What exactly is happening with AstraZeneca?

fly_agaric wrote: »

Yes, UK govt. really would have needed a much more jockey's bollox toughness neck to do what they've done while still an EU member.
Germany has been attacked here (on thread) for ordering more vaccines from same suppliers as the EU but these are to be delivered after so they won't cut into the production for the initial vaccination programme.
By contrast what is happening with AZ (if UK were a member) would be intolerable [order from same company being preferentially filled over the EU (i.e. other member states) order, and UK based production walled away from other EU members].
Countries (thinking of Poland/Hungary) seem to be able to get away with quite alot when they have 1 or more partners in crime with the way the EU is set up to require unanimity or quite close to it on decisions. I think this situation would have been the EU institutions and the rest of the member states all raging with + turning their ire on 1 member (UK).

If the U.K. was still in the EU and the EU were happy to follow their lead rather than try and act the hero, the EU might not be in the position it is in.

Enzokk wrote: »

I wonder where you are from. You post eagerly about coming and goings in Ireland as if you are here, but then talk about the Irish Government as if it is not your government. Seeing that you almost blindly back the UK from any criticism and will come to their defense at any perceived slight, I am taking it you aren't in Ireland. It would just be weird for someone living in Ireland posting what you have been posting, in defense of the UK even when it has come at our expense, when getting your vaccine depends on Ireland and not the UK.

I’m in Ireland and getting increasingly frustrated at watching friends and family back home all get a vaccine, while here there still seems to be no form of a mass vaccine roll out. Just the usual nepotism and cronyism.

There are 125,000 people that work for the HSE and they managed to vaccinate the 235,000 that work on the front line.

That’s banana republic stuff.

fly_agaric wrote: »

Not to derail...but cannot resist, that really was the heart of the problem as regards the UK and membership of the EU wasn't it? Certainly for UK politicians, can't speak to what the public thought. Playing second fiddle to the ilk of Germany and France (when both agree, and are quite determined on doing something at EU level). Not automatically being able to lead.

edit: I have to admit you might be right though. Would have been another large and wealthy member pushing for "lets just do it and spend what we need to spend and think later", which would have been beneficial to the programme. There do seem to be specific issues with the AstraZeneca order that go wider than the EU spending less than USA (for example) given it's the one that is so much more off target than all the others, and nothing seems to be improving really as time goes on this year.

Stella Kyriakides related it to a queue in a butcher's shop.

What the UK did, was to basically take away the arguments of a who comes first and got the butcher to make it's products in their factory.

They didn't just wave wads of cash, they actually bought the necessary equipment and built their own factory and got the butcher to make their products there. This all started in April last year, which is why Pascal Soriot talks about the UK being three months ahead. They have done the same thing with the Valneva and Novavax vaccines as well, although these are still further down the pipeline.

As crass as it was from Boris to say that capitalism was the key to the success of the programme, he does have a point. It was treated the same way as a venture capital company would if they bought a start up and wanted to take the company's products to market en masse. To someone like Kate Bingham (remember her, the woman appointed to lead the vaccine task force and whose appointment was called chumocracy), it was second nature.

With the huge pharma capacity in europe and the buying power of the EU, imagine if they had done the same thing. We would be awash with vaccines by now.

Enzokk wrote: »

Do you hear yourself? Did you not see the contracts for friends of Conservative MPs? Or how about the UK Track and Trace costing more than the Irish health budget, and still by all accounts not being fit for purpose. But yeah, we are the banana republic.

Who has the contract to run the Irish test and trace system and how much does it cost?

Enzokk wrote: »

Also, if it is so bad the flights are still happening between the UK and Ireland. By all means leave and rid yourself of the hassle of fighting the good fight against those that just cannot see your truth.

:cool:

Enzokk wrote: »

Maybe you can tell me, you said we are a banana republic and it is up to you to refute what I was saying. I am not doing your research for you. Let's play some more, how much did the UK app cost and how long did it take them to launch? The good old days where people were saying the UK app would not work and they plowed ahead regardless, and then had to backtrack and launch an second app because the first one failed. But yeah, again, your current home is the banana republic.

And you know what, you could be right. We are a banana republic here when it comes to our health service. But when your beloved UK has been shown up in areas by the clowns running things here...I mean I don't know what to say really. Thank your lucky stars you are here, imagine what could have waited for you in the UK had you stayed home. Maybe you could have ended up in one of the Nightingale Hospital beds, which didn't have staff because the NHS is chronically understaffed and adding 12 000 new beds into the health service that is already short of staff and would have had people out sick at the same time...or you would have been treated by a nurse having to wear a rubbish bag because there wasn't enough PPE. The same nurse who was then blamed by the still Health Secretary for using too much PPE during a pandemic and his party stopped stocking PPE because they had to cut money from somewhere.

Again...we are the banana republic.

Is this nurse Susan again?

You have no idea who is doing contact Traci g and who is doing testing, just as you have no idea what the PPE situation was like here. Because the country is run in secrecy and bullying of whistle blowers and there is no organisation more guilty of this than the HSE.

There is also the army of people who have no I terst in what is going on here, they would much rather look east or west and criticise what is going on there than look at themselves.

The Irish government blew a **** load on ventilators that didn’t work bought from a guy who worked for the IDA. Yet there was no outrage here.

The Irish government made a complete balls of the leaving cert last year, so much so that there were hundreds of court cases over it. Ask anyone though and they will know nothing about it, but will tell you how much of a mess the Tories made of the GCSEs. (Ignoring the fact that the SNP made a bigger mess and took longer to resolve it)

But then, not only did they mess up last years leaving cert, there was no plan put in place for this years. They had a ****ing year to plan for it and once again ****ed it up.

When the media started questioning test and trace, the HSE said there was no problem, sure the MHS has asked if we can help them (or “look over there”) and it worked. Two weeks later they had e up contact tracing because the system collapsed. Result = zero media outrage. But hey look over there at the UK.

The government has had no plan for this pandemic, other than lock everything down and hope a vaccine comes along. They have no plan to open up safely either, which is why Ireland, with a very low infection rate, has lost its euro games.

There will be zero comeback on them though, because people are too busy thumbing their noses at the UK and US.

Enzokk wrote: »

I think people are surprised there are still those defending AZ when it is pointed out they have been delivering a lot more to the UK than the EU. We have been over this, AZ is way over its head and should not have been partnered with Oxford. Had they gone with a more established company that works with vaccines the name Oxford would have been hailed as a saviour.

I assume we can both agree the deliveries to the EU has been a lot less compared to the UK, especially when the contract states there was no impediment to AZ delivering to the EU, and yet they have been prioritising the UK when their contract has more punitive language in it. I think that is the greed Johnson talks about, the UK will take the company for all they have whereas the EU will not.

Look at it this way.

Astra Zeneca aren’t producing in the UK. The UK consortium is, AZ are just managing the license. Once the UK has finished its run, Astra Zeneca can use the facility to sell goods to anyone they like.

In terms of UK manufacturing, this was all happening before AZ joined the party, they were introduced to take the vaccine global, which to an extent, they have done.