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Just a reminder it was the US that blocked vaccine exports. While we in the EU let the free market handle things. Of course, EU countries were smart enough to

by jopsen 5y ago

Just a reminder it was the US that blocked vaccine exports. While we in the EU let the free market handle things. Of course, EU countries were smart enough to buy vaccines collectively :)

systemvoltage 5y ago
EU's vaccine program was a shit show: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/03/31/why-the-eus-covid-19-vaccination-programme-went-wrong https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/03/31/why-the-eus-co...
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  The EU did the right thing ethically and let vaccines be exported to their allies. In the long run they caught up though. Amazing that Canada was forced to import from the EU because we were prevented from importing from our nearest neighbour and "closest ally" and so were set back by two months on vaccinations.
  - blibble 5y ago
    > The EU did the right thing ethically and let vaccines be exported to their allies. no, it thought it had control over the situation and started virtue signalling that it was being ethical and that vaccine nationalism was only the sort of thing the Trump administration would do and at the point it became apparent that it had lost control: the nationalistic flailing began
    - jopsen 5y ago
      > no, it thought it had control over the situation and started virtue signalling... As I understood it, the US had laws necessary to administratively enact export restrictions during emergencies. I suspect the EU didn't have the same leaver it could just magically pull. Some individual countries might, but that's no use when production is distributed across the EU. Unlike the US the EU doesn't have disasters management agencies, many things are left for individual countries. Generally, there is no administrative authority in the EU that can really do much -- where as the US president can take a lot of actions. The EU would like have had to draft laws stopping exports, and those could be challenged in courts, etc. More likely, the EU just didn't have an easy button to push, and nobody has agreed upfront on which cases such button should be used.
      - blibble 5y ago
        > As I understood it, the US had laws necessary to administratively enact export restrictions during emergencies. > I suspect the EU didn't have the same leaver it could just magically pull. it was given these powers after it was obvious it had lost control of the situation: https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/eu-gets-new-powers-to-block-vaccine-exports-40234311.html https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/eu-gets-new-power... then it attempted to use the new powers against the UK this backfired badly: if it had been enacted it would have created a border across Ireland, when the EU had spent the previous 5 years arguing that a border of exactly this type could never be created any circumstances at which point it was forced politically to withdraw the measures
        jopsen 5y ago
        > it was given these powers after it was obvious it had lost control of the situation... > this backfired badly: if it had been enacted it would have created a border across Ireland... Yeah, creating such measures overnight probably wouldn't workout well. Had consistent and thought-out policy existed upfront maybe it would have been a different story. Of course Brexit probably would have ruined many such plans with factories distributed throughout EU and UK.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    >Amazing that Canada was forced to import from the EU because we were prevented from importing from our nearest neighbour and "closest ally" and so were set back by two months on vaccinations. There was never a vaccine export ban by the US (see my other comment for more on this). If I purchase an item before others, purchase by far the most quantities of that item, pay by far the most overall, and pay a considerable amount of money toward funding its development, I should expect that item before others. Any Kickstarter backer knows this; it's what the US and UK did, and what Canada and the EU did not. By early June 2020 (<https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-trump-moderna.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.) By contrast, look at Canada as counterexample. Consider Maclean's desperate attempt to spin its procurement difficulties (<https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/where-did-canadas-vaccine-effort-actually-go-wrong/ https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/where-did-canadas-vaccin...>). If you look past the predictable false eliding of the US's firstest-with-the-mostest contracts as an "export ban", the best the magazine can do is admit that * all Canadian contracts with vaccine providers that actually delivered were signed between late July and late September * all contracts were signed after the collapse of the CanSino deal, which Canada had loudly bragged about as proof of its savviness at obtaining vaccines ASAP and circumvent any perfidious US vaccine export ban (which, again, never happened), and which it has done its best since the collapse to pretend that said contract never existed * the other contracts that the magazine cites as proof that CanSino wasn't the only basket Ottawa was putting all its eggs in are with VBI (Who?) and USask. They may or may not yet deliver effective vaccines, but it's all now a bit beside the point, eh?
- jopsen 5y ago
  Really? We got the most vulnerable population vaccinated pretty quickly. And today we have plenty of vaccines. Is it really a catastrophe that it took 2 months longer? (Two summer months with weather slightly less conductive to virus transmission)
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Nothing like people throwing rocks from the US where they had lots of vaccine supply but also an obscene supply of people who refuse to get it. Having advance supply has hardly done them any good, judging from this week's new case and hospitalization rates.
TMWNN 5y ago
>Just a reminder it was the US that blocked vaccine exports. There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries. The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine, because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries. By early June 2020 (<https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-trump-moderna.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.) The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities. Canada also bet on CanSino because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract. Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it in addition to the non-UK doses it bought. (I don't disagree that to country B waiting on doses, the outcome is the same whether or not the cause is country A implementing an export ban or country A having bought up all the doses by having signed the contract first. But there is a difference.) If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exports, similar to what the EU did implement toward Australia? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money. >While we in the EU let the free market handle things. Except Italy as I mentioned, blocking export of vaccine to Australia that the latter had paid for. More to the point, the EU did not ban vaccine exports more widely because it was afraid that the US would cut off component supply chains. >Of course, EU countries were smart enough to buy vaccines collectively :) ... and because the aforementioned collective effort was delayed relative to the US and UK, the EU saw significant vaccine shortages earlier this year.

