Should the EU send more vaccines to the UK ?

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The EU should have got their act together quicker. What is that old saying?.........Oh yeah I know........you snooze you lose.

Still trying to get my head round this theory that the EU is exporting vaccines and allowing other countries to vaccinate.. The irony is that the UK avoided getting into bed with the USA because of fears of protectionism and yet here we are being denied our bought and paid for vaccines from our ''friends'' across the channel.
 
Its all the UKs fault apparently.
Why should the pandemic be the UK's fault? Although the AZ vaccine does work as well as the RNA technology, it still has lots of qualities, is easier to store and cheaper.

This is a huge achievement.

We either stole the recipe we used to make our dish from the EU, or swooped in like vultures to pig out on a fat meal painstakingly prepared by the EU, or treacherously paid to plant,water, and grow the vegetables in the neighbours garden, and then had the nerve to receive some of the vegetables in return, and whilst trying to feed our own household, from our own garden, with a bit of extra from theirs, then being asked to leave ourselves hungry and donate meals back to the neighbour, so they can tell their own household they don’t taste that nice, so don’t eat them, and just put them in the freezer just in case we might want to eat them later.
what a tirade, just cool down

I'm just pointing out that while the current UK government despise the UE, it is pretty happy to get its vaccines made in Europe.


And the "Global Britain" thing suddenly stops working when you are supposed to share vaccines with the rest of the world in times of dire need.
 
Still trying to get my head round this theory that the EU is exporting vaccines and allowing other countries to vaccinate..
You can ask where Canada got its vaccines.

Hint: not from the UK

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If the EU didnt export any vaccines at all, how would their vaccine roll out be looking?
77 millions jabs = quite a bit

77/428 = 18% more EU population protected (single dose, though) and

Keeping the EU-made doses sent to the UK, would about divide the % vaccinated by 3 in the UK and give like a +8% in Europe (rule of thumb, you're welcome to check).

From a UK perspective, its hard to think if the UK didnt have any vaccines from the EU that the EU would be in any better of a position. If you give all of the UK vaccines to the EU, that 30 million disappears pretty quickly among the EU whilst having the tiniest of impacts.
tiny, still I think it's more than enough for all adults in Belgium..

...three times over

How exactly are the vaccines being counted? Ie if america is sending over raw ingredients to the EU, they make it and then send it back, is that US made or EU made? Or does it count where its bottled or something?
this is a real question mark. e.g somes stats say Germany produce zero vaccines. The truth is they did not keep the end process: bottling. Germany specializes in the biggest value-adding steps: the active substance.

Likewise with it being an oxford led research team that developed the 'british' vaccine, which i think is being made in parts of the EU and used and administered in parts of the EU without the UK government being dicks about it, can we call any oxford/az vaccine UK made?
"Uk-designed" I'd say, but in reality, the firm is British-Swedish, merger of the Swedish Astra AB and the British Zeneca. And Pascal Soriot the CEO is French (but not a billionaire like Stéphane Bancel who is CEO and a 9% owner of Moderna).

The Oxford scientists also insist the clinical trials where conducted all over the world Italy, USA, Brazil, South Africa, Japan, India...

Does pricing come in to this at all? If the EU are paying cheap cheap prices and the UK are paying more does it make a difference?
True it seems for the Pfizer, the UK payed three times the EU price. But it's more than just the price, for example Israel's data-for-vaccines deal with Pfizer causes some ethical worries
 
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I do not know this issue, perhaps you can point us to some references, I found this one:


now, my general feeling on this is like the Valvena startup, the Brits arrive in the end at the last stage of a process which turns out to be successful after years of work and investment.

They come with venture capital and big money and think they are entitled to own the plant, the production, whatever...


It doesn't work like that, sometimes sovereignty trumps capitalism

But it's not really a UE-UK issue, in the present situation, try doing this in other sovereign countries: China, India, the USA or Russia ... it won't work either.
You do know about this issue as we discussed it days ago. The fact is you choose to ignore it as it doesn’t suit you agenda.
 
You do know about this issue as we discussed it days ago. The fact is you choose to ignore it as it doesn’t suit you agenda.
I know the general issue as recapitulated in the article
Pfizer and BioNTech, however, are in the EU's good books, having recently agreed to deliver 10 million more doses in Q2 than previously agreed.

The same cannot be said for AstraZeneca, which is on track to deliver to the EU only 100 million doses by the middle of the year—a third of what it contractually agreed to provide. In the first quarter, AstraZeneca was supposed to deliver 100 million doses, but had only coughed up 18 million by Wednesday this week.

Now I do not know the details of the Halix plant history : if you get your hand on non-partisan detailled info I'm more than happy to read and comment with you.


Now this article dates a while back.

Recently, things seem to have calmed down (considering the excecrable UK-EU relations I mean) and the UK is not "demanding" like two weeks ago.

