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Comment by radicalbyte | Hacker News Reader

The time-wasting meme is a lie from the UK Government. The UK contract was signed after the EU contract. They posted the contract by accident which was picked up on in some of the press. It also had the same clauses as the EU.

On the other hand the UK still has a fully nationalised health service which means that it was in a much better position to be able to scale the vaccinations. That's probably the real reason that they're ahead.

Give it another 10 years of Tory rule and they'll "catch down" to the rest of the world.

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This is a misunderstanding, as incidentally is the claim that the UK contract was signed three months earlier, because in both cases there is the assumption that there is "a" contract and no money flowed or contractual obligations were created before then. The reality is that in both cases, memoranda of understanding, investment agreements, and all sorts of other documents also exist and in some cases were signed earlier. In particular, there were agreements first with Oxford and then with AZ to start scaling capacity very early and even before the notional purchase contract signature in May (that's the one that was later superseded at the same time as the final EU contract was signed).

So it is simultaneously true that they signed a contract within a few days of each other, but also not quite the full picture.

The original claim regarding the EU dragging its feet over signing the contract was made by the AstraZeneca CEO, not the UK government. And the UK's contract is not entirely the same as the EU's. For example, the EU waived its right to sue AstraZeneca for delivery failures, something the UK did not. This article by Politico does a good job of going beyond the rather reductive coverage (both pro-UK and pro-EU) in most of the press coverage of this affair, and digging more deeply into the facts:

https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...

The conclusion, at least as I interpret it, is that both the UK and the EU can reasonably claim to have priority, based on their respective contracts, but that the UK did a better job than the EU in making theirs enforceable. Hence, AstraZeneca has prioritised them, while the EU has been forced to resort to political rather than legal measures to attempt redress (publishing the contract, export controls, etc.). And the UK's closer ties to the AstraZeneca vaccine project likely did mean they started work on the UK supply chain somewhat earlier than in the EU, even although the final contracts were signed essentially simultaneously (one day apart).

I honestly don't really see this as an affair with clear good guys and bad guys, but it seems like most people are determined to do so, and inevitably along the lines of their pre-existing sympathies.

Part of the issue, and this is something that both AZ and the EC fucked up in their contract negotiations is not thinking about this contingency. "Best reasonable efforts" is pretty clear... if you only have one customer.

If you have multiple customers, who signed slightly different contracts at different times, and who also have different side agreements regarding specific facilities they may have paid for in part or in whole, you really need to define how you make allocation decisions in case of shortfall so that everyone understands their risk exposure.

I will personally hold the EC responsible because although AZ has also messed up by not negotiating a clearer contract, it is the EC that indirectly works for me and it is their job to think about this on my and my family's behalf. Had they understood the consequences of being so far back in the production queue much earlier they could have spent more on upgrading production but it is not clear to me that they even understood this until January. While I'm sure that they are trying their best, and bad luck with Sanofi plays a part here as well (as does the incompetence of e.g. the Dutch government in managing distribution), I am pretty unimpressed with how they have dropped the ball here.

It's not good them saying, "oh AZ isn't producing as much as they thought they would". Ok, cool story bro but they're making a novel biological, so you should have anticipated this and done more to prepare plans B, C, all the way through F. Not just placed a few commercial orders and then hope it all works out.

I think the underlying problem is that there is just not any real cooperation on global vaccine distribution. Certainly the details about the enforceability of the various contracts wouldn't matter if the customers all talk between themselves and agree on what would be acceptable modifications of the delivery schedule.

In the event, it seems neither Boris nor Biden seem very interested in considering anyone else before they've scored enough points at home, and meanwhile real international cooperation on vaccine deliveries is dead. Oh well, hope not all trade follows that pattern shrug.

But if the contract states there are no competing customers, and talks about 4 different sites, I'd say most bases should have been covered. Az then turning around, and using three of these sites exclusively for UK production (since it was 'first') kinda defeats that.

Then there is indeed a difference in contract law, where the UK is far more focused on the letter of the contract, while European law is more about 'what could have been done'.

In the middle of a pandemic there isn't much we can do against pharmaceuticals. In the mean while has Az delivered more than Moderna until now. So, we should take what we can. Only thing we could blame the EC on is that we should not have based our strategy of vaccinating out on such an unreliable, inexperienced partner with a complicated biological process. Looking back and keeping the Pfizer vaccin European would have been less naive, but we would have started these vaccins wars. Will be interesting what the long term consequences are of having UK and US vaccinated two months sooner. I don't think Europe will forget this.

But if the contract states there are no competing customers, and talks about 4 different sites, I'd say most bases should have been covered.

But does the AZ-EU Advance Purchase Agreement[1], which is the somewhat redacted document that was published, talk about 4 different sites? I haven't found anything about specific sites so far, nor any guarantee that there are no competing customers. Have I missed something?

In section 5.1, it does state that AZ shall use its BREs to manufacturer the Initial European Doses within the EU. Then in section 5.4, it states that AZ shall use its BREs to manufacture the Vaccine at manufacturing sites located within the EU, and that specifically for section 5.4 only, that includes the UK. If the exception proves the rule, those sections together appear to imply that AZ must try to manufacture those initial batches for the EU within the EU not including the UK, and then any subsequent manufacture can be done in either the EU or UK (and otherwise there are some additional provisions about other possibilities). Maybe a lawyer can comment on the choice of language there, but it seems awkwardly written to me.

