9 ms·

For context, as of August the US has donated over 100 million doses to other countries - which is more than any other nation - and per the NYT is in negotiation

For context, as of August the US has donated over 100 million doses to other countries - which is more than any other nation - and per the NYT is in negotiation to supply another 500M doses for the world. But hey the Guardian needs clickbait. 1. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/03/1023822839/biden-is-sending-110-million-vaccines-to-nations-in-need-thats-just-a-first-step https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2021/08/03/1023822...

pupppet 5y ago
Don't forgot they 'donated' much of this because the U.S. used its position to secure far more than they needed to hedge their bets. Basically offloading vaccine other countries could have purchased themselves.
- unanswered 5y ago
  So in other words... The US paid for a bunch of other countries' vaccines? Explain again how this is a bad thing for those countries?
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    Somehow or another, the US has to be the bad guy. If they don't donate vaccines, they're letting other countries fend for themselves. If they donate vaccines, they should have let other countries pay for them. There's plenty of legitimate criticism for the US government; I'm not sure why people feel the need to invent more.
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      No one that I'm aware of ever complained that vaccines had to be paid the (low) cost of production. What's at issue is keeping the doses for yourself until you don't need them, instead of sharing the doses at the outset. 500 million dollars of charity while I'm sure is appreciated is worth a lot less than timely vaccinations of the most vulnerable.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        > What's at issue is keeping the doses for yourself until you don't need them, instead of sharing the doses at the outset. Letting vaccine go to waste is a bad look, but realistically it's probably just logistically more expensive to collect all of the unused vaccine from all over the US and get it shipped to the right places than it is to get new supply delivered directly to those countries. > 500 million dollars of charity while I'm sure is appreciated is worth a lot less than timely vaccinations of the most vulnerable. It's not "500 million dollars", it's 1 billion doses plus working out the delivery and distribution logistics. Moreover, it's supremely unfair to criticize the US for failing to donate the vaccines sooner when the US is donating them far sooner than all other countries combined. Yes, like every other country, the US prioritized its own citizens, but unlike any other country, it's gone above and beyond to vaccinate the poorest countries as quickly as possible. There's plenty of valid stuff to criticize about the US (e.g., climate policy), but the US nailed vaccine policy.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        You don't need to collect them from every pharmacy, you collect them from distribution centers and cut supply to pharmacies to be in line with use instead of increasing while use is decreasing. The US has not delivered 1 billion doses. It has only delivered 100 or so million. Of those, it has not worked out the distribution logistics, I assure you those countries still had to do the legwork. I have you five examples of countries that did not withhold their exports untill they had saturated their demand. The US is the only country that refused exports untill it literally couldn't use vaccines anymore.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        > The US has not delivered 1 billion doses. It has only delivered 100 or so million. Agreed, 1 billion were pledged. Hundreds of millions have been delivered. In either case, that's more than all other countries combined. > Of those, it has not worked out the distribution logistics, I assure you those countries still had to do the legwork. It was a partnership, but the US is making sure vaccine pledges are actually being administered while other rich countries are faltering. The US is even partnering with the EU so that the EU can use the US logistics framework to realize their pledges. > I have you five examples of countries that did not withhold their exports untill they had saturated their demand. The US is the only country that refused exports untill it literally couldn't use vaccines anymore. You're repeating the same lies here again: 1. We're talking about donations, not exports 2. The US didn't prevent exports
  - garyfirestorm 5y ago
    Ummm time is crucial. (Hypothetically) I can buy all insulin today and maybe donate some after 6 months. Will you survive another 6 months. Except in case of vaccines during early periods if one bought entire supply there isn’t anymore for anyone else.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      The US didn't buy the entire supply, it bought enough for its citizens (with some contingency in case a given vaccine didn't pan out), as did many other wealthy countries. Many countries bought more doses per citizen than the US and donated far less vaccine to poorer countries, but no one is criticizing those countries (go figure).
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        The US bought the entire supply of vaccines made in the US, and banned their export. Other wealthy countries such as EU countries allowed other countries to buy at critical times too, at the expense of their own supply, for the greater good.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        This is patent misinformation, the US never banned export of vaccines. The US did buy vaccines for its citizens before donating (as did virtually every other wealthy country afaik), but it began donating well before many wealthy countries and has donated far more in total. So yeah, the US is guilty of vaccinating its own citizens before vaccinating poorer countries--just like every other country.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        Is that why France asked the US to drop the export ban ? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57039362 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57039362 The US did ban exports. There is no law that says that exports are banned, but the US made sure no one else could buy vaccines made in the US. It's also completely false that every other country did that. As a Canadian I remember very vividly the EU allowing us to buy their vaccines and us receiving them while multiple large EU countries had less than 10% vaccination rate. Equally, China exported millions of doses when their vaccination rates were in the single digits.
  - pupppet 5y ago
    How is the US buying most of the initial vaccine stock leaving the rest of the world to cross their fingers they get some kind of handout, a good thing for anyone but the US?
    - wbl 5y ago
      Vaccine manufacturers respond to incentives. If everyone was paying $1000 a dose there would be a lot more factories opening up.
    - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
      As a citizen of a country that produced 20% of worldwide vaccines supply, the country that hosts 10,000 US troops and dozens of US nukes... I say US fucked up big and my government once in a time managed things well. Congrats to De Croo and Wilmès! We shipped 50% abd we kept 50% for EU and we did it consistently since June 2020.
