Similarly, given the situation in India, I can't sit here and complain about India delaying sending us a consignment of 5m doses, when it's clear they'd save more lives currently in that country given their position in their vaccination programme.
Similarly, given the situation in India, I can't sit here and complain about India delaying sending us a consignment of 5m doses, when it's clear they'd save more lives currently in that country given their position in their vaccination programme.
Didn't they luck out with studies showing support for the delay?
Yes on AZ. Supposedly increase of immune performance up to 10 weeks or so.
For me it depends on the motivation behind it. I may be reading it wrong but it seems more like the EU trying to deflect blame away from their monumental epic fail of a vaccine roll out. Every step of the way they have blundered, either through delaying the ordering of stock, through leaders actively promoting anti-vaccine stances. They only have themselves to blame.
I think that could mean for the overall vaccination effort, including second doses. They also mention in the article:
That does feel slightly optimistic to me, but I'm not an analyst.
Is vaccine supply actually a bottle neck for EU nations at the moment?
If it's anything like my father in law's experience here in France, then I don't think supply is an issue.
My wife took him to his appointment at 10am CET today and she said it was chaos. Loads of old people milling around, don't know where to go, haven't filled out the pre-vaccination questionnaire, staff are useless. It's almost like directing them to an online system wasn't a good idea - you could phone up but it was impossible to get through to anyone.
It's been an hour now and still not done. Everybody else I know has been in and out in a few minutes.
Then again, I honestly don't think I've ever seen people deal so badly with pressure/stress as the folks around here. When something doesn't go to plan they break out in to mild hysteria and panic!
My wife took him to his appointment at 10am CET today and she said it was chaos. Loads of old people milling around, don't know where to go, haven't filled out the pre-vaccination questionnaire, staff are useless. It's almost like directing them to an online system wasn't a good idea - you could phone up but it was impossible to get through to anyone.
It's been an hour now and still not done. Everybody else I know has been in and out in a few minutes.
Then again, I honestly don't think I've ever seen people deal so badly with pressure/stress as the folks around here. When something doesn't go to plan they break out in to mild hysteria and panic!
Yeah I believe results from feb showed that actually having a longer delay in between first and second doses actually provided higher immunity.
Even so, the tests are great. High reduction of infection, other tests show good signs of saying it slows helps prevent transmission, and stops severe side effects, hospitalisation, and death
great news.
EU has had a supply bottle neck from day 1, you can easily see it in data:
COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker | European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
You have to take into consideration that EU only gets doses once a week (so numbers of real full use are only usable on tuesdays) and that EU countries might save part of the vaccination for second doses, so 80% use is still quite high.
The entire "EU is not using AZ" was basically taking bad data and presenting it with an excuse that was not the cause (the problem was logistics of AZ start up due to age gating). AZ use has ramped up since those articles, going from initial week 10% to now upwards of 50% in most big countries (which are the ones whose logistics took the longest to adapt to different vaccination teams), and numbers would be much higher if not for the temporary stop.
"Delaying the ordering of stock" is a bit of a stupid excuse when the contracts directly state that you are supposed to have the same level of preference as any other customer and you dont have anyone in front of you (which AZ lied about).
The motivation behind this is that AZ has delivered less than 30% of their original ordered Q1 (from 100M -> 30M) and less than 75% of their reduced deliveries (40M -> 30M), while also saying they will drop the production of Q2 massively, meaning that they expect to deliver less than 1/3 of their Q1+Q2 deliveries (from 300M -> 100M).
All while only producing from up to 2 (one of them still hasnt delivered to EU either due to AZ fucking up paperwork) of the original 4 factories that the EU contract stated (as 2 of them are producing exclusively for the UK), and actively following the contract of UK.
I will quote myself from earlier: 85% of all undelivered vaccines for EU in Q1 have been AZ(70M out of the probably missed 80M)
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Well, at least it's holding strong in the UK.
Small silver lining of "vaccine nationalism".
I would take statistics taken while there was a vaccine pause with a grain of salt (given that most of the poll was done at the time it was deemed unsure enough not to use by local health authorities), at least wait until the week after ot was started to use again to talk about it.
This has been my worry for a while now, there's definitely a lot of people assuming that's what's going to happen. Though at least the holiday warning in the news over the weekend will have acted as a reality check for some.
EU has had a supply bottle neck from day 1, you can easily see it in data:
COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker | European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control
vaccinetracker.ecdc.europa.eu
You have to take into consideration that EU only gets doses once a week (so numbers of real full use are only usable on tuesdays) and that EU countries might save part of the vaccination for second doses, so 80% use is still quite high.
