European Union's vaccination performance

astrofool

This thread has just become a place to post the same lies that were posted and shot down on the vaccine thread.

Strazdas

boege wrote: »

Some surprising views in this thread.

Vaccines are made by companies not countries. Countries get vaccines by negotiating supply agreements with companies that make the vaccines. The EU negotiated their supply agreement a good 6 months or more after the UK and US.

The EU reaction now is to attempt to control exports out of the EU because rightly or wrongly the UK and US did priority deals with the vaccine companies that succeeded. Those priority deals are being supplied from sites all over the world because its legal.

The UK funded huge amounts (€70m) of vaccine research in Oxford University and even blocked Oxford licensing the vaccine technology to a US pharma company - I assume because they guessed Trump would control supply out of US. There is a lot of 'side-talk' that the Oxford licence agreement with Az requires Az to give priority supply to UK. (My job involves licensing technology). This is probably why the EU went public on their supply agreement.

The EU funded huge amounts (€100m) of vaccine research in BioNTech but did not block or mandate EU supply provisions in the licensing agreement with Pfizer, a US company. EU has now accused US and UK of having 'systems in place that effectively blocked the export of COVID-19 vaccines'.

Moderna, Pfizer and J&J will all hit US supply agreement targets in March with 240m vaccines supplied by the end of the month. Pfizer alone will supply between 100-120m vaccines in the US.

If you come late to the table, you get served last and if you don't even book a seat then you have to wait even longer. One role of government is to look after the well being of their people. The UK and US seem to be doing that well.

I don't think that applies to a legally enforceable contract between a supplier and a customer. If you sign a contract with a supplier and pay him / her up front, unless the contract specifically states you will be in a queue and will have to wait your turn until other contracts are fulfilled, you have every right to expect that the product you ordered and paid for will be delivered on time.

There is no such thing as "first come, first served" in contract law and when you are paying up front. Nor can the supplier inform you you are now in a queue 'after' you have signed the contract and paid him (by doing that, he may well be in breach of the contract).

boege

boege wrote: »

Some surprising views in this thread.

Vaccines are made by companies not countries. Countries get vaccines by negotiating supply agreements with companies that make the vaccines. The EU negotiated their supply agreement a good 6 months or more after the UK and US.

The EU reaction now is to attempt to control exports out of the EU because rightly or wrongly the UK and US did priority deals with the vaccine companies that succeeded. Those priority deals are being supplied from sites all over the world because its legal.

The UK funded huge amounts (€70m) of vaccine research in Oxford University and even blocked Oxford licensing the vaccine technology to a US pharma company - I assume because they guessed Trump would control supply out of US. There is a lot of 'side-talk' that the Oxford licence agreement with Az requires Az to give priority supply to UK. (My job involves licensing technology). This is probably why the EU went public on their supply agreement.

The EU funded huge amounts (€100m) of vaccine research in BioNTech but did not block or mandate EU supply provisions in the licensing agreement with Pfizer, a US company. EU has now accused US and UK of having 'systems in place that effectively blocked the export of COVID-19 vaccines'.

Moderna, Pfizer and J&J will all hit US supply agreement targets in March with 240m vaccines supplied by the end of the month. Pfizer alone will supply between 100-120m vaccines in the US.

If you come late to the table, you get served last and if you don't even book a seat then you have to wait even longer. One role of government is to look after the well being of their people. The UK and US seem to be doing that well.

No no, the EU simply looked around and said "We're doing a great job so far, let's take our time with the vaccines.". Apparently.

HalfAndHalf

astrofool wrote: »

This thread has just become a place to post the same lies that were posted and shot down on the vaccine thread.

Like how the U.K. has double the death rate of the EU?

Or is it only EU favouring lies that are OK?

astrofool

HalfAndHalf wrote: »

Like how the U.K. has double the death rate of the EU?

Or is it only EU favouring lies that are OK?

In January, which is the time I highlighted as to why the UK was getting desperate and taking risks, the UK death rate was over double that of Europe, almost 1.8 deaths per 100k per week, to 0.8 deaths in Europe, you can check this for yourself, the OP also kept on excluding this data from their graphs:
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

I await your retraction.

