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Europe's Vaccine Disaster

spiegel.de

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Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#231

Post by petre »

pelasaco wrote: post #208
cosmodisk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also pro-EU,remainer,etc. The problem is that the EU is the political graveyard, because countries send the most absurd people there. Not all of them,of course,but a lot. EU works when things are going slow and because of the sheer economical scale and power, everybody takes it serious when it comes to negotiations. But the EC isn't a bunch of experts on rapid situations. It's exactly the same when a French civil…

thats true. At least in Germany, you are just sent to the EU Parlament if you re not performing well in the country level.

Except von der Leyen was sent in as head of the Comission, a position which is essentially the Prime Minister of the EU. The PM's or the head of the Comission's job is to get sh*t done, as opposed to bragging about it and passing the responsability and the blame onto others.

Sorry to say but BJ is way better in this regard. He has delivered Brexit and the UK is in a much better position regarding vaccinations.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#232

Post by radu_floricica »

noja wrote: post #206
mrtksn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese and the Russian vaccines were not even considered. Now those are used in mass vaccinations, soon EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all. People don't even want to talk about that, as if those alternatives don't exists. Non-EU countries in Europe are getting them. Serbia(6.1) and Turkey(2.3) are already close to EU average(2.6) or better on the vaccination process.

> Chinese and the Russian vaccines were not even considered. The Russian vaccine's "trial" was mostly a non-consensual trial carried out on their military. I expect this lowered confidence. Does China have a vaccine with decent effectiveness yet? Last time I read about it, the number was around 50%.

I don't see how being consensual or not has any bearing on its efficacy. Not to mention that any model I have of russian military (or any military) tells me that finding volunteers for a pandemic-ending vaccine would be a very easy task.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#233

Post by pmontra »

pelasaco wrote: post #208
cosmodisk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also pro-EU,remainer,etc. The problem is that the EU is the political graveyard, because countries send the most absurd people there. Not all of them,of course,but a lot. EU works when things are going slow and because of the sheer economical scale and power, everybody takes it serious when it comes to negotiations. But the EC isn't a bunch of experts on rapid situations. It's exactly the same when a French civil…

thats true. At least in Germany, you are just sent to the EU Parlament if you re not performing well in the country level.

Italy as well. When they want to get rid of somebody at national level and save everybody's face, they promote to some role in the EU. Somebody come back, others stay there for years or forever.

It's Romans' "promoveatur ut amoveatur", promove to remove.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#234

Post by beagle3 »

dogma1138 wrote: post #48
roenxi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sends negotiators to get highest vaccine price worldwide!" headline would be even worse for the negotiators political career than "[She seeks] to Duck Responsibility". They aren't going to negotiate higher prices on a vaccine in a global emergency.

Why not? Israel did just that, they offered double the US price for their doses + full access to the medical data. They vaccinated half their population whilst the EU is stuck making a surprised Pikachu face.

True, but do note Israel’s population is 1/50 of Europe, so the logistics of accommodating it (on the producer side) are relatively easy.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#235

Post by dathinab »

robotmay wrote: post #10

From what I've gathered (unfortunately mostly on Reddit, before this article), Ursula von der Leyen wasn't exactly fondly thought of in Germany before this and somehow keeps managing to fail upwards. Is that accurate? The utterly bonkers u-turn today was a bit of a shocker. For those that haven't seen the news, the European Commission managed to say they were effectively going to establish border controls between the…

> Germany before this and somehow keeps managing to fail upwards. Is that accurate?

Yes, I'm strongly irritated that she still has *any* job in politics after the failures she caused and the fact that a lot of it smelled quite a bit of a dangerous mix of incompetence and corruption....

But then I also have not looked too much into here (or politics in general) so I might be wrong.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#236

Post by MrRiddle »

vixen99 wrote: post #182
MrRiddle wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh, I’m not convinced it’s such a disaster it’s being portayed. Serbia is/was heavily hit by Covid, yet only 12% more people died in 2020 than 5 year average before that. Again, meh.

