No I’m working off the FT article ISMF referred to which states £1.78b funding from the EU (1). Add @anon27364116 's 1.65b German funding on that, I assume in US$ which, with the conversion of US$ to GBP in September20 when that payment was made, provides additional £1.525b .
So if the FT figures and Cologne’s figures are correct, that’s £1.78b directly from EU and £1.52b from Germany taking it over the £3b funding I mentioned coming from EU states in one way or another.
The thing is, the harsh reality. The reason that UK invested into AstraZeneca/Oxford solution was because it secured national security. This was particularly important in a post Brexit Britain. Where supply chains were at risk.
If it didn’t, it risked being subject to the same problems now faced by 100 other countries now worrying about supply because of EU/US actions. It was also done to help support an industry and protect its future. Long term pharma is an important industry.
From a government perspective (rather than science one) it was not done for humanitarian reasons first and foremost. The R&D was performed with an expectation of reward. This is no different to that in the US, or France or Germany. Therefore your contributions to specific projects influences specific outcomes.
Saw a good Spegal article and Europe’s problem was competing interests. Some want mRNA technology, some wanted the cheapest option. Again their strategy was based upon reward. It quoted a head of German party who said retrospectivly the EU skimped in the wrong place.
It’s not about overall R&D spend that is important. Let’s be honest if the UK and spunked millions on AstraZeneca and it had failed. The EU would not be sitting there saying yeah you did your part. You deserve more of Curevac, or Johnson and Johnson vaccine.
Eh, that’s not the number I said though. I mentioned roughly a billion (Euro), 750m corona vaccine development fund plus an earlier 300m investment in CureVac. The latter is, yes, an investment in a company, but it was done for the sole purpose of ensuring Corona vaccine supply, so I’m not sure it can be disregarded in this discussion. But no 1.65 billion Euro.
I think that’s a fair assessment overall imo. And as you say, there’s a bit of luck and hindsight talk involved as well.Could have been entirely possible only one mRNA vaccine would have succeeded for example and we might have had a very different discussion.
Except some of the figures cited by @anon27364116 you referenced in your post. It came to around €2.4b which is just over £2b.
The EU population being 450m compared with the UK population less than 70m.
The FT article states that the 1.78b funding was in pounds. Cologne had corrected my initial 375m+252m with the vaccine development fund (750m) plus CureVac (300m) which converted to £966m at the time. £1.78b + £966m.
Thanks for the clarification @anon27364116 . Got muddled in your figures.
Yes, a fair bit of double counting going on. Do the numbers include the €500m from the EU for Covax and the £548m from the UK (a correction you haven’t acknowledged)?
If we’re looking at a per capita figure there the UK have put in more than 8 times the amount the EU has into the Covax WHO program.
Yep that’s why I corrected it. I didn’t collate the EU or UK ~2bn figures as they are all properly calculated by the sources I have provided in my previous post. I note that I didn’t provide the source for the COVAX funding. UK has indeed funded £548m and not £500m.
I guess my questions is what did other EU countries invest individually (I only had numbers for Germany)? Nothing? Bit disappointing if true.
You drive off a cliff, you die. We ain’t dead buddy, not by a long way.
No but I’m pretty sure there’s a lot worried people in the fishing industry. It’s damaging, there’s no doubt about that and there are those that are willing to use this problem created by the EU as an excuse to justify that decision. Reality is, it shouldn’t.
No question, I wouldn’t want to be a fisherman right now or work in certain sectors but they’re a huge minority. This isn’t the BREXIT thread though 
Damn, not sure if it is coincidence, but there is now a crapload of EU social media profile being pushed - 2 minute ‘12 highlights of what the EU has done to face covid’ showing up in several places for me.
Could be my search terms this week, I suppose.
Is it Monty Pythonesque?
With how things have escalated over the past few days your gonna get all sides going into PR overdrive when the best thing for politicians is just to shut up and for pharma to promote their vaccines.
And it was used on humans for almost 50 years. Almost 4 billion people used this drug before. Scientist were fighting against Big Pharma on this for almost a year. And the progress is made this month in US.
Many scientist were labeled as anti vaxxers just because of this drug. It’s simple, no money in this, it’s a cheap drug. In ideal world the hype about this drug would be unbelievable. Just read the relevant studies, which is hard on the other hand because of the censorship. Senatore Ron Johnson did the best thing. He called Dr. Pierre Kory on hearing and made this thing more public.
After that NIH (National Institutes of Health) had to revise treatment guidelines for Ivermectin for COVID-19. They have looked at the studies and Ivermectin is now a treatment option for health care providers in US.
Interesting, thanks.
Aqueducts?
Interesting…I’m getting peppered with 'We want you!" Aunty von der Leyen posters. I can’t understand why.
Coronavirus: WHO criticises EU over vaccine export controls - BBC News
But on Saturday WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told the BBC vaccines should be given to all vulnerable groups and health workers across the globe before each country starts giving the jabs out more widely.
This would mean wealthy nations, such as the UK, halting immunisations at home once priority groups had been vaccinated and instead helping with vaccinations elsewhere.
“We’re asking all countries in those circumstances to do that - hang on, wait for those other groups. Rather than rushing to vaccinate one country, we need to be doing the lot and we need to be doing it together,” she said.
I couldn’t agree more with this. I really hope the UK government changes its position on this before spring.