by jopsen 5y ago

Just a reminder it was the US that blocked vaccine exports. While we in the EU let the free market handle things. Of course, EU countries were smart enough to buy vaccines collectively :)

systemvoltage 5y ago

EU's vaccine program was a shit show: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/03/31/why-the-eus-covid-19-vaccination-programme-went-wrong https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/03/31/why-the-eus-co...

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
The EU did the right thing ethically and let vaccines be exported to their allies. In the long run they caught up though. Amazing that Canada was forced to import from the EU because we were prevented from importing from our nearest neighbour and "closest ally" and so were set back by two months on vaccinations.
- blibble 5y ago
  > The EU did the right thing ethically and let vaccines be exported to their allies. no, it thought it had control over the situation and started virtue signalling that it was being ethical and that vaccine nationalism was only the sort of thing the Trump administration would do and at the point it became apparent that it had lost control: the nationalistic flailing began
  - jopsen 5y ago
    > no, it thought it had control over the situation and started virtue signalling... As I understood it, the US had laws necessary to administratively enact export restrictions during emergencies. I suspect the EU didn't have the same leaver it could just magically pull. Some individual countries might, but that's no use when production is distributed across the EU. Unlike the US the EU doesn't have disasters management agencies, many things are left for individual countries. Generally, there is no administrative authority in the EU that can really do much -- where as the US president can take a lot of actions. The EU would like have had to draft laws stopping exports, and those could be challenged in courts, etc. More likely, the EU just didn't have an easy button to push, and nobody has agreed upfront on which cases such button should be used.
    - blibble 5y ago
      > As I understood it, the US had laws necessary to administratively enact export restrictions during emergencies. > I suspect the EU didn't have the same leaver it could just magically pull. it was given these powers after it was obvious it had lost control of the situation: https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/eu-gets-new-powers-to-block-vaccine-exports-40234311.html https://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/eu-gets-new-power... then it attempted to use the new powers against the UK this backfired badly: if it had been enacted it would have created a border across Ireland, when the EU had spent the previous 5 years arguing that a border of exactly this type could never be created any circumstances at which point it was forced politically to withdraw the measures
      - jopsen 5y ago
        > it was given these powers after it was obvious it had lost control of the situation... > this backfired badly: if it had been enacted it would have created a border across Ireland... Yeah, creating such measures overnight probably wouldn't workout well. Had consistent and thought-out policy existed upfront maybe it would have been a different story. Of course Brexit probably would have ruined many such plans with factories distributed throughout EU and UK.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >Amazing that Canada was forced to import from the EU because we were prevented from importing from our nearest neighbour and "closest ally" and so were set back by two months on vaccinations. There was never a vaccine export ban by the US (see my other comment for more on this). If I purchase an item before others, purchase by far the most quantities of that item, pay by far the most overall, and pay a considerable amount of money toward funding its development, I should expect that item before others. Any Kickstarter backer knows this; it's what the US and UK did, and what Canada and the EU did not. By early June 2020 (<https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-trump-moderna.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.) By contrast, look at Canada as counterexample. Consider Maclean's desperate attempt to spin its procurement difficulties (<https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/where-did-canadas-vaccine-effort-actually-go-wrong/ https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/where-did-canadas-vaccin...>). If you look past the predictable false eliding of the US's firstest-with-the-mostest contracts as an "export ban", the best the magazine can do is admit that * all Canadian contracts with vaccine providers that actually delivered were signed between late July and late September * all contracts were signed after the collapse of the CanSino deal, which Canada had loudly bragged about as proof of its savviness at obtaining vaccines ASAP and circumvent any perfidious US vaccine export ban (which, again, never happened), and which it has done its best since the collapse to pretend that said contract never existed * the other contracts that the magazine cites as proof that CanSino wasn't the only basket Ottawa was putting all its eggs in are with VBI (Who?) and USask. They may or may not yet deliver effective vaccines, but it's all now a bit beside the point, eh?
jopsen 5y ago
Really? We got the most vulnerable population vaccinated pretty quickly. And today we have plenty of vaccines. Is it really a catastrophe that it took 2 months longer? (Two summer months with weather slightly less conductive to virus transmission)
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Nothing like people throwing rocks from the US where they had lots of vaccine supply but also an obscene supply of people who refuse to get it. Having advance supply has hardly done them any good, judging from this week's new case and hospitalization rates.