Romanian death rate per 1000 (8th highest in the world) has increased monotonically from 12.7 in 2015 by 0.1/1000 each year to 13.2 in 2020. In other words Covid has had zero effect (to one significant place) on the increase in rate of death per 1000. However to claim Covid has not been a disaster is disingenuous. On many fronts it's been a calamity though much of this has been self-inflicted.

What I believe Covid proven, at least in Serbia, is that you can’t have hospitals built 50 years ago serve almost double population of Belgrade. It shows how politicians didn’t invest in healthcare.

In my mind, the whole thing is so overblown because the medical sector works on fumes. Doctors and nurses are working in Germany, and our hospital are few and far between.

We have thousands of young and educated leaving the country every year.

That’s the real tragedy.

However, this is not to say I’m against measures. I wear a mask, I social distance, I haven’t seen my friends in months.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#237

Post by throwaway4good »

noja wrote: post #206
mrtksn wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chinese and the Russian vaccines were not even considered. Now those are used in mass vaccinations, soon EU would be behind all countries but those who barely have any government at all. People don't even want to talk about that, as if those alternatives don't exists. Non-EU countries in Europe are getting them. Serbia(6.1) and Turkey(2.3) are already close to EU average(2.6) or better on the vaccination process.

> Chinese and the Russian vaccines were not even considered. The Russian vaccine's "trial" was mostly a non-consensual trial carried out on their military. I expect this lowered confidence. Does China have a vaccine with decent effectiveness yet? Last time I read about it, the number was around 50%.

Turkey says China's Sinovac COVID vaccine 91.25% effective in late trials

https://www.google.dk/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/i...

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#238

Post by esja »

triceratops wrote: post #224
esja wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now a lot of people are getting vaccinated - an unprecedented achievement. Did that happen by magic? That’s one example that a federal plan existed, and there are plenty of others if you care to look for yourself. It’s been 12 months now since the US banned flights from China. A lot has happened since then. People can differ on whether the federal plan was a good one (I happen to believe it wasn’t very good), b…

> Right now a lot of people are getting vaccinated But we are far behind schedule and projections. 20m people were supposed be vaccinated in December. Only 1m were actually vaccinated.[1] 5% is a failing grade. > That’s one example that a federal plan existed Even the federal vaccination plan under Trump was essentially "leave it to the states". Now I accept that in these circumstances state governments are better eq…

My concern was just with trianglem misrepresenting reality. “Literally no plan” means: literally no plan.

You’re making a different (and better) argument here, which I have no problem with at all. Although if you look at the situation in Europe right now, you’d probably have to admit the US did a better job on vaccines. In my country the Moderna vaccine looks like it will save the day for us. We didn’t make that happen so fast and so effectively - the US government did.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#239

Post by mattmanser »

jackTheMan wrote: post #92
peteretep wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if the UK was somehow being duplicitous here, and had somehow undermined the EU vaccine program But let us be clear that it isn’t, and they are not.

Do you know how many doses UK is getting over the same period? Does UK also missing 60% of their contract or they are prioritized?

The UK actually ordered that vaccine way before the EU, the UK essentially paid for manufacturing to start.

EU didn't, and only ordered it after it was clear it would work. 3 months later than the UK.

So astrazeneca started manufacturing doses in the UK 3 months ago, but the manufacturing teething problems in the EU factory are 3 months behind.

Essentially the EU, at best, are trying to jump the queue, which is very frowned upon over here in roast beef. At worse they were too slow paying for their own vaccine, are shocked to find you can't magic it out of thin air and are now trying to steal it from the UK to save face.

Re: Europe's Vaccine Disaster

#240

Post by erkanerol »

As far as I see, some people are questioning why EU didn't prefer Chinese or Russian vaccines. I know only one of the Chinese vaccines: CoronaVac (developed by Sinovac)

We still don't have clear phase 3 results. The announced results (by Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia) are so different. It is not easy to trust it at the moment.

BUT WE ALREADY VACCINATED ALMOST TWO MILLIONS IN TURKEY :D

So the real results are coming... Just wait a couple of weeks more.

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