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The EU has exported 41 millionen vaccine doses of which the UK has gotten 8 million so far [1]. Meanwhile, the UK and US do not export any vaccines at all. So j

by gaha 6y ago

The EU has exported 41 millionen vaccine doses of which the UK has gotten 8 million so far [1]. Meanwhile, the UK and US do not export any vaccines at all. So just as a back of the envelope calculation, with 41 millionen doeses the EU could have vaccinated an additional 10% of its population, while the UK would have had more than 10% less vaccinatetions without those 8 million. This would not completetly close the gap, but the numbers would be quite different then. Anyway, you can interpret this in a postivie way: the EU is trying to be good and is sharing its vaccinations more or less fairly with other countries (for now). However, you can also see it as the EU has no real power at all and is just an easy target to get fooled over by other countries.. [1] https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-eu-not-ready-to-share-covid-vaccines-with-poorer-countries/a-56944274 https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-eu-not-ready-to-share-covi...

xiphias2 6y ago
I'm not sure that I would call the number of Pfitzer/BioNTech vaccines exported to young people in Israel fair so that they can party, while my parents inside the EU are waiting locked in for half a year now because they are scared of dying (and some of their friends already dead from COVID :( )
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  The EU decided to spend 750 billion euro of money it does not have (on credit - see [0]) for post-Covid recovery, but at the same time decided to save as much as possible on vaccines. I think that 'penny wise, pound foolish' applies. It would be unfair to Israel if they paid extra surcharge for their vaccines and later were told by European authorities "sorry, we will confiscate them, bad luck." If we instead paid some 10 extra euro per dose, it would have added up to about 1 per cent of the planned recovery fund - and an extra factory or two could have been built during last autumn to start cranking out the vaccines by millions as soon as approved. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/eu-agrees-on-750-billion-euro-recovery-fund/av-54252633 https://www.dw.com/en/eu-agrees-on-750-billion-euro-recovery...
  - ThalesX 6y ago
    Note that for a lot of countries, with perhaps less than competent governments, that money will end up right alongside where our tax money goes, in the hands of the corrupt.
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      It doesn't matter where the money goes in the grand scheme. What matters is that we have enough vaccines to end the pandemic. Whatever we needed to do to achieve this is what we should have done instead of worrying about hypothetical corruption and penny pinching.
- CyberRage 6y ago
  Wow, you almost make it seem like Israel has done something wrong. Nope, it was EU. the EU wanted to wait for final, concrete results before mass adoption. The EU was very skeptical regarding the vaccines. the EU wanted to perform bulk orders as a union which complicated the ordering process. The issue is not necessary the number of vaccines but the entire infrastructure to ship, cool and vaccinate people. Israel had good existing infrastructure, willingness to pay up-front and high demand for the vaccine. * will note that Israel also agreed to share vaccination data with Pfizer to locate any anomalies\problems
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    There's no issue with the infrastructure, the Pfizer vaccines are not coming, because Israel has priority. I'm not saying Israel did anything wrong, they are protecting their population and payed the price for it, while EU was trying to get the price of the vaccine down instead of thinking about the consequences of every lost day. Also if infrastructure whould be a problem, US solved it by just hoarding vaccines: at the end of the year they had 40M Moderna vaccines on stock, they weren't able to use it, but they didn't give it to other countries.
    - CyberRage 6y ago
      France, a while back, was receiving good numbers but were failing to keep up in terms of demand\infrastructure. I think now EU is far more active when it comes to the efforts but initially, they were not. It seems like there is more resistance in the EU to vaccination and data sharing than in Israel.
      - xiphias2 6y ago
        There's resistance to AstraZeneca vaccine, and in my country (Hungary) to Sinopharm and SPUTNIK-V. Russian troops invaded Hungary in the past, so there's not much trust in a Russian vaccine, we trust the EU and US more, but the government is laundering lots of money by getting vaccines from the east (they payed $31 per dose for Sinopharm vaccine)
- ben_w 6y ago
  “Fair” isn’t well defined at the best of times. I certainly want this all over ASAP, the vaccination isn’t as fast as I want; my biggest concern right now is the overlap between anti-mask-and-and-lockdown protestors and anti-vaccination protestors.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    I wish anti-vaccination protest would be real, that would mean that I would get my own vaccine faster, but I don't see that happening.
- cdash 6y ago
  Just so you know, this sounds a lot like classic european anti-semitism.
  - remirk 6y ago
    I have never really understood why you can't criticize Israeli politics without it sounding like antisemitism.
    - Ma8ee 6y ago
      It doesn’t sound like antisemitism. Some people choose to pretend all criticism of the state of Israel is. -Israel is an apartheid state. -You fucking nazi!
    - ars 6y ago
      Nah, that particular comment was not antisemitism. But to answer your question: There are a TON of antisemitic people in the world, but they know they can't talk that way, so they pretend that are "anti-Israel" instead. Most people can see right through that, some can't. This doesn't happen to other countries, so the situation with Israel is unique.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    I'm half Jewish (49% according to 23andMe), and I have a picture of 10 people of my own family killed in a mass grave, so I couldn't be farther from an anti-semite. Also I have no problem with Israel, as I said (I have far relatives there). What I don't like is the mix of price based capitalistic distribution for the countries, but not priced based capitalisic distribution of vaccines for the people. It's fake humanitarian and fake capitalism at the same time.
    - hfjfktkrkf 6y ago
      Just imagine govmts auctioning vaccines. That's how you start a revolution. And isn't the point of govs to take care of their own people? Otherwise rich countries should right now start spending their money on solving poor countries issues, like lack of a working healthcare system.
- ars 6y ago
  Israel paid a LOT more for the vaccine to ensure early supply. They are also tiny - a lot smaller than you might think, they are not really hogging all that much supply in terms of absolute numbers. And finally they agreed to be the research study for the world, so what they are doing does have value, even for your parents in the EU. In particular they will answer the question: If you immunize everyone does COVID stop?
onetimemanytime 6y ago
Export? USA and UK bought those vaccines a year ago from Pfizer, Moderna, J&J and AstraZeneca. Warp Speed, USA gambled and the world is better because of it. They are contracts and dates on which x million doses are to be delivered by. Why didn't EU do the same? Crying now it's too late and a trade war can go both ways. Say, no vaccine would be produced unless a certain item that is produced in USA goes to a Belgium factory.
- bryanlarsen 6y ago
  > Why didn't EU do the same? Germany gave BioNTech 445M. The US didn't give Pfizer/BioNTech anything.
  - Robotbeat 6y ago
    The US did, actually, by placing a firm order for vaccines.
    - bryanlarsen 6y ago
      The order was far from firm, Pfizer would have gotten $0 from the order if the vaccine didn't pass trials.
      - merpnderp 6y ago
        Far from firm? If I sign a contract to buy apples from you 6 months from now, but you show up with apple seeds, was my order not firm if I don't pay you? The fact is when Pfizer showed up with a vaccine, they knew they could sell $2 billion to the US and would have legal recourse if the US government didn't pay. That's as firm as it gets.
