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Comment by aktuel | Hacker News Reader

This is hair splitting, because the effect is exactly the same. The UK made sure not to export any vaccines until it has more than enough. This is exactly what the the US is doing, even if they use technically slightly different means.

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Having a preferential contract with a single supplier is not remotely the same as imposing export controls on every supplier within a territory. The EU is and always has been allowed to source vaccines from the UK and the fact it voluntarily chose not to does not mean it was 'effectively' banned from doing so. The British government spent months and tens of millions of pounds setting up the AZ supply chain while the EU were haggling over its contract. It's not then unreasonable for the British government to require that it has priority on the supply it was instrumental in creating.

How is it hair splitting?

If the EU had paid for the vaccine's development, they could have had the deal instead.

But they didn't.

You just confirmed my point. The EU -in contrast to the US and the UK- did not want any exclusivity. They wanted collaboration and a fair distribution of vaccines. They negotiated on a EU level exactly to avoid any nationalistic competition. I am not saying that the US/UK strategy is bad in any objective way. I am just saying that it is the same strategy.

By "fair" do you mean EU countries favoured over the rest of the world? How much have the EU exported? They only house 6% of the world's population, but are keeping something like 75% for themselves, no?

And how much would be the EU's "fair" share of vaccine manufactured in the UK? As they seem to be expecting far more than that 25% for themselves, from their retoric they wanted it "evenly" distributed, i.e. massively in their favour, directly from Ms Von der Leyen's mouth:

“That is the message to AstraZeneca, ‘You fulfil your contract with Europe before you start delivering to other countries’.”

There's nothing "fair" about the EU's distribution of the vaccine, claiming otherwise shows complete naivety or bare faced lying.

Other countries can also make the effort to produce it themselves.

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