Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Following the recently announced failure of French vaccine trials, the EU appears to have panicked, and is attempting to seize vaccines made under contract for the UK. They are even demanding vaccines physically manufactured in Britain be sent to Europe. The UK contract was reportedly signed three months before the EU contract.
EU Bureaucrats Try to Seize UK-Made Vaccines After Covid Failures
VICTORIA FRIEDMAN
28 Jan 2021The European Union, which failed to secure early production of coronavirus vaccines, is demanding that UK-made AstraZeneca doses produced for Britons be sent to Europe instead.
Earlier this week, the European Commission threatened to halt the export of vaccines made in Europe produced under a UK contract, after both drugs companies Pfizer and AstraZeneca revealed a delay in delivery to the EU market due to production problems in Belgium.
While Eurocrats sought to blame AstraZeneca and alleged that it was favouring the UK as a customer, the company’s CEO revealed that the UK had a contract in place three months before the bloc, and implied Brussels bureaucracy was to blame for the lack of progress with successful vaccine production.
Now, in order to make up for the bloc’s shortfall, the EU is demanding that not only are exports of the drugs forbidden but that millions of vaccines made in the UK by the joint British AstraZeneca-Oxford venture — under the British government’s contract, meant for Britons — be sent to Europe, according to The Telegraph.
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The Eurocrat said: “Not being able to ensure manufacturing capacity is against the letter and the spirit of our agreement. We reject the logic of ‘first come, first served’. That may work at the neighbourhood butchers, but not in contracts. And not in our advanced purchase agreements.”
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Peter Liese, of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), said: “We have to show our weapons… we need to tell other companies in the world, if you treat the Europeans as second class you will suffer for this.”
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Read more: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2021/01/28/eu-bureaucrats-try-to-seize-uk-made-vaccines-after-covid-failures/
Thanks to President Trump, the US is unlikely to be directly impacted by this geopolitical ugliness. A priority of President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed was that US vaccines be manufactured in the USA.
I am genuinely curious as to why no country outside of eastern Europe is running tests on the Russian vaccine.
I wonder if anyone in charge even knows that there is a Russian vaccine. I haven’t seen mention of it in mainstream media (or even alternative media).
They know, Hungary the EU member is currently using it to vaccinate their population
… and been criticised for not following Herr Merkel’s orders.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1387279/EU-news-Hungary-russia-vaccine-sputnik-v-viktor-orban-vladimir-Putin-eu-summit
They’ll probably go for the “made in China” vaccine too, which will pour more oil on an already raging fire.
Hungary has just cleared the Chinese vaccine for use as well as the Russian ‘Sputnik’ vaccine.
Serbia has also cleared the Russian ‘Sputnik’ vaccine, ordering 40,000 doses initially but hopes to begin production of the ‘Sputnik vaccine in Serbia for home use and, eventually, export.
It’s part of the anti-Russian rhetoric spewing out of certain western governments. The initial response was to downplay the Russian vaccine saying they couldn’t possibly have tested it properly in the time they had and it would affect millions with the side-effects. When the expected vaccine deaths didn’t occur as Russia rolled out first 1 then 3 different vaccine program’s, everyone ignored Russia completely and Pfizer (I think) became the world’s first vaccine, despite getting clearance weeks after the first Russian one. Vaccine nationalism started back then, it hasn’t just surfaced.
And now they appear to have followed through with a ban on export of vaccines contracted to supply other countries. Interestingly, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine apparently uses a key component patented and produced exclusively in Britain (basically the antifreeze carrier by my understanding). It will be interesting to see if this product is still exported by the UK.
“Croda is to play a vital role in the production of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine.
The East Yorkshire headquartered specialty chemical company has entered into an agreement with the US giant to supply a new ingredient that carries the active element into the body. It will be produced at sites in the UK and US.
The contract with Pfizer runs for five years and awards Croda an initial supply contract for four component excipients – described as the vehicle to transfer the drug – for the first three years of the contract.”
Don’t rush to buy shares, I bought some 6 months ago, and sold about two weeks ago with just 5% net profit.
https://www.business-live.co.uk/manufacturing/croda-covid-vaccine-pfizer-coronavirus-19255856
Paul
There in no export ban on vaccines AFAIK, they have just mandated receiving permission for vaccine exports.
They are getting ready for it, why else evoke article 16 of the UK-EU’s NI treaty.
Vuk
Yes they took some steps down that deeply unwise article 16 path, but now it looks like the EU are backtracking from that.