        bryanlarsen 6y ago
        The participants in operation warp speed get paid whether or not their vaccine makes it through trials. To use your analogy, farmers can sign contracts for "all the apples that's produced this year" if they want to offload the risk of crop failure rather than a contract for a specific number of apples.
tempestn 6y ago
As a Canadian it's certainly contributing to my goodwill toward the EU. We'd be SOL if they were taking the same approach as the US.
- birken 6y ago
  In about 2 months I suspect the US is going to flooding Canada/Mexico with vaccine doses.
  - tempestn 6y ago
    I agree, as at that point it will be in their self-interest to do so. So yes, we wouldn't be completely SOL, just in rougher shape than we are. I certainly understand the desire to keep doses within the country. I don't even necessarily blame the administration for doing so. But I do appreciate the EU giving us the opportunity to vaccinate our seniors prior to 18 year olds in the US.
    - birken 6y ago
      Currently 25% of the US population has one dose of the vaccine. That is way beyond Canada and most other countries, but the US is far from vaccinating 18 year olds.
      - tempestn 6y ago
        That's true. I don't expect them to allow Pfizer to export vaccine until they have though.
  - retrac 6y ago
    Canada will, with luck, already be half done with the first dose in two months. But yes, there's likely to be a surfeit in the entire developed world by July or so. The domestically manufactured Canadian vaccine for example, if approved, will likely end up primarily exported.
blibble 6y ago
> However, you can also see it as the EU has no real power at all and is just an easy target to get fooled over by other countries.. the position it finds itself in is entirely a result of its inability to competently and promptly negotiate contracts with its suppliers it was entirely focused on price instead of delivery, and it took months more than the suppliers other customers (e.g. the UK) to agree anything none of this is surprising behavior for an organisation that is primarily a producer's cartel the mistake was putting such an organisation in charge of the procurement in the first place the other outrageous fact is that France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands (the "Inclusive Vaccine Alliance") had all but signed a deal back in June, then the EU commission forced itself into the process, spent three months trying to re-negotiate (for a product being produced at cost), then signed the original deal regardless
- gebruikersnaam 6y ago
  This is not true, the contract for EU and UK are largely the same. The EU even signed 1 day earlier. This is FUD originating from AZ, which are downright lying.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Zenst 6y ago
    I'm not sure AZ said otherwise. I did check and you are correct about signing date. However the devil as always is in the detail and the two contracts are different and best covered here: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-the-eu-and-uk-astrazeneca-contracts/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-... Crux being the UK contract was a contractual commitment to deliver whilst the EU contract was best effort.
    - gebruikersnaam 6y ago
      This link says that the contract are comparable: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/astrazeneca-signed-vaccine-contract-with-eu-at-the-same-time-and-with-the-same-terms-as-uk-221293/ https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/astrazeneca-signed-va...
bengale 6y ago
The EU didn’t make them, companies with facilities in the EU did. They were exported because the EU managed to delay its procurement process and other countries made their orders earlier.
- hogFeast 6y ago
  ...and because politicians in the EU told citizens it might be dangerous. Fine, believe all the conspiracy theories about the UK stealing vaccines...the EU has literally millions of doses sitting around going unused because citizens won't take it (it is almost verging on mania: in Germany I have heard that 50% of health workers at some hospitals who had the vaccination are calling in sick after getting the vaccine). I am not sure why there is even a discussion on these points: the EU was late, and once they were late they did almost everything wrong (unsurprisingly, countries in Europe have a terrible record on vaccines)...that is it.
  - realityking 6y ago
    > the EU has literally millions of doses sitting around going unused because citizens won't take it This is utterly false. The vaccine is being used as quickly as it comes in. As of yesterday, more than 75% of all doses delivered to Germany have been administered. (Source: https://impfdashboard.de/ https://impfdashboard.de/) this includes the slow-down from temporarily halting the use of AstraZeneca.
    - hogFeast 6y ago
      Just 75%...wow...so low. The UK is doing close to 1m/day. Germany has what, ~1.4m that aren't being used. Amazing that people accept it.
      - realityking 6y ago
        Unfortunately I couldn‘t find a source for how many doses have been delivered to the UK so it‘s hard to draw a comparison. While the UK is vaccination their population at 3.5x the rate of Germany, the majority of that is due to the lack of supplies. If Germany was vaccinating at a rate of 750k/day, ever dose would be applied in 5 days. Considering big deliveries only happen ~1/week this is neither feasible nor desirable.
quietbritishjim 6y ago
The official line from these companies always seems to be that they were able to ramp up production to make the vaccines for the UK because the UK committed to its order signficantly earlier than the EU. (I've never seen this next bit said explicitly, but the subtext, as I read it, is that the EU was holding out for a better price.) Of course I don't know the accuracy of such statements. But if that is true, you could certainly argue it would unfair that the EU should benefit from production capacity that only exists because of commitments made by the UK, and the location of the factories is fairly irrelevant to that. You could counter argue that I am mistakenly treating the "EU" and "UK" as a single individual person each who deserves to suffer the consequences of their actions, when in fact the people suffering are individual citizens who had almost no control over the negotiation process. But, on the flip side, if companies cannot rely on agreements made during difficult negotiations to be honoured then it will be harder to secure such agreements in future.
- turbinerneiter 6y ago
  What makes this so painful for me is that person responsible, the comission president von der Leyen, was not actually elected by the people. We need some massive reforms and rebuilding after this. There already was a lot of EU scepticism, and instead of taking this opportunity to shine, they completely squandered it and destroyed trust.
  - iso1210 6y ago
    Commission president was decided by the heads of each democratically elected government - so Merkel, Sanchez, Johnson, Macron etc. Just like in the UK where the PM is elected by each democratically elected MP
    - turbinerneiter 6y ago
      They promised us that the candidate of the strongest party will get the job.
      - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
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genghisjahn 6y ago
The US is exporting vaccines (AstraZeneca) to Canada and Mexico. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-vaccine-exports-to-mexico-canada/a-56908883 https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-va...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- mrighele 6y ago
  Not "is exporting", but "plans to send", quite different. Meanwhile EU exported at least 3.9 million doses to Canada, 3.1 million doses to Mexico [1] https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=2252 https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=2252
- mahkeiro 6y ago
  Yes and AZ vaccine is not even approved in the US...
krona 6y ago
> the EU is trying to be good and is sharing its vaccinations more or less fairly with other countries The AstraZeneca factory in the Netherlands is owned by AstraZeneca, not the EU commission. World War 2 ended a long time ago.