      - kcplate 5y ago
        It’s interesting to me how it appears from this comment that you feel like that hosting 10k US troops and dozens of nukes is something your country is providing to the US to it’s benefit.
        pbak 5y ago
        If I'm not mistaken the OC gentleman is Belgian. I surmise that as "benefit", you mean "protection". Last time there were battles on Belgian soil was Napoleon. Germans kind of breezed through twice. Contemporary Belgium however is bordered by two nuclear powers. Who is the US protecting Belgium with all of this, since the USSR dissolved ? The action these days is in Poland, Ukraine and the eastern Baltic countries. Even Germany moved a number of armored divisions there. I hardly see Russia with less than a quarter of the industrial output and half the population walk it all the way to Brussels. I mean... we're not in 1815 anymore... Moreover, NATO infrastructure and nukes only make it a prime target for ballistic missiles. I'd be interested in how you get to a positive benefit vs. risk balance in their case. I might have missed some major contrary arguments.
  - geofft 5y ago
    Replace "paid for" with "bought" and the connotation changes entirely. Would you rather buy groceries, or find that the shelves are empty and go to the food bank for the things the rich people in the next neighborhood donated because they couldn't use?
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      This is horribly misleading. The US isn't donating its leftover vaccine stock, it's paying to have vaccines manufactured and delivered to poorer countries and working out the logistic hurdles to make sure the pledged vaccines are actually delivered. To that end, the US has already delivered more doses than the entire rest of the world combined (hundreds of millions of doses total), and they've pledged about a billion more doses. A much more apt analogy would be: "would you rather not be able to afford groceries, or would you rather have a rich person buy your groceries and deliver them to you?"
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        The US is actually donating leftover orders. The reason why it's donating is because the US banned export of doses, so there is no way for other countries to buy them. The US has not exported more doses than anyone else - China alone has exported more than a billion vaccines, and the US between 100-200 million. Even the EU is ahead. If the choice is wait one and a half years for groceries I need now or pay less than it costs me to actually cook them into food to get them now, I'll choose the later 100% of the time.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        > The reason why it's donating is because the US banned export of doses, so there is no way for other countries to buy them. This is blatant misinformation. The US never banned export of doses. > The US has not exported more doses than anyone else - China alone has exported more than a billion vaccines, and the US between 100-200 million. Even the EU is ahead. This is also blatant misinformation. You're comparing foreign exports to US donations. The US has donated more doses than all other countries combined.
- _3u10 5y ago
  Yeah as a vaccinated non-US citizen I’m super upset the Trump govt funded vaccine development. What an awful country. Thankfully 50% of your country graciously declined vaccines so the rest of us could get vaccinated. Those citizens are the real heroes of the pandemic don’t you agree?
  - pupppet 5y ago
    Nearly every first world country funded their own vaccine development. And nobody said US is an awful country.
maxerickson 5y ago
That's still kind of a pathetic amount when you consider how wealthy the US is and how many vaccines are needed globally. The reluctance to invest in production capacity demonstrated by both the Trump administration and the Biden administration is disappointing. People like to reply to points like this by highlighting the unambitious investments that did get made. I don't pretend to know what the actual limits of production are, but I'm pretty skeptical that we got near them. Edit: A year after it was reasonably clear we had viable vaccines, we are something like 10 billion doses short of global coverage. That's what I am comparing 100 million to.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  The Trump and Biden administrations both invested heavily in vaccine production. And while the US is wealthy, it’s not wealthier than all of the other countries combined, and yet it is donating more vaccine than all other countries combined.
  - maxerickson 5y ago
    The Trump and Biden administrations both invested heavily in vaccine production. This is what I disagree with. They picked relatively low targets and invested against those. Modestly larger investments would likely have been able to increase production rates well beyond where they are right now. And it's production rate that is the bottleneck, not the decision to donate or whatever.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      > Modestly larger investments would likely have been able to increase production rates well beyond where they are right now. Citation needed. Scaling an industry from nothing in a year is a herculean task. I’m a staunch Trump critic, but Operation Warp Speed worked pretty well (if only because DJT got out of the way). The production rates are damn impressive and it’s not like anyone had any idea about how much vaccine we would be able to produce or how quickly. Arguments from hindsight aren’t particularly convincing.
wbl 5y ago
Did those containers actually get on planes and go, or was it just a pledge?
sudosysgen 5y ago
The only reason these doses were donated is because they couldn't be used. When the doses could be used, the US jealously guarded them, while the EU, Russia, China and even Cuba shared. The 100 million doses that were "donated" almost two years later is a very poor excuse for hogging the supply when it mattered most. As for the optics or donating - it was done only so that the US could say "we donated the most" while many, many countries actually supplied a lot more. Paying 3-4$ per dose is not an issue for almost any country, and when it actually is the EU, Russia, China et al. had no issues discounting or even donating them.
- andrewbarba 5y ago
  Are we now saying donating unused things is inferior to donating things that could be used? I think this is a horrible take. Also two years since when? US had regular supply of vaccine only since March.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    Donating things years after they are needed is worse, to put it plainly. The EU and China started arranging the export of vaccines before even they had a regular supply. Talks for the export of vaccines from those countries started almost two years ago from now, ie, early 2020.
    - foota 5y ago
      Does it matter when talks of exporting started if it wasn't actually available at that time?
- bitshiftfaced 5y ago
  Were those doses exclusory? If not, then there's no problem because producing them had no good or bad effect on other countries. If it was exclusory, then shouldn't it be a country's first priority to ensure its own citizens' safety first? If your house is burning down, do you let your neighbor use your water hose before you can put out your own fire?

