The EU is just naive with all the "let's do this together", e "lead by moral example", when in reality they should have placed precisely the first supply policy and everyone would be waiting for Pfizer vaccines until now.

It's sad, but it's the world we live in.

But the EU also bought from pfizer and moderna?

In India's case it was one of the first places to be licensed to make the AstraZenca vaccine, I think at no cost. The Serum Institute there, the world's largest vaccine producer, was the first place to start producing vaccine in quantity. I'm not sure you can really blame the west here. Though recently the US have been blocking supplies which I hope is a temporary glitch.

Did we read the same article? It literally blames the Netherlands for having insufficient refrigeration infrastructure for mRNA vaccines.

> Germany also publicly blamed the US for buying too much vaccines and sucking up all the production at a premium price in front of other countries

Which as the article says, was politics to cover up for their own delays.

> I'm from Belgium and I'm pretty sure that we could used some military law to force dips on vaccines we created ( Pfizer/Biontech) and could have done everything faster than the US if we wanted. But we didn't, since it's not fair, selfish and we wouldn't get away with it like the US

That just seems like an excuse. The EU also failed to invest in sufficient production capacity by fronting capital to jump start production before the vaccines were approved. From your own FT link:

> But investments by the EU to help companies cover upfront costs appear to have been relatively modest compared with those agreed by the US. Mr Wojahn said the EU had pre-financed production capacity with roughly €2bn in the summer and early autumn. In contrast, Donald Trump’s administration in the US began funding vaccine producers through its Operation Warp Speed programme back in March. It has spent more than $12bn to date — more than a third of which was given to Boston-based biotech Moderna alone

Germany also blames the European Commission in your FT article:

> But German politicians, including Bavarian premier Markus Söder, who also leads one of Germany’s governing parties, the Christian Social Union, have said the blame sits with the EU. “There was probably too much bureaucracy at the European Commission . . . too few of the right vaccines were ordered and price debates went on for too long”, Mr Söder told German newspaper Bild am Sonntag.

And from your Washington Post article:

> Even as Brussels and European capitals cry foul over bearing the brunt of supply chain issues from manufacturers and point to continued exports, sluggish vaccination programs in many European countries mean millions of delivered doses haven’t been used. The E.U.’s most populous member state, Germany, has administered just over 8 million vaccine doses but still has a backlog of 4.3 million doses in storage, according to government figures.

Did you read your own articles or did you have an opinion you were looking to confirm coming into this conversation?

That's exactly what EU is doing.

> Former German defense minister von der Leyen said the EU would only buy vaccines using mRNA technology — such as Pfizer and Moderna — for the next round of jabbing drives.

...

> Recently, the bloc decided not to exercise its options for another 300 million doses from AstraZeneca

https://www.dw.com/en/eu-sues-astrazeneca-over-delayed-deliv...

The reason for the lawsuit is to hold up a contract.

> When signing the contract with the EU, AstraZeneca committed to make its "best reasonable efforts" to deliver 180 million vaccine doses to the bloc in the second quarter of this year, making up a total of 300 million in the period from December to June. Last month, however, AstraZeneca said it would aim to deliver only one-third of that.

You don't sign up for a contract with the world's largest trading bloc and simply neg them. There are consequences and EU wants to ensure there will be some.

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.

A sizeable portion of my friends and coworkers managed to work the system to gain access to vaccines well before they otherwise would have. I'd strongly prefer the honest version of that system, wherein we wouldn't pretend that elites wouldn't cut the queue to finagle vaccines for themselves and their families. One option would have been setting aside ~5% of the total supply and putting it on the open market. I'd guess early doses would have gone for a few thousand dollars and we could have used the money to support vaccinations elsewhere.

If you don't see the difference between those that come up with the idea of banding together then almost immediately after everyone agrees go against everyone vs the rest which many of went their separate ways later once it became obvious "banding together" was a bad idea from the start I don't think anything I say will convince you.

>The EU deal was done with messed up priorities.

That's exactly my point.

This is utterly false. The vaccine is being used as quickly as it comes in. As of yesterday, more than 75% of all doses delivered to Germany have been administered. (Source: https://impfdashboard.de/) this includes the slow-down from temporarily halting the use of AstraZeneca.

Normally vaccine exports are no problem for the EU, originally there wasn't even the mechanism that is now used to block that one shipment.

Given all the circumstances (various vaccine exports still going on, Australia having a pretty calm Covid situation right now and starting production of their own AZ vaccine this month) I wonder if that shipment was deliberately chosen as a statement to get AZ to stop playing games while minimizing the impact it has on global efforts. (or maybe I'm giving bureaucrats too much credit)

Of course a heads-up notice to Australia would have been nice if that was the case.

So you say: >Other than that: Germany was in advanced talks with multiple suppliers way earlier than most EU countries in Summer 2020, was able to spend more and even got offered priority supply from Biontech (which only supplies Germany and Turkey directly, all other countries are supplied through Pfizer). Chancellor Merkel specifically ordered these talks and procurement efforts to be stopped, so that in solidarity with other EU countries procurement would be centralized by the EU (which then did everything wrong without politicians, also German politicians, intervening).