- markus92 6y ago
  Halix is an independent contractor, AZ is not the owner at all.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- smnrchrds 6y ago
  Pfizer and Moderna production factories in the US are not owned by the government either, but they are prohibited from exporting a single dose of vaccine until the US government has enough doses to vaccinate the entire US population.
  - krona 6y ago
    If that was a condition of the contract between two parties and the two parties agreed, then what's the problem?
    - smnrchrds 6y ago
      First of all, I don't know if this is purely contractual or not. Perhaps it is, perhaps it's not. But I remember earlier in the vaccination campaign the news talked about how the companies will be free to export after they have fulfilled their 100-million-dose obligation to the US, but later that changed to 300-million doses. Perhaps this was part of the original contact, perhaps it was forced on them later on. Regardless: The problem with this approach is that if this becomes the norm, which so far it seems it will, the next pandemic, the rest of the world will be mega super screwed. Right now, the saving grace of us folks in Canada is that the EU, unlike US and UK, did not prohibit vaccine exports. If they had put the same barriers, we Canadians (as well as most other nations on earth) would have had to wait for the great powers (US/UK/EU) to finish vaccinating their 16-year olds before we could start vaccinating our 90-year olds. So many would have died who would have survived if the vaccines were shared between countries based on population or elderly demographics. It would have been a net gain for US/UK/EU, a net loss for Canada/etc and a net loss for the world as a whole. That's because when you prioritize not-at-risk population from country A over at-risk population from country B, for every A citizen you save, you cause 7900 citizens from country B to die [0]. Also, let's not pretend any country could have signed such a contract with the vaccine manufacturers. If Canada tried to sign a contract with a US manufacturer that said they would give Canada their 96-million-dose contract before selling a single dose to the US, I bet the US government would have ripped the contact to shreds and imposed their own rules on it. Only the countries in which the vaccine producers are located can sign such contracts. So in practice, there is little difference between contract and rule-making in terms of who can do it and what the outcomes are. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...
outside1234 6y ago
When you are in a crisis, the first thing you do is put the oxygen mask on yourself. The crisis in the UK and the US has been severe and it does not help to spread the vaccine around peanut butter style across every country in the world such that only 5% of the population has it. If anything else, we should be focusing it more on single countries impacted the most to get their essential workers and most impacted covered before moving on to a next one.
- Ma8ee 6y ago
  It certainly helps to vaccinate the most vulnerable people in all countries, instead of vaccinate everyone in certain countries first.
  - rootusrootus 6y ago
    Apparently the rest of the world, in particular many non-western nations, are not being hit as hard by covid as the US. So it makes sense to roll it out as fast as possible where people are getting the most lethal infections.
- raducu 6y ago
  Actually, "putting the oxygen mask on yourself" would be the equivalent to vaccinating your medical staff, not your whole friggin country. The US and UK don't fare much worse than the rest of the EU, per capita, do they? USA+ UK = 34 million cases, EU=24 million cases. The biggest problem with vaccine mercantilism is if we don't rationally share the vaccine, the vaccine technology and means of production, then the fact we vaccinated 100% of one country will be useless in 2 years with all the variants mutating in less fortunate countries.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Somehow, the EU plan to over purchase (which they did already end of 2020, early 2021) and share surplus vaccines withe developing countries to avoid exactly that gets completely ignored.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
The EU has received more than 62 million doses (of all vaccines) and has more than 10 million doses in stock. They've also created problems to the AZ vaccine at every turn. So much so that now some people simply refuse it. So if they hadn't shipped 8 million doses to the UK (where that vaccine was developed with public funds) there is no guarantee at all that they would have vaccinated 8 million more people. Edit with non-UK source (as of 2 weeks ago): "Millions of Vaccines in EU Unused (March 11, 10:00 a.m. ET) More than 11.5 million Covid vaccine doses that have been delivered to European Union countries have not yet been used, according to Bloomberg. The number of shots sent by manufacturers now totals 54.2 million, compared to 46 million a week previously. The data covers the week to March 7. [1] [1] https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/31024-coronavirus-watch-governments-rush-to-secure-ventilators https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/31024-coronavirus-...
- bArray 6y ago
  I believe several EU Countries have still not cleared AZ for use on (false?) fears of blood clots. And then there is the problem of distribution - not so easy in a place as large as the EU.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    First some countries refused to give the AZ vaccine to people over 65, then they recklessly suspended it altogether, now some countries refuse to give it to people under 55. That's ridiculous. Distribution is no more a problem than in the UK. The EU has probably the best infrastructure in the world and vast resources, while being smaller than the US.
    - morsch 6y ago
      That's ridiculous. No vaccination for ages over 65 while there is insufficient data on efficacy in those groups, briefly suspend vaccination with new drug while evaluating reports of unexpected side effects, release of the vaccine to age groups that are least effected by those side effects. I agree that all three decisions are wrong, but I don't think they're ridiculous. Just overly cautious.
kjakm 6y ago
Nonsense. This isn’t really about countries exporting/not exporting. These vaccine deals are with private companies who produce their product around the world. Just because vaccines are manufactured in a specific country doesn’t make them property of that country. Whichever country is contractually at the front of the line will have their order fulfilled first/according to the terms of the contracts. The EU wasted months negotiating lower prices and then took longer with approvals. There is no good guy or bad guy (at least until the UK or EU blocks exports preventing execution of the private contracts - at that point the country blocking the exports becomes the bad guy).
- hamax 6y ago
  So both UK and US are bad guys since they're blocking all exports?
  - kjakm 6y ago
    I’m aware of the US blocking exports of certain things but as far as I know the UK isn’t. If you have evidence proving otherwise I’d love to see.
  - dbetteridge 6y ago
    Per the above, no. The UK purchased right of first refusal on the first 100million doses of Oxford/AZ produced in the UK factories that they funded. The EU also funded factories (in the EU) but did not purchase right of first refusal only best efforts contracts. The USA has a full ban on exports till they are ready to export.
  - heraclius 6y ago
    There is no UK prohibition on exports. The UK is not blocking exports. The EU were free to conclude contracts with the (not very productive) UK manufacturers at the same time HM government was doing so.
- dan-robertson 6y ago
  Sure it’s private companies but it wasn’t random chance that led to AstraZeneca (a British–Swedish company) working with the Oxford group in the U.K. or Pfizer (an American company) with BioNTech. It’s a lot easier to control production when it happens within your borders (eg Trump did have some executive order banning exports but this was just symbolic when the defence production act was invoked.)
