[Atlantis]

Your first statement is a fact, no doubt about that. However, i am not sure that the contract breach is "that obvious". AstraZeneca has probably be too quick in signing contracts, but then the decision on who to prioritize has probably been based on a minimization of the legal consequences.

If approval had gone according to plan, AZ would have had to supply hundreds of millions of doses since December to the UK, the US and the EU. The production shortfall would have been massive.

Everybody was wondering why AZ didn't apply for EU approval after it got UK approval in December. Now we know that they didn't have vaccines to deliver. In fact, the "best effort" clause also relates to approval. As long as it didn't get approval in the EU, it didn't have to supply. But since they couldn't delay requesting approval indefinitely, they had to admit their production shortfall.

In the US, their test was halted and approval isn't expected before April.

It's not a matter of minimizing legal problems, it's a matter of who can apply more political pressure on AZ. That is clearly the UK.

[noemon]

If approval had gone according to plan, AZ would have had to supply hundreds of millions of doses since December to the UK, the US and the EU. The production shortfall would have been massive.

Everybody was wondering why AZ didn't apply for EU approval after it got UK approval in December. Now we know that they didn't have vaccines to deliver. In fact, the "best effort" clause also relates to approval. As long as it didn't get approval in the EU, it didn't have to supply. But since they couldn't delay requesting approval indefinitely, they had to admit their production shortfall.

In the US, their test was halted and approval isn't expected before April.

It's not a matter of minimizing legal problems, it's a matter of who can apply more political pressure on AZ. That is clearly the UK.

Yes exactly.

[Atlantis]

...But the EU is the topic.

@Atlantis, I like you but you are Anglophobic. I don't mind your posts. In fact I enjoy them. Nonetheless I don't see what the British have to do with this. And no, you mentioned it was a Swede-UK company once a few pages back. The last post was British companies in general. But if you hadn't had @ me I would have just ignored it like I usually do. So I get you're upset. But don't engage me when you are ranting. Because to me that is a sign we agree when clearly we don't.

I'm not ranting. I'm defending the EU against hostile propaganda from the UK.

Like most Germans of my generation, I'm Anglophile, but I have no illusions about what GB is capable of in the interest of its geopolitical ambitions.

Destroying or at least weakening the EU is the aim of a section of the UK establishment. That is not even a secrete.

The way the vaccine story has been exploited by the British propaganda machine reminds one of wartime propaganda.

The British media (especially The Telegraph, The Spectator and the boulevard press) are producing anti-EU propaganda at a frantic rate. Anti-EU campaigns in the social media are obviously orchestrated by intelligence firms of the type of Cambridge Analytica who are closely linked to national intelligence agencies and whose daily bread it is to manipulate public opinion. From the Snowden revelations we know that the 5-eyes routinely use chills and agents provocateurs to manipulate the social media.

As a private individual, I can hardly stand against this barrage of hostility, but you accuse me for stating the facts?

[B0ycey]

I'm not ranting. I'm defending the EU against hostile propaganda from the UK.

I don't mind facts. You make strong arguments. And I can see somethings you are saying. Just throwing away Brits this and Brits that is annoying to read. But I am not going to keep going on about this as perhaps I am missreading you. Also I don't like the idea of vaccination nationalism and if the UK has done anything it shouldn't have I will be the first to complain about that. I am not a fan of Johnson so it wouldn't be hard for me. But at the moment these are assertions.

Nonetheless what I agree with you on is the UK media. They do seem to be making an issue over something that never happened. So if that is something you want to mention I agree. But the media isn't the UK. And in my opinion the UK is still better in the EU and Brexiteer mentality is also driving a wedge into this issue. Which shouldn't be the case as it has nothing to do with Brexit and we should be on the same side. So by all means defend away.

[Rugoz]

As a private individual, I can hardly stand against this barrage of hostility, but you accuse me for stating the facts?

If you haven't noticed, the EU is being criticized heavily outside the UK as well. Here's Sinn's take:
https://www.project-syndicate.org/comme ... nn-2021-01

An excerpt:

Whatever the reason, the severe delay in the supply of vaccines in Europe is now a fact. While the US, the United Kingdom, Japan, and Canada jostled last July and August to secure huge batches of the BioNTech vaccine, the EU initially placed its orders only with Sanofi and AstraZeneca, both of which subsequently admitted difficulties in clinical trials. Not until November – when journalists started asking pointed questions – did the EU strike its first deal for a batch of the BioNTech vaccine. This was followed in December and early January by further purchases, including from Moderna.

