EU and the vaccine

[medsec222]

I don't understand any of this to-ing and fro-ing with grievances over the vaccine. Why is the UK at fault. We ordered the vaccine and are rolling it out. Various members of the EU have said they think the AstraZeneca is not totally safe, so do they want it or not? I read somewhere that the EU is hoarding it until they are assured it is safe. so what is the problem if others are happy to use it, it is better than it going to waste if there is a shelf life. They are now talking about openness, whatever that means.

[Workingman]

The UK is not at fault. There are production problems at both the AZ and Pfizer plants in Belgium and Netherlands as well as worldwide gaps in the supply chain of raw materials.

And nobody is hoarding it. Some countries, not the EU, have paused its use pending reports about blood clots. Whether they are right to do so is debatable, as is the case.

It has a shelf life of up to six months so the latest batches have some time to go before they need to be thrown.... I suspect, and hope, that if there are any approaching their use by date they will be donated to Covax and countries that can use them immediately.

[Suff]

Agree WM, the vaccines are not going to waste and the EU is not at fault for the current pause. Note I say the EU, not the member states. Those are two totally different things.

There is, however, a political undercurrent going on. There are elections either going on right now or in the next 18 months. There is significant vaccine envy going on right now and not just with the UK.

The member states of the EU were sold a pup. All get together and well have more clout. Follow the EMA and there will be No problems because the EMA is the best in the world, allow the commission to do the ordering and we will have more clout as a group and we will be at the front of the queue.

These are all reasonable assumptions. On the basis of one thing, that they actually work as advertised and everyone does their job.

Of course it could never work as advertised. New vaccines go through a regime of testing which can last a decade, incredibly fast delivery would be 5 years. This was emergency authorisation and nothing else, yet the EMA is only allowed to authorise for a minimum of 1 year.

So the EMA took much more time than expected. It was never going to change a thing but when shit went south, as it was always going to, the EMA would have rock solid proof they "followed procedure".

The European Commission aslo has procedures. They will not place orders for vaccines until it is virtually certain they will be approved.

Between the EMA and the Commission, they wasted nearly 4 months of critical time in both approving and ordering the vaccines.

Whether or not the Commission was eating its own dog food about "we're the biggest vaccine manufacturer in the world" , or not, is hard to tell. It is certain that they still had the UK as part of the EU at the time of signing the contracts or they would never have demanded 3rd country facilities to be counted as EU.

Whilst this whole merry go round was going on, the UK government was placing orders for 3 times the amount of vaccines needed, with a range of vaccine suppliers to mitigate the risk of reactions and have the ability to switch to a different vaccine if needed.

Even with millions pushed into AZ manufacturing in the UK, the initial output was variable and below the volume expected.

Roll forward to the EMA finally and begrudgingly, giving approval to Pfizer, followed by AZ and the production problems seen in the UK were reflected in NL and BE. Doubled and quadrupled by the fact that AZ does not manufacture in these countries, it is done by contract to other companies and one of those companies was mid take over when the supply started.

With all of the above in mind, consider the EU member state government politicians position. Late, not enough, sold the whole story of EU supremacy only to find it was a myth, elections bearing down, anti EU press going their mile, opposition parties, especially far right, picking up votes.

Is it any wonder that these politicians, faced with either admitting they backed the wrong horse or casting doubt on the quality of the vaccines; chose to do the latter.

Meanwhile those same politicians are raging at the commission, with the mildest statement probably being "what the fuck did you think you were doing", the commission starts looking for the "a big boy did it and ran away" story.

Enter the UK and that horrible UK firm that won't live up to its contractual obligations. Even though that firm is Anglo Swedish, it is now firmly a UK firm in the press.

And what about those horrible UK people who won't allow vaccines produced in the UK to be sent to the EU.

Well there is an interesting story. Because the EU produced a redacted contract and the the unredacted contract surfaced, stating "best efforts" to reach their targets.

I can just see those negotiations. "you are late and you want priority treatment. Forget it. Oh you won't write a contract without these ridiculous levels of deliveries, your problem. Oh I see you can't say anything else because you screwed up, OK, you write whatever number you need and we'll write best efforts and fail to deliver. Deal".

