All the current disagreements and sterile ‘discussions’ about who gets how many vaccines are so boring and counterproductive. What have the words togetherness, solidarity become? Apparently, they have become null and void in the midst of this catastrophy.
A Belgian lawyer speaks!
Yet, while Johnson hit out at the EU for weighing export controls on vaccines, the British government itself has a list of 174 medicines that are currently banned from export from the U.K., because they “are needed for UK patients.” Additions to the list in 2020 included around 100 medicines that have been suggested as possible treatments for COVID-19 patients or are being used to alleviate symptoms of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units.
In addition, the list includes flu vaccines, which while not directly used to treat COVID-19, are considered a critical public health tool in combating the virus, by reducing other pressures on the National Health Service.
Also on the list are a host of medicines associated with intensive care and long periods of intubation, while breathing is supported mechanically. While not solely used to treat specific COVID symptoms they were needed to prepare hospitals for an influx of intensive care patients suffering from severe cases of the disease.
One of the most recent updates to the list, made on November 6 last year, included Dabigatran etexilate and Semaglutide. The first acts as a blood thinner, and has been used to try and combat what a U.K.-based intensive care doctor described as a “stickiness” in the blood experienced in some COVID-19 cases. The other, semaglutide, has previously been used for treating strokes, but doctors believe it could help ease the impact of COVID-19 on patients’ hearts.
All sides would want to be careful with how far they go in this. I take it there is more to growing a vaccine than just throwing monkey dna on a dish. The other ingredients, if any, may come from places you piss off if you decide not to share.
I am not critical of the UK for such a protectionism mechanism, nor of the EU for wanting the same. I am just critical of the hypocrisy in blaming the EU for vaccine nationalism. Because in my opinion, in wars and terrible catastrophes, that is when protectionism and national self interest is understandable.
I don’t, (but perhaps I misunderstand) understand how the UK is not stopping anyone from getting what they ordered when they have clearly stipulated, according to AZ, that UK plants shall be delivering to UK only as long as the need is great, before being used for export. Morally and ethically it is absolutely no different from what the EU is trying to do, yet it has been construed here on this thread as different ethically to my bewilderment.
The very idea of the state, what excuse it has to exist, is that it protects it’s own against outside interference, and this includes pandemics etc. Same with a multi national block of states. In wars and disasters, an element of protectionism is not ethically unreasonable, it would arguably be in breach of the Social Contract a state has with its citizens ethically speaking for the state to not have an element of protectionism, so I am not at all criticising the UK or the EU for that. I am just critical of the tendency to browbeat the EU for protectionism, as if the UK is not guilty for exactly the same ethically speaking.
The terrible tragedy of the nature of a pandemic is that you will naturally have protectionism as various states seek to fulfill the needs of their own citizens first, and it ethically speaking, becomes easily a race towards the bottom rather than to the highest. But I find it difficult to criticise the race when it is the entire economy of various states, the lives of their citizens on a macro scale, that is at risk.
That’s how it works, and why an epidemic such as this has the potential to increase the growth of nationalism profoundly. Unfortunately.
Sigh. This is not the same as introducing bans or restrictions on the export of products already ordered.
I agree it’s about looking after your own but it’s not actual interference in the contractual obligations of 3rd parties. Imagine if the UK had continued to sell much needed PPE from its own scarce resources to other countries when we were disastrously short of those supplies for our own healthcare workers?
I think you misunderstand why the EU is being criticised then. The EU is being criticised because it wants AZ to act in breach of its contractual obligations and divert vaccines that are contractually earmarked for the UK to the EU and, simultaneously, have sought to impose restrictions on the export of vaccines being produced in the EU pursuant to agreements with non-EU nations.
The EU finds itself in this position as a result of decisions it took and its delays in taking them. It deliberately opted out of a WHO program because it wanted to ensure that it could meet the demands of its own citizens in priority. It now seeks to claim the moral high ground. The hypocrisy is astounding.
The UK has not demanded access to vaccines meant for the EU. The UK has not, so far, sought to interfere in the export of products already ordered by other countries.
I don’t see any moral high ground anywhere, whether in the EU or the UK; I just see unfortunate circumstances and competing self interests during a time of crisis. The ethics at work are pretty much the same.
The cause of this entire debacle is large delays in vaccine production and the reason it is so heated is that the epidemic is so damaging to lives and macro-economy, so claws and teeth are out everywhere.
Some would probably say that this entire debacle is a reason to champion nationalism, others would say that it is ethical evidence for the need of greater global integration between various states.
As for the battle regarding contract language, it appears Von Der Leyen has used very incorrect words (at this moment) and the EU might have a bad legal case as you and others have highlighted. It is probably not over yet.
Anyway, I am off to visit a friend for a few hours. Take care everyone and try to be some what kind to each others in what is right now a difficult topic.
That one is strange. Logically, if all their elderly people have now been vaccinated, who goes into the hospitals then?
Normally, it’s elderly people who clog up hospital beds. The younger ones, apart some exceptions, cope without the need to go to hospital.
I’m hoping that this is simply a consequence of the lag between the vaccine becoming effective (I think I remember reading that it’s about 10-14 days) from first dose to significantly limit serious illness or death. Hopefully what we will begin to see in Israel (and what we are already seeing in the UK) is that new cases come down, as well as the daily rate of fatalities thereafter.
It may be too soon to see that effect in lowering the numbers of critically ill in hospital though as these individuals likely contracted the virus before or not long after the vaccination program began. Hopefully in a week or two we’ll see some positive progress.
I am not party to this dispute between EU and UK and I am asking a genuine question, hopefully nobody gets triggered by it: how much do you all think that EU is making a huge issue of this vaccine distribution is alot about the EU government does not like how bad they look by the ‘UK putting one over them’ in vaccination distribution so soon after Brexit?
Yeah fair enough, let’s give it some more time. It will be interesting to see how they fare in a week or two.
Not sure to be honest. I wouldn’t have thought it would be related, but a lot of peoples opinions on Von der Leyen by people who have followed her career seem to be pretty similar regardless of which side of Brexit you supported. After all, even allowing for the differences in vaccination, there are plenty of things the EU could have said or done which wouldn’t have been so damaging.
Given the threats on restrictions by EU cover all vaccines being produced with the EU and we see EU countries complaining about the pfizer quantities not matching what they are paying for, delays to both their main vaccine supplies, then I wonder if it is a general frustration towards all the companies and inner pressures from member states we don’t hear about just boiling over and AZ got the short straw and ire of the commission.
oh…
I agree with @redfanman that the current approach of the EU is less about a comparison with the UK and the implications that Brexit may have been a benefit in this particular regard but much more about trying to divert attention from its own failings.
It has a duty to its citizens to try and get access to as much vaccine as possible. Certainly this is a situation of its own making but they’d be criticised if they simply said, “yeah, we messed up, we’ll just wait patiently whilst everything that needs to be sorted gets sorted”. They have to do all that they urgently can to mitigate what has objectively been a bit of a disaster, so far. That’s what they’re trying to do…regardless of how that makes them perceived around the world.