reddotX 6y ago
also AstraZeneca failed to deliver to EU in a big way. 70% less than agreed!!! at the same time AZ exported vaccines from EU. i hope EU will take legal action against AZ
- Silhouette 6y ago
  i hope EU will take legal action against AZ The APA explicitly states that the EU side waives any claim against AZ arising from delays in delivery of the vaccine. What legal action do you think the EU can or should take, and why?
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Especially if the delay is caused by additional orders from the EU.
  - gebruikersnaam 6y ago
    It seems they are starting legal actions: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BA1CF https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BA1CF
    - Silhouette 6y ago
      Not quite. They are starting the prescribed dispute resolution process, as set out in the agreement. If that fails, they would still have to take AZ to court, and presumably then the restrictions on claims also set out in the agreement would apply.
secondcoming 6y ago
The UK is exporting vaccine components to the EU though.
- reddotX 6y ago
  source?
  - cheradenine_uk 6y ago
    https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14400027/pfizer-warns-eu-threats-block-vaccine-exports/?utm_campaign=sunmaintwitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1616248709 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14400027/pfizer-warns-eu-threa... Block AZ in the EU, you'll force the populist Johnson into tit-for-tat retaliation - and we'll all go to hell in a hand-cart.
    - reddotX 6y ago
      the sun LMAO, stop reading British tabloids
      - cheradenine_uk 6y ago
        You don't think Croda are important then? Or that this deal doesn't exist? https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/croda-covid-vaccine-pfizer-coronavirus-19255856 https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/croda-covid-va...
    - libertine 6y ago
      This has been debunked, it's just rumors with no support, both Pfizer and BioNTech secured critical supplies in the beginning of the year for EU production - internally in Europe (2 German companies if I recall correctly), from Canada, and from the UK. At best banning those exports would just harm the production of surplus vaccines/exports. It would be the UK crippling their own supply of vaccines - which they have received 10 million so far from Pfizer made in Belgium.
goatinaboat 6y ago
The EU has exported 41 millionen vaccine doses of which the UK has gotten 8 million so far Not “the EU”. Private companies with factories in European countries fulfilled pre-orders placed and paid for months ago. “The EU” owns no factories and produces no vaccines itself.
cm2187 6y ago
In France at least I believe there was (and probably still is) also a distribution problem. Also health authorities flip-flopping on the benefits and side effects is disastrous from an adoption point of view. First it is not efficient for people over 65, then it is, then it will only be distributed to people over 50, then it is dangerous, then it is not dangerous anymore. You couldn't manufacture reluctance to getting vaccinated more if you wanted to.
- jeromenerf 6y ago
  Distribution is OK. The main problem is the availability of the approved vaccine doses. AZ vaccine is easy to move around, at near 0°C. As for the flip-flopping, it’s the usual media game. High public expectations, low delivery. What is really annoying is that french pharma has not been able to invent a vaccine or at least able to manufacture someone else’s.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
My bad, I didn't realise the EU was already a socialist dystopia which owned what is produced by their private citizens. The EU bureaucrats were simply worse at negotiating contracts and doing their job.
bogomipz 6y ago
>"Meanwhile, the UK and US do not export any vaccines at all." This is untrue. The US in the process of exporting 4 million doses of vaccine between Mexico and Canada[1]. The US has also said that once they have ensured that there is enough vaccine supply for all Americans(likely around May 1st)it will begin exporting any surplus in the summer.[2] The US has not met that target of enough vaccines for its population. The reality is that US and EU took very different approaches towards vaccine procurement. The US government acted more like an investor and threw insane sums of cash at the drugmakers with very few strings attached and the EU sought lower prices and higher accountability for drug makers. There were very different risk profiles between the two. In the end the EU placed their orders months after the US, the UK and Israel. Ursula von der Leyen seems quite content to shift the blame everywhere else and propagate the view that the EU is being taken advantage of. [1] https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-vaccine-exports-to-mexico-canada/a-56908883 https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-va... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biden-moves-up-vaccine-timeline-in-the-u-s-vows-to-expand-global-supplies https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biden-moves-up-vaccine-tim...
perryizgr8 6y ago
> the EU is trying to be good and is sharing its vaccinations more or less fairly with other countries (for now) What's fair about it? The number of exported vaccines would account for only 10% of EU population, by your own admission. Since the poor countries in need of vaccine are from Africa and Asia (mostly), they most definitely have much greater populations. What's fair about exporting just 10% of vaccines?
Semaphor 6y ago
I expect this whole thing will result in the EU getting a similar law as the US and less cooperation.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
The EU started this particular game of iterative prisoner's dilemma with the assumption of cooperation. That trust in was betrayed in the first round, and now we're seeing the reaction. Considering the supply chains cross many borders, there is a good chance this will now escalate further, and total production capacity may well be harmed as a result, which is exactly why cooperation was the first choice. It may have been naive in a practical sense to assume that Johnson and, at the time, Trump would be capable of thinking two steps ahead. But getting burned on an assumption of good faith isn't exactly the worst thing in the world. Plus, once the US, UK, and Israel are done, and with more capacity coming on-line, the spigot will turn to the EU and the difference may end up being far smaller than one might think from just extrapolating current data.
rsj_hn 6y ago
What's interesting about this comment is that it demonstrates the core sources of sclerosis in the EMU. Instead of engaging in a careful investigation to identify roadblocks to the rollout, removing said roadblocks, and then engaging in some soul-searching as to why these roadblocks are there, one immediately starts denouncing their favorite villains, blaming them and while at the same time indulging in fantasies of moral superiority to compensate for one's failures. "Yes, comrade, we have no toilet-paper, but we do not exploit toiler-paper workers!" It's obvious why this type of casuistry is so appealing to the powerless, but what's scary is when those in leadership become slaves of the same memes - that's when you know that things will only get much, much worse - as owning your failures is a pre-requisite to learning from them, which is a pre-requisite for effective reform. The EU is a system to grow bureaucracy but reform is effectively blocked by the moralizers. Thus, things will continue to get worse until the all the sanctimonious people are kicked out of office or until the society itself collapses under the massive weight of moralistic bureaucrats.
youngtaff 6y ago
And the Pfizer production relies on Lipids that are produced in the UK, along with other products produced elsewhere. Moderna is made in Switzerland and then goes to Spain for finishing does that make it an EU or Swiss export? We all need to cooperate to succeed. Given the relative country sizes it's weird that the EU seems to have comparatively less vaccine production And if the EU really wants to 'put the issue to bed' why don't they just publish the export numbers but vaccine type and country?