TMWNN 5y ago

>Just a reminder it was the US that blocked vaccine exports. There is and has never been a US vaccine export ban, and the US has not seized vaccines meant for other countries. The Trump administration last year signed gigantic contracts for every planned vaccine, because no one knew which ones would work. Like, enough for every American from one manufacturer, let alone the current four major available ones. More importantly, the contracts guaranteed the US the earliest deliveries. By early June 2020 (<https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/us/politics/coronavirus-vaccine-trump-moderna.html https://web.archive.org/web/20200603171013/https://www.nytim...>) the Trump administration had already identified and was planning to sign the aforementioned huge contracts with Moderna, AstraZeneca, J&J, Merck, and Pfizer. (An 80% success rate is fantastic in drug discovery.) By that time the US had already paid $2.2 billion to three of the companies. (Also note the skepticism throughout that any vaccines could be delivered anywhere within the timeframe the administration was promising.) The UK signed a similar contract for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EU and Canada did not assure themselves of such quantities. Canada also bet on CanSino because it was afraid that the US would ban vaccine exports (which, again, never happened). Of course, the Chinese did not live up to the contract. Before you say "But what about—", the Trump executive order from December 2020 merely sets up the legal framework to prohibit exports if desired. But that does not mean that the framework is invoked. Let me repeat: The US signed contracts that were a) huge in size/scope and b) from every pharmaceutical company working on a vaccine, which c) got the country the largest and among the first deliveries. The UK did the same thing with the AstraZeneca vaccine, and spent a lot of money to retool domestic plants to produce it in addition to the non-UK doses it bought. (I don't disagree that to country B waiting on doses, the outcome is the same whether or not the cause is country A implementing an export ban or country A having bought up all the doses by having signed the contract first. But there is a difference.) If the situation were different, might the US have implemented a ban on exports, similar to what the EU did implement toward Australia? Perhaps. But, fortunately, the US never faced this issue, because of the huge amounts of money it invested a year ago and the contracts it signed with said money. >While we in the EU let the free market handle things. Except Italy as I mentioned, blocking export of vaccine to Australia that the latter had paid for. More to the point, the EU did not ban vaccine exports more widely because it was afraid that the US would cut off component supply chains. >Of course, EU countries were smart enough to buy vaccines collectively :) ... and because the aforementioned collective effort was delayed relative to the US and UK, the EU saw significant vaccine shortages earlier this year.