HalfAndHalf

astrofool wrote: »

In January, which is the time I highlighted as to why the UK was getting desperate and taking risks, the UK death rate was over double that of Europe, almost 1.8 deaths per 100k per week, to 0.8 deaths in Europe, you can check this for yourself, the OP also kept on excluding this data from their graphs:
https://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/

I await your retraction.

So you argue with others that their timeframe suits their narrative then choose another that suits yours.

Timeframes are irrelevant, it’s the total amount that matters which are the figures I stated.

You can’t accuse others of lying and siting their narrative yet do the same yourself.

So sorry, no retraction coming your way any time soon.

astrofool

HalfAndHalf wrote: »

So you argue with others that their timeframe suits their narrative then choose another that suits yours.

Timeframes are irrelevant, it’s the total amount that matters which are the figures I stated.

You can’t accuse others of lying and siting their narrative yet do the same yourself.

So sorry, no retraction coming your way any time soon.

My point was the horrendous death rate in the UK at the time of decisions being made about vaccination was what drove them to take the risks they did. My point was not that the UK had double the death count per capita of the EU (they don't).

The UK has done an awful job in everything around the pandemic barring the vaccine rollout, they saw what happened in Italy and Spain and still tried to ignore the problem, then continued misstepping causing the high case count and then high death rate around Christmas 2020.

You accused me of posting lies, I did not, continue digging if you please.

Tippbhoy1

boege wrote: »

Some surprising views in this thread.

Vaccines are made by companies not countries. Countries get vaccines by negotiating supply agreements with companies that make the vaccines. The EU negotiated their supply agreement a good 6 months or more after the UK and US.

The EU reaction now is to attempt to control exports out of the EU because rightly or wrongly the UK and US did priority deals with the vaccine companies that succeeded. Those priority deals are being supplied from sites all over the world because its legal.

The UK funded huge amounts (€70m) of vaccine research in Oxford University and even blocked Oxford licensing the vaccine technology to a US pharma company - I assume because they guessed Trump would control supply out of US. There is a lot of 'side-talk' that the Oxford licence agreement with Az requires Az to give priority supply to UK. (My job involves licensing technology). This is probably why the EU went public on their supply agreement.

The EU funded huge amounts (€100m) of vaccine research in BioNTech but did not block or mandate EU supply provisions in the licensing agreement with Pfizer, a US company. EU has now accused US and UK of having 'systems in place that effectively blocked the export of COVID-19 vaccines'.

Moderna, Pfizer and J&J will all hit US supply agreement targets in March with 240m vaccines supplied by the end of the month. Pfizer alone will supply between 100-120m vaccines in the US.

If you come late to the table, you get served last and if you don't even book a seat then you have to wait even longer. One role of government is to look after the well being of their people. The UK and US seem to be doing that well.

I don’t understand why you open your post taking about legal contracts, then spend most of it taking about things like research funding, behind the scenes deals etc. Which is it?

If you want to argue the contract basis-then stick to the contract point. Money the Uk gave to fund Oxford has no bearing on an agreement the EU made with AZ. Additional, first come first served has no basis in contract law, it is what the parties agree.

I couldn’t care less if the Uk gave 10billion to AZ. What difference does it make to a contract the manufacturer made with the EU. Maybe on a moral basis you could feel that doing a preferential deal is reasonable, and I wouldn’t disagree there. If this was all said you front at the start, the client’s expectations would have been set and they would have had to soak it up, seeking supplies elsewhere. Take the Moderna extra doses ireland turned down at the start, we probably wouldn’t have done that if we had know that AZ were in trouble. Irish lives likely lost because of this.

Defend the manufacturer position either on a contract basis or on a moral basis, don’t use parts of a contract watered down with some moral compass to get an end result of something that’s favourable for you. The manufacturer has been nothing but atrocious throughout this whole sorry mess.

