This is the second 'EU blocks export of AstraZeneca vaccine' headline (the other being the UK). It's interesting how the EU ends up carrying the backlash on both occasions, and AstraZeneca, who are the ones who ultimately over-committed and under-delivered, still comes out of it with relatively little PR damage.
Isn't this because the EU let the US/UK take priority of production? I was under the impression AZ was filling their fulfillments to US/UK just fine. This seems like EU just couldn't keep up in the horse race negotiating.
This is still the subject of debate, and, at some point, possibly a matter for the courts.
What has emerged more recently is that the UK contract was, in contradiction of earlier statements, signed a day after the EU contract.
The UK contract's text was also leaked somewhat accidentally, and it is almost identical to the previously-released EU contract. I've looked at them side-by-side and I'm just not enough of an armchair lawyer to make too much sense of 60-page contracts, but I couldn't quite see how the existing differences would constitute any clear priority for the UK.
Now all of the sudden agreements with UK and US are fulfilled and with EU are not.
Countries are currently outbidding each other and stealing the supplies. It was naive of EU bureaucracy to think that the cheapest price is the priority.
As an Australian I actually don’t have much of a problem with this.
I didn’t see it mentioned in the article but of the total of 53.4 million doses of AZ vaccine Australia has ordered 50 million are being manufactured in Australia.
What’s more except for some minor outbreaks originating from returned traveller quarantine community transmission has been effectively stopped in Australia for the last 6 months. Even 1 case outside of returned traveller quarantine is big news and cause for internal travel restrictions. It’s been months since the last person died from COVID-19 and the economy has largely recovered to prepandemic GDP levels.
Frankly this is a minor delay in Australia’s vaccine rollout and the doses will go to serving places that are frankly more in need.
Once more, this simply shows how weak EU is and how much it depends on the USA for survival: defense, science, tech.
The entire EU was only able to produce one vaccine: also UK is not in EU anymore, and AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish.
It does not come as a surprise. In decades, they haven't invested any significant money in research and tech, but austerity.
Thousands of EU engineers and scientists moved to the USA to never come back.
EU is now paying an high price. And given their inability to reverse this trend, they will always be at the mercy of other more developed and advanced countries.
Technically, the Pfizer vaccine is a collaboration between Pfizer, and BioNTech, a German company. I believe much of the development was done by BioNTech, with Pfizer doing much of the production and distribution.
So while it isn't solely an EU effort, they were crucial in it's development.
This is a good point, and Pfizer's vaccine isn't the only example. Janssen, the JnJ subsidiary, is headquartered in Belgium. All of these companies have researchers who hail from and work in other countries...
None of the major vaccines would have been possible without international cooperation for sequencing, development, and testing....and the virus doesn't check your passport before it enters your cells.
Ultimately issues like competing contractual obligations can get ugly, fast. But aggressive vaccine nationalism can impede the kind of international collaboration that is necessary to produce enough product to inoculate everyone who wants a shot.
BioNTech would have produced nothing without Pfizer.
Without BioNTech, Pfizer would have partnered with a different company (Moderna, Novavax, the list goes on..) and produced a vaccine.
I don't mean to understate the value of what BioNTech's research set Pfizer (and the world) up for, but without Pfizer there would be no BioNTech vaccine.
Lots of vaccine shipments by other manufactures are leaving the EU every week. There are specific grievances with the way AZ has been handling its contracts with the EU that resulted in this action.
I agree that EU is not the top dog anymore but I'm having trouble reasoning your logic.
AZ is UK-Swedish, Biontech/Pfiser is German-US but all this shows that EU is falling behind?
Wouldn't that count 2 for EU, 1 for UK 1 for USA? Is this some accounting trick where it ends up 1 US, 1 UK and 0 for EU?
Europe missed on the computers and internet but I don't see how EUs involvement in inventing the first two vaccines show that Europe is pathetic when the other partners are superior.
Actually, I think the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was also developed in EU(Netherlans?). Would that count as +1 or -1 for the old world?
Switzerland is an example of this and probably the reason they have not joined the EU. Just look at the quality of life, median salary, indices after indices, Switzerland comes ahead of EU in every measure.
I'll get Sputnik V vaccine next week (I live in Russia). I wish there were less politics involved so everyone who needs it could get the vaccine without worrying that Putin's regime is behind it.
"Follow the contracts and you don't get your shipments blocked."
This does not make any sense, it's worse than crude economic nationalism because it doesn't take other agreements into context.
They were probably 'following the contracts' - but by the nature of the agreements - at least some shipments to go Australia.
"The fact that they were trying to export doesn't bode well to them pretending they're following "best effort" wording on the contract."
No - this is false.
Everyone is behind on manufacturing - that we all accept.
This means that shipments everywhere are going to be delayed.
If they are late overall, then of course some shipments are going to go to other customers, while some shipments go to Italy.
Your statement basically implies:
"I don't care what your contracts are - Italy comes before all the other customers, if you don't ship to us, we are going to use emergency measures to screw you and your other customers".