While not a complete ban, their misuse of the Northern Ireland protocols is effectively the same thing. The EU is the world’s expert in non-tariff barriers to trade. They know that simply holding things up at the border “for paperwork” costs the importer/exporter so much time and money, and possibly destruction of a perishable load that while not technically a ban, it has exactly the same effect. Just look at exports of live Langoustines from Scotland to France. Hold them up at the border long enough, and the restaurants no longer want them. The risk is too great, so they get used for frozen scampi instead.
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-01-29/covid-eu-bans-exports-of-vaccines-potentially-putting-uk-supply-at-risk
P.S. the title of that article has just been toned down.
Interestingly, from a public health perspective, I think the strategy of vaccinating vulnerable groups first may be misguided. Anyone still working is likely to have far more contacts, so vaccinating workers first would be likely to break chains of transmission. That inhibition of transmission should also protect the vulnerable until they too are vaccinated. In other words, vaccinating vulnerable people who are shielding is not likely to have significant impact on the R0 number. General vaccination of adults who are in contact with many people would be much more likely to end the pandemic quickly. It would be interesting if a country followed that strategy. Any volunteers? Sweden?
If the risk of dying from the virus was reasonably the same across populations, then your strategy would be correct. With COVID the risk of dying if you are under the age of 60 is quite small and gets smaller as you move toward a younger population.
The entire purpose of vaccinating a population is to prevent death and significant sequalae (long term complications). So we can try to prevent those deaths by vaccinating people who won’t die or have problems with the hope that we prevent those most at risk of dying from getting the disease. Or we just vaccinate those most at risk of dying directly.
Given that these vaccines are limited at this point, we need to vaccinate those at risk of dying. If no one is dying from this disease, does it really matter if the R0 is still above 1?
Yes, probably more applicable to countries such as Australia/NZ/Taiwan who have been successful in avoiding mass infections, but still need a route back to opening up the economy – eventually including international travel.
Paul C
It would be interesting if a country followed that strategy. Any volunteers? Sweden?
Indonesia have done exactly that – started covid vaccination with workers.
https://www.dw.com/en/indonesias-covid-vaccination-campaign-prioritizes-workers/a-56316852
Thanks for alerting me to that. I will have to keep an eye on their progress.
Try persuading young people, who have virtually zero chance of serious illness or death, to accept a vaccine with known, if mild, side effects; to protect other people, just is not going to happen. Especially as 100% of them would have to be vaccinated, and that vaccine efficacy would have to be 100% as well. Not going to happen. A large amount do not even wear face-coverings, and some even sport the lanyards signifying exemption from wearing protection. Not going to happen. everybody is selfish now.
I wonder why did the EU wait so long to try to secure vaccines? Did France have the final word hoping their vaccine was a “better one”? I wonder if this came down to greed?
In any case, if I were UK I would be building the infrastructure to fill the vaccine bottles locally, not in Germany. Wouldn’t it be something if large amounts of vaccine meant for UK were actually seized in Germany?
I think that it might be a paralysis of indecision caused by having too many competing choices. The UK approach was to hedge their bets and support several companies at once hoping they’d backed at least one winner. I don’t know for sure but I think the EU was reluctant to commit in case they picked a loser so became unable to make a decision at all. In hindsight they should have allowed individual countries to order vaccine then consolidated those into an EU wide approach. Because of that indecision some EU countries have broken ranks and are making their own deals for vaccine.
This why centralized, government management set-up are failures. Nicholas Nassim Taleb discusses these issues in his sequel to The Black Swan, Anti-Fragile.
It is the problem of top-down organized/run, fragile systems, as opposed to a bottom-up style of letting the manufacturers compete with little government interference (as Trump Admin did). The old Soviet Union 5-years plans are an example of top-down directed fragile systems that eventually led to disastrous consequences for the people when they inevitably failed.
What ever happened to ivermectin. Not to long ago I read on wuwt that ivermectin is very effective. One commenter asked why doesn’t ivermectin work in America but does in India. This comment received a lot of support. So if ivermectin works and is cheap why are we arguing about expensive vaccines. Before I get slaughtered bear in mind I am one of the laymen and not a scientist and the more I try to learn about this dam pandemic the more confusing it gets. Are people dying with it or from it, is the survival rate really 99.97% if so how would we even know how effective a vaccine is, PCR tests with a CT of 45 which I’m led to believe is useless. I could go on but you get the point. How is average Joe to make sense of this.
Unfortunately, politics has apparently trumped rational medicine.