It mystifies me that there seems to be a rump of people completely against export bans but totally pro exclusive contracts. The end result would be the same. If the EU had exclusive contracts the UK would be much further behind where they are. If the EU implemented export restrictions 3 months ago we would be much further ahead and the UK further behind. Even now, if we turned off the tap it would only be a good thing for the EU in terms of vaccinations. It’s laughable to suggest this same cohort of people lauding the exclusive contracts of the uk and the USA, wouldn’t be completely outraged if the EU had done the same from the start, same as they are outraged now about a risk of an export ban.

HalfAndHalf

astrofool wrote: »

My point was the horrendous death rate in the UK at the time of decisions being made about vaccination was what drove them to take the risks they did. My point was not that the UK had double the death count per capita of the EU (they don't).

The UK has done an awful job in everything around the pandemic barring the vaccine rollout, they saw what happened in Italy and Spain and still tried to ignore the problem, then continued misstepping causing the high case count and then high death rate around Christmas 2020.

You accused me of posting lies, I did not, continue digging if you please.

‘At the time’ is still irrelevant, if the U.K. did such a bad job and the EU such a good one, why is it that the figures are so close? Add in that the U.K. are now at a point of massive vaccination and numbers continue to fall while large population EU countries continue to rise, I fail to see how you can say one entity is doing better than the other.

It’s been proven the U.K. did not take risks it simply adjusted its review and approval process to speed up approval. Seemingly correctly as they approved every vaccine that the EU did in the end.

You posted that this thread is the same old lies too.....clearly because there are some good and valid points that the EU aren’t being as amazing as some would like to believe, like yourself.

You can hardly have a fair debate when it’s U.K. bad, EU good and that’ll do. The figures don’t lie and since the beginning of the pandemic both sides have suffered nearly equal amounts of innocent people. Hardly something to go cheerleading the EU about now is it.

Danzy

The WHO are added to the list of EU skeptics/Brexiteers, alongside Guy Verhofstadt etc.

They called out the unacceptable slow pace today.

HalfAndHalf

Danzy wrote: »

The WHO are added to the list of EU skeptics/Brexiteers, alongside Guy Verhofstadt etc.

They called out the unacceptable slow pace today.

Just saw that and good, this constant diversion of AZ this and AZ that as the cause for them screwing it up is tiresome.

You’ve got to question why the focus is on AZ and nobody else, reports of Pfizer links to clots and they’ve also not met production yet not a peep.

Something more at play behind the scenes for sure, be it politics or big pharma pressure due to AZs near cost price versus far more money to be made for Pfizer and the others.

Tippbhoy1

Danzy wrote: »

The WHO are added to the list of EU skeptics/Brexiteers, alongside Guy Verhofstadt etc.

They called out the unacceptable slow pace today.

They are referring to Europe, not the EU.
And it’s an undeniable fact that it is slower than one other large block. The reasons are multiple. One of the solutions suggested is to ramp up manufacturing, like wtf? They also suggest using every single vial available? Is that a good thing?

Why aren’t they calling out for vaccines to be shared from the US for example? They’re vaccinating people of low risk now, wouldn’t it be medically better to vaccinate people at risk?

Let’s not even go into the Chinese investigation.

The WHO have shown themselves to have no credibility at this stage.

Do you support any changes in approach from Europe?

HalfAndHalf

Tippbhoy1 wrote: »

They are referring to Europe, not the EU.
And it’s an undeniable fact that it is slower than one other large block. The reasons are multiple. One of the solutions suggested is to ramp up manufacturing, like wtf? They also suggest using every single vial available? Is that a good thing?

Why aren’t they calling out for vaccines to be shared from the US for example? They’re vaccinating people of low risk now, wouldn’t it be medically better to vaccinate people at risk?

Let’s not even go into the Chinese investigation.

The WHO have shown themselves to have no credibility at this stage.

Do you support any changes in approach from Europe?

One thing to change would be to use all of the vials that we currently have, reports of stockpiles of millions of vaccines isn’t a good look, especially when the narrative is we don’t have enough and that’s why we’re behind. It doesn’t add up.

micosoft

astrofool wrote: »

You also need to go back further than 28 days on the death graph for the UK to understand why they did what they did (nationalize vaccines, hide vaccine imports, stop following manufacturers recommendations, approved vaccines at a lower standard than the EU). Their death rate and virus spread has been horrendous for an island that had advance warning of what was coming due to the situation in Italy and Spain, and at the end of it all, they'll probably still have a higher death rate than the EU per capita.