Due to the delay in ordering, the deliveries are coming late. After all, producers are operating on a first-come, first-served basis and need time to build up new production sites. As a result, European news media are filled with forlorn images of empty vaccination centers that have run out of supply, alongside footage of overstretched intensive care units. A sense of imminent horror has seized a frightened European public. At this rate, the EU will have no chance of catching up with the US, the UK, Israel, and other leading vaccinators until this summer.

That is why the EU resorts to "vaccine nationalism" now.

[noemon]

Ursula von der Leyen: UK is Covid vaccine speedboat compared to EU ship
Oliver Wright, Policy Editor, and David Crossland in Berlin
Friday February 05 2021, 12.00pm, The Times

In an acknowledgement of Europe’s slow pace of vaccine rollout, Ursula von der Leyen said that operating on its own allowed the UK to move more nimbly to secure supplies.

But she said the delays in signing contracts was a price worth paying to ensure that all 27 EU member states received equal supplies of the vaccine at the same time.

Two weeks ago AstraZeneca shocked the EU by cutting its vaccine delivery by 60%. What went wrong, and why? And could the high drama that followed have a lasting political impact?

“Alone, a country can be a speedboat, while the EU is more like a ship,” von der Leyen told a group of European newspapers.

“Before concluding a contract . . . the 27 member states had five full days to say whether they agreed or not. This naturally delays the process.”

But she added: “I can’t even imagine what it would have meant for Europe, in terms of unity, if one or more member states had access to vaccines and not the others.”

Von der Leyen has come under sustained pressure in recent days for her handling of the vaccine programme amid rows with Astrazeneca over disruption to supplies.

Yesterday the German finance minister Olaf Scholz was reported to have described the EU’s strategy as “really shit” at a cabinet meeting.

Scholz is said to have named von der Leyen and said that he was in no mood “for the shit to be repeated now”, Bild reported.

He said problems were building in Brussels with the Commission’s attempts to duck responsibility for the shortage of supplies.

EU countries have so far given first doses to only about 3 per cent of their populations compared with more than 15 per cent in Britain and almost 10 per cent in the US. The EU in part bet on procuring vaccines that failed initial trials or are taking longer to produce.

In the interview von der Leyen acknowledged for the first time that the EU had made mistakes in its planning.

“Looking in the rearview mirror, we should have thought more about mass production and the challenges it poses,” she said.

“We should have warned, explaining that at the beginning the process would not be smooth, that there would be ups and downs.”

She also admitted that it had been a mistake to try and use the Northern Ireland protocol to stop supplies of the Pfizer vaccine escaping EU export controls.

“We shouldn’t even have thought about Article 16! I regret it,” she said.

“The Commission took around 1,500 decisions in a short period of time and almost 900 emergency decisions under very high pressure.”

Having initially blamed the trade commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis for the move, von der Leyen accepted she had to take the blame.

“Whatever the Commission does or decides, I have full responsibility,” she said.

[Atlantis]

1. The UK government selected AstraZeneca (AZ) to team with Oxford for political reasons.

2. AZ doesn't have much vaccine experience

3. AZ messes up the trials

4. AZ oversells massively

5. AZ has big production problems

6. AZ delayed request for EMA approval to hide production problems

7. AZ hides its production problems until it was too late to make other arrangement

AZ in cohorts with the British government has been lying through the teeth, but according to the EU-hating British media, the EU is to blame.

Nothing new under the sun.

Even the Anglophile German media is starting to see the light. According to Der Spiegel:

The EU Commission appears to have the law on its side in the dispute with vaccine manufacturer AstraZeneca, say lawyers after reading the contract. However, this does not guarantee fast deliveries.

The EU Commission wanted to provide clarity. On Friday, it published the contract with the British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, which intends to supply less Corona vaccine than promised. According to experts, it does not provide final clarity, partly because crucial passages are blacked out. Nevertheless, it does tend to support the commission's statements.

