there might be a war coming anytime soon, etc... To top all that, countries are much faster in claiming their autonomy than states (they are countries after all). This single fact has big implications in coordinated efforts.
    - Udik 6y ago
      European countries are not (just) states, they're sovereign nations. And that's the big issue of the EU. The whole system is organised in such a way that each nation can retain most of its power, which is almost always greater than that of the EU institutions.
  - skissane 6y ago

ucha 6y ago

The EU is 3x worse than the US, 4-5x worse than the UK and about 20x worse than Israel. It's one of the few - maybe the only - developed "countries" that has both a record number of cases and low vaccination rates. How is that not bad? A lot of pro-EU people refuse to blame to commission because they see it, justly, as a vindication of the Brits who warned of the EU bureaucracy when they left. But IMO, being pro-EU starts by naming the problems in the commission so that they can be fixed.

HugoDaniel 6y ago
Please provide data. How did you make the comparison? Does it consider that these countries moved up the priority stack through shady tactics and started vaccination earlier than the EU? Are you analysing the numbers per capita? total? average in 7 days? Please be constructive.
- danielfoster 6y ago
  The data is easily available by searching Google. The EU has been slow to order doses from viable partners and always seems to be the last to approve new vaccines. Some EU countries are only now giving their first vaccines. What shady tactics did other countries use? To be fair it’s not reasonable to demand someone show data and then allude to “shady tactics” without providing evidence, though I don’t doubt that shady tactics were probably used all around.
  - HugoDaniel 6y ago
    Does not answer the question or expand on what time interval the data is collected. However, since you played the Google card, please take it back: "What shady tactics did other countries use?" Also easily available by searching Google.
    - MichaelRazum 6y ago
      Id doesn't matter at all. Facts are: Other countries placed their bets faster and started vaccination faster. First come first serve, don't see anything wrong with it. Maybe the EU should also use shady tactics but it sounds more like a huge corruption and bureaucracy disaster. By the way Biotech offered more vaccines and it was refused (even the CEO of Biotech gave an interview and said it was very confusing how the EU negotiated).

oli5679 6y ago

The EU has administered 2 doses per hundred citizens. The UK and US have administered 12 and 8 respectively. The EU treated this like a procurement exercise, fussing over price and process and not buying sufficiently diverse portfolio. UK and US treated this like an emergency. Every day of lockdown costs close to total vaccines expenditure, so they moved fast. Now the EU is scapegoating a company that is producing the vaccine at cost, faster than other firms, because it is more advanced in its separate UK supply chain, that was established and approved to start distribution months ahead of EU. Saying the EU process was different so it is understandable that it took longer, because it saved some cost or saved some duplication of procurement energy is missing the point. This is a disaster. The only thing that matters is speed! Spiegel's article is not a 'lie'.

HugoDaniel 6y ago
Its a coordinated effort, a fair comparison needs to at least take that into consideration. Even so: Why are you comparing "today" EU numbers with those of countries that started a one or two months earlier? If so, what makes you think that is a fair comparison (even disregarding the cost of the coordinated effort)? Can we compare "today" EU numbers with those of countries that have just started vaccinations? Would that be fair?
- HugoDaniel 6y ago
  Doesn't it sound fishy to you when Der Spiegel compares a multi-country federation with multiple-languages and cultures to a single country with 9 million habitants with known shady non-democratic practices (like selling the data of its own citizens to move ahead of the vaccination stack)?
  - oli5679 6y ago
    USA has administered 28m vaccines compared to the EU's 12m, despite having a smaller population. I don't have any info on this 'shady non-democratic practice', but the reasons I have seen for other countries getting vaccines earlier is that they committed funds to build up capacity earlier while the EU haggled on price and liability law. I am grateful for vaccine manufacturers for working around the clock to develop, demontrate validity of and manufacture, at cost, millions of doses. Scapegoating them seems misguided to me. If you have some evidence for this shadiness, can you share it?