This. The UK were forced to put everything on Red because they made such a monumental mess of keeping Covid under control. They might land on Red (but the wheel is still spinning) and I hope they do. But I also prefer not taking that kind of risk with peoples lives.

Tippbhoy1

HalfAndHalf wrote: »

One thing to change would be to use all of the vials that we currently have, reports of stockpiles of millions of vaccines isn’t a good look, especially when the narrative is we don’t have enough and that’s why we’re behind. It doesn’t add up.

You have a partial point and I agree but it’s more nuanced. The EU doesn’t control rollout, countries do. This is a problem of several individual countries, and not every country in the EU. Additionally, I though we are all supposed to keep a bit of stock back for second doses?

micosoft

HalfAndHalf wrote: »

One thing to change would be to use all of the vials that we currently have, reports of stockpiles of millions of vaccines isn’t a good look, especially when the narrative is we don’t have enough and that’s why we’re behind. It doesn’t add up.

It would be better to report the stockpile as a proportion of population. The EU has a population of 445 million people. While four million vaccines sounds like a lot for Ireland it's 1% of the EU population and if we go for two does - .5% of the doses required.

Put it another way - let's say we have an average of 2.5 physicians per thousand people in EU. That would mean a reserve of 4 Vaccines per Doctor. Point I'm trying to make is you could easily see a need for a 4 million float in the system for second doses from production to GP. You can't have zero in your supply chain...

Another problematic point is the horrendous argument made in a Guardian article that because there are more people in the EU giving the UK doses to the EU would not be worth while. Obviously logic is out the window there but again - one of the things about the Covid debate is the misleading use of statistics.

micosoft

Tippbhoy1 wrote: »

It mystifies me that there seems to be a rump of people completely against export bans but totally pro exclusive contracts.

It does not really mystify me. Some people will repeat talking points from the Tory regime and the agenda of the British right wing press and change their view depending on what way the wind is blowing. They will twist and turn the argument to suit their narrative.

Will be interesting to see the narrative next year when AZ vaccine is not effective for new variants (mRNA will be only effective ones to respond quickly) and the UK will have to buy EU developed, made and invested Vaccines. They will be squealing about unethical contracts and the EU being protectionist.

micosoft

humberklog wrote: »

This post comes across more like thinking of the crisis in a political or emotional manner. It doesn't come across as understanding what's required to handle the virus with a vaccine in effective scientific manner.

This situation reminds me of the instruction your given on an airline flight if the cabin decompresses- put you oxygen mask on first and then assist others.
Israel, UAE, UK and the USA are in my opinion doing the right thing. The EU is scrabbling about the cabin looking for their kids.

This post comes across more like thinking of the crisis in a political or emotional manner. It doesn't come across as understanding what's required to handle the virus with a vaccine in effective scientific manner.

This situation reminds me of the instruction you're given on an airline flight if the cabin decompresses- put you oxygen mask on first and then assist others. If the EU did what Israel, UAE, UK and the USA did we would have a catastrophe of 27 EU countries fighting each other which in my opinion is doing the wrong thing. The EU is doing the job of the cabin crew to get EVERYBODY safely off the airplane while Israel, UAE, UK and the USA are in First class cabin looking for their Louis Vuitton luggage to clog the slide before everyone else.

Bit cynical

I think the AZ thing is a bit of a side issue. The EU would be behind even if AZ fulfilled its contract in full and, as pointed out, there's already a thread devoted to the subject.

I do think, however, that the UK were cleverer and more proactive with AZ so that when AZ did eventually run into problems, the UK had a measure of protection whereas the EU did not.

Not sure if it has been posted but here's a good article on some of the legal and other factors concerning the two contracts.

Politico: How the UK gained an edge with AstraZeneca’s vaccine commitments

Quote:

The U.K. contract is also more clear in how it will monitor the delivery of the doses, as well as what happens if the company doesn't come through.

