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> 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 itse

> 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...
- readittwice 6y ago
  No, this isn't FUD. AZ wasn't lying. Yes, it's true that the EU signed one particular contract one day before the UK on August 27. However, the UK had a binding contract with AZ since May already. "However, the key lies in an earlier agreement that AstraZeneca made back in May with the U.K., which was a binding deal establishing “the development of a dedicated supply chain for the U.K.,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson said." This quote is from this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-the-eu-and-uk-astrazeneca-contracts/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...
  - gebruikersnaam 6y ago
    AZ is lying: Here the boss is telling the UK signed in june : https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-innovation-2021-1-astrazeneca-boss-says-faster-uk-vaccines-due-to-contract-terms/ https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-inno... Except it didn't, the UK signed on august 28th, 1 day after the EU (per your link). In the interview from my link he also says that no vaccines manufactured in the EU leave for countries outside of the EU. Except he lies about that too: Italy prohibited the export of vaccines to Australia. Last i checked Australia is not a part of the EU.
    - Aengeuad 6y ago
      Nobody is lying, the redacted agreements do indeed show that the UK agreement is dated to a day after the EU agreement but that says nothing about when money changed hands or prior deals or commitments. You get a 3 month difference between the UK and the EU because the UK had an agreement with AstraZeneca all the way back on the 17th of May (note: June -> Aug is not 3 months, that's sloppy reporting from your linked website) as can be seen here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-and-manufacturing-boost-for-uk-vaccine-programme https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-and-manufacturing... or here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/17/uk-plans-38m-centre-to-start-production-of-coronavirus-vaccine https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/17/uk-plans-38m... and this is on top of funding Oxford had received from the UK prior to the Oxford-AZ deal. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-24-oxfords-covid-19-research-receives-government-funding https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-24-oxfords-covid-19-resear... Yet the publicly announced deal with the EU was on the 27th of August: https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/eu-pays-e336-mln-to-secure-astrazenecas-potential-covid-19-vaccine/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/eu-pays-e3... It should be noted at this point that France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, had jointly negotiated a deal with AZ in June but my understanding is that after an EU27 vote the EC took over negotiations and you get the final (and first for the EU) deal in August. Why the redacted UK agreement is dated 28th of August is anybodies guess but some things should be made clear, firstly that the UK started funding AZ in May and not late August, secondly that they did this a month before other EU countries had reached an agreement with AZ, and finally that the EC getting involved added a further 2 months to the negotiation.
markvdb 6y ago
I do not care one single iota about who was first or paid most. What is clear is that people are dying unnecessarily because of this competition. The ethical thing would to be minimise the number of people dying of covid-19. Distributing these vaccines evenly based upon risk factors (age, BMI, ...) is what should have happened. Practical example: - My double marathon running, under 40 brother in law in Israel is low risk. He should not have received the vaccine yet, even if I like him. - My heavily overweight 71 years old father is high risk. He should have received the vaccine already. The EU, the UK, the US, Israel _and_ most of the manufacturers failed abysmally at this.
- blibble 6y ago
  > Distributing these vaccines evenly based upon risk factors (age, BMI, ...) is what should have happened. this is exactly what the UK has been doing? https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/17157/production/_117315549_vaccine_group_timeline_combined-2x640-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/17157/production...
  - iso1210 6y ago
    I suspect the poster was saying that 80 year olds in India should receive the vaccination before 50 year olds in New York
    - rrrazdan 6y ago
      The good part is that they are.
- optimiz3 6y ago
  Straight out disagree. One of the most fundamental purposes of a country is to prioritize the interests (and most fundamentally life) of its own citizens. If countries agreed on things like resource distribution, human rights, economic structure, reward incentives, culture, there would be no need for different nations. This is purely a negotiation. "Ethics" is a weak appeal stemming from a failure to plan, invest, and execute.
mytailorisrich 6y ago
It seems that they focused too much on price. Like if a few cents or even a few euros per dose would make any difference considering the accruing cost of the pandemic.
- hef19898 6y ago
  Problems like these, availability of goods and distribution, are usually not solved by throwing money at them.
  - mytailorisrich 6y ago
    On the contrary, that's exactly how they are solved. You can entice suppliers to serve you first by paying more than others, that's what Israel did. I don't think that distribution is an issue but that can also be resolved by throwing money directly or through resources at it. Same for production and supply. It was useless and counter-productive to drag negotiations to lower prices while throwing away 10s of billions a month to prop up locked down economies. It would have been more useful to work with suppliers to go all in on production with unlimited funds and resources so that as many factories as possible could produce (and that would have probably been cheaper overall).
    - dmatech 6y ago
      Money doesn't always buy competence.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        No, but lack of money doesn't either.
    - hef19898 6y ago
      Adding new production not only costs money, but also takes time. And while the EU has money, time was the problem. Risking to repeat myself, the initial orders were enough. And they took the existing production capacity i to account. Except some early prod hick ups, things were running rather smooth on the production end, until the public and media pressured the EU to increase order volumes. I think the vaccine distribution will solve itself, not by throwing money at it but by the vaccine surplus we will have come June/July. It will be solved by throwing inventory at it, inventory covers up all kind of supply chain issues. Stringent supply management and control would be a lit faster and more efficient so. Ordering more probably made the problems worse, kind of like ehat happened with toilet paper a year ago. The goal was not be the first to start, but to be fast to finish inoculation of the EU population. The initial ordering of the EU allowed that, everything member states and the EU did since January made this goal harder to achieve. And made it harder for developing countries to start their campaigns. All because the media knows shit about numbers, the politicians know shit about supply chains and everybody cares more about PR and elections than solving a problem.