The last I read from Boris Johnson was a surprising "reciprocally beneficial relationship"...

pretty different language from the historical "little turds" you might have heard about.
 
The last I read from Boris Johnson was a surprising "reciprocally beneficial relationship"...
Which was a joint statement made with the EU I believe, intended to draw a line under all the nonsense. Yet every single Euro MP or Local EU Country official can't help going on and on and on about it every time someone puts a microphone near them.

You seem to think supply vaccine should be a charitable endeavour, the reality is pharmaceutical is not a charity, but funnily enough Oxford-AstraZeneca has been done on a not-for-profit basis, yet the EU uncharitably bullied them down on price anyway.
 
You seem to think supply vaccine should be a charitable endeavour, the reality is pharmaceutical is not a charity, but funnily enough Oxford-AstraZeneca has been done on a not-for-profit basis, yet the EU uncharitably bullied them down on price anyway.
I would not say "charitable" as it is a bit pejorative in French, but indeed I think vaccines should be shared.

As you have seen above the EU is the lead donor in the COVAX initiative. Millions of vaccines made in Europe are sent abroad right now


The UK has nice intentions indeed but sends zero doses of its own production.

Talk is cheap as you say.



.. and you probably also know the UK's national-populist government has been slashing foreign aid and has programmed further deep cuts
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Please try and stay on topic, thanks.
 
Please try and stay on topic, thanks.
The topic is called "Should the EU send more vaccines to the UK ?" and the fact that there are countries needing the vaccines more than the UK is precisely on topic, as this is the central argument in making this decision.


I think the fact that the UK is slashing its foreign aid and sharing zero of its own vaccines production is also part of the debate to determine whether the EU should or not send more vaccines to the UK or prioritize other countries.
 
The topic is called "Should the EU send more vaccines to the UK ?" and the fact that there are countries needing the vaccines more than the UK is precisely on topic, as this is the central argument in making this decision.
Of course.
 
The topic is called "Should the EU send more vaccines to the UK ?" and the fact that there are countries needing the vaccines more than the UK is precisely on topic, as this is the central argument in making this decision.


I think the fact that the UK is slashing its foreign aid and sharing zero of its own vaccines production is also part of the debate to determine whether the EU should or not send more vaccines to the UK or prioritize other countries.

Since 1970, the UN has set a target for donor countries to contribute 0.7% of their GDP on foreign aid. The UK government has been signed up to the target since 1974, but it only reached it for the first time in 2013. In 2015, the necessity to hit 0.7% of GDP was enshrined in UK law.

Figures from 2017 show that Britain was the only member of the G7 to meet the 0.7% target, according to statistics published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

How is the UK’s foreign aid budget spent? | The Week UK

UK post Brexit/Covid GDP is down by over 10% and so foreign aid in real terms is down on previous years.

UK aid exceeded that of the major EU and world economies so while down, it is down from a higher starting level and would have to drop more than it has to match the low levels seen in most of the major EU and world economies.

Percentage of GNI given as aid (wikipedia figures)
UK 0.70%
Germany 0.60%
France 0.44%
Japan 0.29%
Italy 0.24%
Spain 0.21%
USA 0.16%

On the vaccine side the considerable overprovision the UK has made in procurring vaccine supplies will eventually lead to the excess being (re)exported.
 
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As you have seen above the EU is the lead donor in the COVAX initiative. Millions of vaccines made in Europe are sent abroad right now

And this is a problem with perception. The EU is not a Country. You can't compare the EU as a whole with individual Countries and declare EU the winner.
 
On the vaccine side the considerable overprovision the UK has made in procurring vaccine supplies will eventually lead to the excess being (re)exported.
(Don't tell anyone, but we've sent 700,000 to Australia)
 
(Don't tell anyone, but we've sent 700,000 to Australia)
Pedantically the UK hasn't, AZ has.
The eventually (re)export of the overprovisioned UK government vaccine stockpile will be by the government i.e. Uk taxpayer as they are the ones who paid for it upfront.

And this is a problem with perception. The EU is not a Country. You can't compare the EU as a whole with individual Countries and declare EU the winner.
So far, the UK has committed £548m to the global Covax initiative, making the UK the largest single donor. The Covax initiative is the key way that more than 180 countries will have fair, early access to COVID-19 vaccines. The UK has also encouraged other countries to contribute over $1bn to Covax. Through the Covax facility, Pakistan will take delivery of 17m doses of the UK-developed Oxford University-Astra-Zeneca vaccine shortly, with the first 7m expected before April. The next 10m doses will come later, likely before June. This will help protect 8.5m people from the virus, which has already claimed over 12,000 lives in Pakistan.
UK’s support to global vaccine facility Covax will help Pakistan’s COVID-19 vaccination programme

While U.S. investment in COVAX will go some way towards helping poorer countries, administraton officials said the move will benefit Americans as it will reduce the risk of dangerous Covid-19 mutations developing that could prolong the pandemic. Before U.S. involvement, the UK was the biggest COVAX donor with over $730 million pledged as of December 2020, according to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. It has now slipped down to third position with Germany moving into second with around $1 billion of funding pledged.
Infographic: The Governments Donating The Most Money To COVAX
 
Figures from 2017 show that Britain was the only member of the G7 to meet the 0.7% target, according to statistics published by the Organisation .
This is a fine point, though one could argue with the calculations of what you include or not in "foreign aid".

