I wouldn’t mind knowing just how many,and who,were in the room when that decision was made.
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I am neither particularly outraged at the prospect, nor really surprised. The stumbling of the EU and US efforts has been filling me with dread, because of the inevitable consequences. It is notable that the US is almost completely out of the conversation. But the EU appears to be heading down the same road, led by their own German blonde Trump no less. She was all but shouting ‘fake news’ this week.
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Unfortunately I see it as symptomatic of the direction of travel
Like Boris Johnson’s fuck ups being symptomatic for the direction of travel?
As I’ve always said, von der Leyen is an incompetent idiot who’s messed up every single job she’s ever been given, perfect timing that she’s now in this position at this crucial moment.
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Mrs flight to Edinburgh via Amsterdam on Wednesday has been cancelled now btw. Weirdly the notification email was in Spanish for some reason. They offered her an alternative flight days later early in the morning, but since the Dutch now require a rapid test max 4hrs old before departure (in addition to the PCR test no older than 48hrs) and there is no rapid test at Düsseldorf Airport nor anything else testing open at this early hour this won’t work either.
I do think it’s good that these kind of things are in place now. Does kind of piss me off though that loads of irresponsible people in the world apparently had no issue travelling and breaking rules for no good reason, whereas she had everything planned, was going to obey all the rules, isolate etc, even got letters from doctor and clinic in Scotland explaining the situation.
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For a while earlier this year, I was playing ‘Plague Inc’ on my phone when I had to wait somewhere. This Trump-Johnson-von der Leyen setup feels like one of those stupid scenarios you can’t actually win.
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Possibly. Was it VDL that instructed the invocation of Article 16? Does the EC not have advisors? Or did they advise it?!
Is she to blame for the vaccine procurement fiasco as well? Because to me that’s a systemic failing.
For the first part it’s likely she’s a bit of an egomaniac and as such has the same type of fuckwits in her inner circle as Johnson and Trump.
The 2nd part i think it’s a supply issue on AZ part with materials going into the European plants prior to manufacture.Couldn’t be foreseen at time of signing contracts and as such wasn’t accommadated for.
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April, it will all be better in April.
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Unfortunately the numbers are not quite so black and white.
An issue somewhat complicated by how the numbers are misrepresented by the press (and to an extent the EU). The research/payments were effectively two phases.
1/ The high risk, early development of the vaccine (Oxford University part)
2/ The upscaling and outsourcing of distribution (AstraZenica Part)
The EU claims to have invested more than €300m/£265m to to help it develop the vaccine and to produce it in mass quantities. The reality is the EU is is yet to hand over a majority of this promised amount (according to the BBC). That puts a bit of a different light on events. The EU contribution was not for the high risk phase, but for the lower risk second phase (basically helping scaleup and getting local distribution).
Whilst both the UK and the EU roughly 2bn into pharma. Much of that investment remained internal (within the EU/within the UK) for the early stage R&D. Governments/EU naturally supporting their own industries (Post Brexit that simply has how funding has further gone, most researchers I know unable to get any EU funding for the last 3 years).
The FT explained that the UK and US n total, spent about seven times more upfront, per capita, on vaccine development, procurement and production than the European bloc,
As your link for the US investment shows, the UK by May 2020 had already directly invested £84M on top of the £47M already invested into Oxford/Astra. That does not include various funding indirectly through the UK government funding bodies (BBSRC, MRC, EPRC). It also does not include the £38M government funding that went into the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation center (VIMC) for the bioreactor that helps produce the vaccine.
When I said the UK took a big bet, I was talking about the vaccine R&D. The stage that it was a 50-50 chance the money could have gone down the toilet.
Sure they diversified risk for procurement of the vaccine. But that is not the same as the money invested into the vaccine development. The UK put money upfront, they took on the risk, they invested in the support infrastructure.
Bar any delays (or EU measures) by the end of Q1 the UK total doses with both Oxford/Astra and also Pfizer vaccine it by the end of Q1 have 28M doses. The EU are complaining because they are only getting 31M doses from Astrazenca in the same period.
When the EU has not invested to the same extent (per capata, not invested in the accompanying infrastructure, didnt take on the same risk) for me it only comes across as selfish.
I am pretty disappointed in the EU (and article 16 as an example). The US you expect them to be selfish. You dont expect that of the EU. I expect greater integrity from them. I expect them to be putting values first. But the last week has shown them to be as petty as any government.
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Is it possible that the graph compares funding of two countries vs the EU bloc per capita, but leaves out funding of individual countries within the bloc? Germany e.g. became the major investor of Curevac via a 300m investment and then on top of that had another 750m corona vaccine development fund, including 375m for Biontech and another 230m for Curevac . That’s a billion right there.
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And yet, due to the funding the EU pump into R&D each year - €300b+ or 2.19% of GDP (1), the mRNA vaccines were made possible. They are not my words but from the developer of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, Uğur Şahin. (2) He was referring to the various funding tranches available from the ERC in the research of, specifically, mRNA that have been taking place since at least 2018. (3)
What about the €137.5m funding from the EU Horizon 2020 R&D program for academic research, the €164m from the EIC for small companies to commercialize vaccine products, a €80m grant to CureVac for R&D, and €130m to the WHO for response on the ground? (4)
The idea of trying to suggest one country deserves the benefits of the vaccine more than another due to research funding is pointless on many levels. And suggesting the EU, or any other nation, hasn’t thrown bucketloads of funding at this COVID issue in the last 12 months and further back, is disingenuous.
It’s as if a 36 hour period of a shithead (VDL) messing around has destroyed decades of tremendous work the EU has done, and continues to do, in some people’s eyes
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The FT graph looks like it includes those. It puts the EU at about £2b, the UK at about £1.9b and the US at about £10b. Don’t know if it includes Germany’s order on the side for £30m of Biontech though…
Wouldn’t include the German funding as that would take it well over 3b.
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Numbers don’t seem to add up to me, if I were to include that billion by Germany alone (don’t know what other EU countries might have invested individually). Even if I take out the initial 300m investment in Curevac, although that’s not entirely accurate as if it was done for the sole purpose of ensuring Corona vaccine supply.
Except much of the numbers @anon27364116 mentioned you had said were included in your figure.
My post from last night? No, I deliberately kept the EU and German funding separate in that part as it would be misleading to combine them:
Yes, which puts the EU number at around £2b (including the extra tranche mentioned by @anon27364116) , as I said.
Maybe you’re missing the distinction between £s and €s?
I think the difference is one of funding for pharma vs funding for vaccine.
There has been considerable funding for treatments, which is seperate.
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Not at all, they’ve screwed up and created a massive incident when quiet discussion was required.
What I dont like is the UK press using this as another tool to hide the fact or justify that we drove ourselves off a cliff.
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