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Does anyone know why all of the geopolitical discourse in the UK and Europe has been around arguing over a small supply, rather than about increasing manufactur

Does anyone know why all of the geopolitical discourse in the UK and Europe has been around arguing over a small supply, rather than about increasing manufacturing capacity?

Tade0 5y ago
There are groups which advocate for that, but they often don't have a large (if any) representation.
junippor 5y ago
I don't know any details, but my understanding if that manufacturing vaccines is quite difficult.
- jarmitage 5y ago
  Me neither, but I find it hard to believe that it is more difficult than remaining stuck in the pandemic.
  - junippor 5y ago
    The manufacturing process is a matter of precision engineering. "Remaining stuck" is just... psychologically difficult? How do you compare which one is "more difficult"? Your comment makes absolutely no sense.
    - jarmitage 5y ago
      I would have taken your question seriously if you didn't follow it up with an over-generalised and rude remark.
  - quonn 5y ago
    As far as I know, Germany helped BioNtech with their new plant but even then it took at least half a year to get that going. And that was despite the fact that they could buy and adapt it instead of building it from scratch. For example, in software, maybe it takes a single developer a year to build a compiler for some advanced language and we can speed it up to 3 months by adding some people. But could we get to a week by adding 12x more? We can‘t and it may be the same with vaccine production.
    - jarmitage 5y ago
      All good points indeed! I was referring more to the discourse, which seems to be about heightening nationalistic sentiments by pitting governments against each other fighting over a small stockpile, rather than highlighting the progress/pitfalls/ongoing support needs of collaborative initiatives to provide scaled solutions. But maybe this is just a sign that I need to broaden my media inputs, always a good thing to do.
raverbashing 5y ago
> rather than about increasing manufacturing capacity? They have looked into increasing supply (see the kerfuffle about the Halix plant) but in the end it seems that the process AZ is using scales poorly. (Not sure how many were produced by the SII, probably not much more than that) I think AZ delivered approx. 25Mi to the UK and 30Mi to the EU. Compare with Pfizer who delivered somewhere close to 300Mi doses already.
Dumbdo 5y ago
Where do you get that from? There's a huge effort to scale up the production up, which you can see by the weekly increasing output for example of Biontech [0]. Discussing one thing doesn't exclude taking care of another. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-biontech-target-idUKKBN2BM1A4 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-bionte...
- jarmitage 5y ago
  Nowhere in particular. Perhaps my sentiment is more a reflection of media coverage focusing on issues like TFA, rather than on increasing supply which is less scandalous. Thanks for this link. I would much rather that the media kept me up to date on this instead!
  - Dumbdo 5y ago
    From my personal experience (at least the German) media focuses on that as well. I read a lot of articles on how the companies are working to scale the output up. One good and recent example is this article (paywalled) https://www.zeit.de/2021/15/biontech-werk-marburg-corona-impfstoff-herstellung https://www.zeit.de/2021/15/biontech-werk-marburg-corona-imp...
    - jarmitage 5y ago
      That's good to hear. Maybe I don't read enough UK media widely enough (for health reasons!) to really have a say here, but I don't remember reading similar articles recently. It must be out there though, perhaps in more specialised media.
      - Dumbdo 5y ago
        > for health reasons I can relate to that, which is also a reason why I now _try_ to consume weekly newspapers (like the linked "Die Zeit") instead of the daily/hourly short-lived news. In my experience the latter tend to report more about "drama" and focus more on negative things, exactly like you said. I also saw your remark in the other chain: > I was referring more to the discourse, which seems to be about heightening nationalistic sentiments by pitting governments against each other fighting over a small stockpile And that also makes sense. I'd say that's something especially prominent nowadays due to Brexit. The amount of news highlighting the failures of the EU certainly got an uptick in the UK and so did the news portraying UK's vaccine import as "egoistic" in the German media. There are certainly more shades to that, but it's pretty obvious from the newspapers as well that the EU and UK are just frustrated with each other currently.
throwaway10110 5y ago
Arguments over AZ production feckups and vaccine exports stopped weeks ago. And billions have been poured instead into producing mRNA vaccines not just for europe but for the world. The article is about pursuing AZ in courts, its aim is not to increase supply of AZ vaccine which increasingly people are refusing to accept when they know there are (what may or may not be) better alternatives
Slartie 5y ago
Increasing manufacturing capacity is happening. BioNTech as the most important producer in Europe has brought multiple additional partners into production as well as an entire new plant, which by itself is churning out 1 billion doses per year when fully operational (they're still scaling up production there AFAIK, but have been shipping doses from there since April). Also, the CureVac vaccine is expected to be authorized in the near future, and manufacturing capacity for that one is being prepared right now, also through manufacturing partnerships within Europe. But the thing is: while EU agencies like the EMA are involved in these processes, and also monetary grants to finance production increases have been provided in several cases, the EU has a limited number of actions available to "increase manufacturing capacity", especially in the short term (the new BioNTech plant for example was already bought in September, so it took over half a year to get it retrofitted for production). We cannot simply - like the US or UK - declare that everything produced within the EU stays within the EU, with no exceptions. Or well, technically we could, and that would certainly increase the supply in the EU in the short term, but that would have geopolitical repercussions that might in the worst case damage the EU's vaccine production in the long term (because it is at least partially dependent on pre-products sourced from outside the EU), but will for sure cause a lot of damage in international relations. The EU is effectively the world's biggest vaccine exporter in terms of doses, especially when you focus on the mRNA vaccines which have the highest efficacy and least complications and are thus the most sought-after. Limited to just that class of vaccines, the EU even is the single relevant source right now. The epic fuck-up of the EU body that was responsible for ordering the vaccines in the first place might in the end turn out to be a bad thing for us EU citizens because of slower vaccination, but a good thing for geopolitical relations/tensions as a whole. That's because this fuck-up kind of deters the EU from taking the same isolationist "our citizens first" stance that the US took - politically such a move would now clearly be regarded as a cheap and, most importantly, illegitimate attempt to fix the failure of negotiating proper and broad supply contracts with manufacturers using brute political force, and that effectively stops the EU from taking this step, even if it would technically be a possibility. As a result, all the countries in the world without significant mRNA vaccine production capabilities on their territories at least have realistic access to a single source for their imports, as long as they negotiated supply contracts with the manufacturers early enough. This situation has for example been the key enabler for the huge success of the Israeli's highly acclaimed vaccination campaign, which was powered by vaccine supply from Europe.
rsynnott 5y ago
It has, and Pfizer and Biontec in particular have scaled up production quite effectively (delivering more than originally committed). AstraZeneca is fairly dramatically behind on production (delivered about 33% of commitments in the EU so far), and at this point it feels like the European Commission has basically abandoned it; its contract is apparently not getting renewed.

