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Comment by jlouis | Hacker News Reader

Yes. UK and US have both had some export regulations on vaccines, which aren't present in EU. So the current flow of available doses isn't really a free market in the usual sense.

There are other factors than dose availability though. Putting vaccines into people isn't easy to do on a large scale in a short time window. Vaccine programmes are usually running with a much larger window, with vaccines that doesn't require extreme cold temperatures.

UK seems better prepared for this than many of the EU-bloc's countries.

The other part of the question however is: "Severely lags behind what?". Even with a "slow" rollout, EU countries in general are better off than many other countries in the world. It isn't the case they are trying to keep up with the pack in general, as they are well positioned. It's more that there are a few countries who are doing extremely well on a quick rollout.

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There's no export restrictions in the UK, they just ordered vaccines earlier and in bigger bulk than the EU (comparatively).

One of the many spats about this between the EU and the UK was when an EU functionary incorrectly claimed the UK had export controls and they had to back track[1].

As far as I know, the EU gambled on a French vaccine that unfortunately failed, then ordered other vaccines much later than everyone else.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/6d28903d-3723-45cc-878a-21e1f2d39...

I think you are wrong. UK gov blocked exports to the EU.

"Two factories in Britain run by Oxford Biomedica and Cobra Biologics are also listed as suppliers to the EU in the contract with AstraZeneca, but no vaccine has so far been shipped from Britain to the EU, despite Brussels' earlier requests."

"AstraZeneca told EU officials that the UK is using a clause in its supply contract that prevents export of its vaccines until the British market is fully served, EU officials said."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-eu-uk-...

So?

That's a commercial clause, AZ took funding for vaccine development with that clause in it.

That's not an export ban, that was paid for.

AZ took funding from the EU as well and delivered zero vaccines from its UK facilities breaching its agreement.

Do you expect the EU to watch how AZ fails to deliver on its contract, exports vaccines made on EU soil to the UK and then talk about commercial clauses, in a pandemic?

The EU signed contract with AstraZeneca 1 day before the UK did, claims https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1372897637469458432

There's no export restriction, it's more subtle.

UK has funded Oxford vaccine development on condition that UK gets preference for doses produced in UK (if not elsewhere too).

This has exactly the same practical effect as an export ban, but it technically isn't an export ban, hence the recent grandstanding from UK politicians.

As a comparision BioNTech got $445M funding from Germany and in return Israel is getting priority.

Israel got priority by being 'just right' sized with an efficient healthcare system and being able to demonstrate the ability to organise a mass vaccination as quickly as possible. As such they acted as a very large scale test of what we can expect as the number of people vaccinated increases.

I don't think this is particularly to the detriment of Germany. Wasn't Israel vaccinating people before Germany had approved any vaccination?

The Israelis paid more[1] and placed orders earlier than the EU; it's not surprising their orders are higher priority.

[1] (https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-to-be-paying-avera...)

It wouldn’t matter if Germany asked for vaccine priority for providing $440M, just like what US and UK did. EU is extremely inefficient compared to how much money it’s spending for the pandemic.

I mean did they expect a lot with just that? The USA was willing to commit to billions if they delivered.

UK is also one of the producers for the lipids that are needed to make the pfizer vaccine and that's still being exported

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