For example, AstraZeneca claims that it is not contractually obligated to deliver specific quantities at specific times. The main argument: according to the contract, the company merely has to make "best reasonable efforts" to deliver the agreed vaccine quantities on time. This is called "best reasonable efforts" in contractual English. The only problem is that there are production difficulties at a plant in Belgium, and in addition, the British government has ordered earlier. So, unfortunately, the EU will have to make do with less.
Most recently, it was announced that only 31 instead of 80 million vaccine doses would be delivered by the end of March.

The EU Commission does not want to accept this. "There are binding orders, and the contract is crystal clear," EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told Deutschlandfunk radio - and the contract seems to support her position on several points:

• The passage dealing with delivery quantities and dates is blacked out, to be sure. Nevertheless, it is clear that there are concrete supply agreements for 2020 and for individual quarters.

• Four plants are mentioned for the production of the vaccine, two of which are in the UK, the other two in the EU. It is explicitly stated that AstraZeneca should use all four to manufacture the vaccine.

• AstraZeneca must immediately inform the EU Commission of any problems that could lead to a risk to the delivery of the promised quantities of vaccine. According to the commission, that has not happened, despite being in constant contact with the company about the vaccine's approval on Friday.

• In another passage, AstraZeneca guarantees it has no obligations to other contractors that would be an obstacle to full performance of the contract with the EU. That seems to contradict the company's argument that it has to supply less because the British ordered first.

"AstraZeneca cannot therefore cite problems at a single plant in Belgium as a reason to break its commitments to the EU," said SPD MEP and former German Justice Minister Katarina Barley, for example. Other legal experts take a similar view. "In the contract, there is no compelling connection between the obligation to deliver and the place of production," notes Passau law professor and contract law expert Thomas Riehm. It is therefore "not the case that AstraZeneca can say we can't produce enough in the EU, so you get less."

His colleague from Marburg, Wolfgang Voit, also says: "In my opinion, production in the UK is put on an equal footing with production in the EU." In another paragraph, he says, there is explicit mention of the fact that the vaccine doses AstraZeneca was supposed to supply to the EU can also be produced in the UK to meet the commitment.

However, the fact that AstraZeneca only has to make "best efforts" to fulfill the contract could play into AstraZeneca's hands - and what is meant by this is at best vaguely formulated. The EU's contract with the German company Curevac, for example, which has also already been published, gives a number of examples. The contract with AstraZeneca, however, merely states that a "best efforts" effort means "those activities and efforts that a company of similar size, infrastructure and resources would undertake to develop and manufacture a vaccine in view of the urgent need in the event of a pandemic."

That, criticizes SPD politician Barley, is "vaguely defined." But whether that's enough for AstraZeneca to supply the EU with less is something lawyer Voit doubts. He sees "no starting point for a cutback at the EU, only to be able to fully service earlier orders, according to the examination to date." The contract commits AstraZeneca "to very great efforts to produce the vaccine."

The question is what use the EU's legal endorsement currently is. The Commission, too, admits that it is not interested in a legal dispute that could last for years, at the end of which it might receive damages. They want the vaccine doses, and they want them now. An amicable solution must therefore be found quickly with AstraZeneca, demands SPD MEP Tiemo Wölken. "The priority must be to produce the vaccine more quickly."

But how it will continue in the dispute between the EU Commission and AstraZeneca is open. Only on Friday, the EU made a mistake when it published the previously secret contract with AstraZeneca: the passages that had been blacked out at the company's request were partially readable. "Very unfortunate and worrying" that was, AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot said in a video press conference Friday evening.

Still, he tried to muddy the waters. The problems at the Belgian plant should be resolved soon, the Frenchman said. Already in the next few days, the first three million cans will be delivered to the EU, he said, and productivity will soon increase. The company is completely focused on higher production for the EU, he said.

Der Spiegel

It's clear that AstraZeneca breached its contract and waited to inform the EU until it was too late so that the EU's vaccination strategy has been derailed.

I hope AZ never gets another contract in Europe.

@Rugoz, very original of you to cite Sinn, who has been the original EU hater in Germany ever since the Greek debt crisis.

The US and the UK pursue blatant vaccine nationalism, while the EU continues to supply vaccines to the world.