Does anyone know why all of the geopolitical discourse in the UK and Europe has been around arguing over a small supply, rather than about increasing manufacturing capacity?

Tade0 5y ago

There are groups which advocate for that, but they often don't have a large (if any) representation.

junippor 5y ago

I don't know any details, but my understanding if that manufacturing vaccines is quite difficult.

jarmitage 5y ago
Me neither, but I find it hard to believe that it is more difficult than remaining stuck in the pandemic.
- junippor 5y ago
  The manufacturing process is a matter of precision engineering. "Remaining stuck" is just... psychologically difficult? How do you compare which one is "more difficult"? Your comment makes absolutely no sense.
  - jarmitage 5y ago
    I would have taken your question seriously if you didn't follow it up with an over-generalised and rude remark.
- quonn 5y ago
  As far as I know, Germany helped BioNtech with their new plant but even then it took at least half a year to get that going. And that was despite the fact that they could buy and adapt it instead of building it from scratch. For example, in software, maybe it takes a single developer a year to build a compiler for some advanced language and we can speed it up to 3 months by adding some people. But could we get to a week by adding 12x more? We can‘t and it may be the same with vaccine production.
  - jarmitage 5y ago
    All good points indeed! I was referring more to the discourse, which seems to be about heightening nationalistic sentiments by pitting governments against each other fighting over a small stockpile, rather than highlighting the progress/pitfalls/ongoing support needs of collaborative initiatives to provide scaled solutions. But maybe this is just a sign that I need to broaden my media inputs, always a good thing to do.

raverbashing 5y ago

> rather than about increasing manufacturing capacity? They have looked into increasing supply (see the kerfuffle about the Halix plant) but in the end it seems that the process AZ is using scales poorly. (Not sure how many were produced by the SII, probably not much more than that) I think AZ delivered approx. 25Mi to the UK and 30Mi to the EU. Compare with Pfizer who delivered somewhere close to 300Mi doses already.