[1] https://www.rai.it/dl/doc/2021/02/19/1613725900577_AZ_FIRMAT...

It does not say there is no competing contract, it says no contract would prevent fulfilment of its contract. The EU contract stipulates that the delivery schedule is only an estimate, so another contract that was estimated to permit that delivery schedule would not conflict. It also seems to stipulate that the initial 300M doses will be manufactured within the EU, but this is incidental to this claim.

Sources? I've heard the "EU signed before UK" multiple times now, but nobody ever links to a source. It just seems unlikely, no? Why would they be so catastrophically far behind in that case?

Similarly - the NHS is great, but not unique. Norway for example has a system akin to the NHS (and so do many EU countries) and there's no correlation there. Norway is waaaaay behind the UK and the US. Again, it seems unlikely that the NHS is the cause.

It's obvious you hate the Tories, but that shouldn't cloud your judgment to such a degree that you fail to celebrate the real achievement of the UK's vaccination rate.

It's my impression that the vaccination program in Denmark is very efficient just like in the UK. However, the speed is limited by the vaccine imports which are governed by deals made by the EU. I would think that Norway is similarly limited by imports. (They are not in the EU so probably are making deals at a national level.)

Individual member states can approve their own vaccines. Look at Hungary. Italy wants to use and manufacture the Russian vaccine, but the EMA hasn’t approved it yet. Why not?

> the Russian vaccine, but the EMA hasn’t approved it yet. Why not?

Because nobody applied for approval for the longest time. It was just a few weeks ago that a German company decided to apply for this approval. Now the wheels of assessment are turning.

https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/news/ema-starts-rolling-review-...

The EU “time-wasting meme” comes from a direct quote from the AZ CEO.

According to Dominic Cummings recent select committee hearing, the vaccine programme was largely built outside/adjacent to any existing NHS processes. It was given NHS branding for public trust reasons (just like the new-from-the-ground-up Track and Trace endeavour).

The vaccination rollout programme is very much NHS. Vaccination is something the NHS does. So that shouldn’t be surprising.

Believe Cummings point was that The Department of Health wasn’t in control as it is in terms of test and trace. So NHS + Cabinet office (and not DHSC’s normal red tape, funding models) = success.

However, I think “sources” in the vaccination task force have said Cummings is full of it.

Administering each vaccine seems to be 100% NHS. While it is quite likely that Cummings is full of it, he did specifically mention that the vaccine task force works outside of the Department of Health.

“That is why we had to take the vaccine process out of the Department of Health.”

Q193, https://committees.parliament.uk/oralevidence/1911/html/

Cummings is a self-serving apparatchik with an eye to his future reputation so of course he’s trying to claim he was involved in the one successful program initiated by the government. I’m not sure why you give his claims any credence given his proven lies elsewhere.

I’m no fan of his and ad hominem arguments don’t help anyone. Considering the lack of transparency across the whole vaccine programme, I think the fact he made the point several times without being called out (in a committee hearing designed to call out any BS) is quite pertinent.

He lied to the public, repeatedly, in a very obvious way. He was also in that segment being fed softball questions by Aaron Bell, Conservative MP which were probably arranged in advance.

I therefore don't in any way trust his self-assessment of his own department's work and the 'vaccine task force' he set up, which incidentally hired some of his associates, who were paid very well, for example the PR firm:

https://www.ft.com/content/6159d5b7-171c-49ed-b318-144efcc4c...

A director of the public relations firm paid £670,000 to advise the head of the UK government's coronavirus vaccine task force is a longstanding business associate of Dominic Cummings.

Gosh, that article is incredibly revealing of some serious cronyism going on. It does also, however, confirm that the task force was operating outside of the DoH as per the original point.

If you trust what he says about who did what. If you don't, it could mean it operated outside the DoH but actually did very little in the procurement process.

I don’t trust Cummings, I trust the scrutiny of the select committee and the FT journalists.

No, EU countries definitely don’t get as many doses from AZ. Distribution is NOT the reason the UK are ahead, but earlier shipments.

> On the other hand the UK still has a fully nationalised health service which means that it was in a much better position to be able to scale the vaccinations. That's probably the real reason that they're ahead.

EU doesn't have problems with vaccination but with supply of vaccines, we use up all we can get (at least until AZ issues, now people are afraid to vaccinate with it).

There are many (all?) countries in EU that have health service nationalised in EU. The only country I know that doesn't is US.

Public Health care =/= nationalized health service

e.g. germany is holding up a ton of vaccines for the second shot right now, so no, we are not using everything we have. Supply is one thing, distribution is another. And the EU has trouble sorting out the latter, a problem that will hurt even when supply increases to a point were there will be more doses than needed around June/July.

I'm genuinely curious what's the difference between public and nationalized health service? Nationalized for me means that something is owned by state (and for me it is the same as public).

(You are right I forgot about second dozes, but I think that's a good thing considering manufacturers are not supplying us on schedule - and some stupid countries - like mine - use up all vaccines and hope that there will be a second doze in 6 weeks).

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