The entire "EU is not using AZ" was basically taking bad data and presenting it with an excuse that was not the cause (the problem was logistics of AZ start up due to age gating). AZ use has ramped up since those articles, going from initial week 10% to now upwards of 50% in most big countries (which are the ones whose logistics took the longest to adapt to different vaccination teams), and numbers would be much higher if not for the temporary stop.
"Delaying the ordering of stock" is a bit of a stupid excuse when the contracts directly state that you are supposed to have the same level of preference as any other customer and you dont have anyone in front of you (which AZ lied about).
The motivation behind this is that AZ has delivered less than 30% of their original ordered Q1 (from 100M -> 30M) and less than 75% of their reduced deliveries (40M -> 30M), while also saying they will drop the production of Q2 massively, meaning that they expect to deliver less than 1/3 of their Q1+Q2 deliveries (from 300M -> 100M).
All while only producing from up to 2 (one of them still hasnt delivered to EU either due to AZ fucking up paperwork) of the original 4 factories that the EU contract stated (as 2 of them are producing exclusively for the UK), and actively following the contract of UK.
I will quote myself from earlier: 85% of all undelivered vaccines for EU in Q1 have been AZ(70M out of the probably missed 80M)
Thanks for this, I've been wondering about this because as much as the headlines make it seem like stupid nationalism, I couldn't understand why the EU has been receiving so few vaccines and the UK so many.
AZ were supposed to be using a "no priority system" but in fact it very much seems that the UK does have priority, maybe because it paid more per vial?
In that case, I can see why European leaders are getting pissed, although they poisoned the well a bit by threatening to break the NI protocol.
I'm getting my first jab this evening. Quite surprised given my age and general lack of other illnesses but apparently being overweight enough qualifies you for it now so I guess that is at least one upside (and it has also been a bit of a wake up call about my weight in general too).
It isn't related to COVID though, more the bill that the government is trying to push through that will potentially severally restrict the ability to peacefully protest in this country. Although I think shame on the government for trying to push this through right now when they know they can use COVID as an excuse to try to demonise even peaceful protest about it (and indeed police started yesterday by trying to tell people to leave and not to gather before the number of peaceful protesters got too high for them to manage in that way).
It isn't related to COVID though, more the bill that the government is trying to push through that will potentially severally restrict the ability to peacefully protest in this country. Although I think shame on the government for trying to push this through right now when they know they can use COVID as an excuse to try to demonise even peaceful protest about it (and indeed police started yesterday by trying to tell people to leave and not to gather before the number of peaceful protesters got too high for them to manage in that way).
UK signed a "first priority" contract with the UK factories meaning all the doses produced in UK would be first used to serve the UK.
AZ also signed a deal witb EU letting them invest in manufacturing in 4 factories (which were supposed to provide EU with vaccines) including the 2 british ones while saying EU had the same high priority as everyone else and nobody was in front of them.
AKA AZ double booked factory production on the UK.
In the end AZ decided that they would honor the UK commitment (mainly because it would be hard to ship vaccines from UK to EU without UK noticing) and have failed to do any significant production fixes or deliveries of other fashion to the EU.
I was actually just reading an article about this, though it's a bit old, so maybe there's been some things that have come out since.
How the UK gained an edge with AstraZeneca’s vaccine commitments
A comparison of the UK and EU contracts shows that London’s deal has extra teeth.
www.politico.eu
It suggests that one of the main differences in the contract is that:
"The starkest example of this difference is a clause in the U.K. contract stating that if any party tries to force or persuade AstraZeneca or its subcontractors to do anything that could hold up the supply of the vaccine doses, the government may terminate the deal and invoke what appear to be punishment clauses — although these are largely redacted.
The EU, on the other hand, can only withhold payments until the company delivers the goods, or until it helps find more producers to make the vaccine. And as POLITICO reported last week, the non-redacted version of the contract shows that the EU also waived its right to sue AstraZeneca in the event of delivery delays."
The article goes into quite a bit beyond that, including the different legal systems, other differences in the contract and an earlier agreement the UK had reached with AZ months before signing the full contract.
Well Britain has done enough vaccines for awhile now...the question is do we give them to Europe or India? Or somewhere else? They'd save a lot more lives in other places (at the moment).
I'm a little confused, is the number of extra AZ vaccines the UK are receiving from AZ sufficient to cover the gaps the EU currently has in their vaccine roll-out?
As in, is the UK the main cause of poor vaccine roll-out in Europe? If not, how much is our vaccine supply impacting their roll-out, in terms of overall planned percentages of vials etc.
As in, is the UK the main cause of poor vaccine roll-out in Europe? If not, how much is our vaccine supply impacting their roll-out, in terms of overall planned percentages of vials etc.