Dumbdo 5y ago

Where do you get that from? There's a huge effort to scale up the production up, which you can see by the weekly increasing output for example of Biontech [0]. Discussing one thing doesn't exclude taking care of another. [0] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-biontech-target-idUKKBN2BM1A4 https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-health-coronavirus-bionte...

jarmitage 5y ago
Nowhere in particular. Perhaps my sentiment is more a reflection of media coverage focusing on issues like TFA, rather than on increasing supply which is less scandalous. Thanks for this link. I would much rather that the media kept me up to date on this instead!
- Dumbdo 5y ago
  From my personal experience (at least the German) media focuses on that as well. I read a lot of articles on how the companies are working to scale the output up. One good and recent example is this article (paywalled) https://www.zeit.de/2021/15/biontech-werk-marburg-corona-impfstoff-herstellung https://www.zeit.de/2021/15/biontech-werk-marburg-corona-imp...
  - jarmitage 5y ago
    That's good to hear. Maybe I don't read enough UK media widely enough (for health reasons!) to really have a say here, but I don't remember reading similar articles recently. It must be out there though, perhaps in more specialised media.
    - Dumbdo 5y ago
      > for health reasons I can relate to that, which is also a reason why I now _try_ to consume weekly newspapers (like the linked "Die Zeit") instead of the daily/hourly short-lived news. In my experience the latter tend to report more about "drama" and focus more on negative things, exactly like you said. I also saw your remark in the other chain: > I was referring more to the discourse, which seems to be about heightening nationalistic sentiments by pitting governments against each other fighting over a small stockpile And that also makes sense. I'd say that's something especially prominent nowadays due to Brexit. The amount of news highlighting the failures of the EU certainly got an uptick in the UK and so did the news portraying UK's vaccine import as "egoistic" in the German media. There are certainly more shades to that, but it's pretty obvious from the newspapers as well that the EU and UK are just frustrated with each other currently.

throwaway10110 5y ago

Arguments over AZ production feckups and vaccine exports stopped weeks ago. And billions have been poured instead into producing mRNA vaccines not just for europe but for the world. The article is about pursuing AZ in courts, its aim is not to increase supply of AZ vaccine which increasingly people are refusing to accept when they know there are (what may or may not be) better alternatives

Slartie 5y ago

Increasing manufacturing capacity is happening. BioNTech as the most important producer in Europe has brought multiple additional partners into production as well as an entire new plant, which by itself is churning out 1 billion doses per year when fully operational (they're still scaling up production there AFAIK, but have been shipping doses from there since April). Also, the CureVac vaccine is expected to be authorized in the near future, and manufacturing capacity for that one is being prepared right now, also through manufacturing partnerships within Europe. But the thing is: while EU agencies like the EMA are involved in these processes, and also monetary grants to finance production increases have been provided in several cases, the EU has a limited number of actions available to "increase manufacturing capacity", especially in the short term (the new BioNTech plant for example was already bought in September, so it took over half a year to get it retrofitted for production). We cannot simply - like the US or UK - declare that everything produced within the EU stays within the EU, with no exceptions. Or well, technically we could, and that would certainly increase the supply in the EU in the short term, but that would have geopolitical repercussions that might in the worst case damage the EU's vaccine production in the long term (because it is at least partially dependent on pre-products sourced from outside the EU), but will for sure cause a lot of damage in international relations. The EU is effectively the world's biggest vaccine exporter in terms of doses, especially when you focus on the mRNA vaccines which have the highest efficacy and least complications and are thus the most sought-after. Limited to just that class of vaccines, the EU even is the single relevant source right now. The epic fuck-up of the EU body that was responsible for ordering the vaccines in the first place might in the end turn out to be a bad thing for us EU citizens because of slower vaccination, but a good thing for geopolitical relations/tensions as a whole. That's because this fuck-up kind of deters the EU from taking the same isolationist "our citizens first" stance that the US took - politically such a move would now clearly be regarded as a cheap and, most importantly, illegitimate attempt to fix the failure of negotiating proper and broad supply contracts with manufacturers using brute political force, and that effectively stops the EU from taking this step, even if it would technically be a possibility. As a result, all the countries in the world without significant mRNA vaccine production capabilities on their territories at least have realistic access to a single source for their imports, as long as they negotiated supply contracts with the manufacturers early enough. This situation has for example been the key enabler for the huge success of the Israeli's highly acclaimed vaccination campaign, which was powered by vaccine supply from Europe.

rsynnott 5y ago

It has, and Pfizer and Biontec in particular have scaled up production quite effectively (delivering more than originally committed). AstraZeneca is fairly dramatically behind on production (delivered about 33% of commitments in the EU so far), and at this point it feels like the European Commission has basically abandoned it; its contract is apparently not getting renewed.