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

@LizzieSiddal

Hasn’t the Uk ordered something like 400m vaccines? I do hope that once all adults in the uk are vaccinated, any “extras” will go to countries who need it. Surely we can’t sit on millions of vaccines?

UK has ordered even more than that and yes we will sit on them, the latest is that we need them in case there is a 4th wave.....

I have always maintained that Brexit means the UK and EU become enemies/competitors in all that matters, there will little cooperation, a new european cold war if you like.
Imagine the rhetoric from both sides in the last few weeks happening if we had remained in the EU but still done our own thing with vaccine?

This will effect our trade, culture and where we holiday, long after CV is a distant memory.

I am a remainer. I still believe we should be a member of the EU. This sovereign state crap and we are a great country etc has never been so irrelevant.

People are dying . Should we really be so smug that due to a huge gamble by Boris that less people are dying in the UK. This is about people's lives.

Having said that, i completely agree with OP. This has been a disaster for the EU and it demonstrates all that is wrong with the institution. It is bureaucratic and outdated and is showing these traits to the world. The benefits of collaboration and friendship have been ignored. And completely played into the hands if Brexiteers. Hell, if I was on the fence I'd have been persuaded Brexit was the right thing.

I'm still wondering though where that £350 million per week for the NHS has gone? Pay rises?

[quote ScribblingPixie]@LizzieSidal: Boris pledged most of our surplus vaccines to lower income countries at the G7 www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-56117120[/quote]
Yet is doing the exact opposite, if he actually meant it, he would tell the eU to keep any doses planned for the UK as we are "far ahead"

"There is no point in us vaccinating our individual populations - we've got to make sure the whole world is vaccinated because this is a global pandemic and it's no use one country being far ahead of another, we've got to move together."

The joke is that AZ is neatly all currently manufactured in the UK. So even if the EU get their ban, they will get very little benefit.

Apparently we are in a position to make their lives very very difficult with regards to Pfizer as they rely heavily on us for some vital components. I doubt we would do such a thing as it wouldn't just impact the EU but we are technically in a position to retaliate if they keep chucking their toys out of the pram.

I'm so glad we are out, not just because it has saved our hides with the vaccine rollout but also because this ongoing tantrum on their part is just downright embarrassing.

I am now happy we aren't part of the EU purely down to the vaccines

I am a EU citizen living in the UK. I cried when Brexit won, I cried when Brexit happened, I cried when the transition was over.
Well, I am not crying much about it these days.
I still think it was a bad idea to leave and that it won't work in our favour long term, but yes, I think the EU are behaving appallingly right now.
YANBU.

The EU have just made themselves look foolish - and of course Britain will not be rejoining.

Even if that was possible, there is a serious effort to ensure that it does not happen. Why? Because our rules for both sides will be vitally different in even a years time. Give it a decade and we will just be like Turkey, trading but otherwise sub hostile relationship. It may not be an effort that the EU make, but it is definitely what Britain is doing and will be for the next decade.

Pfizer supplies won't be impacted. It's all about AZ. They screwed over eu, only supplying 1/3 of the contracted doses and refused to supply from the UK due to the contract. The big fuss now is the Netherlands plant. UK want these supplies too, which would not be unreasonable if AZ were honouring the EU contract, but they are not. Forget about best efforts, they are not even making reasonable efforts, when they signed the UK contract the next day, effectively taking the two UK plants off the table which are listed in the contract. And now wanting to ship even more vaccines out of Europe. I don't think it's unreasonable for he EU to keep vaccines, which they have contacted and paid for, in Europe.
And as for AZ sitting in fridges unused, this is not an EU wide issue. Many countries are administering the vaccines as soon as they get them.

@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.

The EU took too long to lace the orders and approve them etc so the book lies with them for not ordering early enough.

You can’t drag your heels ‘umm if and arring’ then when you finally found decide (months later) demand that stocks are now redirected equally to you.

The UK had its fingers in a few pies and it paid off. Reminds me of a petulant child saying I don’t want an ice cream whilst all their friends get one, then decide they do half an hour later and then kicking off because they have to wait longer!

Also putting a halt to AZ and being fussy about using it before halting it. People would have been crying out to have the chance of the vaccine. Even I could see that 40 cases if blood clots in about 17 million is likely not to be connected to the vaccine 🤔 low and behold it’s not....

When I see how they’re carrying on and threatening to stop vaccines leaving Europe, I’m glad we’re out of it! They aren’t coming across as graceful or a team player. They’re certainly not doing themselves any favours on the world stage.

