EU threaten to cut off vaccine supply to the UK 2

[Baileysforchristmas]

As the other thread is full

www.politico.eu/article/commission-proposes-six-week-vaccine-export-ban-amid-fears-of-trade-war/

@FourTeaFallOut

It doesn't sound like the hands around the world meeting is going very well today.

Oh what’s happening?

I find the idea of these meetings fascinating

I bet there’s a few blunt truths etc

@LimitIsUp

I am trying to understand - you seem to be saying that some posters see it as a badge of honour to be slower on their vaccination programme??, but I think you mean that they see it as a badge of honour to be ahead? I've read your post several times now and I am still none the wiser

I don't give a rats arse how slowly / quickly Canada are vaccinating, but I do judge unsubstantiated inferences about the safety of AZ and falling for the guff from some politicians in the EU

I also take exception to you saying that the UK is 'ploughing on no matter what' as if our vaccination programme is reckless. I am surprised that other posters appear to be giving you a pass on that

I agree ploughing on regardless isn’t right or apt

If everyone has issues with AZ it's great because more for the UK. If they can ship it here asap we can 'recklessly' continue to shove it into arms. Over 30m, mainly AZ done so far. Haven't noticed many problems here at all. Weird that. No money to be made for AZ ?

Just reading the politico article linked above. Austria is threatening a veto on 10m additional Pfizer vaccines because it feels cheated out of their full share of their alloted doses, whereas the rest are suggesting that Austria gave up it's full share and basically if you snooze you lose and they can not claim that share retrospectively. Interestingly, more emphasis is being placed on it not being fair that Austria should play this game because they don't have a burdonsome covid case load, rather than because they are breaching a pre-agreed contract. Surely there was a pre-agreed contract? Or does it just make for better media soundbites to allude to fairness?

This seems in stark contrast to the aim of the meeting which was heralded as a pandemic treaty.

I didn't say Canada was in the EU

@QwertyGirly

It feels to me anyway that the UK is plowing ahead no matter what, and if I were in Finland or Canada or Iceland I'd feel reassure that the authorities would pause the rollout to check on vaccine safety.

The rollout in Canada has been patchy for different reasons - firstly, they had to include in their plan that Trump may win the elections and would take a protectionist approach to the manufacturing of the vaccines and wouldn't export to Canada. So their purchasing contracts had to not rely on their closest neighbour. After Biden was elected there was a sigh of relief, but Biden also took a protectionist approach which left Canada in a bit of a ditch.

Canada started extremely well, they purchased (like the UK) early on a massive amount of vaccine doses. However, they relied mostly on Novavax, which will be produced in Canada, but the approval process has been slower in Canada than in other countries. So their vaccine program was slow off the block but will catch up at some point.

Yes the morale is low in countries such as Canada, but they will catch up hopefully very soon.

The country has committed months ago to passing on any over-ordered vaccines to developing countries, as in real numbers Canada has ordered enough doses to vaccine each citizen 4 times.

OK!

So the UK was instrumental in developing AZ vaccine.

We have great genomic capabilities.

We have the MHRA

All that live data, coming in every day, from here, Israel and many other places and the UK startegy includes using it all as soon as possible, not losing time in inessential delays. We have hd delays, we have worked round and throgh delays but,a s far as I can tell, we haven't replicated research that was done well just to say "We looked, it's fine"

Canada did indeed take a different view, inclduing being one of the wealthy countries that signed up to be a Covax recipient!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-55932997

@FourTeaFallOut

This seems in stark contrast to the aim of the meeting which was heralded as a pandemic treaty.

Oh I didn’t realise it was the same meeting!

Yes that did go a bit sour

If the EU donkey like the AZ vaccine, fine. We'll have it.
We'll have the novavax now as well.
Good thinking on that Boris.

@UserEleventyNine

AstraZeneca vaccine - was it really worth it? "It's appalling the way AstraZeneca has been treated. I wouldn't blame them if they were thoroughly fed up and decided to bow out of the covid vaccine business." That was the view from one of the biggest institutional investors in the UK.... BBC Report

Meanwhile, BBC Live reporting at 9.38 this morning:
GSK-Novavax deal 'not profit-generating'
The boss of British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division tells the BBC the company’s not intending to make a profit from its tie-up with the vaccine developer Novavax.

Roger Connor, president of GSK Global Vaccines, tells Radio 5 Live’s Wake Up to Money programme: "Our deal with Novavax… this is not a commercial venture for GSK.

“We are doing this because it is the right thing to do, but this is not going to generate any significant commercial return for us. This is not a profit-generating mechanism."

He adds: “Any profit that we generate from our adjuvant partnerships or other partnerships where we’re developing vaccines, we’re going to redeploy that into pandemic preparedness investments.” link

Oh dear, non profit again. Will the EU start saying Novovax is shit now too?

The EU Countries bickering between themselves is going to turn into a disaster, i’m glad we have not been dragged into it and have kept our council, for a change we have handled this pretty well.

Will someone start a new thread, as we approach 1000 again? There's some interesting discussion that's worth continuing, I think.

Ursula von der Leyen refused to add her name to world leaders' pandemic plea. European Commission president's absence from list of signatories raises fears she plans to pursue a hardline stance on Covid vaccine exports

Shall we end on this bombshell !

Ursula von der Leyen refused to add her name to world leaders' pandemic plea. European Commission president's absence from list of signatories raises fears she plans to pursue a hardline stance on Covid vaccine exports

There one to disappoint with anything remotely diplomatic - she is staying true to form, she is too busy recruiting an armed vaccine military response ready to raid any factory or production site between here and Russia! Doing dirty deals with the best of them with Italy to do her dirty work for her - she is not going to sully herself with charters and peaceful resolution with world leaders.

*never one to disappoint

Oh, and can someone, anyone, explain why everyone is seemingly so happy to now go ahead and order Sputnik vaccines, whose trials are not approved or peer reviewed (although it is stunningly close to the Oxford vaccine.....someone might think they had stolen the recipe, but that's a conspiracy theory), and at the same time restrict AZ (again odd seemingly as they are the same vaccines). German hospitals and Canada being the next to restrict access to over 55's.

"...seen as others as scientific rigour. Finland and Iceland don't strike me as countries in hysterics."

The misapplication of the precautionary principle, and refusing to weigh the very quantifiable deaths that occur due to delay of the roll out, is not being rigorous. They know that they are on the hook if side effects are discovered, but they are very much less on the hook for the greater number (and equally directly attributable) deaths due to slower vaccine push.

This is because one is easy for the public to allocate blame for, the other requires a level of subtler thinking.

Literally 15 million doses have been given out in the UK, over months, and any serious side effects (if present) are so rare that they're practically impossible to measure, statistically. This vaccine is safe to within whatever reasonable threshold of safe you want to apply.

This kind of precautionary principle gone mad prizes blame avoidance over saving the most lives, and to seeks to minimise the threat to the regulating body. That's their highest principle, here.

Medicine is, in almost all situations, served well by the precautionary principle. But in a fast-moving pandemic, where doing nothing kills people, refusing to risk the vaccine "as a precaution", in the face of good but imperfect evidence, is a harmful act.

New thread
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/4206408-EU-threaten-to-cut-off-vaccine-supply-to-the-UK-3?watched=1