You live in a deranged world. You are obviously immune to reason and facts.

[Atlantis]

AstraZeneca claimed that the Belgium plant for manufacturing the vaccine is to blame for the production shortfall. However, following an inspection of the plant by the EU Commission, the plant owner claims to have fulfilled all its contractual obligations towards AstraZenca.

Somebody is lying. Considering AstraZeneca's past communications, it's not hard to guess who.

The plant owner is the US company Thermo Fisher.

The Belgian plant at the center of the EU’s fight with AstraZeneca over coronavirus vaccine shortages said Wednesday it produced all the doses it was obliged to under its contract with the drugmaker.

AstraZeneca pointed to filtration problems at the factory in Seneffe as part of its justification for a nearly 75 million dose cut to the EU’s vaccine deliveries for the first quarter of 2020. Belgian authorities inspected the plant in January at the request of the European Commission.

“We have complied with all the contractual requirements we have with AstraZeneca,” Cedric Volanti, EU vice president for Thermo Fisher, which owns the plant, told a press conference Wednesday attended by Reuters.

Politico

[Rugoz]

The plant owner is the US company Thermo Fisher.

OMG, more perfidious Anglos, god help us!

[Atlantis]

While the US and the UK keep on banning exports of all vaccines from their territory, the EU continues to allow exports of vaccines to the UK, the US and the rest of the world.

It's amazing how the British media turned this into an anti-EU rant. Nor did it have anything to do with the Good Friday Agreement since the controls are covered by the NI-Protocol and since no border infrastructure is required on the Island.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Commission has so far approved all requests for the export of COVID-19 vaccines, including to Britain, the United States, China and Japan, since it set up on Jan. 30 a mechanism to monitor vaccine flows, a spokeswoman said on Thursday.

EU approves all requests for COVID-19 vaccine export to UK, U.S., Japan, China

OMG, more perfidious Anglos, god help us!

When it comes to perfidy, even the Americans need the Albion. Remember Cambridge Analytica?

Centuries of Empire have formed the British mind.

[Rugoz]

While the US and the UK keep on banning exports of all vaccines from their territory, the EU continues to allow exports of vaccines to the UK, the US and the rest of the world.

They have done no such thing.

[Atlantis]

AstraZeneca has cut supplies to the EU in order to sell it to EU members at a higher price.

And then they say that AstraZeneca provides its vaccine on a non-profit basis.

It really can't get worse than that.

Four EU leaders were offered ‘separate’ deals with AstraZeneca

Four EU member states were offered to sign separate COVID-19 vaccine agreements, outside of the EU deals framework, with British-Swedish pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca in order to get vaccines faster than others, Czech PM Andrej Babiš unveiled on Thursday (11 February).

Babiš’s statement raises questions regarding the company’s tactics in the aftermath of the row with the EU over delayed deliveries of doses, which have considerably derailed vaccination programs across the bloc.

“While AstraZeneca was refusing to deliver to the EU 80 million doses, we received repeated offers of this vaccine – not only me but three other prime ministers in Europe – even before the start of deliveries [to the EU],” Babiš said.

“A company, an intermediary from Dubai. With 50% prepayment,” he said.

“Believe me, we would definitely use this opportunity if it was realistic. But we cannot afford it […] Of course, we have some [EU] agreements and we have to respect them,” Babiš added.

The vaccines’ price in these separate deals is still unknown but considering Babiš’s statement, it was likely to be high. The incident also adds to EU suspicions about behind-the-scenes talks at the member state level with the pharma industry, bypassing Brussels.

When EURACTIV asked the European Commission about the possibility of such bilateral offers several weeks ago, EU sources replied that they were not aware of them.

@Rugoz, the UK and US have banned exports of vaccines. That's why AstraZeneca refuses to supply the EU with vaccine from the UK. What do you not understand about this?

[Rugoz]

the UK and US have banned exports of vaccines. That's why AstraZeneca refuses to supply the EU with vaccine from the UK. What do you not understand about this?

No, they have not.

[Atlantis]

They have been lying through the teeth!

AstraZeneca in connivance with the British government just keeps on lying.

AstraZeneca signed a deal with the EU before it signed it's UK deal, even though AZ has claimed that it needs to supply the UK first because it's deal with the UK was signed months before.