I think you may be right. If a cheap cure has been pushed aside to make way for a more profitable vaccine then that erodes my confidence in the vaccine. Why trust a seemingly rushed through vaccine when there is a cure in a drug that’s been around for a long time and likely has no unforseen consequences ?
https://www.drugs.com/price-guide/ivermectin
According to the numbers given above, the cost of the AZ vaccine is cheaper than ivermectin.
I have long said that the EU will eventually make the Brits look like geniuses for brexiting that cluster farrago. And sure enough, within a couple of months the EU dose it.
I agree wholeheartedly. Just curious when you said the EU dose it was that a pun or a spelling mistake?
The EU obviously did it with a large dose.
I can’t type or spell. And, I am not that clever.
Don’t put yourself down, please. It was a very amusing, if unintended pun. Kudos to you sir.
Unfortunately, the EU have done something even worse: They have made Nigel Farage look sensible. He no longer looks like a vocal clown, he looks like a sensible prophet.
Dear Lord, it’s worse than we thought!
Its rather sad to how WUWT is turning into a political site instead of site for skeptics of CAGW regardless of their political views. When you bow to one group of people, you are showing you other end to others.
Respectfully, you don’t have to read anything you don’t want to. No one is forcing you.
CAGW is political. In fact, it is policy in most countries. It sure ain’t science.
I believe the climate scam was always political so if your talking cagw, whether you’re skeptical or not politics will be in there somewhere.
I would imagine that if most of here were raving socialists, you would be cheering the politics.
I only you had the slightest idea how silly you little bubble looks from the Nordic countries, where I am from. But then again, bubbles exist because of unwillingness to understand other views.
Ah yes, anyone who disagrees with me is living in a bubble, but I of course am bubble free. I know this because everybody I know agrees with me.
Yawn, look in the mirror pal. In the Nordic countries, every opinion is listened to and the every one of these countries have large number of political parties representing differing views. The whole point of any genuine discussion is to hear differing views so that we can learn from each other. Demonizing all those you disagree with, like the EU in this post, is not a way for grown-ups to deal with the challenges.
“we need to tell other companies in the world, if you treat the Europeans as second class you will suffer for this.”
Bizarre statement as the EU is clearly trying to turn every European into a second class citizen who lacks reliable power, employment, accountable governance or free choice in a wide array of decisions about how to live and thrive. So the message is essentially a threat of reprisals for recognizing the reality.
C’mon EU – there’s a cure already out there, stop being so racist and opposed to the wisdom of other cultures!
https://english.alaraby.co.uk/english/news/2020/2/25/applying-essential-oil-to-anus-cures-coronavirus-iranian-cleric
Just a little violet oil dabbed on your bum will take care of you right quick!
You dare laugh at me? Might I remind you that China now recommends anal swabbing for CoVID checks. You didn’t realize that CoVID was such a buggery bugger, did you?
It wasn’t actually clear if said cleric was suggesting everyone does it themselves or if he was going to do it for others? That’s one way to get your kicks I suppose – each to their own.
The EU’s ire on this subject is deeply irrational, as shown by a cool look at the numbers involved.
How many vaccine doses would it be practically and politically possible to ship from the UK across the channel to the EU? Maybe ten million at most. This corresponds to less than 3% of the EU’s population. And that would be at the cost of damaging political acrimony, as is already happening.
Much better to just get production sorted out in Belgium and the Netherlands. And to learn the lesson that speed and flexibility do really matter sometimes more than rigid organisational orthodoxy.
You got it in one, which sets you apart from the crowd of ‘denier’ criers on this thread, sorry, ‘remainer’ criers who believe everything they read in the tabloids. Oh those nasty European imperialists. And then crowing that the EU caved in, Barnier told the Council off and so on. We won!
Ask the simple question, why so public, why humiliate your colleagues (Barnier’s) in public when all you had to do was walk down the corridor and knock on the door? Because he was playing to the gallery, that’s why. Because the whole thing was a charade, and the whole of the UK press fell for it, lock stock and barrel. You have been played. You have been played with a little machiavellian scheme to get a strong message across without spelling it out (that would be impolite, wouldn’t it).
I’ll tell you a secret. The UK is widely seen as an unreliable partner. Not the people, the bureaucracy. What partners in agreements perceive as firm commitments that shall be stuck to whatever, is often treated as declarations of intent by UK bureaucrats. Something that is ignored when the ‘circumstances change’. I quote from personal experience: “our partners will understand”. (There is one exception, the military.)