by gaha 6y ago

xiphias2 6y ago

I'm not sure that I would call the number of Pfitzer/BioNTech vaccines exported to young people in Israel fair so that they can party, while my parents inside the EU are waiting locked in for half a year now because they are scared of dying (and some of their friends already dead from COVID :( )

inglor_cz 6y ago
The EU decided to spend 750 billion euro of money it does not have (on credit - see [0]) for post-Covid recovery, but at the same time decided to save as much as possible on vaccines. I think that 'penny wise, pound foolish' applies. It would be unfair to Israel if they paid extra surcharge for their vaccines and later were told by European authorities "sorry, we will confiscate them, bad luck." If we instead paid some 10 extra euro per dose, it would have added up to about 1 per cent of the planned recovery fund - and an extra factory or two could have been built during last autumn to start cranking out the vaccines by millions as soon as approved. [0] https://www.dw.com/en/eu-agrees-on-750-billion-euro-recovery-fund/av-54252633 https://www.dw.com/en/eu-agrees-on-750-billion-euro-recovery...
- ThalesX 6y ago
  Note that for a lot of countries, with perhaps less than competent governments, that money will end up right alongside where our tax money goes, in the hands of the corrupt.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    It doesn't matter where the money goes in the grand scheme. What matters is that we have enough vaccines to end the pandemic. Whatever we needed to do to achieve this is what we should have done instead of worrying about hypothetical corruption and penny pinching.
CyberRage 6y ago
Wow, you almost make it seem like Israel has done something wrong. Nope, it was EU. the EU wanted to wait for final, concrete results before mass adoption. The EU was very skeptical regarding the vaccines. the EU wanted to perform bulk orders as a union which complicated the ordering process. The issue is not necessary the number of vaccines but the entire infrastructure to ship, cool and vaccinate people. Israel had good existing infrastructure, willingness to pay up-front and high demand for the vaccine. * will note that Israel also agreed to share vaccination data with Pfizer to locate any anomalies\problems
- xiphias2 6y ago
  There's no issue with the infrastructure, the Pfizer vaccines are not coming, because Israel has priority. I'm not saying Israel did anything wrong, they are protecting their population and payed the price for it, while EU was trying to get the price of the vaccine down instead of thinking about the consequences of every lost day. Also if infrastructure whould be a problem, US solved it by just hoarding vaccines: at the end of the year they had 40M Moderna vaccines on stock, they weren't able to use it, but they didn't give it to other countries.
  - CyberRage 6y ago
    France, a while back, was receiving good numbers but were failing to keep up in terms of demand\infrastructure. I think now EU is far more active when it comes to the efforts but initially, they were not. It seems like there is more resistance in the EU to vaccination and data sharing than in Israel.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      There's resistance to AstraZeneca vaccine, and in my country (Hungary) to Sinopharm and SPUTNIK-V. Russian troops invaded Hungary in the past, so there's not much trust in a Russian vaccine, we trust the EU and US more, but the government is laundering lots of money by getting vaccines from the east (they payed $31 per dose for Sinopharm vaccine)
ben_w 6y ago
“Fair” isn’t well defined at the best of times. I certainly want this all over ASAP, the vaccination isn’t as fast as I want; my biggest concern right now is the overlap between anti-mask-and-and-lockdown protestors and anti-vaccination protestors.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  I wish anti-vaccination protest would be real, that would mean that I would get my own vaccine faster, but I don't see that happening.
cdash 6y ago
Just so you know, this sounds a lot like classic european anti-semitism.
- remirk 6y ago
  I have never really understood why you can't criticize Israeli politics without it sounding like antisemitism.
  - Ma8ee 6y ago
    It doesn’t sound like antisemitism. Some people choose to pretend all criticism of the state of Israel is. -Israel is an apartheid state. -You fucking nazi!
  - ars 6y ago
    Nah, that particular comment was not antisemitism. But to answer your question: There are a TON of antisemitic people in the world, but they know they can't talk that way, so they pretend that are "anti-Israel" instead. Most people can see right through that, some can't. This doesn't happen to other countries, so the situation with Israel is unique.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  I'm half Jewish (49% according to 23andMe), and I have a picture of 10 people of my own family killed in a mass grave, so I couldn't be farther from an anti-semite. Also I have no problem with Israel, as I said (I have far relatives there). What I don't like is the mix of price based capitalistic distribution for the countries, but not priced based capitalisic distribution of vaccines for the people. It's fake humanitarian and fake capitalism at the same time.
  - hfjfktkrkf 6y ago
    Just imagine govmts auctioning vaccines. That's how you start a revolution. And isn't the point of govs to take care of their own people? Otherwise rich countries should right now start spending their money on solving poor countries issues, like lack of a working healthcare system.
ars 6y ago
Israel paid a LOT more for the vaccine to ensure early supply. They are also tiny - a lot smaller than you might think, they are not really hogging all that much supply in terms of absolute numbers. And finally they agreed to be the research study for the world, so what they are doing does have value, even for your parents in the EU. In particular they will answer the question: If you immunize everyone does COVID stop?

onetimemanytime 6y ago

Export? USA and UK bought those vaccines a year ago from Pfizer, Moderna, J&J and AstraZeneca. Warp Speed, USA gambled and the world is better because of it. They are contracts and dates on which x million doses are to be delivered by. Why didn't EU do the same? Crying now it's too late and a trade war can go both ways. Say, no vaccine would be produced unless a certain item that is produced in USA goes to a Belgium factory.

bryanlarsen 6y ago
> Why didn't EU do the same? Germany gave BioNTech 445M. The US didn't give Pfizer/BioNTech anything.
- Robotbeat 6y ago
  The US did, actually, by placing a firm order for vaccines.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    The order was far from firm, Pfizer would have gotten $0 from the order if the vaccine didn't pass trials.
    - merpnderp 6y ago
      Far from firm? If I sign a contract to buy apples from you 6 months from now, but you show up with apple seeds, was my order not firm if I don't pay you? The fact is when Pfizer showed up with a vaccine, they knew they could sell $2 billion to the US and would have legal recourse if the US government didn't pay. That's as firm as it gets.
      - bryanlarsen 6y ago
        The participants in operation warp speed get paid whether or not their vaccine makes it through trials. To use your analogy, farmers can sign contracts for "all the apples that's produced this year" if they want to offload the risk of crop failure rather than a contract for a specific number of apples.