The British government claims that the contract with AZ cannot be made public for "reasons of national security" even though it is already disclosed on the web.

The "reasonable effort" clause in AZ's deal with the EU means exactly the same as this clause means in AZ's deal with the UK. By serving the UK at the expense of the EU AstraZeneca is in breach of contract.

AstraZeneca's vaccine contract with the UK is based on 'best efforts,' just like its deal with a frustrated EU

AstraZeneca's vaccine contract with the UK is based on 'best efforts,' just like its deal with a frustrated EU

London (CNN)AstraZeneca's contract to supply the UK with 100 million Covid-19 vaccine doses commits it to making "best reasonable efforts," the same language used in its deal with the European Union, which critics blamed for the bloc's faltering inoculation program.

The details of the contract are contained in a redacted version published online without fanfare months ago, long before the UK and the EU became embroiled in a bitter dispute over vaccine supply.

British officials had earlier declined to provide the contract to CNN, making no mention of the redacted version, and have repeatedly refused to give details on the country's vaccine supplies, citing "security reasons." A junior UK government minister said in a recent interview that publishing the contract would risk national security.

Yet in response to a Freedom of Information request from CNN, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) this week provided CNN a link to the redacted 52-page contract, which had been published on a website that hosts details of UK government contracts. Details like the number of doses to be delivered to the UK and the dates of delivery have been redacted.

The redacted contract has, technically, been publicly available since at least November 26, according to the date the page was last edited. BEIS this week confirmed the same date of publication to CNN. But the link is difficult to find on the government website without using precise search terms and it appears to have gone largely unnoticed.

A fight between the EU and UK reveals the ugly truth about vaccine nationalism

European Union leaders and AstraZeneca engaged in a public war of words in late January after the company advised the 27-country union that it would deliver tens of millions fewer doses than agreed by the end of March. At the same time, it appeared to be making good on its deliveries to the UK, heightening tensions between Westminster and Brussels, fresh from their Brexit divorce.

The EU then published its own redacted agreement with AstraZeneca. A comparison between the two contracts is now possible.

The UK is currently celebrating a hugely successful vaccination drive, having administered at least one vaccine dose in a two-dose regimen for more than 15 million people, over 20% of its population. The EU, on the other hand, continues to have major supply problems. It reports it has administered more than 20 million doses, though many people have received two shots, so it is unclear exactly how many individuals have received at least a single shot. Either way, it has given doses to just over 4% of its population at best.

AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot told Italy's La Repubblica at the time that its agreement with the EU was "not a contractual commitment. It's a best effort," referring to language used in their contract.

Its contract with the UK, however, also states that company only needs to make its "best reasonable efforts" to stick to the original agreed delivery schedule, which the company could "update and refine" when necessary. The agreement says the company must notify BEIS at least 30 days before each delivery with a "firm and final" schedule.

Where there may be a significant difference is in which markets the drug company is prioritizing. Soriot confirmed to La Repubblica that his company had agreed to supply the UK before other markets, saying it was "fair enough" because the UK had reached an agreement with AstraZeneca earlier than the EU. But the UK's official contract is actually dated August 28, one day after the EU's contract.

It was a reasoning ridiculed by European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Stella Kyriakides, who had come under intense questioning over whether the EU's "best efforts" contract was significantly weaker than the UK's.

"We reject the logic of first come, first served," she told reporters. "That may work at the neighborhood butcher's but not in contracts and not in our advanced purchase agreements."

The contract also confirmed the UK could receive vaccines manufactured in the EU, another point of contention between Brussels and AstraZeneca during their spat.
BEIS did not share even its redacted AstraZeneca contract with CNN when asked in late January, and it cited "security reasons" when declining to give information on vaccine supply levels. LBC Radio, which like many media outlets appeared to also be unaware the redacted contract had already been published, pressed junior prisons minister Lucy Frazer at the time as to why the government would not make the contract with AstraZeneca publicly available. She replied that doing so would pose a national security risk.

"It risks the security of the vaccine, which risks the security of the people," she said.
AstraZeneca declined to comment when asked several questions by CNN about its contract with the UK, how it prioritizes different markets with contracts based on "best reasonable efforts" and for details around its supply chains to the UK and EU.

