Fuji_Abound wrote:
Yes, but I am less certain why some countries would wish to discredit AZ (other than of course hurt feelings, oh dear, so sorry).
I would say it’s an EU (or EC) desire rather than one of individual countries. The individual national regulators are just the tool – the EMA cannot do it because it has a global reputation to uphold.
As for why? To deflect blame. At present rates (6.5 jabs per 100 head of population per month) it will be autumn 2022 before 75% of EU citizens have two jabs.
their alledgedly not for profit vaccine
I am sure they are allocating the maximum fixed costs to it; they would be fools not to do so, given how much capital expenditure is being sunk into it, and there is a possibility that china doesn’t come up with the next “present” for a while… even if mutations result in a need for continuous vaccine production on a vast scale, which looks fairly likely.
that they have managed the complete opposite
If there was an EU referendum in the UK today, it would be not 52% like last time but probably 90%. And it would likely be over 50% on much of the mainland, too (much of which was in the ~40% region anyway, looking at old polls) so this is a huge own goal.
Astrazeneca also had a zero-risk entry into the vaccine business, courtesy of the ’we’ll pay you anyway’ UK government.
In ordinary times, that would be seen as an egregious state subsidy of a national champion.
I’m not complaining, I have shares in AZ :-)
Whilst I would agree that any referendum for the UK to rejoin the EU might well produce a 90% of even more vote against especially as the terms of rejoining are likely to be unacceptable to nearly everyone in the UK, I cannot see where you are getting your evidence that the majority of people in Europe would be vote out if given a referendum. There is a lot of evidence to the contrary despite what Brexiteers would have you believe.
DavidS wrote:
Astrazeneca also had a zero-risk entry into the vaccine business, courtesy of the ’we’ll pay you anyway’ UK government.
In ordinary times, that would be seen as an egregious state subsidy of a national champion.
I’m not complaining, I have shares in AZ :-)
Likewise :-)
But that is a perfectly normal business arrangement for a large, one-off need, albeit that the amount they will be ‘paid anyway’ is just a covering of costs so hardly represents much in the way of business.
Same as BAE Systems do not start building nuclear submarines until the UK Govt places a firm order, and those are produced at a considerable profit :-)
Graham wrote:
At present rates (6.5 jabs per 100 head of population per month) it will be autumn 2022 before 75% of EU citizens have two jabs.
Disregarding the fact that until then most of those who have been vaccined now will need a new shot by then in all possibility….
I guess we have to resign ourselfs to the fact that Covid will never really be over. Vaccines nonwithstanding, masks, social distancing and travel restrictions to worst affected areas will most probably stay for the forseeable future. We also might see some profound changes in voter behaviour and quite possibly some massive changes in the political landscape. Dissatisfaction has never been that high.
The politics is getting nasty again. Just listened to a brief speech by UVDL saying that the vaccine business must be a two way street and the UK is to be punished with an export embargo on unspecified goods to the UK because it is ahead in vaccination. It was thinly veiled and I am not sure anyone could read it very differently. But she has “previous form” for this kind of “shoot from the hip” stuff, and is probably concerned about what her CV will look like when this is all done.
Von der Leyen said the bloc had exported 10m doses to the UK in the past six weeks, making it “country number one as far as exports from the EU is concerned”.
But while the UK was producing AstraZeneca vaccines, and “there are even two sites in the UK that are our contract for potential deliveries for the EU … we’re still waiting for doses to come from the UK. So this is an invitation for reciprocity.”
The majority of vaccines exported from the EU to the UK have been made by Pfizer, which distributes globally from its European production sites. The EU has blocked only one export request, a shipment of 250,000 Oxford/AstraZeneca doses from Italy to Australia
She is fundamentally wrong.
The EU has not exported doses to the UK. An American multinational, Pfizer (which has production facilities in the EU) has. Fortunately the Americans are unlikely to tolerate any attempt to interfere with Pfizer’s exports, and UVDL has no lever here.
The UK production sites are not “in the EU contract” in the way she implies. The contract gives AZ the option to use those sites, but does not mandate them to. We’ve all read it and this part is old news.
I am surprised she remains in her job. But the outburst is not surprising – as @Peter says her favoured tactic seems to be to shoot from the hip – things are getting pretty desperate and since the weekend the EU vaccination rate I referred to earlier has dropped further from 6.5 jabs/100 heads/month to 4. My bet would be ‘solution’ she is pursuing is that of all EU Pfizer productions being diverted to them. It cannot be that they actually want the UK to ship them some AZ, because it’s not being used at present and EU citizens will never accept it now anyway.
Graham wrote:
At present rates (6.5 jabs per 100 head of population per month) it will be autumn 2022 before 75% of EU citizens have two jabs.
Not targeted at you, but it is kind of funny:
- during large periods of time, the spread of Covid has not been exponential but everybody was talking about R-values as if it were
- The “spread of Covid vaccine” actually has been surprisingly well exponential since the last week of December across Europe (with a two week average R-value of 1.5) but everyone treats it like being “linear beginning yesterday”.
But in general you are right: If we think that the vaccination practice in all European countries has already been perfect last week and we will not realistically be able to further improve, it will take more than a year…
The EU has blocked only one export request, a shipment of 250,000 Oxford/AstraZeneca doses from Italy to Australia
I am not sure that is correct; this was reported as a local Italian action, and the EU later supported it because they have to show solidarity with Italy. The 250k is a trivial quantity.
My bet would be ‘solution’ she is pursuing is that of all EU Pfizer productions being diverted to them
Most likely, especially since more than 50% of UK vaccinations have apparently been done with Pfizer. That figure was not supposed to become public (because Pfizer will/has come under a load of pressure over it) but it became evident when the UK published the total number done and the total number done with AZ and, ahem, you subtract one from the other 