You're not saying: "respect the contract"
You're saying: "respect our contract, we don't give a crap about anyone else's contract, because we have the power of the law to screw them"
"If this was the US or any other country I believe most of the comments would be positive. "
No, the news would roughly be the same: a nation screwed up in it's procurement, months behind other nations, is screwing up agreed deliveries to other nations because of a procurement failure.
The EU's attempts to 'work together' to secure vaccines has been a big boondoggle, this is obvious.
Readit News
What has emerged more recently is that the UK contract was, in contradiction of earlier statements, signed a day after the EU contract.
The UK contract's text was also leaked somewhat accidentally, and it is almost identical to the previously-released EU contract. I've looked at them side-by-side and I'm just not enough of an armchair lawyer to make too much sense of 60-page contracts, but I couldn't quite see how the existing differences would constitute any clear priority for the UK.
Later, UK and US agreed to buy AZ vaccine and are paying 3$ and 4$.
https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n281
Now all of the sudden agreements with UK and US are fulfilled and with EU are not.
Countries are currently outbidding each other and stealing the supplies. It was naive of EU bureaucracy to think that the cheapest price is the priority.
Deleted Comment
I didn’t see it mentioned in the article but of the total of 53.4 million doses of AZ vaccine Australia has ordered 50 million are being manufactured in Australia.
What’s more except for some minor outbreaks originating from returned traveller quarantine community transmission has been effectively stopped in Australia for the last 6 months. Even 1 case outside of returned traveller quarantine is big news and cause for internal travel restrictions. It’s been months since the last person died from COVID-19 and the economy has largely recovered to prepandemic GDP levels.
Frankly this is a minor delay in Australia’s vaccine rollout and the doses will go to serving places that are frankly more in need.
Deleted Comment
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_21_...
The entire EU was only able to produce one vaccine: also UK is not in EU anymore, and AstraZeneca is a British-Swedish.
It does not come as a surprise. In decades, they haven't invested any significant money in research and tech, but austerity.
Thousands of EU engineers and scientists moved to the USA to never come back.
EU is now paying an high price. And given their inability to reverse this trend, they will always be at the mercy of other more developed and advanced countries.
So while it isn't solely an EU effort, they were crucial in it's development.
None of the major vaccines would have been possible without international cooperation for sequencing, development, and testing....and the virus doesn't check your passport before it enters your cells.
Ultimately issues like competing contractual obligations can get ugly, fast. But aggressive vaccine nationalism can impede the kind of international collaboration that is necessary to produce enough product to inoculate everyone who wants a shot.
Without BioNTech, Pfizer would have partnered with a different company (Moderna, Novavax, the list goes on..) and produced a vaccine.
I don't mean to understate the value of what BioNTech's research set Pfizer (and the world) up for, but without Pfizer there would be no BioNTech vaccine.
Well, your mind is going to be totally blown when you find out where they're based.
The trend in pharma has been to HQ in the USA for tax reasons and access to capital, but a lot of the research still happens in the EU
AZ is UK-Swedish, Biontech/Pfiser is German-US but all this shows that EU is falling behind?
Wouldn't that count 2 for EU, 1 for UK 1 for USA? Is this some accounting trick where it ends up 1 US, 1 UK and 0 for EU?
Europe missed on the computers and internet but I don't see how EUs involvement in inventing the first two vaccines show that Europe is pathetic when the other partners are superior.
Actually, I think the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was also developed in EU(Netherlans?). Would that count as +1 or -1 for the old world?
Israel UAE UK (lucky them, they BREXIT just in time) USA
https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
This is a bureaucratic/political problem, maybe an operations problem, not so much an R&D problem.
Deleted Comment
Yeah, that’s worked many times in history.
Deleted Comment
The fact that they were trying to export doesn't bode well to them pretending they're following "best effort" wording on the contract.
Follow the contracts and you don't get your shipments blocked. Pfizer exports from Europe to Canada no problem.
If this was the US or any other country I believe most of the comments would be positive.
This does not make any sense, it's worse than crude economic nationalism because it doesn't take other agreements into context.
They were probably 'following the contracts' - but by the nature of the agreements - at least some shipments to go Australia.
"The fact that they were trying to export doesn't bode well to them pretending they're following "best effort" wording on the contract."
No - this is false.
Everyone is behind on manufacturing - that we all accept.
This means that shipments everywhere are going to be delayed.
If they are late overall, then of course some shipments are going to go to other customers, while some shipments go to Italy.
Your statement basically implies:
"I don't care what your contracts are - Italy comes before all the other customers, if you don't ship to us, we are going to use emergency measures to screw you and your other customers".
You're not saying: "respect the contract"
You're saying: "respect our contract, we don't give a crap about anyone else's contract, because we have the power of the law to screw them"
"If this was the US or any other country I believe most of the comments would be positive. "
No, the news would roughly be the same: a nation screwed up in it's procurement, months behind other nations, is screwing up agreed deliveries to other nations because of a procurement failure.
The EU's attempts to 'work together' to secure vaccines has been a big boondoggle, this is obvious.
There has been a shipment to Australia before: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-28/astrazeneca-oxford-va...