pupppet 5y ago

Don't forgot they 'donated' much of this because the U.S. used its position to secure far more than they needed to hedge their bets. Basically offloading vaccine other countries could have purchased themselves.

unanswered 5y ago
So in other words... The US paid for a bunch of other countries' vaccines? Explain again how this is a bad thing for those countries?
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Somehow or another, the US has to be the bad guy. If they don't donate vaccines, they're letting other countries fend for themselves. If they donate vaccines, they should have let other countries pay for them. There's plenty of legitimate criticism for the US government; I'm not sure why people feel the need to invent more.
  - sudosysgen 5y ago
    No one that I'm aware of ever complained that vaccines had to be paid the (low) cost of production. What's at issue is keeping the doses for yourself until you don't need them, instead of sharing the doses at the outset. 500 million dollars of charity while I'm sure is appreciated is worth a lot less than timely vaccinations of the most vulnerable.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      > What's at issue is keeping the doses for yourself until you don't need them, instead of sharing the doses at the outset. Letting vaccine go to waste is a bad look, but realistically it's probably just logistically more expensive to collect all of the unused vaccine from all over the US and get it shipped to the right places than it is to get new supply delivered directly to those countries. > 500 million dollars of charity while I'm sure is appreciated is worth a lot less than timely vaccinations of the most vulnerable. It's not "500 million dollars", it's 1 billion doses plus working out the delivery and distribution logistics. Moreover, it's supremely unfair to criticize the US for failing to donate the vaccines sooner when the US is donating them far sooner than all other countries combined. Yes, like every other country, the US prioritized its own citizens, but unlike any other country, it's gone above and beyond to vaccinate the poorest countries as quickly as possible. There's plenty of valid stuff to criticize about the US (e.g., climate policy), but the US nailed vaccine policy.
      - sudosysgen 5y ago
        You don't need to collect them from every pharmacy, you collect them from distribution centers and cut supply to pharmacies to be in line with use instead of increasing while use is decreasing. The US has not delivered 1 billion doses. It has only delivered 100 or so million. Of those, it has not worked out the distribution logistics, I assure you those countries still had to do the legwork. I have you five examples of countries that did not withhold their exports untill they had saturated their demand. The US is the only country that refused exports untill it literally couldn't use vaccines anymore.
        throwaway894345 5y ago
        > The US has not delivered 1 billion doses. It has only delivered 100 or so million. Agreed, 1 billion were pledged. Hundreds of millions have been delivered. In either case, that's more than all other countries combined. > Of those, it has not worked out the distribution logistics, I assure you those countries still had to do the legwork. It was a partnership, but the US is making sure vaccine pledges are actually being administered while other rich countries are faltering. The US is even partnering with the EU so that the EU can use the US logistics framework to realize their pledges. > I have you five examples of countries that did not withhold their exports untill they had saturated their demand. The US is the only country that refused exports untill it literally couldn't use vaccines anymore. You're repeating the same lies here again: 1. We're talking about donations, not exports 2. The US didn't prevent exports
- garyfirestorm 5y ago
  Ummm time is crucial. (Hypothetically) I can buy all insulin today and maybe donate some after 6 months. Will you survive another 6 months. Except in case of vaccines during early periods if one bought entire supply there isn’t anymore for anyone else.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    The US didn't buy the entire supply, it bought enough for its citizens (with some contingency in case a given vaccine didn't pan out), as did many other wealthy countries. Many countries bought more doses per citizen than the US and donated far less vaccine to poorer countries, but no one is criticizing those countries (go figure).
