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EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

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Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#71

Post by turbinerneiter »

blfr wrote: post #53

The quality of leadership has really declined. Western countries seem to be run exclusively by petty managers. There's almost no "we shall fight them on the beaches" or "not because they are easy but because they are hard" and way more process, lawsuits, committees, etc. As it turns out, you need some charisma and vision to effectively do things.

Just look at how the "leaders" in place got there. Backroom deals instead of elections. Von der Leyen did not achieve a single thing in her career except for hiring consultants.

Our politicians are mostly lawyers, the job they and their staff do is all about laws. And even at that they suck, as is evident by the long list of laws they pass which are then denied by the supreme courts as unconstitutional.

We still don't have a good way of finding the best leaders and putting them in the potions where they are most effective, neither in politics nor in the economy (although there are positive examples of people and mechanisms in both).

I think we are super complacent with our representative democracy and we are failing to develop it further and make it better.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#72

Post by jarmitage »

Slartie wrote: post #57
jarmitage wrote: post #4

Does anyone know why all of the geopolitical discourse in the UK and Europe has been around arguing over a small supply, rather than about increasing manufacturing capacity?

Increasing manufacturing capacity is happening. BioNTech as the most important producer in Europe has brought multiple additional partners into production as well as an entire new plant, which by itself is churning out 1 billion doses per year when fully operational (they're still scaling up production there AFAIK, but have been shipping doses from there since April). Also, the CureVac vaccine is expected to be autho…

I feel like I gained more from this comment than the last month of mainstream media combined, so thank you for sharing.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#73

Post by rvieira »

blfr wrote: post #67
rvieira wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand your comment. "we shall fight them on the beaches" is war-time motivational speech. We live in peace-time (in Europe at least). In a stable, peace-time society, disputes are solved in courts.

An acute crisis requires a different mindset. When you shut down half of your economy, introduce curfew, try to keep people in their homes, and plenty of people are also dying, you're not at war but it's not quite peacetime either. https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2021/04/06/scientists-against...

"we shall fight them on the beaches" was not about metaphorical war. I was about real war, with real bombs falling and real enemy boots ready to invade.

The above post is about a contractual dispute, for which a lawsuit is the obvious path. I still don't understand what you'd expect.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#74

Post by [deleted] »

blfr wrote: post #53

The quality of leadership has really declined. Western countries seem to be run exclusively by petty managers. There's almost no "we shall fight them on the beaches" or "not because they are easy but because they are hard" and way more process, lawsuits, committees, etc. As it turns out, you need some charisma and vision to effectively do things.

[deleted]

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#75

Post by NumberCruncher »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #44
codebeaker wrote: post #19

Sorry if this is considered off-topic, but I mus thave surely missed something about why AstraZeneca is seemingly the only choice on the vaccine market. I am German, we developed the Pfizer vaccine, but there is _no_ news about it, it seems like the AZ vaccine is the only option. Is it a case that Pfizer wasn't viable, wasn't used here, or only made lucrative contracts with other countries, or is it being used, quiet…

I can't remember exact values but my guess is this friction comes from the price point. AZ was negotiated at something like less than 2 euros per shot for EU markets, and the Pfizer contracts varied wildly for different countries but it was negotiated at about 15 euros per shot for EU. With my cynical hat on if you are having to vaccinate millions that order of magnitude difference probably matters. What I haven't se…

I remember the exact values, at least the ones published on public media (German ZDF):

The negotiation wasn't about the purchasing prise of a shot, but about the price to "reserve a shot". Germany spent ca. 4€ per capita on "reserving an AZ shot", which adds up to a total spending of ca. 350M€.

Just to have a comparison:

- Last time I bought a beer in a pub in Munich a paid more than 4€

- Just last week Germany spent 1.7B€ on a Syrian topic, which obviously won't change anything, neither for Syria, nor for Germany

- The lockdown - ongoing since November - costs 3 to 4B€ per week

The only one acting not like a moron in this situation is AZ: selling the vaccine to whoever pays the highest price. If the German politicians could pay the highest price, but doesn't want to, whose fault is that?

Funny fact: a friend of mine gets paid to support German R&D on measuring COVID concentration in the sewers to develop an early-warning-system. He says this money should be used to buy vaccines instead of founding some random R&D.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#76

Post by [deleted] »

codebeaker wrote: post #19

Sorry if this is considered off-topic, but I mus thave surely missed something about why AstraZeneca is seemingly the only choice on the vaccine market. I am German, we developed the Pfizer vaccine, but there is _no_ news about it, it seems like the AZ vaccine is the only option. Is it a case that Pfizer wasn't viable, wasn't used here, or only made lucrative contracts with other countries, or is it being used, quiet…

[deleted]

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#77

Post by rvieira »

fighterpilot wrote: post #70
rvieira wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don't understand your comment. "we shall fight them on the beaches" is war-time motivational speech. We live in peace-time (in Europe at least). In a stable, peace-time society, disputes are solved in courts.