Although the delivery schedule itself is redacted, the U.K. contract clearly states that AstraZeneca shall notify the British government about any changes to the schedule and use its “Best Reasonable Efforts to keep as close to the original” delivery schedule. The company also has 30 days to notify the U.K. ahead of its delivery about the number of doses it should expect.

Once that happens, “AstraZeneca may not adjust the Delivery Schedule without the prior consent” of the British government.

An exception: AstraZeneca isn't in violation if there's a “minor variance” to the delivery schedules, up to five business days, “due to the unpredictable nature of the Manufacturing of the Products” — as long as the U.K. is notified within a reasonable timeframe.

The EU contract, by contrast, doesn't go into this level of detail about notification when manufacturing plans change. But it does have another remedy in the Belgian system, De Rey explains: If a company is in breach of a contract, the other party can appoint another producer to do the job at the expense of the company in breach.

Lots more stuff in the article on why the UK got the better end of the stick with AZ.

Danzy

micosoft wrote: »

This post comes across more like thinking of the crisis in a political or emotional manner. It doesn't come across as understanding what's required to handle the virus with a vaccine in effective scientific manner.

This situation reminds me of the instruction you're given on an airline flight if the cabin decompresses- put you oxygen mask on first and then assist others. If the EU did what Israel, UAE, UK and the USA did we would have a catastrophe of 27 EU countries fighting each other which in my opinion is doing the wrong thing. The EU is doing the job of the cabin crew to get EVERYBODY safely off the airplane while Israel, UAE, UK and the USA are in First class cabin looking for their Louis Vuitton luggage to clog the slide before everyone else.

You list 4 countries where the crisis is weeks from being over as examples of what not to do and laud a block where cases are surging and vaccine rollout is extremely slow.

robinph

micosoft wrote: »

This post comes across more like thinking of the crisis in a political or emotional manner. It doesn't come across as understanding what's required to handle the virus with a vaccine in effective scientific manner.

This situation reminds me of the instruction you're given on an airline flight if the cabin decompresses- put you oxygen mask on first and then assist others. If the EU did what Israel, UAE, UK and the USA did we would have a catastrophe of 27 EU countries fighting each other which in my opinion is doing the wrong thing. The EU is doing the job of the cabin crew to get EVERYBODY safely off the airplane while Israel, UAE, UK and the USA are in First class cabin looking for their Louis Vuitton luggage to clog the slide before everyone else.

Not that it's necessarily the correct way to do things in a global pandemic situation, but you've got two different parts of your airline situation mixed up.

US, UK and Israel are putting their masks on before helping anyone else.
The EU has got one loop of the mask over their own ear, but then got distracted whilst pulling the mask out of the ceiling for the row infront with one hand to start the flow of oxygen for them and trying to use their foot to kick the mask off the UK sat on the other side of the aisle.

Nobody has even got to the stage of worrying about if they take their bags out of the overhead lockers or not yet, although Australia and New Zealand had checked the weather report before boarding and decided to take the train instead.

astrofool

HalfAndHalf wrote: »

‘At the time’ is still irrelevant, if the U.K. did such a bad job and the EU such a good one, why is it that the figures are so close? Add in that the U.K. are now at a point of massive vaccination and numbers continue to fall while large population EU countries continue to rise, I fail to see how you can say one entity is doing better than the other.

Whether you agree with my 'At the time' argument is irrelevant, you said my post was lies. It wasn't because I mentioned specifically the time period that the decisions were being made and the death count at the time.

Whether you agree with my argument is irrelevant to the statement of fact that I posted.

Now your argument is that we should look at the overall death count, where the UK is still worst in Europe, but not twice as bad, which is fine, but it doesn't make my statement of fact a lie.

astrofool

robinph wrote: »

US, UK and Israel are putting their masks on before helping anyone else.