It works both ways and Britain will be making arrangements with other countries so it will be interesting to see how the EU copes when one of its largest contributors stops contributing!

by July this will all be a memory

That's very unlikely.

I voted Remain, but voted YANBU here.

@ChameleonClara

I don't see the two as linked really, the EU have really made a mess of the vaccines but I am not sure that negates the economic fallout of Brexit.

Also, if the UK was in the EU, the vaccine procurement may have gone rather differently as our Oxford vaccine would have been inside the bloc.

We are where we are - the UK has a good vaccines policy and Brexit has fucked up our economy.

I agree with some of what you say but as op said, the fact it’s a once in a 100 years pandemic, the death rate here was already sky high, so god only knows how many tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands more people would have died, had we not rolled out the vaccine as fast as we did.

So whilst Brexit may have hit us financially for a while, that’s nothing compared to lives lost without a vaccine.

@LoadsOfTrouble of course if uk was in the eu it would of been different as we wouldn't of been able to secure our own vaccines

I can't see how people think if in the eu we could of opted out of the vaccine procurement as no other eu country did

@ListeningQuietly which goes to show the eu look silly banning exports as they are not eu companies and don't get all the ingredients from the eu

@CuthbertDibbleandGrubb

Even if we had remained in the EU the UK government of whatever shade of Conservative it was would have opted out of the EU procurement scheme and would have gone it alone on vaccine purchase and manufacture.

The difference if we had voted to Remain is that there would have been a different Conservative Prime Minister and the pandemic response would have been far better and quicker.

Do you really think that Cameron would have opted out of the joint procurement scheme? I rather doubt it. He'd have fallen for it.

As for the pandemic response, it was Cameron who contracted out the maintenance emergency stockpile of PPE and other pandemic supplies to an incompetent private firm who moved it all to one warehouse in Merseyside rather than the several depots spread across the UK we used to have and who mismanaged the supplies such that they were mostly written off by the time we came to use them.

@PigletJohn the eu have not sent vaccines the private companies with who the contracts are with have sent vaccines in the agreed contract time
The eu does not own these companies or vaccines and some of the components for some even come from the uk
Thats the bit I don't get these vaccines are not owned by the eu

@donewithitalltodayandxmas
Hungary did.

Passionate Remainer here.

I’m now glad we are out of the EU. So sad to be saying it but I’m glad we left.

@LemonRoses no private companies have exported doses , johnson also
Doesn't own or make vaccines
The eu do not own pfizer or az or the vaccines they produce
Contracts decide on who gets what and when that is what the eu fail to understand
Maybe if they issue a ban some of these companies may think in future if its worth moving their factories out of the eu , especially when owned or partially owned by non eu countries, its a risky thing to do

@LemonRoses

People believe the pro Tory press propaganda. It’s sad. The EU has exported more vaccines than any single country. The individual countries decided to suspend use whilst considering safety nothing much to do with EU.

The country made a bad decision re Brexit and are now desperately trying to hide the impact.

Countries/blocks do not export vaccines. Private companies export vaccines. Where the factory and supply chain happen to be are irrelevant, the EU had nothing to do with the ramping up of supplies to non-EU states, that was done between the pharmaceutical firms and their customers.

It's like saying that the EU exports more LEGO bricks than any single country. It doesn't, LEGO group make LEGO bricks, the fact that the headquarters and main factory is in Denmark doesn't mean that the EU is responsible for LEGO brick production.

@jasjas1973 the eu are not under developed nations that can't afford their own
Plus they could also speed up by leaving the large gap the uk is , everyone forgets that is why we seem further ahead

@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.

👏👏👏

@GeorgiaMelissa I don't think they opted out they just went elsewhere for alternative vaccines , they couldn't order extra or go their own way on the vaccines the eu have got

DdraigGoch You are absolutely right, of course, which it’s why getting into a battle about blocking vaccines is ridiculous. The EU nations were daft enough to trust trading partners to behave reasonably. Sadly, very sadly, to gain kudos Johnson has used an ‘We’re alright Jack’ attitude to make sure large numbers see ‘his’ programme as a huge success and hide the underlying catastrophic management of the whole pandemic.

The U.K. has a policy of preventing export of drugs. The U.K. has yet to share anything with any other country. The EU nations are a bit upset, understandably that the US and UK have self serving rather than collaborative policies and are reacting to the nationalistic approach taken thus far.

It’s sad because greater cooperation would protect us all far better and open up the world far quicker.