Now the real issue I think is your are referring to the UK of yesterday, which indeed was open to immigration and a major contributor to foreign aid. For me I'm looking at the UK today which is a quite different country, with a very different policy.
 
This is a fine point, though one could argue with the calculations of what you include or not in "foreign aid".

Now the real issue I think is your are referring to the UK of yesterday, which indeed was open to immigration and a major contributor to foreign aid. For me I'm looking at the UK today which is a quite different country, with a very different policy.
As it was the OECD which stated that, it would seem to be what the OECD includes...

immigration has absolutely nothing to do with foreign aid so I don't follow why you see the need to raise it. Unless you can provide recent figures which show UK aid as a % of GDP has fallen below that of Germany, France, Italy and Spain your other point is also without foundation.
 
This is a fine point, though one could argue with the calculations of what you include or not in "foreign aid".

Now the real issue I think is your are referring to the UK of yesterday, which indeed was open to immigration and a major contributor to foreign aid. For me I'm looking at the UK today which is a quite different country, with a very different policy.
ohreally.jpg



 
I think I might move this to the Politics Forum as it doesn't seem to be about vaccines any more... :lesson:
 
Before U.S. involvement, the UK was the biggest COVAX donor with over $730 million pledged as of December 2020, according to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. It has now slipped down to third position with Germany moving into second with around $1 billion of funding pledged.
Infographic: The Governments Donating The Most Money To COVAX
This is a chart which does not include the EU

I you go this way, you could also split US aid by states or differentiate UK aid with England, Wales and Scotland.



Likewise, the manufacturing and delivery of vaccines is a EU-wide process (worldwide even to a large extent).
For example Germany appears on some Statista charts with a zero production, while they are producing the active substance of the vaccine, but not bottling it in the end



another thing I think we should take into account is that these are promises.
The UK is making promises, but how much of the UK's vaccines production was really sent? Zero?

.. right now "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush".

Same thing for vaccines, it's nice to commit for the future, but these last months, we saw the reality. India used to export/share its production (not anymore), only the EU has shared and is still sharing, even while most of the 27 are in lockdown and we total 2200 deaths/day

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Quite frankly - who cares how much each country (not super-national legislative assembly) has sent to another country. I don't.

the UK is not here to save the world, we have done that at least 3 times in the last 200 years, and look how grateful they have been.

Keep arguing, but it is like 2 bald men arguing over a comb.
 
The topic is called "Should the EU send more vaccines to the UK ?" and the fact that there are countries needing the vaccines more than the UK is precisely on topic, as this is the central argument in making this decision.


I think the fact that the UK is slashing its foreign aid and sharing zero of its own vaccines production is also part of the debate to determine whether the EU should or not send more vaccines to the UK or prioritize other countries.
Maybe we could rename it “why are the EU seizing vaccines from a private company from a plant they refused to fund and was instead funded by the UK taxpayer”?
 
Yes that's the (sad) Valvena story

The UK didn't create and fund this Franco-Austrian startup. As the article says, the UK "snatched" the end result and funded the last research phase. As I said, the Brits have a big checkbook, and once the see a profitable startup... the USA tried to do the same with CureVac.


Another thing of note is that, the end-product Valvena bottling plant is located in Scotland.

Given "Global Britain" exports zero vaccines, it is unlikely a single jab from this plant would go to the EU before the UK has been fully served anyway.


The only chance to modify the situation would be for Scotland to rejoin the European Union, and it will absolutely not happen before Valvena production starts.
It wasn't long back that the UK had the highest death rate in the world, i see no problem here with putting ourselves first. Also the point scoring on the vaccines is weird, if the EU values political points over the lives of their own citizens than fair enough.
 
The EU should remove the block on vaccine exports, they do not belong to the EU anymore than a car maunufactured there. When the next pandemic hits as it surely will I think we can say with confidence that the UK will be self reliant on manufacture and there will be no headlong rush for big Pharma to produce in the EU. Once bitten twice shy as they say. Maybe the UK will become the preferred site for vaccine manufacture across Europe.
 
This thread seems more about Brit bashing because we left the EU more than it is about supplying vaccines .
 
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