It seems like this should simply motivate the EU review of the Netherlands plant to speed up, so that all these doses can be used as soon as possible if they're safe and effective. What am I misunderstanding here?
It sort of looks from the outside that Brexit was done just in time as the UK government is now saving more UK lives than they would otherwise. If I were an EU member I would be extremely critical of the current regime and truly question how they are legit when the EU is far behind the rest of the developed world in this.
It’s not fair to EU citizens that pay into the pot of mostly unelected representation.
What can we say? Once upon a time there was a belief that the world could come together and solve it problems if there just was some good will among the countries of the world.
This spirit still survives in the EU leadership that have spent so much time working for that on the European scale, so they simply have too much faith in international collaboration.
So, if everyone had brought in export bans, then it's likely that wouldn't have been the end of it; trade restrictions on precursors and equipment and those little glass bottles (these were seriously a problem for vaccine manufacture at one point) would have followed, and world production would have ground to a halt. No country/bloc except possibly China can make a vaccine in large quantities single-handed.
The EU's mistake was in being the only big producer not to ban or heavily restrict export; being the last one to do it would be very dangerous and more likely to cause escalation. That's still a concern for current proposed EU export restrictions.
Saying it's not effective for older people, temporarily banning it, saying it's not for younger people etc. At this point a lot of average people are skeptical not because they are anti-vaxx but because of the mixed messages from the governments.
Delay 2 weeks to double check some reaction numbers vs rush and possibly cause thousands of deaths?
I think it's good they were willing to put on brakes if not sure, and good they resumed when science told them it was fine.
Except that's not the order that things went. They put on the brakes after 'science' told them it was fine to continue, and then resumed based on no new (public) scientific information.
Even if their intentions are good, the timing and communication around the whole things looks and feels chaotic and arbitrary and does not make people feel confident that they have any idea what they are doing.
Nobody said that; they said that the trial showed no statistically useful evidence that it was effective for older people (which was true, at least for the original trial). Given limited supplies of AZ it arguably made more sense to use the more plentiful Pfizer vaccine for groups it was known to work on, and use the rarer AZ vaccine for groups it was known to work on.
This was informed by the limited supply; if AZ had been the main vaccine available decisions were different. As it is, restricting AZ to under 65s didn't meaningfully slow rollouts in countries that did it.
The fact that EU is the only western entity that produces vaccines and where export is allowed makes it much more complicated.
And these guys shall now solve a problem for real despite having a track record of being unable to do so?
As a consequence, the EU imposed that the commission would lead the vaccine acquisition negociation. The plan was simple: prevent countries from talking to the labs, get a good deal on the vaccines because you represent a huge market, and then use that victory to justify the EU existence/need after the Brexit blow.
Of course that plan did not materialize, the EU "great deal" that was announced by an overly confident Ursula von der Leyen was just smoke and mirrors, and now that the reality is hitting, the EU tries to do everything in it's power - as an aferthought - to do some damage control. And it's not pretty.
I hope the EU gets it together and maybe other developed countries can help them after some time. It’s sad to see my friends there headed into another lockdown when everyone else is planning parties and trips for this summer and just getting back to life.
https://www.politico.eu/article/breton-no-astrazeneca-jabs-e...
but this is still a guess at this point.
Did Moderna get more support from other companies/the government?
(I suppose my point is that I would have expected such teething problems from a young company like Moderna, but they seem to have done everything right.)
The EU started negotiating later and signed a contract with fewer remedies than the UK (https://www.politico.eu/article/the-key-differences-between-...). It's not at all surprising that AZ is focusing their efforts on the UK.
Must have been some contract...
Through I think that isn't going anywhere outside of bureaucracy, it's still a valid export controlled vaccine just not produced in a valid way.
But then if the pandemic would have been mostly over by now they would probably have gotten away with it.
To me one likely explanation for this is that AZ was holding off on applying to the EU in the hope that they could make these doses "in secret" and sell them outside the EU.
Another, more mundane one, is that their back office is just a total shitshow with so much panic going on that somebody just didn't file it.
Which makes the number found here really curios.