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      The US bought the entire supply of vaccines made in the US, and banned their export. Other wealthy countries such as EU countries allowed other countries to buy at critical times too, at the expense of their own supply, for the greater good.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        This is patent misinformation, the US never banned export of vaccines. The US did buy vaccines for its citizens before donating (as did virtually every other wealthy country afaik), but it began donating well before many wealthy countries and has donated far more in total. So yeah, the US is guilty of vaccinating its own citizens before vaccinating poorer countries--just like every other country.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        Is that why France asked the US to drop the export ban ? https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57039362 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57039362 The US did ban exports. There is no law that says that exports are banned, but the US made sure no one else could buy vaccines made in the US. It's also completely false that every other country did that. As a Canadian I remember very vividly the EU allowing us to buy their vaccines and us receiving them while multiple large EU countries had less than 10% vaccination rate. Equally, China exported millions of doses when their vaccination rates were in the single digits.
- pupppet 5y ago
  How is the US buying most of the initial vaccine stock leaving the rest of the world to cross their fingers they get some kind of handout, a good thing for anyone but the US?
  - wbl 5y ago
    Vaccine manufacturers respond to incentives. If everyone was paying $1000 a dose there would be a lot more factories opening up.
  - sam_lowry_ 5y ago
    As a citizen of a country that produced 20% of worldwide vaccines supply, the country that hosts 10,000 US troops and dozens of US nukes... I say US fucked up big and my government once in a time managed things well. Congrats to De Croo and Wilmès! We shipped 50% abd we kept 50% for EU and we did it consistently since June 2020.
    - kcplate 5y ago
      It’s interesting to me how it appears from this comment that you feel like that hosting 10k US troops and dozens of nukes is something your country is providing to the US to it’s benefit.
      - pbak 5y ago
        If I'm not mistaken the OC gentleman is Belgian. I surmise that as "benefit", you mean "protection". Last time there were battles on Belgian soil was Napoleon. Germans kind of breezed through twice. Contemporary Belgium however is bordered by two nuclear powers. Who is the US protecting Belgium with all of this, since the USSR dissolved ? The action these days is in Poland, Ukraine and the eastern Baltic countries. Even Germany moved a number of armored divisions there. I hardly see Russia with less than a quarter of the industrial output and half the population walk it all the way to Brussels. I mean... we're not in 1815 anymore... Moreover, NATO infrastructure and nukes only make it a prime target for ballistic missiles. I'd be interested in how you get to a positive benefit vs. risk balance in their case. I might have missed some major contrary arguments.
- geofft 5y ago
  Replace "paid for" with "bought" and the connotation changes entirely. Would you rather buy groceries, or find that the shelves are empty and go to the food bank for the things the rich people in the next neighborhood donated because they couldn't use?
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    This is horribly misleading. The US isn't donating its leftover vaccine stock, it's paying to have vaccines manufactured and delivered to poorer countries and working out the logistic hurdles to make sure the pledged vaccines are actually delivered. To that end, the US has already delivered more doses than the entire rest of the world combined (hundreds of millions of doses total), and they've pledged about a billion more doses. A much more apt analogy would be: "would you rather not be able to afford groceries, or would you rather have a rich person buy your groceries and deliver them to you?"
    - sudosysgen 5y ago
      The US is actually donating leftover orders. The reason why it's donating is because the US banned export of doses, so there is no way for other countries to buy them. The US has not exported more doses than anyone else - China alone has exported more than a billion vaccines, and the US between 100-200 million. Even the EU is ahead. If the choice is wait one and a half years for groceries I need now or pay less than it costs me to actually cook them into food to get them now, I'll choose the later 100% of the time.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        > The reason why it's donating is because the US banned export of doses, so there is no way for other countries to buy them. This is blatant misinformation. The US never banned export of doses. > The US has not exported more doses than anyone else - China alone has exported more than a billion vaccines, and the US between 100-200 million. Even the EU is ahead. This is also blatant misinformation. You're comparing foreign exports to US donations. The US has donated more doses than all other countries combined.
_3u10 5y ago
Yeah as a vaccinated non-US citizen I’m super upset the Trump govt funded vaccine development. What an awful country. Thankfully 50% of your country graciously declined vaccines so the rest of us could get vaccinated. Those citizens are the real heroes of the pandemic don’t you agree?
- pupppet 5y ago
  Nearly every first world country funded their own vaccine development. And nobody said US is an awful country.