tempestn 6y ago

As a Canadian it's certainly contributing to my goodwill toward the EU. We'd be SOL if they were taking the same approach as the US.

birken 6y ago
In about 2 months I suspect the US is going to flooding Canada/Mexico with vaccine doses.
- tempestn 6y ago
  I agree, as at that point it will be in their self-interest to do so. So yes, we wouldn't be completely SOL, just in rougher shape than we are. I certainly understand the desire to keep doses within the country. I don't even necessarily blame the administration for doing so. But I do appreciate the EU giving us the opportunity to vaccinate our seniors prior to 18 year olds in the US.
  - birken 6y ago
    Currently 25% of the US population has one dose of the vaccine. That is way beyond Canada and most other countries, but the US is far from vaccinating 18 year olds.
    - tempestn 6y ago
      That's true. I don't expect them to allow Pfizer to export vaccine until they have though.
- retrac 6y ago
  Canada will, with luck, already be half done with the first dose in two months. But yes, there's likely to be a surfeit in the entire developed world by July or so. The domestically manufactured Canadian vaccine for example, if approved, will likely end up primarily exported.

blibble 6y ago

> However, you can also see it as the EU has no real power at all and is just an easy target to get fooled over by other countries.. the position it finds itself in is entirely a result of its inability to competently and promptly negotiate contracts with its suppliers it was entirely focused on price instead of delivery, and it took months more than the suppliers other customers (e.g. the UK) to agree anything none of this is surprising behavior for an organisation that is primarily a producer's cartel the mistake was putting such an organisation in charge of the procurement in the first place the other outrageous fact is that France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands (the "Inclusive Vaccine Alliance") had all but signed a deal back in June, then the EU commission forced itself into the process, spent three months trying to re-negotiate (for a product being produced at cost), then signed the original deal regardless

gebruikersnaam 6y ago
This is not true, the contract for EU and UK are largely the same. The EU even signed 1 day earlier. This is FUD originating from AZ, which are downright lying.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Zenst 6y ago
  I'm not sure AZ said otherwise. I did check and you are correct about signing date. However the devil as always is in the detail and the two contracts are different and best covered here: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-the-eu-and-uk-astrazeneca-contracts/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-... Crux being the UK contract was a contractual commitment to deliver whilst the EU contract was best effort.
  - gebruikersnaam 6y ago
    This link says that the contract are comparable: https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/astrazeneca-signed-vaccine-contract-with-eu-at-the-same-time-and-with-the-same-terms-as-uk-221293/ https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/astrazeneca-signed-va...

bengale 6y ago

The EU didn’t make them, companies with facilities in the EU did. They were exported because the EU managed to delay its procurement process and other countries made their orders earlier.

hogFeast 6y ago
...and because politicians in the EU told citizens it might be dangerous. Fine, believe all the conspiracy theories about the UK stealing vaccines...the EU has literally millions of doses sitting around going unused because citizens won't take it (it is almost verging on mania: in Germany I have heard that 50% of health workers at some hospitals who had the vaccination are calling in sick after getting the vaccine). I am not sure why there is even a discussion on these points: the EU was late, and once they were late they did almost everything wrong (unsurprisingly, countries in Europe have a terrible record on vaccines)...that is it.
- realityking 6y ago
  > the EU has literally millions of doses sitting around going unused because citizens won't take it This is utterly false. The vaccine is being used as quickly as it comes in. As of yesterday, more than 75% of all doses delivered to Germany have been administered. (Source: https://impfdashboard.de/ https://impfdashboard.de/) this includes the slow-down from temporarily halting the use of AstraZeneca.
  - hogFeast 6y ago
    Just 75%...wow...so low. The UK is doing close to 1m/day. Germany has what, ~1.4m that aren't being used. Amazing that people accept it.
    - realityking 6y ago
      Unfortunately I couldn‘t find a source for how many doses have been delivered to the UK so it‘s hard to draw a comparison. While the UK is vaccination their population at 3.5x the rate of Germany, the majority of that is due to the lack of supplies. If Germany was vaccinating at a rate of 750k/day, ever dose would be applied in 5 days. Considering big deliveries only happen ~1/week this is neither feasible nor desirable.

quietbritishjim 6y ago

The official line from these companies always seems to be that they were able to ramp up production to make the vaccines for the UK because the UK committed to its order signficantly earlier than the EU. (I've never seen this next bit said explicitly, but the subtext, as I read it, is that the EU was holding out for a better price.) Of course I don't know the accuracy of such statements. But if that is true, you could certainly argue it would unfair that the EU should benefit from production capacity that only exists because of commitments made by the UK, and the location of the factories is fairly irrelevant to that. You could counter argue that I am mistakenly treating the "EU" and "UK" as a single individual person each who deserves to suffer the consequences of their actions, when in fact the people suffering are individual citizens who had almost no control over the negotiation process. But, on the flip side, if companies cannot rely on agreements made during difficult negotiations to be honoured then it will be harder to secure such agreements in future.

turbinerneiter 6y ago
What makes this so painful for me is that person responsible, the comission president von der Leyen, was not actually elected by the people. We need some massive reforms and rebuilding after this. There already was a lot of EU scepticism, and instead of taking this opportunity to shine, they completely squandered it and destroyed trust.
- iso1210 6y ago
  Commission president was decided by the heads of each democratically elected government - so Merkel, Sanchez, Johnson, Macron etc. Just like in the UK where the PM is elected by each democratically elected MP
  - turbinerneiter 6y ago
    They promised us that the candidate of the strongest party will get the job.
    - 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

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genghisjahn 6y ago

The US is exporting vaccines (AstraZeneca) to Canada and Mexico. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-vaccine-exports-to-mexico-canada/a-56908883 https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-va...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
mrighele 6y ago
Not "is exporting", but "plans to send", quite different. Meanwhile EU exported at least 3.9 million doses to Canada, 3.1 million doses to Mexico [1] https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=2252 https://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=2252
mahkeiro 6y ago
Yes and AZ vaccine is not even approved in the US...

krona 6y ago

> the EU is trying to be good and is sharing its vaccinations more or less fairly with other countries The AstraZeneca factory in the Netherlands is owned by AstraZeneca, not the EU commission. World War 2 ended a long time ago.