How does the above negate that German politicians were the first in EU to say they'll procure the vaccine by themselves few weeks after the EU procurement deliveries started? You talk about what happened directly after the end of EU talks. I talk about stuff that happened weeks later when it was apparent German-led EU effort was botched. Also I talk about it being "German led" not because U. Vdl happens to be German, but because first, it was a German's idea everyone agreed to, second I've heard they were given a leading role in the talks no doubt due to their prior involvement with the companies you mentioned(this may or may not be true as it is an unofficial information - names of 7 people from the so called Joint Negotiation Team have been kept secret by the commission despite multiple requests from the journalists, Eu Parliament members etc.) Now, looking at the whole situation a cynic could say - Germany was very involved in talks with manufacturers, but they were worried the rest of EU will start a bidding war with them so they got everyone involved in the " botched common procurement scheme" to finish their negotiations in peace. Then they cancelled their own already negotiated contract to show everyone they are serious. Fast forward to few weeks later. It becomes apparent common procurement is a botched job. Every other country has to consider if they want to start individual procurement negotiations while Germany has an already negotiated contract template they can pull out of a drawer. Is it an accurate description of intentions? Who knows, but based on the actions one could think that. German (federal) state actions annoy so many people elsewhere not because they are egoistic, but because at the same time as being self interest centered they are constantly telling other countries how greatly altruistic they are. Hypocrisy is what annoys people. Every democracy on earth treats its own citizens as priority - that is unsurprising. Not many of them, however, lecture neighbors on altruistic values while at the same time being the same as everyone else.

Your choice then. In the EU and NA, wherever nations pride themselves on their vaccination drives, either the makers of the vaccines have been indemnified by law or everyone who wants the vaccine has to sign an indemnification clause before getting the vaccine. In Germany the latter is the case.

It is a highly rational concern to distrust highly experimental vaccines, which these vaccines all are. The question in the risk calculation is, can you afford to position yourself against a means that can lessen the impact of a highly damaging virus? Perhaps individuals should make that choice, if states don't want to.

This is not the issue. A few billion would not have magically solved the problems with vaccine deliveries. The EU has contracts with pharmaceutical companies which these companies are not honoring sometimes intentionally so.

AstraZeneca for example doesn't have the production capacity to supply what they promised to the EU even if the Belgian site was working properly. That's the result of the EU audit. These companies are betting that the consequence of them not fullfiling their contractual obligation will be insignificant compared to their benefits. As these companies remain hugely profitable, their production issue is not linked to difficulty accessing capital. It is naive to assume things would have gone differently if the EU was paying more. It would just have meant more profits for them.

The heart of the issue is that contraty to the USA or China the EU is weak so companies don't hesitate trampling it. If a Chinese company did to China what AstraZeneca is doing to the EU, the CCP would take control of it and its CEO would never be seen again. Meanwhile, the USA has little qualm using its legal system to punish companies defying the state to much. Congressional inquiries are not fun.

They did. But after the approval went through. The EU have orders on generally way too many vaccines than it needs.

In my opinion they should, This is no time to play silly games regarding contract law. Vaccines should be produced as quickly as possible by as many capable facilities as possible.

Let's also not forget that most of the developing world is dead last in receiving vaccines, and greatly increasing production could prevent the death of countless lives.

But would it be legal? That kind of protectionism would definitely run counter to the ideals if the EU common market.

It's hard to know what EU countries might do, but during covid the EU avoided protectionism when it came to vaccines.

Of course, it could be different this time.

I think, the emphasis is wrong there on bargaining as a group. The US bargained also "as a group", if you will.The EU prioritised (in my eyes wrongly) pricing over speedy delivery and was risk averse: The US purchased most of the doses a whole half year before approval, the EU only bargained for options on vaccines pending approval.

There is a 10 day delay between the emergency approval of the FDA and the full approval of the EMA. But we do not see a 10 day delay in the vaccinations.

A delay of a ramp-up on the other hand by half-a-year looks more like what we see.

Also, the US does not allow exports of the vaccines produced in the US. To my knowledge, no such restrictions are in place in the EU.

This is untrue. The US in the process of exporting 4 million doses of vaccine between Mexico and Canada[1].

The US has also said that once they have ensured that there is enough vaccine supply for all Americans(likely around May 1st)it will begin exporting any surplus in the summer.[2] The US has not met that target of enough vaccines for its population.

The reality is that US and EU took very different approaches towards vaccine procurement. The US government acted more like an investor and threw insane sums of cash at the drugmakers with very few strings attached and the EU sought lower prices and higher accountability for drug makers. There were very different risk profiles between the two. In the end the EU placed their orders months after the US, the UK and Israel. Ursula von der Leyen seems quite content to shift the blame everywhere else and propagate the view that the EU is being taken advantage of.

[1] https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-digest-us-to-send-first-va...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/biden-moves-up-vaccine-tim...

It is (or was), AZ was to supply EU with 500M vaccines this year but changed that to 200M.

EU got really served on the vaccine front, UK got more from AZ, US got more from Pfizer/Moderna (both have 3x more vaccinated than EU). And each transport that we ought to get is smaller or dalayed.

I wouldn't be surprised if governments there blocked some of the vaccine export.

I really hope that there will be a backslash for those companies for not fulfilling their obligations. If not now then later when there is a race for subsidies for "free" prescription medications.