maxerickson 5y ago

That's still kind of a pathetic amount when you consider how wealthy the US is and how many vaccines are needed globally. The reluctance to invest in production capacity demonstrated by both the Trump administration and the Biden administration is disappointing. People like to reply to points like this by highlighting the unambitious investments that did get made. I don't pretend to know what the actual limits of production are, but I'm pretty skeptical that we got near them. Edit: A year after it was reasonably clear we had viable vaccines, we are something like 10 billion doses short of global coverage. That's what I am comparing 100 million to.

throwaway894345 5y ago
The Trump and Biden administrations both invested heavily in vaccine production. And while the US is wealthy, it’s not wealthier than all of the other countries combined, and yet it is donating more vaccine than all other countries combined.
- maxerickson 5y ago
  The Trump and Biden administrations both invested heavily in vaccine production. This is what I disagree with. They picked relatively low targets and invested against those. Modestly larger investments would likely have been able to increase production rates well beyond where they are right now. And it's production rate that is the bottleneck, not the decision to donate or whatever.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    > Modestly larger investments would likely have been able to increase production rates well beyond where they are right now. Citation needed. Scaling an industry from nothing in a year is a herculean task. I’m a staunch Trump critic, but Operation Warp Speed worked pretty well (if only because DJT got out of the way). The production rates are damn impressive and it’s not like anyone had any idea about how much vaccine we would be able to produce or how quickly. Arguments from hindsight aren’t particularly convincing.

wbl 5y ago

Did those containers actually get on planes and go, or was it just a pledge?

sudosysgen 5y ago

The only reason these doses were donated is because they couldn't be used. When the doses could be used, the US jealously guarded them, while the EU, Russia, China and even Cuba shared. The 100 million doses that were "donated" almost two years later is a very poor excuse for hogging the supply when it mattered most. As for the optics or donating - it was done only so that the US could say "we donated the most" while many, many countries actually supplied a lot more. Paying 3-4$ per dose is not an issue for almost any country, and when it actually is the EU, Russia, China et al. had no issues discounting or even donating them.

andrewbarba 5y ago
Are we now saying donating unused things is inferior to donating things that could be used? I think this is a horrible take. Also two years since when? US had regular supply of vaccine only since March.
- sudosysgen 5y ago
  Donating things years after they are needed is worse, to put it plainly. The EU and China started arranging the export of vaccines before even they had a regular supply. Talks for the export of vaccines from those countries started almost two years ago from now, ie, early 2020.
  - foota 5y ago
    Does it matter when talks of exporting started if it wasn't actually available at that time?
bitshiftfaced 5y ago
Were those doses exclusory? If not, then there's no problem because producing them had no good or bad effect on other countries. If it was exclusory, then shouldn't it be a country's first priority to ensure its own citizens' safety first? If your house is burning down, do you let your neighbor use your water hose before you can put out your own fire?