To think that the EU have done more to endorse Brexit in the last 2 weeks than the UK managed in nearly 5 years

[Butterflyfluff]

I’ll start by saying I’ve never thought Brexit was in the long term interest of the UK and still don’t

But dear God, the EU’s behaviour over vaccinations and, in particular, the blatant prejudice around the Astra Zeneca vaccine has done more to endorse the UK leaving than anything that has been said in the UK before, during and after the vote

The EU is a third party. I don’t know why each individual country cannot do their own thing regarding vaccines? This is absolutely crucial and a major global emergency and they’re fannying about. Now is not the fucking time for indecision.

YANBU.

Yanbu. The EU is a shit show at the moment - and they have not done themselves any favours now, throwing all their toys out of the pram?! Threatening to hold back vaccines?! Jesus Christ. If anything - they have given the people who voted to leave more reason to say I told you so. Ursula really should step down.

Boris has absolutely pulled a blinder. Absolutely.

If I had any question in this debate it would be:

Does Brexit have any bearing on any CV19 Vaccination decisions that the EU have made?

A Simple Question - requiring only simple answers and explanations - no links are necessary.

Please! So many people made this a success. Not Johnson. Credit must go to those who planned, researched, negotiated, delivered and worked the longest of hours to make this work.

VdL is an example of personal failure. Johnson has not been a personal success with COVID

The EU has behaved very unreasonably.

EU has sent over nine million doses to UK

UK has sent zero doses to EU.

Yep, there's certainly somebody not being very co-operative.

But who is it?

Does anybody, seriously, expect that pattern to continue?

@TheHateIsNotGood

If I had any question in this debate it would be:

Does Brexit have any bearing on any CV19 Vaccination decisions that the EU have made?

A Simple Question - requiring only simple answers and explanations - no links are necessary.

Yes it does have a bearing on Brexit

The prejudiced against AZ appears to be entirely linked to its British connections

If we hadn’t left that wouldn’t have happened

Happy to hear a counter argument but nothing is immediately obvious to me

@PigletJohn

Well let’s see why that might be. Is it because the EU made contracts which meant its requirements would always be subordinated to the UK contracts?

Yes. There’s the answer. Rubbish contracts across the board by the EU, not just AZ.

Yanbu

agreed on the vaccines. However, there's still way too much that's worse in the UK at the moment that is still making me want to move to Europe (investment in health, quality, accessible education, decent benefits to protect from most of the outfall of covid...)

@LoadsOfTrouble

EU citizen here.

The EU has never tried to 'ban' use of the AZ vaccine. Moreover, the EU is not a state, and the country that banned exports of AZ vaccines (Italy) was not the same as the countries that started the (preliminary, now over) suspension of the AZ vaccine (Germany, among others).

There is nothing the UK has done about vaccination that it could not also have done while in the EU. Yes, there would probably have been pressure to distribute some of the doses now available to the UK to smaller EU countries - which in the big scheme of things would not be a bad thing - but the NHS was never under EU control.

The one constant, pre- and post-Brexit, in the UK is the piss-poor quality of debate about the EU and the rampant ignorance that permeates it. I should know, I lived in the UK for 15 years; left late 2016.

Imagine for a moment that the situation were reversed, with the UK short of vaccines and the EU not. Compared to the screaming and shouting Brexiters would be doing then, the EU is fairly low-key.

Here in Belgium, infections are up but deaths are still down. Vaccines may be few, but they've been targeted at the right people. Of course I wish there were more vaccines and less vaccine hesitancy here. But the way UK retainers are using the vaccine rollout problems in the EU to reconcile themselves to Brexit is, frankly, a bit pathetic.

Also in EU and I agree with you. The reason why people in the EU aren’t ‘more angry’ ‘out demonstrating’ is that we don’t share the same view of this as those in the U.K. do.

Like @LoadsOfTrouble said , vaccines are being given out. Slower than we’d like but we know there are supply issues and hoping it’ll all speed up in Q2 and they are getting to the right people.

Also , in Ireland where I am, our deaths per capita is far lower than in the U.K. so less anger overall than you probably feel in the U.K. with your awful death rate.

Brexit was always a good idea.

It was never going to be all (or any) of the negatives people wailed about.
(Did you really think Sainsbury's was going to shut up shop?)

Project fear and the compulsion of pro EU sentiment in order to keep friends / stay mc / date / not be socially ostracized was a powerful force.

I managed to rise above it and despite not being racist, stupid or a bigot, I'm very proud I voted leave.

The UK is producing its own stock of AZ, and sourcing some from India. The Commission spent too much time haggling over price,(which as AZ is at cost) seems daft, and then the glitches in production in AZ's plants in Belgium and the NL haven't yet been ironed out. Given that these vaccines have been rolled out in extremely quick time, what did the EU expect? Both the UK and the U.S. put development money in, and helped where needed.

Let Uschi crack on making an idiot of herself. The Pharma companies may start to evaluate where they wish to be based in light of this.

Pigletjohn
Where are vaccine doses manufactured in the UK?
Where are vaccine vials manufactured in the UK?

Its a bit tricky to export what you do not make.

Here we go again.

@LoadsOfTrouble

When the EU first looked at a vaccine countries within the EU were all going to go off and do their own thing EU said no, it needs to be done as norm and then took three months to sort something. Hence in September some countries did try to do their own thing and purchase vaccines direct, no doubt as they could see the writing on the wall.

The EU is just a conglomerate of countries who actually don’t want t9 work together if it doesn’t suit them.

And seeing what’s happened since the beginning of the year with the NI issue, and now this it sums up the EU.

What I really don’t get, and have to assume it is political is that Pfizer has exactly the same, if not a bit more issues with blood clotting, I don’t see the EU banning that, perhaps because it’s German?

So agree,,,

@PigletJohn

Pfizer is manufactured in the EU not the UK therefore it has to be exported to us

Yes AZ is manufactured here, but the bulk is abroad over which we have no control, thecEU are sitting on millions of doses they didn’t want for a while,

The fact that certain EU countries are sitting on a surplus of AZ is actually a problem. You cannot impose export controls when you already have a supply. The reason for an export control is usually a shortage!

There is just a vast difference between negotiations for trade and this.

I doubt all of the Commission think VdL is handling it well. Nor their own leaders in EU MS. The politicking on top is embarrassing but obviously we are not going to have a nice relationship with the EU, but a difficult one like Turkey.

[quote Chloemol]@PigletJohn

Pfizer is manufactured in the EU not the UK therefore it has to be exported to us

Yes AZ is manufactured here, but the bulk is abroad over which we have no control, thecEU are sitting on millions of doses they didn’t want for a while,[/quote]
so the EU has been sending vaccines here, and you think they're behaving badly.

It’s AZ who send the vaccine. The EU would like to put controls on that. They don’t get any brownie points

Butterfly - so it seems that it's very probable that the EU are acting so irrationally is because of Brexit.

Whilst I'm sure that lots and lots of Scientists based at Oxford come from all over the World, quite a few from EU countries even, there's no escaping the fact that Oxford is geographically based in the UK.

Maybe after a few centuries the EU will have put together something similar for themselves.

based=located

To be clear EU countries have exported over 40 million doses.
U.K. has not exported any doses.

Johnson is certainly very good at blinding people.

The economic fallout for this could be huge, the US and UK could, despite having had awful starts to the pandemic reach heard immunity and open up very soon whilst the EU stays lockeddown. I’m pleased we aren’t tied to them anymore.