markus92 6y ago
Halix is an independent contractor, AZ is not the owner at all.
deleted 6y ago
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smnrchrds 6y ago
Pfizer and Moderna production factories in the US are not owned by the government either, but they are prohibited from exporting a single dose of vaccine until the US government has enough doses to vaccinate the entire US population.
- krona 6y ago
  If that was a condition of the contract between two parties and the two parties agreed, then what's the problem?
  - smnrchrds 6y ago
    First of all, I don't know if this is purely contractual or not. Perhaps it is, perhaps it's not. But I remember earlier in the vaccination campaign the news talked about how the companies will be free to export after they have fulfilled their 100-million-dose obligation to the US, but later that changed to 300-million doses. Perhaps this was part of the original contact, perhaps it was forced on them later on. Regardless: The problem with this approach is that if this becomes the norm, which so far it seems it will, the next pandemic, the rest of the world will be mega super screwed. Right now, the saving grace of us folks in Canada is that the EU, unlike US and UK, did not prohibit vaccine exports. If they had put the same barriers, we Canadians (as well as most other nations on earth) would have had to wait for the great powers (US/UK/EU) to finish vaccinating their 16-year olds before we could start vaccinating our 90-year olds. So many would have died who would have survived if the vaccines were shared between countries based on population or elderly demographics. It would have been a net gain for US/UK/EU, a net loss for Canada/etc and a net loss for the world as a whole. That's because when you prioritize not-at-risk population from country A over at-risk population from country B, for every A citizen you save, you cause 7900 citizens from country B to die [0]. Also, let's not pretend any country could have signed such a contract with the vaccine manufacturers. If Canada tried to sign a contract with a US manufacturer that said they would give Canada their 96-million-dose contract before selling a single dose to the US, I bet the US government would have ripped the contact to shreds and imposed their own rules on it. Only the countries in which the vaccine producers are located can sign such contracts. So in practice, there is little difference between contract and rule-making in terms of who can do it and what the outcomes are. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investigations-discovery/hospitalization-death-by-age.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/investi...

outside1234 6y ago

When you are in a crisis, the first thing you do is put the oxygen mask on yourself. The crisis in the UK and the US has been severe and it does not help to spread the vaccine around peanut butter style across every country in the world such that only 5% of the population has it. If anything else, we should be focusing it more on single countries impacted the most to get their essential workers and most impacted covered before moving on to a next one.

Ma8ee 6y ago
It certainly helps to vaccinate the most vulnerable people in all countries, instead of vaccinate everyone in certain countries first.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  Apparently the rest of the world, in particular many non-western nations, are not being hit as hard by covid as the US. So it makes sense to roll it out as fast as possible where people are getting the most lethal infections.
raducu 6y ago
Actually, "putting the oxygen mask on yourself" would be the equivalent to vaccinating your medical staff, not your whole friggin country. The US and UK don't fare much worse than the rest of the EU, per capita, do they? USA+ UK = 34 million cases, EU=24 million cases. The biggest problem with vaccine mercantilism is if we don't rationally share the vaccine, the vaccine technology and means of production, then the fact we vaccinated 100% of one country will be useless in 2 years with all the variants mutating in less fortunate countries.
- hef19898 6y ago
  Somehow, the EU plan to over purchase (which they did already end of 2020, early 2021) and share surplus vaccines withe developing countries to avoid exactly that gets completely ignored.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

The EU has received more than 62 million doses (of all vaccines) and has more than 10 million doses in stock. They've also created problems to the AZ vaccine at every turn. So much so that now some people simply refuse it. So if they hadn't shipped 8 million doses to the UK (where that vaccine was developed with public funds) there is no guarantee at all that they would have vaccinated 8 million more people. Edit with non-UK source (as of 2 weeks ago): "Millions of Vaccines in EU Unused (March 11, 10:00 a.m. ET) More than 11.5 million Covid vaccine doses that have been delivered to European Union countries have not yet been used, according to Bloomberg. The number of shots sent by manufacturers now totals 54.2 million, compared to 46 million a week previously. The data covers the week to March 7. [1] [1] https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/31024-coronavirus-watch-governments-rush-to-secure-ventilators https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/31024-coronavirus-...

bArray 6y ago
I believe several EU Countries have still not cleared AZ for use on (false?) fears of blood clots. And then there is the problem of distribution - not so easy in a place as large as the EU.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  First some countries refused to give the AZ vaccine to people over 65, then they recklessly suspended it altogether, now some countries refuse to give it to people under 55. That's ridiculous. Distribution is no more a problem than in the UK. The EU has probably the best infrastructure in the world and vast resources, while being smaller than the US.
  - morsch 6y ago
    That's ridiculous. No vaccination for ages over 65 while there is insufficient data on efficacy in those groups, briefly suspend vaccination with new drug while evaluating reports of unexpected side effects, release of the vaccine to age groups that are least effected by those side effects. I agree that all three decisions are wrong, but I don't think they're ridiculous. Just overly cautious.

kjakm 6y ago

Nonsense. This isn’t really about countries exporting/not exporting. These vaccine deals are with private companies who produce their product around the world. Just because vaccines are manufactured in a specific country doesn’t make them property of that country. Whichever country is contractually at the front of the line will have their order fulfilled first/according to the terms of the contracts. The EU wasted months negotiating lower prices and then took longer with approvals. There is no good guy or bad guy (at least until the UK or EU blocks exports preventing execution of the private contracts - at that point the country blocking the exports becomes the bad guy).

hamax 6y ago
So both UK and US are bad guys since they're blocking all exports?
- kjakm 6y ago
  I’m aware of the US blocking exports of certain things but as far as I know the UK isn’t. If you have evidence proving otherwise I’d love to see.
- dbetteridge 6y ago
  Per the above, no. The UK purchased right of first refusal on the first 100million doses of Oxford/AZ produced in the UK factories that they funded. The EU also funded factories (in the EU) but did not purchase right of first refusal only best efforts contracts. The USA has a full ban on exports till they are ready to export.
- heraclius 6y ago
  There is no UK prohibition on exports. The UK is not blocking exports. The EU were free to conclude contracts with the (not very productive) UK manufacturers at the same time HM government was doing so.
dan-robertson 6y ago
Sure it’s private companies but it wasn’t random chance that led to AstraZeneca (a British–Swedish company) working with the Oxford group in the U.K. or Pfizer (an American company) with BioNTech. It’s a lot easier to control production when it happens within your borders (eg Trump did have some executive order banning exports but this was just symbolic when the defence production act was invoked.)