The contracts are signed under different law structures (common law vs civil law), so they arent easy to compare. The earlier agreement part shouldnt matter for the EU as their contract stated they was no clash between their contract and any previous (or future without warning EU) contract.I was actually just reading an article about this, though it's a bit old, so maybe there's been some things that have come out since.
How the UK gained an edge with AstraZeneca’s vaccine commitments
A comparison of the UK and EU contracts shows that London’s deal has extra teeth.
It suggests that one of the main differences in the contract is that:
"The starkest example of this difference is a clause in the U.K. contract stating that if any party tries to force or persuade AstraZeneca or its subcontractors to do anything that could hold up the supply of the vaccine doses, the government may terminate the deal and invoke what appear to be punishment clauses — although these are largely redacted.
The EU, on the other hand, can only withhold payments until the company delivers the goods, or until it helps find more producers to make the vaccine. And as POLITICO reported last week, the non-redacted version of the contract shows that the EU also waived its right to sue AstraZeneca in the event of delivery delays."
The article goes into quite a bit beyond that, including the different legal systems, other differences in the contract and an earlier agreement the UK had reached with AZ months before signing the full contract.
In the case of belgium, there is less need to go into the punishments, as those are for a judge to choose.
At least half of the AZ vaccines in UK should have probably gone to the EU according to the EU(if we follow the "EU has same preference" part of EU contract). It would probably mean that UK would be net 0 exporter (as they probably would have shipped more or less the same they got as Pfizer).
Of course, that would have only helped a bit into the EU givrn the population size, but would have probably mean AZ would have at least reached their "reduced Q1 target" instead of missing it.
I doubt even with UK base, AZ would have been able to produce original Q1 quantities, given the utter failure in their production everywhere were they are the ones in charge (thank god fo SII taking care of most of production), so a slump would have happened either way, just not this lvl of slump.
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That makes sense, for once it feels like the UK government has done nothing wrong, although they are playing it to boost their own image.
Also seems like while the rollout of vaccines has gone well, the Tories are overplaying their own involvement.
I suppose without that "first priority" deal we would be sharing the UK produced volumes with the rest of the EU. Personally, I think that's a healthier outcome but we know full well how much people in this country love to dick over foreigners.
I agree - i have no love for MP's and MEP's and bureaucracy in general but we've dicked the European governments around for over 2 years about Brexit. The next few months supply of vaccines will save many more lives if they are used in other countries, than used in the UK.
We've already benefitted from the deal that was hashed out (or whatever) as we've got tons of vaccines already...As a minimum of human decency we should show some solidarity and compassion with people in other parts of the world by not continuing to hog the supply even more.
If tub-thumping knob ends want to make a fuss about it then we could at least position it as a "commonwealth" (i.e. empire) solution and bang some out to Australia, India etc and at least *try* to get some goodwill with countries we "bagsied" in our glorious past.
Likelihood of any of this happening? fuck all.
Apparently Boris is going around begging for support to prevent an EU export ban.
To be a fly on the wall during those conversations.
To be a fly on the wall during those conversations.
Coronavirus vaccines: PM to telephone EU leaders in bid to stop export ban being imposed
EU leaders will hold a virtual summit on Thursday to discuss the fate of vaccines made on the continent.
www.bbc.co.uk
Didn't AZ miss their Q1 target by 70m?
I'm pretty sure going by the UK's Yellow Card stats, AZ had accounted for just over half of the vaccines in the UK.
So even if all those vaccines had gone to the EU instead of the UK, AZ still would have missed their EU Q1 deliveries by more than 50%.
That's nothing to do with the rights and wrongs between the UK and EU, but obviously AZ's ultimate problem is production numbers, not where they're being sent (or not as the case may be).
I'm pretty sure going by the UK's Yellow Card stats, AZ had accounted for just over half of the vaccines in the UK.
So even if all those vaccines had gone to the EU instead of the UK, AZ still would have missed their EU Q1 deliveries by more than 50%.
That's nothing to do with the rights and wrongs between the UK and EU, but obviously AZ's ultimate problem is production numbers, not where they're being sent (or not as the case may be).
We haven't got 'tons of vaccines'. How have you missed this news?
Disappointing to see people in this thread demonising the Bristol protesters. The biggest bunch of crooks in this country is sitting in Westminster right now. You can't try to quietly criminalise peaceful protest and not expect people to go fucking apeshit. Fuck the Tories, despicable collection of tinpot charlatans.
AZ have done an incredible job getting everyone blaming each other instead of them.
Because really... it wasn't the EU that fucked up, or the UK playing a blinder, it was AZ completely failing to deliver on their targets and schedules.
Because really... it wasn't the EU that fucked up, or the UK playing a blinder, it was AZ completely failing to deliver on their targets and schedules.