Just look at the eternal renegotiations of terms for the EU membership, the opt-outs, by Maggie, by Major, by Cameron (before the referendum) and the attempt by Boris to wriggle out commitments concerning Northern Ireland. And with the current bureaucratic mess in industries such as fisheries, transport a what not more, you can see the next “they will understand” being considered. And the EU won’t have any of it anymore.
So they sent a message: we can play that little game too. You didn’t like it one bit. So don’t even think of it yourself.
I’ll tell you a secret – in the UK the EU has always been viewed as a bit of a joke. We have always viewed the other countries in Europe as partners but not the EU. It was an interesting experiment that has failed, gone far too far and should be scrapped before it rips Europe apart completely. We tried to look at necessary and vital changes over the years only to be shut out completely by the EU leadership out of touch with reality. Is it any wonder we could no longer stand to be in such an organisation?
Ed
Honesty in relationships needs to be cultivated.
If you are a bully, all around you will seem to be liars.
So your position boils down to a belief that since doing something this stupid would be bad for the EU, therefore the EU isn’t doing it and anyone who says otherwise is an anti-EU bigot.
The EU is planning to stop exports of vaccines to non EU countries which will impact Australia which pre-ordered vaccines many months ago with valid contracts. To cover for their incompetence on this issue the unelected Brussels mandarins are trying to break legal arrangements between private companies and elected governments. No wonder Brexit got up.
I believe the EU has now reversed it’s position. However I think the WHO have now intervened and asked the UK to stop vaccinating after the ‘at risk’ vaccinations and supply their vaccine to other countries so that they can ‘catch up’. I kid you not.
Why is everyone so obsessed with the vaccine?
There seems to be an assumption that this will prevent transmission and infection?
The UK government in their briefing the other day, from what I could make out were saying again that they do not know if it prevents infection and transmission and seemed to be implying it is most likely it does not prevent them. It is thought likely it reduces transmission to some extent but it is not confirmed or quantified yet. Probably different from one vaccine to another. The main thing seems to be taking pressure off hospitals, but in the government briefing we were reminded again you will still get some vaccinated people catching it with a severe outcome.
In fact, I may be imagining it, but thought there was a hint during the answers to questions in their last briefing that as results come in they may review the vaccination strategy. Why vaccinate the half of the population who are unlikely to have a serious outcome from the virus if the vaccine is not having a big impact on infection and transmission? Why risk a hurriedly validated product (the pressure to design, validate, manufacture reminds me of the 737Max issue) and strategy on a virus we still have much to learn about if we likely get limited impact beyond vaccinating the 5 to 15% most at risk?
Because the latest results show amongst the trial population of those who had the vaccine, no deaths from covid at all, greatly reduced levels of severe illness.
If the vaccine can prevent covid deaths and dramatically reduce the load on health services, then we can return to normal life much more quickly.
Will vaccinated individuals still become infected just like now? Of course.
Thanks Steve. As an engineer perhaps I could tell everyone my product testing showed zero failures but in reality I only had time to test 10 samples to a quarter of the design life and only one type of test and we’re expecting to sell hundreds of thousands. So simplistically with low confidence zero failures could mean reliability might be 91% or better at quarter design life on that one type of test. As we get better data we can develop the best strategy of risks, costs vs warranty returns etc.
One of the points I was trying to make is depending where the real numbers are for impact of vaccine on infections and transmission and reduction of severity and across risk factors etc our current lack of accuracy for these as well as taking into account other factors like cases around the world dropping, lack of knowledge of lengterm effects of disease or vaccine could perhaps mean the difference between several very different strategies e.g. perhaps vaccinate everyone or only vaccinate a very small number of people we know (e.g. due to age, blood group, genes, lifestyle etc, which I would have thought we must be close to having reasonably useful data on that by now, surely?) are likely to have severe outcome, just enough of that group to keep the impact of the virus within other causes of hospitalisation or death like flu. We could weigh up these options, risks etc both as a government and as an individual.
I’m always nervous when we put so much faith in science and engineering to control nature and perhaps we need to be a bit more cautious how we deal with threats.
The latest presentation by Dr. David Martin concerning the legal definition of a vaccine in the USA and why neither Pfizer nor Moderna meet this definition is fascinating.
We will vaccinate our hamsters before we give spare vaccines to you, Hancock tells EU
https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/we-will-vaccinate-our-hamsters-before-we-give-spare-vaccines-to-you-hancock-tells-eu-20210128204733