It's not a great analogy, but I would posit that the UK are reaching over and grabbing other people's masks, hoarding them, and insisting that they're entitled to all the masks they've taken, meanwhile the EU is asking for those masks back, while distributing masks to the rest of the plane.

astrofool

astrofool wrote: »

It's not a great analogy, but I would posit that the UK are reaching over and grabbing other people's masks, hoarding them, and insisting that they're entitled to all the masks they've taken, meanwhile the EU is asking for those masks back, while distributing masks to the rest of the plane.

a better analogy would be the UK saying we have our own mask, why didn't you bring yours?

NeuralNetwork

There’s no question but the EU response was inadequate but I’m not sure it had the ability to respond much better than it did.

We all tend to assume the EU is directly comparable to the US Federal Government, because it’s a large, economically powerful bloc but also because that’s the image continuously projected by Eurosceptic media in the U.K. - they discuss the EU as if it’s some all-powerful entity that pursues political agendas, much like a US president.

The reality is far from it. The EU isn’t federal government. The agencies it has in the realm of health are mostly about ensuring the free flow of the single market. The EMA is a pooled regulatory agency, similar in scope to the FDA, but the primary reason for its existence was to remove barriers to trade in the EU single market.

Most of the other EU agencies are similar. It excels in open standards, regulation, rules based trade and achieving cooperation between the members where things are pooled and shared.

All of its mechanisms are about consensus finding and multilateralism between the members.

It doesn’t have a huge budget. It doesn’t have taxation powers like the US Fed. There aren’t really any executive agencies that implement health, defence, emergency planning or anything like that.

So basically the EU was tasked by its members (and others who participated in the joint purchase) with procurement of vaccines. This is something it has never done before. It was relying on input and resources from member states and it’s built the infrastructure to do all of this more or less on the fly.

Would it have been better if the 27+ who signed up to this, all wealthy European countries with big budgets, went head to head and competed for supply? Arguably, the outcomes would have been worse, particularly if you got vaccine nationalism and EU members hoarding supplies by big pharmaceutical companies that happened to be in their territory, because they were serving the wider EU market. We saw this with PPE in some shocking displays of nationalism, with supplies seized and borders closed to goods.

So arguably, it would have been a messy fight for scarce supplies.

Could Ireland have done better going it alone and maybe throwing say €4 or €5 bn at it, securing vaccines at premium prices? Maybe, but it’s a bit of an impossible question as 27+ others would have been doing the same.

I think though we are risking not seeing what the issues are here. They’re not necessarily that the EU dropped the ball but that the EU isn’t what we imagine it to be. It’s condemned for any growth towards federal like powers but then it’s also condemned when it doesn’t have them and moves slowly as a result.

You also had a second issue which was member states not all being on the same page. If you go back to mid 2020 when the coronavirus crisis was rolling. Western European countries primarily and southern ones like Italy were being absolutely hammered, while a lot of central and Eastern Europe wasn’t.

The reasons for that were being assumed to be something about how Western Europe was behaving, rather than just the direction of flow of the virus. So there were definitely states not seeing the urgency of spending on vaccines, others were even behaving smugly as rates of infection in Italy, France, Spain and even here were very high while theirs weren’t.

That’s now reversed and we are seeing that this virus is capable of ebbing and flowing through populations with very limited ability to control it other than with what are really uncomfortably, barely tolerable lockdowns. So we absolutely needed a technical solution.

The U.K. and US also had enormous infection rates, you can blame many factors for that but the reality was that they focused on vaccines as their only way out. They both also have very strong focuses on having prepared for what to do in a massive biohazard threat and you had various national security responses kick off, securing a strategic response that wasn’t necessarily just in the political realm.

Europe in the meantime approached this as a tender process and was fumbling because it just didn’t have that kind of decision making infrastructure. You’d some states wanting speed, while others were counting the cents.

There’s also an assumption that the EU can expect US cooperation. I think the Trump legacy and indeed the way that the first few months of the Biden administration have gone with this, we can forget those assumptions. The US isn’t place it was 40 years ago and has become much more inward focused. Also because this isn’t a military threat, the NATO infrastructure didn’t even seem to apply at all. It turned into everyone for themselves.

The lesson that needs to come out of this is that the EU can’t just drift on like this without proper strategic abilities to deal with a pandemic.