The only thing that could possibly have saved the EU from this fiasco is if the UK had joined their vaccine alliance. We chose not to and now they are in a mess.

The elections are coming.

A big boy did it and ran away!

[Suff]

Interestingly I read, today, that the Halix plant in the Netherlands is actually not licensed by the EMA to produce the AZ vaccine. Leaving only the Belgian plant producing and that has problems.

Hence why the UK offered "knowledge and expertise" to get the Halix plant up and running so they could produce their own vaccines. After all we had no capability as late as August 2020.

This won't resolve any time soon as they were expecting 130m doses by the end of Q1 21. They have had about 50m. Perhaps they should be hassling the German owners of Halix to get their plant producing??

[Workingman]

A bit more on this..... and it is not clear cut. However, it does look that if wise heads get together then a way out is available. The willy-whanging has to stop some time.

Reuters and The Times.

[Suff]

I did find it positive that although the UK government has it in their power to make things significantly worse for the EU, they chose to add help in response to threats.


But you are right, if the pissing competition doesn't stop, things will get worse for everyone.

But who wants to back down to a bully? We all know how that works.

Hopefully Thursday will bring something new.

[Workingman]

The truth is hard to unpick. It is a 'she said this', he said that' story padded out by the media with peripheral stuff about the EU, UK and vaccines in a mud raking way.

Try this from Sky:

And in a continuing war of words, the EU has threatened to block exports of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to countries outside the EU - including the UK - in a bid to make sure there are enough left for its citizens.

And there it is, a war of words. Except that the EU has not prevented the export of the O/AZ vaccine to the UK; it cannot because it does not export it to us. Sure, it could prevent the export of the P/BT one, but it relies on the UK for some of the raw materials so that would be counter productive if the UK reciprocated. As things stand there has been no action, only words.

As stupid games to play go it is one of the stupidest.

[Suff]

Agreed, this is really stupid.

There is some info on Wikipedia about the whole mess. Apparently the vaccines alliance in the EU, Germany, France, Italy and Netherlands, inked a deal with AZ, for the whole EU, last year around the same time that the UK did. Then the commission barged in, insisted that deal had to be EU wide, there is some precedent for this and if you are going to have the commission and the EMA, then you can't have local state alliances.

This is where the wheels came off the bus. AZ is the cheapest covid vaccine, it is totally non profit and is sold to every country at the same base price, plus local additional costs. The EU spent 3 months trying to negotiate a lower price then agreed exactly the same process.

That is history.

Now we have a battle going on over perception. I see the commission building a case to stop P/BT deliveries because we won't share our UK manufactured AZ vaccines.

I guess that was a bit complicated when they found out that if they stop deliveries, we have the power to halt the vaccine entirely. I suspect that gummed up the works a bit.

To us, normal people, it all seems insane. However to an embattled politician these things seem normal. Witness our government and the constant direction changes at the start of this pandemic.

What it comes down to is that if the commission halt the P/BT vaccine to the UK and the UK finds no other source, the UK loses 2 months time in the vaccination and the EU gains one week.

This may sound like complete insanity, exchanging UK citizens lives for a better standing with EU politicians and their electorate. But to a politician, who has been making policy that, quite literally, weighs the lives of people on scales of action and perception, for the last year, it may make some sense.

Hopefully, tomorrow, cooler heads will prevail.

[Suff]

And if you read to the bottom of this BBC article, this is how they are going to play it.

The summit where.

The European Commission is to call for tougher controls on Covid vaccine exports after it accused UK-Swedish firm AstraZeneca of failing to honour its contract to supply EU countries.

And right at the very end..

The EU's 27 leaders will assess the proposals at a summit on Thursday, in which US President Joe Biden will also take part via video

If that is not trying to ramp up the rhetoric and pressure, I do not know what is.

[Workingman]

So, more muck raking.

The doses conveniently "found" in Italy are not exports, they were not produced in the EU, they are simply there for "fill and finish" and then to be returned to the UK. Typical of the media to mark them down as "exports" though.

Maybe Joe is there to pour oil on troubled waters or knock heads together, who knows? He won't be happy to be sending US Johnson & Johnson doses to the EU for "fill and finish" if this is what is threatened.