When asked whether the agreement to prioritize the UK was a redacted part of its contract or included in any other legal document, BEIS said only that: "The UK Government has an agreement with AstraZeneca to supply 100 million doses of the University of Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, and have agreed delivery timescales for this.

"The detail of any commercial agreements between the UK government and AstraZeneca for the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine are commercially sensitive."

Vaccine rollout is a much-needed win for UK after bungling its pandemic response

But UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested earlier this month to the LBC that the agreement was included in the contract.

"I wasn't going to settle for a contract that allowed the Oxford vaccine to be delivered to others around the world before us. I was insisting we could keep all of the British public safe as my primary responsibility as the Health Secretary," he said.

The issues of timing and prioritization are key in the European Union, which centralized its procurement of vaccines to ensure fair distribution among its member states. But its supply shortages -- not just from AstraZeneca -- meant its vaccination program got off to a slow start and is continuing on a start-stop basis in many countries.

A European Commission spokesperson did not want to comment on the UK's contract with AstraZeneca, but said the commission regarded its own contract to include "binding orders and clear delivery quantities."

"A best effort clause is there because the vaccine hadn't yet been developed or authorized, and it was not clear whether AstraZeneca would produce a vaccine," the spokesperson said.

"And now with the development of a vaccine which has now been authorized, there are clear delivery quantities, both for December of last year as well as the coming quarters for this year."

Where does this leave AstraZeneca?

AstraZeneca's contract with the EU is essentially the same as the UK's in terms of language, with some differences to reflect that the EU was procuring on behalf of 27 nations, according to David Greene, a senior partner at the law firm Edwin Coe, who has read the two redacted contracts, and has not seen the unredacted versions.

"There are many similarities between these two contracts, including the best reasonable efforts terms. It's hardly surprising because they were made at the same time," he said.

He explained that the term "Best Reasonable Efforts" was essentially an escape clause to offer some legal protection to AstraZeneca in the event it could not deliver to its agreed schedule.

"However, what they can't do, on the face of it, is choose one contracting party over another. So they can't say to the EU 'I'm not going to deliver to you because I'm going to deliver to the UK,' and similar. That's always been the case."

All of this has always been obvious, yet the Spectator and the Telegraph together with most of British media used this to blame the EU for AstraZeneca's failure and British double play.

The true significance of this is that the "global Britain" of the Brexitters really means "protectionist Britain" with British vaccine jingoism just one harbinger of things to come.

@Rugoz, you again have been fooled by the British media, but your autism must have reached concerning proportions if you can't even understand that the UK and the US have effectively banned Covid vaccine exports.

[Rich]

Well I have already made my position clear. I will not collude with vaccine Apartheid. If you jump the queue, if you take the vaccine before someone in a higher risk group or key worker in another part of the world, before Palestine, before the Congo, before Afghanistan, you are a racist Apartheid murderer.

[noemon]

Take a look at this ultra-nationalist EU-bashing Telegraph article by Jeremy Warner 1 day after Meghan's and Harry's interview that has sent several Brits either into curtain-twitching depression or into EU-bashing overdrive.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/20 ... h/#comment

Observe the comments. Nick Matheson is noemon.

When the EU made the contract it had to make sure that the UK would not use AstraZeneca as a Brexit firecracker(which it did) so it wanted to make sure the company will manufacture it in the EU in case the UK threatens its vaccine supply(which it did).

Clause 5.1 defines that agreement, specifying that AZ would use best efforts to produce the vaccine in the EU.

But it also had to make sure that if AstraZeneca failed to set up manufacturing facilities in the EU(which it did), its vaccine supply would not be undermined(which it eventually was) and so Clause 5.4 made it very clear which manufacturing plants are to be used for the fulfilment of the order, both the EU's and the UK's.

Despite taking all these contractual precautions, Astrazeneca still failed to fulfil its obligations and we have now reached a point where Brits are openly saying that vaccines made in the UK rightly were not exported to the EU while at the same time trying to convince themselves that this never was an effective ban.

Mmkay.

[Atlantis]

The UK media (especially the Telegraph and the Spectator) is truly toxic.

I shudder to think what it does to people who read it on a daily basis.