reddotX 6y ago

also AstraZeneca failed to deliver to EU in a big way. 70% less than agreed!!! at the same time AZ exported vaccines from EU. i hope EU will take legal action against AZ

Silhouette 6y ago
i hope EU will take legal action against AZ The APA explicitly states that the EU side waives any claim against AZ arising from delays in delivery of the vaccine. What legal action do you think the EU can or should take, and why?
- hef19898 6y ago
  Especially if the delay is caused by additional orders from the EU.
- gebruikersnaam 6y ago
  It seems they are starting legal actions: https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BA1CF https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN2BA1CF
  - Silhouette 6y ago
    Not quite. They are starting the prescribed dispute resolution process, as set out in the agreement. If that fails, they would still have to take AZ to court, and presumably then the restrictions on claims also set out in the agreement would apply.

secondcoming 6y ago

The UK is exporting vaccine components to the EU though.

reddotX 6y ago
source?
- cheradenine_uk 6y ago
  https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14400027/pfizer-warns-eu-threats-block-vaccine-exports/?utm_campaign=sunmaintwitter&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1616248709 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14400027/pfizer-warns-eu-threa... Block AZ in the EU, you'll force the populist Johnson into tit-for-tat retaliation - and we'll all go to hell in a hand-cart.
  - reddotX 6y ago
    the sun LMAO, stop reading British tabloids
    - cheradenine_uk 6y ago
      You don't think Croda are important then? Or that this deal doesn't exist? https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/croda-covid-vaccine-pfizer-coronavirus-19255856 https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/croda-covid-va...
  - libertine 6y ago
    This has been debunked, it's just rumors with no support, both Pfizer and BioNTech secured critical supplies in the beginning of the year for EU production - internally in Europe (2 German companies if I recall correctly), from Canada, and from the UK. At best banning those exports would just harm the production of surplus vaccines/exports. It would be the UK crippling their own supply of vaccines - which they have received 10 million so far from Pfizer made in Belgium.

goatinaboat 6y ago

The EU has exported 41 millionen vaccine doses of which the UK has gotten 8 million so far Not “the EU”. Private companies with factories in European countries fulfilled pre-orders placed and paid for months ago. “The EU” owns no factories and produces no vaccines itself.

cm2187 6y ago

In France at least I believe there was (and probably still is) also a distribution problem. Also health authorities flip-flopping on the benefits and side effects is disastrous from an adoption point of view. First it is not efficient for people over 65, then it is, then it will only be distributed to people over 50, then it is dangerous, then it is not dangerous anymore. You couldn't manufacture reluctance to getting vaccinated more if you wanted to.

jeromenerf 6y ago
Distribution is OK. The main problem is the availability of the approved vaccine doses. AZ vaccine is easy to move around, at near 0°C. As for the flip-flopping, it’s the usual media game. High public expectations, low delivery. What is really annoying is that french pharma has not been able to invent a vaccine or at least able to manufacture someone else’s.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

My bad, I didn't realise the EU was already a socialist dystopia which owned what is produced by their private citizens. The EU bureaucrats were simply worse at negotiating contracts and doing their job.

bogomipz 6y ago

>"Meanwhile, the UK and US do not export any vaccines at all." This is untrue. The US in the process of exporting 4 million doses of vaccine between Mexico and Canada[1]. The US has also said that once they have ensured that there is enough vaccine supply for all Americans(likely around May 1st)it will begin exporting any surplus in the summer.[2] The US has not met that target of enough vaccines for its population. The reality is that US and EU took very different approaches towards vaccine procurement. The US government acted more like an investor and threw insane sums of cash at the drugmakers with very few strings attached and the EU sought lower prices and higher accountability for drug makers. There were very different risk profiles between the two. In the end the EU placed their orders months after the US, the UK and Israel. Ursula von der Leyen seems quite content to shift the blame everywhere else and propagate the view that the EU is being taken advantage of. [1] https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-vaccine-exports-to-mexico-canada/a-56908883 https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-va... [2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biden-moves-up-vaccine-timeline-in-the-u-s-vows-to-expand-global-supplies https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biden-moves-up-vaccine-tim...

perryizgr8 6y ago

> the EU is trying to be good and is sharing its vaccinations more or less fairly with other countries (for now) What's fair about it? The number of exported vaccines would account for only 10% of EU population, by your own admission. Since the poor countries in need of vaccine are from Africa and Asia (mostly), they most definitely have much greater populations. What's fair about exporting just 10% of vaccines?

Semaphor 6y ago

I expect this whole thing will result in the EU getting a similar law as the US and less cooperation.

IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago

The EU started this particular game of iterative prisoner's dilemma with the assumption of cooperation. That trust in was betrayed in the first round, and now we're seeing the reaction. Considering the supply chains cross many borders, there is a good chance this will now escalate further, and total production capacity may well be harmed as a result, which is exactly why cooperation was the first choice. It may have been naive in a practical sense to assume that Johnson and, at the time, Trump would be capable of thinking two steps ahead. But getting burned on an assumption of good faith isn't exactly the worst thing in the world. Plus, once the US, UK, and Israel are done, and with more capacity coming on-line, the spigot will turn to the EU and the difference may end up being far smaller than one might think from just extrapolating current data.

rsj_hn 6y ago

What's interesting about this comment is that it demonstrates the core sources of sclerosis in the EMU. Instead of engaging in a careful investigation to identify roadblocks to the rollout, removing said roadblocks, and then engaging in some soul-searching as to why these roadblocks are there, one immediately starts denouncing their favorite villains, blaming them and while at the same time indulging in fantasies of moral superiority to compensate for one's failures. "Yes, comrade, we have no toilet-paper, but we do not exploit toiler-paper workers!" It's obvious why this type of casuistry is so appealing to the powerless, but what's scary is when those in leadership become slaves of the same memes - that's when you know that things will only get much, much worse - as owning your failures is a pre-requisite to learning from them, which is a pre-requisite for effective reform. The EU is a system to grow bureaucracy but reform is effectively blocked by the moralizers. Thus, things will continue to get worse until the all the sanctimonious people are kicked out of office or until the society itself collapses under the massive weight of moralistic bureaucrats.

youngtaff 6y ago

And the Pfizer production relies on Lipids that are produced in the UK, along with other products produced elsewhere. Moderna is made in Switzerland and then goes to Spain for finishing does that make it an EU or Swiss export? We all need to cooperate to succeed. Given the relative country sizes it's weird that the EU seems to have comparatively less vaccine production And if the EU really wants to 'put the issue to bed' why don't they just publish the export numbers but vaccine type and country?