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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

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.

markvdb 6y ago
The loyalties of a country's government should absolutely be with its constituents. That loyalty does not necessarily mean that the health of its inhabitants only should be the government's concern. I can perfectly imagine a healthy 40 years old UK constituent supporting the idea that a 80 years old EU constituent should get priority over him. Or the other way round obviously, should that situation ever occur. Governments could take that into account, but we don't even have to go down that contentious rabbit hole to find points of consensus. I just happen to think that an opportunity to reach a Pareto optimum was missed in negotiations, particularly between the UK and the EU. Would an agreement on proportionality in vaccine distribution really have been so difficult between the EU and the UK for example? That would have produced real advantages for both sides. Both governments can harm each other's vaccine supplies, and it's increasingly looking like that could also become reality. That's lose-lose instead of win-win.
- makomk 6y ago
  The problem with that is that in reality, there's very little the UK can do to supply the EU with a meaningful number of vaccines. You've got to remember that the UK has less than a sixth the population of the EU and doesn't have much local pharmaceutical manufacturing. What Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing we do have only has enough capacity to supply part of the UK demand as, basically, a back-up plan in case everyone goes vaccine nationalist and bans exports. Any real solution to the EU's vaccination problem basically has to involve fixing their vaccine supply chains, not getting magical extra vaccines from somewhere else because there is no supply of vaccines from elsewhere that could fill their gaps. All the rabble-rousing about UK-made vaccines from the European Commission and the rest of the EU is just an attempt to distract from that because the actual cause is really politically inconvenient for the people trying to blame the UK.

markvdb 6y ago

The loyalties of a country's government should absolutely be with its constituents. That loyalty does not necessarily mean that the health of its inhabitants only should be the government's concern. I can perfectly imagine a healthy 40 years old UK constituent supporting the idea that a 80 years old EU constituent should get priority over him. Or the other way round obviously, should that situation ever occur. Governments could take that into account, but we don't even have to go down that contentious rabbit hole to find points of consensus. I just happen to think that an opportunity to reach a Pareto optimum was missed in negotiations, particularly between the UK and the EU. Would an agreement on proportionality in vaccine distribution really have been so difficult between the EU and the UK for example? That would have produced real advantages for both sides. Both governments can harm each other's vaccine supplies, and it's increasingly looking like that could also become reality. That's lose-lose instead of win-win.

makomk 6y ago
The problem with that is that in reality, there's very little the UK can do to supply the EU with a meaningful number of vaccines. You've got to remember that the UK has less than a sixth the population of the EU and doesn't have much local pharmaceutical manufacturing. What Covid-19 vaccine manufacturing we do have only has enough capacity to supply part of the UK demand as, basically, a back-up plan in case everyone goes vaccine nationalist and bans exports. Any real solution to the EU's vaccination problem basically has to involve fixing their vaccine supply chains, not getting magical extra vaccines from somewhere else because there is no supply of vaccines from elsewhere that could fill their gaps. All the rabble-rousing about UK-made vaccines from the European Commission and the rest of the EU is just an attempt to distract from that because the actual cause is really politically inconvenient for the people trying to blame the UK.