We’ll catch up by the end of the summer, but we need to accept that we were caught out by this and that the infrastructure and policies need to be there to coordinate a response to future pandemics.

There’s going to have to be an EU bio security infrastructure put in place and something to deal with pan EU health emergencies. We can’t just go on like this. Not responding properly and promptly has cost lives, huge amounts of money in direct and opportunity costs and has left Europe looking weak when it has all the pieces of the puzzle, it just didn’t have the ability to put them together quickly.

Padre_Pio

astrofool wrote: »

It's not a great analogy, but I would posit that the UK are reaching over and grabbing other people's masks, hoarding them, and insisting that they're entitled to all the masks they've taken, meanwhile the EU is asking for those masks back, while distributing masks to the rest of the plane.

The UK is putting the UK first, and fair play to them.
The US is doing the same.

UAE and Israel are paying a premium for their citizens.

It's a shame the EU isn't putting the EU first, and exporting millions of vaccines to other countries and prolonging lockdowns in countries that are worst affected by COVID.

It's all well to say "Oh aren't we great" by not implementing export bans, but looking at the worst affected countries (deaths per million), 4 of the top 10 are in the EU, and the continent is entering a third wave of infection.

HalfAndHalf

astrofool wrote: »

Whether you agree with my 'At the time' argument is irrelevant, you said my post was lies. It wasn't because I mentioned specifically the time period that the decisions were being made and the death count at the time.

Whether you agree with my argument is irrelevant to the statement of fact that I posted.

Now your argument is that we should look at the overall death count, where the UK is still worst in Europe, but not twice as bad, which is fine, but it doesn't make my statement of fact a lie.

Your view was that the U.K. are twice as bad as the EU. Which it isn’t.

You want to pluck points in time out to bolster your narrative that the U.K. is twice as bad as the EU. Which it isn’t.

What will your argument be once all is said and done and the figures show most countries are near identical?

But OK.

HalfAndHalf

The EU aren’t exporting anything. The EU don’t own the vaccines that private companies have developed and produced, the private companies do.

This view that the EU control the stock of private companies is bizarre.

What next, oh we’ve not enough BMW’s in Germany so we’re banning exports to other countries where people have ordered them....

NeuralNetwork

Padre_Pio wrote: »

The UK is putting the UK first, and fair play to them.
The US is doing the same.

UAE and Israel are paying a premium for their citizens.

It's a shame the EU isn't putting the EU first, and exporting millions of vaccines to other countries and prolonging lockdowns in countries that are worst affected by COVID.

It's all well to say "Oh aren't we great" by not implementing export bans, but looking at the worst affected countries (deaths per million), 4 of the top 10 are in the EU, and the continent is entering a third wave of infection.

I think we could do with listening a lot less to the anti EU press in the U.K. that went immediately on rants about vaccine nationalism, and those were echoed around international media outlets and the financial media too, despite the fact that that plants in the EU were supporting vaccine programmes in the U.K. and in many countries around the world.

Somehow it’s legitimate for traditional sovereign states to do that but when the EU even hinted at regulating exports there was outraged because of rampant anti EU sentiment and double standards.

We were worse for paying any attention to it and I think it triggers a lot naval gazing in Europe.

The reality of this is the EU has had some of the worst impacts of the pandemic in terms of death per capita and disruption. We haven’t really accepted this is a pan EU emergency. It’s as serious as a war situation, yet we seem to have let it drift and not focused on solutions and speed in the way the US in particular has done.

Wolf359f

Bit cynical wrote: »

I think the AZ thing is a bit of a side issue. The EU would be behind even if AZ fulfilled its contract in full and, as pointed out, there's already a thread devoted to the subject.

If AZ fulfilled their contract, the EU would have 120mil doses delivered, not 21mil.
If 100% was administered, it would increase the doses per 100 from an EU average of 16.54 to 36.4. That's a pretty substantial increase.
By the end of April, if they continued with the contract being fufilled (200 mil delivered), it would increase from 36.4 to 53.0, which seeing as how they delayed applying for EMA approval for about a month, puts the EU exactly a month behind the UK.