I got the spirit of the comment. At the beginning of the pandemic, there should've been overwhelming support for therapeutics and vaccines. Multiple countries should've been preparing manufacturing facilities well in advance, and those that couldn't should've been scrambling to order from every vendor just in case. A "war effort" if you will. Instead we got a very inward and reactionary response (lockdowns etc) but l…

> we got a very inward and reactionary response (lockdowns etc) [...] it's probably a consequence of having mostly lawyers in charge

I disagree. Lockdowns were not proposed by lawyers or politicians, but rather the scientific community. In fact, in countries were the scientific advice was ignored, you had the fewest restrictions.

Also, "At the beginning of the pandemic, there should've been overwhelming support for therapeutics and vaccines." shows what the problem really is.

This is the politicians POV, in my opinion. A kind of mythical man-month for science. Long-term investment must be made in fundamental science so we can have nice things like mRNA vaccines. The politicians mentality of "pour millions in research" and they'll come up with something in two weeks is a real problem. Pure and fundamental research must be supported continuously, which is something politicians typically don't.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#78

Post by mschuster91 »

blfr wrote: post #53

The quality of leadership has really declined. Western countries seem to be run exclusively by petty managers. There's almost no "we shall fight them on the beaches" or "not because they are easy but because they are hard" and way more process, lawsuits, committees, etc. As it turns out, you need some charisma and vision to effectively do things.

> The quality of leadership has really declined. Western countries seem to be run exclusively by petty managers.

Most Western countries are either run by Conservatives (as their voters don't vote for the Conservatives but rather against "communists") or by populists who rose to power because people were fed up too much (e.g. Macron, BoJo).

The problem with voting for a party only because the other party is worse is that it places no pressure on the "not as bad" party to improve and keep themselves accountable.

Another cause, especially in Eastern Europe with Hungary's Orban but also in Germany with BILD or Fox "News" in the US, is media that is either directly controlled or massively influenced by government politics. A constant barrage of propaganda will always keep voters for the Conservative parties.

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#79

Post by throwaway4good »

mort96 wrote: post #64
throwaway4good wrote: post #55

The EU is hitting top bureaucratic legalize idiocy. Who cares if AZ breached the contract if it takes years of legal battle to find out? The EU needs to focus on getting more vaccines. I would suggest to start trail/approval processes for the vaccines from Russia and China. In particular China has shown the capacity and a willingness to export. So let's eat our pride and focus on getting the pandemic under control.

So, it's totally possible that the EU isn't doing enough to approve alternative vaccines, I don't know. But dude, the EU is huge. They're capable of pursuing multiple avenues at once. I don't understand why they shouldn't try to get more doses from AZ _at the same time as_ trying to approve and procure vaccines from other sources. It's not one or the other.

Sure. I am just frustrated like probably so many other Europeans on EU's handling of this.

To me EU has been naive and unable to protect the interests and lives of Europeans when other countries went for war-like export controls and aggressive poaching of vaccine companies / resources.

I have posted this before:

https://twitter.com/DaveKeating/status/1372897635577761803

https://www.axios.com/countries-producing-most-coronavirus-v...

Re: EU preparing legal case against AstraZeneca over vaccine shortfalls

#80

Post by fighterpilot »

rvieira wrote: post #77
fighterpilot wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got the spirit of the comment. At the beginning of the pandemic, there should've been overwhelming support for therapeutics and vaccines. Multiple countries should've been preparing manufacturing facilities well in advance, and those that couldn't should've been scrambling to order from every vendor just in case. A "war effort" if you will. Instead we got a very inward and reactionary response (lockdowns etc) but l…

> we got a very inward and reactionary response (lockdowns etc) [...] it's probably a consequence of having mostly lawyers in charge I disagree. Lockdowns were not proposed by lawyers or politicians, but rather the scientific community. In fact, in countries were the scientific advice was ignored, you had the fewest restrictions. Also, "At the beginning of the pandemic, there should've been overwhelming support for t…

Look, I'm not trying to argue that lockdowns were a bad idea or what have you. Just that they were the easiest cognitively for non-technical politicians.

The hard, longer-term work of building out local vaccine manufacturing and distribution wasn't done because it required way more foresight, executive planning ability and basic scientific/medical knowledge.

The other contributing factor is that politicians don't want to be embarrassed if they create some expensive manufacturing facility which ends up being unused. Better to just not make it at all and you'll be safe - after all, that's what everyone else did.

Lack of spending on science research is one thing, but couldn't they have at least imported a little talent to create redundant vaccine manufacturing facilities to deal with just this one acute crisis? It seems like the only person thinking about that was Bill Gates? Why can't our elected leaders show the same leadership? The only country that I'd expect to have this kind of technocratic vision and execution would be China.

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