There is so much wrong with Warner's opinion piece that I wouldn't know where to start.

In the meantime, the AstraZeneca story has taken another turn for the worse.

The EU tried to get AstraZeneca doses produced in the US. The vaccine hasn't been approved in the US and the US has more than enough Pfizer, Moderna and J&J doses. But since the US has a vaccine export ban (@Rugoz), it'll rather put vaccines in storage than allow exports to Europe. I wonder what would happen if the EU banned exports of J&J vaccines to the US.

Exclusive: EU told to expect no AstraZeneca vaccines from U.S. in near future

The U.S. message could complicate vaccination plans in the 27-nation EU, which has been grappling since January with delays in deliveries from vaccine makers.

“The U.S. told us there was no way it would ship AstraZeneca vaccines to the EU,” said a senior official directly involved in EU-U.S. talks.

AstraZeneca told the EU earlier this year it would cut its supplies in the second quarter by at least half to less than 90 million doses, EU sources told Reuters, after a bigger reduction in the first three months of the year.

[AFAIK]

1.1 million AZ vaccines are being distributed in Cambodia thanks to Covax. I believe many of these jabs came from India, which has generously donated to multiple countries. China is donating millions of vaccines to dozens of countries. Covax will receive 170 million AZ vaccines. Meanwhile NATO countries bicker and work to deprive one another of assistance and aid.

Governments should use emergency legislation to deprive pharmaceutical companies of their patents especially those that lack the manufacturing capacity to meet vaccination schedules. In the long term patents should no longer be granted since >90% of the R&D is publicly funded. Patents are a form of protectionism that force the transfer of wealth from poor countries to the wealthy ones whilst the dismantling of tariffs and quotas prevent protectionism by developing countries.

[Atlantis]

1.1 million AZ vaccines are being distributed in Cambodia thanks to Covax. I believe many of these jabs came from India, which has generously donated to multiple countries. China is donating millions of vaccines to dozens of countries. Covax will receive 170 million AZ vaccines. Meanwhile NATO countries bicker and work to deprive one another of assistance and aid.

Vaccine nationalism has nothing to do with Nato. The UK wouldn't treat European Nato countries like enemies otherwise.

On May 4th, 2020, the EU hosted a donor's conference to collect 8 billion dollars for suppling poor countries with vaccines with the Covax program under WHO management. The Trump administration, Russia and China boycotted the international vaccine effort to pursue their own vaccine programs for national and/or geopolitical aims. Biden has in the meantime rejoined the WHO and the Covax program.

Merkel, Macron Back $8 Billion Virus Vaccine Fund Effort

Covax purchased vaccines from the Serum Institute in India. India did not donate them. It is true that India also supplied vaccines to its neighborhood for geopolitical influence. China and Russia use vaccines as a political tool. For example, Turkey has started to extradite Muslim Uighurs to China after it signed an agreement for Chinese vaccines. China and Russia extract a political and/or monetary price in exchange for vaccines.

Instead of pursuing vaccine nationalism like the UK and the US or vaccine imperialism like Russia and China, EU countries have opted for joint vaccine procurement and international cooperation.

Governments should use emergency legislation to deprive pharmaceutical companies of their patents especially those that lack the manufacturing capacity to meet vaccination schedules. In the long term patents should no longer be granted since >90% of the R&D is publicly funded. Patents are a form of protectionism that force the transfer of wealth from poor countries to the wealthy ones whilst the dismantling of tariffs and quotas prevent protectionism by developing countries.

I have already refuted that in my reply to Heisenberg:

1. waiver of IP rights will not get us more Covid vaccines,

2. cooperation between companies is already leading to a great surge in production,

3. punishing the innovators will deprive society of much needed inventions while benefitting the profiteers who want to maximize profits without spending money on innovation,

4. initial public funding (mRNA in our example) was insignificant compared to the private funding that resulted in usable products,

5. public institutions and politicians are incapable of making the decisions that we'll lead to good products ...

LARGEST VACCINE MAKER WARNS OF DELAYS AS U.S. PRIORITIZES PFIZER#1516015

[Rugoz]

But since the US has a vaccine export ban (@Rugoz)

And still no evidence provided. That article certainly isn't. How hard can it be?