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...
readittwice 6y ago
No, this isn't FUD. AZ wasn't lying. Yes, it's true that the EU signed one particular contract one day before the UK on August 27. However, the UK had a binding contract with AZ since May already. "However, the key lies in an earlier agreement that AstraZeneca made back in May with the U.K., which was a binding deal establishing “the development of a dedicated supply chain for the U.K.,” an AstraZeneca spokesperson said." This quote is from this article: https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-the-eu-and-uk-astrazeneca-contracts/ https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...
- gebruikersnaam 6y ago
  AZ is lying: Here the boss is telling the UK signed in june : https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-innovation-2021-1-astrazeneca-boss-says-faster-uk-vaccines-due-to-contract-terms/ https://www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-europe-inno... Except it didn't, the UK signed on august 28th, 1 day after the EU (per your link). In the interview from my link he also says that no vaccines manufactured in the EU leave for countries outside of the EU. Except he lies about that too: Italy prohibited the export of vaccines to Australia. Last i checked Australia is not a part of the EU.
  - Aengeuad 6y ago
    Nobody is lying, the redacted agreements do indeed show that the UK agreement is dated to a day after the EU agreement but that says nothing about when money changed hands or prior deals or commitments. You get a 3 month difference between the UK and the EU because the UK had an agreement with AstraZeneca all the way back on the 17th of May (note: June -> Aug is not 3 months, that's sloppy reporting from your linked website) as can be seen here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-and-manufacturing-boost-for-uk-vaccine-programme https://www.gov.uk/government/news/funding-and-manufacturing... or here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/17/uk-plans-38m-centre-to-start-production-of-coronavirus-vaccine https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/may/17/uk-plans-38m... and this is on top of funding Oxford had received from the UK prior to the Oxford-AZ deal. https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-24-oxfords-covid-19-research-receives-government-funding https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2020-03-24-oxfords-covid-19-resear... Yet the publicly announced deal with the EU was on the 27th of August: https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/eu-pays-e336-mln-to-secure-astrazenecas-potential-covid-19-vaccine/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/coronavirus/news/eu-pays-e3... It should be noted at this point that France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands, had jointly negotiated a deal with AZ in June but my understanding is that after an EU27 vote the EC took over negotiations and you get the final (and first for the EU) deal in August. Why the redacted UK agreement is dated 28th of August is anybodies guess but some things should be made clear, firstly that the UK started funding AZ in May and not late August, secondly that they did this a month before other EU countries had reached an agreement with AZ, and finally that the EC getting involved added a further 2 months to the negotiation.

markvdb 6y ago

I do not care one single iota about who was first or paid most. What is clear is that people are dying unnecessarily because of this competition. The ethical thing would to be minimise the number of people dying of covid-19. Distributing these vaccines evenly based upon risk factors (age, BMI, ...) is what should have happened. Practical example: - My double marathon running, under 40 brother in law in Israel is low risk. He should not have received the vaccine yet, even if I like him. - My heavily overweight 71 years old father is high risk. He should have received the vaccine already. The EU, the UK, the US, Israel _and_ most of the manufacturers failed abysmally at this.

blibble 6y ago
> Distributing these vaccines evenly based upon risk factors (age, BMI, ...) is what should have happened. this is exactly what the UK has been doing? https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/17157/production/_117315549_vaccine_group_timeline_combined-2x640-nc.png https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/17157/production...
- iso1210 6y ago
  I suspect the poster was saying that 80 year olds in India should receive the vaccination before 50 year olds in New York
  - rrrazdan 6y ago
    The good part is that they are.
optimiz3 6y ago
Straight out disagree. One of the most fundamental purposes of a country is to prioritize the interests (and most fundamentally life) of its own citizens. If countries agreed on things like resource distribution, human rights, economic structure, reward incentives, culture, there would be no need for different nations. This is purely a negotiation. "Ethics" is a weak appeal stemming from a failure to plan, invest, and execute.

mytailorisrich 6y ago

It seems that they focused too much on price. Like if a few cents or even a few euros per dose would make any difference considering the accruing cost of the pandemic.

hef19898 6y ago
Problems like these, availability of goods and distribution, are usually not solved by throwing money at them.
- mytailorisrich 6y ago
  On the contrary, that's exactly how they are solved. You can entice suppliers to serve you first by paying more than others, that's what Israel did. I don't think that distribution is an issue but that can also be resolved by throwing money directly or through resources at it. Same for production and supply. It was useless and counter-productive to drag negotiations to lower prices while throwing away 10s of billions a month to prop up locked down economies. It would have been more useful to work with suppliers to go all in on production with unlimited funds and resources so that as many factories as possible could produce (and that would have probably been cheaper overall).
  - dmatech 6y ago
    Money doesn't always buy competence.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      No, but lack of money doesn't either.
  - hef19898 6y ago
    Adding new production not only costs money, but also takes time. And while the EU has money, time was the problem. Risking to repeat myself, the initial orders were enough. And they took the existing production capacity i to account. Except some early prod hick ups, things were running rather smooth on the production end, until the public and media pressured the EU to increase order volumes. I think the vaccine distribution will solve itself, not by throwing money at it but by the vaccine surplus we will have come June/July. It will be solved by throwing inventory at it, inventory covers up all kind of supply chain issues. Stringent supply management and control would be a lit faster and more efficient so. Ordering more probably made the problems worse, kind of like ehat happened with toilet paper a year ago. The goal was not be the first to start, but to be fast to finish inoculation of the EU population. The initial ordering of the EU allowed that, everything member states and the EU did since January made this goal harder to achieve. And made it harder for developing countries to start their campaigns. All because the media knows shit about numbers, the politicians know shit about supply chains and everybody cares more about PR and elections than solving a problem.