Gotta be honest, AZ CEO doing a PR tour blaming the EU for not signing the contract earlier and basically saying that EU was trying to get the vaccines that UK correctly got was an amazing move to get the british media fully on their side from the onset.
If that is indeed the worst-case scenario....I agree it could be a lot worse, we've waited so long already, what's an extra 4 weeks? I'd assume we'll have some of the freedoms we had last summer again by that point anyway (with masks and social distancing outside of bubbles I would hope).
But I guess we'll have to see, if there's one thing that has been proven already is that the vaccine supply chain is delicate as hell.
And all the most vulnerable will be vaccinated so it's not a major issue if the EU decides to block shipments. I would blame them either as we're hardly angles over here helping them out!
I've said it in another thread, but that would never happen. It would be political suicide for even any other country to stand up and go 'hey we could have most of the population vaccinated ready for summer and basically be free, but instead we will ship the vaccines out to the union that we literally just left and have to do because AZ fucked up at every step of the way. You guys can stay with social distancing and having the economy/Your business still be mostly fucked for a few more weeks/months. Right guys ?....right?'
i certainly think though after we have vaccinated everyone that our focus should be on helping eu countries get additional doses through export, espcially as i assume they are the countries that will be affected by the 'kent strain'.
Oh yeah, it was a very smart move to atleast get one of the sides to back them. 'Hey UK, that union you just left is trying to steal your vaccines!!!!!!'
In a perfect world a cure for corona would no be intellectual property, and anybody in the world could manufacturer and use it......but then where would the money come from ey?
The reasoning and anger behind it is understandable.
I think it's fair enough to question the wisdom of protesting against the restriction of rights to protest peacefully by setting fire to police vans.
It's not that it isn't helpful, it's that it literally gives ammunition to the government and media to take it and use it as a justification for the bans. Doesn't matter what's justified or not, it's the reality and people need to be smarter.
Honestly this just seems like him trying to get more people to accept the vaccine and to increase public support for not giving up the vaccines we have access to.
Also it wouldn't affect us if they were actually competent at closing borders.
The people who smashed up my city last night are also crooks and will have achieved nothing but give cover to the govt to get the bill passed.
Maybe they were deliberately provoked by the police to escalate the situation? I've heard numerous commentaries that the event was peaceful until the police started hitting people sitting on the ground. What possible reason could the police have for inciting both the event last night, and the women's rights vigil a week or so back? Oh wait.
protesting peacefully has barely ever worked. it's ignorable, it's easy, has little impact. the suffragettes, an example of progressives that both the left and right respect, weren't exactly peaceful.
As far as I've seen, none of the (albeit shit) local media have reported that the police escalated this.
I think it's just as likely that a bunch of yobs decided they wanted to fight the police last night as much as it was the police who instigated it.
Marvin Reese has already referred to 'protest tourists' and I'm inclined to believe (based on precedent) that a bunch of people came to Bristol looking for a fight last night (alongside our resident hooligans)
I aren't sure on the validity but their is a Twitter thread from a observer saying it was totally provoked and the police started the unrest. Two of the police vehicles attacked shared the same license plates too as per pics (Not sure if that is valid; people are bringing up the car has no MOT, police vehicles don't need a MOT). Take Twitter with a (massive) grain of salt. But many are of the view the unrest (And lots of even local papers are reporting it) will lead to the bill getting through.
A friend posted something earlier re as above women's rights, black rights, probably even gay rights. If we lost as a people a right to show we don't approve we are fucked (Especially with how society is going to go a bit down hill with climate change and stuff like being snooped on).
that you have to go that far back tells me that non-peaceful protests aren't that impactful either
the Poll Tax protest caused a stir and then Poll Tax was rebranded to Council Tax and we're all good with it now
the Anti-War protests in 2003 didn't do anything either, Blair and Bush were replaced but the war in Iraq didn't stop (and various conflicts got worse)
There's a load of footage from last night. If the police started it, there would be video evidence and as yet I haven't seen any.
I don't disagree that the bill is dangerous but I don't really see how sending policemen and women to the hospital, smashing up a load of public property and scaring local residents is going to achieve anything... especially under this Tory govt.
If 2020 has shown anything, it's that police are usually always the shit stirrers with peaceful protesters.
no doubt of course that dumbasses bored in lockdown decided to use this as an excuse to smash some stuff, but they would be outweighed by people there genuinely trying to stop an absurd bill
Indeed, thus the massive pinch of salt. Not really followed this other than on here (Fairly left; as am I) and very left Facebook groups so their is a ton of bias. The local rag are totally running with it though without anything negative towards the bill and bloody hope it doesn't go through.